“I know.” Vince nodded. “Drake is gathering people round and having a vote, but I can’t see it going any other way.”
“And can you blame them?” said Quint.
“Chap?” Stephen seemed annoyed by Quint’s comment. “It’s Pickle.”
“I don’t even know this guy.”
“He’s a good guy,” Stephen said.
“No, he’s right.” Vince nodded in agreement to Quint’s comment. “Giving up the Audi and the three pickups, potential lifesavers, for one man is not gonna happen. Going out on runs on foot will not wash with these people, and we’re hardly blessed with horses or any other means of transport, apart from a few shitty mopeds that are running low on fuel anyway.”
“Guys!” Findlay yelled. “We’re all meeting by the large shed. We’re gonna have this vote.”
All three nodded and began making their way over.
“After the vote,” Vince began. “Meet me in Ward 22. The new clinic.”
“Why?” Quint and Rowley said at the same time.
“Just do it. I’m gonna get everyone else from Colwyn to go there as well.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
The vote had been cast and it was unanimous. Only eleven people raised their hands when asked if the vehicles were worth sacrificing for one man. Every member of Colwyn voted in favour for it to go ahead, and so did Mildred and Quint, and a few others like Shelley Tavernier and Patricia Johnson.
The crowd of people slowly dispersed, most relieved that the vehicles weren’t going to be given up, and Vince headed to the back of the building.
“Vince!” Drake called after him, but Vince wasn’t slowing down for anybody. “Wait up!” Drake called out.
Vince stopped walking and turned around. His machete was in his belt, his hand resting on it, and his face was filled with fury.
“I’m sorry,” Drake said. “But we knew that was going to happen.”
“Give me the keys to one of your mopeds,” Vince said.
“What? No.”
“I need to get out of this place.”
Drake stood for a moment and could see the man was in pain and raging. He groaned, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I’m not gonna do anything stupid. I won’t go far.”
“Fine.” Drake huffed. “Don’t go too far.” He put his hand in his pocket and tossed him a key. “Take mine. One at the end. Need a helmet?”
Vince shook his head.
Karen emerged from the building and could see Vince getting on the bike.
“Where’re you going?”
“I need to get out of here, otherwise I’m gonna punch fuck out of somebody.” He started the engine and yelled, “Won’t be long!”
“What about the meeting?” Karen called out.
“Later.”
Drake turned to Karen and said, “What meeting?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
*
Vince rode along Gaol Road and could feel his eyes filling due to the mixture of the shock of losing Stephanie and the wind almost blinding his eyes. His mind went elsewhere as he travelled at sixty, down the long main road, and thought about the demise of the young girl that won his heart. She had been like a daughter to him and his mind went back to the time when the two of them were beyond the wall at Colwyn Place. He couldn’t think why they were there. His mind went blank, but he remembered when they climbed back over, and that she told him that she loved him before going in one of the houses for the night to sleep.
He slowed down and turned a corner, heading down the high street, swerving by cars and limbs that were scattered along the road.
The bike going by disturbed the crows pecking on the cadavers. He slowed down and turned right at a junction, and stopped the bike where he could see up ahead six of the dead.
“Right, you fuckers.”
Vince got off the bike and headed towards the half dozen Snatchers with tears in his eyes. His blood was simmering and released an angry cry as he began to hack at the six dead.
Three had been put down straightaway and number four received a slice through its head, but Kindl was struggling to remove the blade. He lifted his leg and pushed it away with his foot, as the two remaining ones grabbed him and tried to take him down.
One set of rotten teeth were inches away from Vince’s skin, but he managed to shrug the two off and common sense prevailed and he ran back to the bike with the machete in his right hand. He put the engine on and saw the two stragglers heading his way. He moved away and found it easy to avoid them by going on the other side of the road.
He took a quick look behind him and could see the distance between him and the two Snatchers increasing considerably.
He turned into a country road and pushed the bike as far as it could go, regarding speed. He slowed down and eventually brought it to a stop and cursed himself.
“Not a good idea, Vincent,” he said to himself. “Drinking, riding a bike, and then putting down Rotters. Got a death wish or something?”
Vince was raging and instead of punching a wall, or wrecking a room, he chose to get fresh air and escape temporarily from the hospital. He parked up the bike at the side of the road and looked around. The place he was at was a little like the Little Haywood area.
There were fields to either side of him, and according to the signage the next town from Stafford was two miles away.
He sat on the grass bank and a smile stretched over his face. Right now would have been a good time to have a joint. Sometimes when he and Lee James used to go out for a few beers, they would walk home smoking a joint.
He looked both ways, lowered his head, and closed his eyes. He had been like this for a couple of minutes and dragged his nails across his grey hair, occasionally smacking the palms off his forehead. He started to feel emotional again, but he could feel a presence and this immediately brought him out of his self-pity.
Vince looked up and could see a male, extremely thin, and had a dark beard. The guy looked like he was in his thirties and was reminiscent of the junkies that used to hang around Rugeley town centre, begging for money.
“Alright?” the man asked.
“Not really,” Vince responded.
“You look good for a man that’s been involved with the apocalypse for three months.”
“I have a place.” Vince decided to be honest with the man he didn’t know.
“Good for you,” the man said with slight disdain in his voice. “I’m not looking for somewhere to stay. I already have one.”
Vince felt for the man. He looked malnourished and probably would benefit being at Stafford. Whether Drake would let him in was another thing.
“Have you been in the wars?” the gaunt man asked.
Vince looked down at his machete that he had now put in his belt and could see there were stains on the blade. He nodded.
“You stay by yourself?” Vince asked him.
“Kind of.”
Confused, Vince queried further, “Kind of?”
“My place is in that wooded area.” The man pointed thirty yards down the road, on the left side. “I found it a few weeks back.”
“You found it?”
“It’s a cabin,” he said. “I don’t have much to eat, but I managed to find a bottle of vodka the other day that I found. Why don’t you come back and we can have a drink?”
“No.” Vince shook his head. “I better be going back, and I think I’ve had enough to drink for one day. Then again … I don’t think I should be drinking any more, but it has been a while since I tasted vodka.”
“Great, that’s settled then.”
“Okay, but I ain’t staying for long. I need to be back to sort some things out.”
“Needed to get away, eh?” The thin man smiled and Vince could see his teeth were grey, rotten.”
“Something like that.” Vince got onto the bike and started the engine. “Ready when you are.”
The man looked perplexed, so Vince snapped at him, “Get on.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
The moped was taken into the wooded area and Vince followed the man, of name he still didn’t know, and dumped the bike against a tree once he spotted the cabin eleven yards away.
“Anybody here when you arrived?” Vince asked him, walking through the bracken.
“No. It was completely empty,” he replied. “Couldn’t believe it when I came across it.”
“In Cannock Chase they’re hidden everywhere,” said Vince. “I’ve come across a few myself when I’ve been out.”
“Stay there.” The man held his hand up. “Just need to make sure the place is acceptable ... tidy.”
“It really doesn’t matter.” Vince found the man’s behaviour bizarre and wished he hadn’t bothered coming now. “What am I doing?” he muttered quietly.
The man opened the door and disappeared inside the hut. Vince had a quick look around and ran over to the bike and began making a move, heading out of the woodland. This was a bad idea, he thought.
“Where’re you going?” the man called out from behind.
Vince stopped moving and turned around. “I better get back. Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Just five minutes,” the man said, almost begging. “I can’t tell you the last time I had adult company.”
With the Pickle crisis and the death of Stephanie, Vince’s head was all over the place, but he still had pity for the man and asked him, “Why don’t you hop on the bike and I’ll take you to Stafford? I think they’ll let you in.”
“I’m a lone wolf. I already told you that.” He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Five minutes,” Vince sighed, placing the bike on its side. “Then I really need to go.”
“What’s the rush?”
“A friend of mine is in trouble and a few people I know have been killed.”
“Trouble?” The man wiped his nose across his sleeve, making Vince wince with disgust.
“I have a few days to get him back.”
“Then you have plenty of time.” The man held out his hands and his lips stretched underneath the hair on his face. “Come on then.”
Vince walked over to the dishevelled individual and said, “I’m Vince.”
“Zac.” The van held his hand out and screwed it into a fist. “Fist bump?”
Vince paused and said. “I’m not sure.”
“Why not?” Zac still had his fist out, waiting for Vince to make contact.
“Um … because I’m not ten years old anymore.”
“Just do it,” Zac chuckled.
Vince fist bumped the man and stepped inside the cabin after him.
Vince’s nose twitched as he stepped in, and his eyes widened when they clocked a female Snatcher. She was in the corner of the cabin, her left foot chained up to a beam a foot high and against the wall. Her teeth had been removed as well as her fingers, and her dark straggly hair was over her hideous dead face.
Vince took a step closer to get a better look and his face blanched. “What the...?”
It looked like she had stocking and suspenders on and a matching black bra. Her head lifted and it appeared that some kind of lipstick had been applied.
“Where did you find her?” Vince asked Zac. Although he really wanted to know why the fuck she was in the cabin in the first place.
“I found her a few weeks ago,” he said with a smile. “She was naked, wandering along the road.”
“Naked?” Vince scratched his head.
“Yeah.” He smiled and told Vince to sit down. He then grabbed a bottle of Smirnoff that was half full and passed it to a now sitting Vince Kindl.
Vince thanked Zac and took the bottle. He had changed his mind about the drink, but didn’t want to offend the man.
“But...” Vince took a swig. “The clothes she’s wearing. Where did you get them?”
“I already had them here,” Zac spoke with a happy tone.
Vince didn’t want to know the answer why Zac had ladies’ underwear in his possession, but Zac told him anyway.
“I picked them up when I was doing a bit of looting,” he began. “Haven’t been with a woman for a while, so I thought these were the next best thing, until she came along.” He pointed over at the female Snatcher.
“Okay.” Vince had made his mind up to get out of the place as soon as he could. The scenario was bizarre. With what was happening back at the hospital and now this, Vince was struggling to get his head together.
Seeing the confusion on his guest’s face, the man began, “I know this all might seem a bit strange—”
“Just a little.”
“But she keeps me occupied.”
“What are you telling me?” Vince narrowed his eyes at the man like Clint Eastwood in one of his spaghetti westerns.
“I’m just saying…” The man paused and then hunched his shoulders. “She keeps me occupied.”
“You mean...” Vince ran his fingers over his face, shook his head, and queried, “You’re intimate with this ... her?”
“Now and again.” The man smiled.
“And it was you that removed the teeth and the fingers?”
“Had to,” he laughed and joked, “Need to practice safe sex, otherwise she’d rip my throat out.”
Kindl looked around the creepy place and it reminded him of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films. He looked to his right, over to the table, and could see that a small pile of meat was sitting on a plate, next to a jar that was filled with yellow liquid.
“It’s cat meat,” Zac laughed, noticing that Vince was looking. “Try some, if you want.”
“Cat food?”
“No. Cat meat.”
“I’m good, thanks.” Vince shook his head and screwed his face.
“You don’t like the taste of pussy?” Zac cackled and winked at Vince.
“Not of the dead pet variety I don’t, no.” Vince pointed at the jar and asked what was in it.
“That’s my own urine,” Zac said with a straight face and Vince knew he wasn’t joking.
“No shit?”
“That’s right. No shit, just piss.”
“Cat meat washed down with a jar of piss,” Vince mocked and didn’t know whether to laugh or not. “You should open a restaurant when this apocalypse is over.”
“Mock away, Vince. But some of us don’t have a choice. The vodka has come as a nice change.”
Vince took another swig from the bottle and handed it back to Zac, then suddenly began to feel nauseous when he realised that he was sharing a bottle with a man who drank his own piss.
“I better be going.” Vince retched and put his hand over his mouth.
“But you’ve only just got here.”
Vince stood up, nodded over at the Snatcher and said, “I’ll leave you two love birds to it.”
“If you have to.” There was disappointment on Zac’s face as Vince headed for the door, still retching, and said further, “If ever you’re passing...”
“You can count on it,” Vince lied, and left the place with hurried steps.
Vince headed for the door, but stopped and turned around. “A question,” he said. “Since you removed the teeth…” Vince sighed and said, “I can’t believe I’m asking you this.”
“I know what you’re going to say,” the man laughed. “No. I don’t get blowjobs from her. Tried it once, but she still tries to bite down.”
“You’ve already tried,” Vince moaned and shook his head in aghast. “Of course you have.”
He turned around, making sure the psychopath wasn’t following him, and grabbed the bike and pushed it out onto the road. The image of the female Snatcher dressed in underwear turned his stomach, and Vince pulled a face when a brief image of Zac and his dead lover having sex scurried across his mind.
He shuddered with disgust and started the bike.
“Possibly the weirdest day of my life so far,” Vince moaned. “And that’s saying something.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Vince returned from his bizarre short trip and parked up the bike at the back of the hospital. He strolled towards the outpatients building and saw Quint and Rowley by the large shed. He whistled them over and told them to follow him.
“I need to go to the toilet, chap,” said Stephen, hobbling on his crutches. “I’ll catch you up.”
Mildred could be seen talking to Shelley Tavernier.
“Mildred!” Vince called over.
She excused herself and went over to Vince, asking what was wrong.
“Need you to get Joanne and meet me at Ward 22.”
“She’s already there with Karen,” Mildred said. “What the piss is going on?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
*
Stephen Rowley took a while to get to one of the portaloos and decided to sit down for a pee. The seat looked clean enough and then he shut the door and was covered in darkness. He sighed and it was good to take the weight off his feet. He dropped his head in his hands and thought about Craig Burns. His death was going to plague him for the rest of his life. He knew that.
Stephen lifted his head up as he finished, and could hear gentle steps heading his way.
He could see a shadow from the crack at the bottom of the door and didn’t understand why someone was hanging about. There were plenty of vacant ones either side of him.
The door wasn’t being tried, so Rowley decided not to speak up, but the individual hanging around was getting on his nerves.
He stood and pulled his pants and trousers up. He winced as he accidentally put a bit of weight on his strapped ankle; he then grabbed his crutches and opened the portaloo door.
Whoever was there had now disappeared, and Rowley looked about and could see that the place was barren, with the exception of one female guard at the main gate that he didn’t recognise.
He shut the door behind him, looked up and closed his eyes. The days recently had been murkier to what people were used to. Since June, most of the days had been extremely warm. If this had been a normal summer, this heatwave across the UK would have been in the news. There would have been reports of scores of people basking in the sun on grass banks during their lunch breaks, on British beaches, and also news about a hosepipe ban and some possible fatalities from the heat.
Snatchers (Book 14): The Dead Don't Hate Page 21