Chapter Twenty One
"They'll be coming inside soon!" Johnny exclaimed. "What do we do?"
Jack and Johnny had been keeping an eye on the situation, regarding the looters in the street. They didn't seem to be just a bunch of opportunists; they seemed to know what they were doing, as if they had been doing this for days, weeks even. They had wheels—probably stolen, were armed, and had a leader that they listened to.
"Let's just give up," Johnny suggested.
Jack shook his head. "You saw what they did to that man, in front of his family."
"That's because he was making it hard for them."
"And so he should. He had a family; you can't just let people walk all over you, Johnny."
"We can't all be like you," Johnny sneered.
Jack smiled at Johnny, his eyes narrowed. "I was just like you a few weeks ago, before all of this kicked off. I was one of the biggest cowards on the planet."
"So what happened?" Johnny didn't seem to be bothered being labelled as a coward.
"I killed some of these things because I didn't have a choice. Then I lost my son, and then I just stopped caring."
"Stopped caring? But you're still alive."
"I know." Jack glared into space, and added, "When that belt slipped and I went crashing into the swimming pool, I felt that I had been given another chance."
"By God?"
Jack shrugged his shoulders and snapped out of his hypnotic stare. He had no definite answer. "By God, fate, something else—I don't know."
They both continued to glare outside and saw three bodies go into the house next door.
Johnny looked back at Jack for a reaction, but his male companion seemed unruffled by the people in the street. "This house will be next," said Johnny.
Jack agreed, and said nonchalantly, as if he had all the time in the world, "We better hide, and you better go downstairs and grab yourself a knife."
Johnny's facial expression suggested that he didn't want to be the bearer of a weapon. "If they find me, I don't want them to think I'm hostile."
"Please yourself," Jack grunted.
Johnny ran into the spare room that had a bed and a cupboard. He hid in the cupboard and Jack looked around to see where
he
could go. He placed his hand on the doorknob of Thomas' bedroom door, but something was stopping him from going in. He felt that if he went in, he could have an emotional breakdown with all the reminders of his little boy, his toys, his quilt cover, amongst other things.
"Fuck it." He went into Kerry's bedroom and whispered under his breath as he went under her bed, "This has got to be the worst fucking hiding place ever."
Despite the doubts suffocating his psyche, he remained under the bed and kept the crowbar by his side. He then thought it would be better to hide in the built-in cupboard, at least then he would be in a better position to attack if he was found. He changed his mind and crawled out from under the bed, then went into Kerry's cupboard just as the front door was forced open, moving away the barricade.
Jack tried to keep his breathing under control, but he was a little nervous and the cupboard was stifling hot. He listened to the voices and footsteps on the ground floor of the house and could hear them ransacking the place. He knew that if staying in the house became untenable, then they would have to find an empty one to dwell in, and hopefully feed off the scraps that had been left behind.
He could hear bags being filled, plates being smashed, and cupboards being emptied. It angered him that these vagrants had come into Kerry and Thomas' house and were helping themselves to what they wanted.
Then he heard the sound of thudding footsteps making their way up the stairs, and the chesty cough of a man could be heard as he reached the landing. It sounded like just the one person, but Jack grasped his crowbar with both hands, ready to strike.
His breathing became heavier when he heard the bathroom door open. There was silence for a few seconds, and then the door was shut. Then he listened to the door to Thomas' bedroom being opened.
Jack became enraged that a strange man was poking about in his son's room, and envisaged coming out of the cupboard and smashing his brains in. There was a lot of noise coming from Thomas' room, and it sounded to Jack that the place was being turned upside down.
His son's door was now shut, and the man had two rooms to go. Jack had already agreed with himself that as soon as the cupboard was opened, the intruder was getting it.
The bedroom door that used to belong to Kerry, before she had fled to her mother's in Hazelslade, remained closed. Jack was baffled by this, as he was convinced that the room he was in was going to be checked next.
Maybe he had gone.
Maybe he had decided that the house was vacant.
Maybe he was just too damn lazy to check the rest of the house, and was going to tell his pals that it was clear.
Jack's little theories were quashed once he heard footsteps on the landing. The man hadn't left. He was still on the first floor of the house. The creak of the door belonging to the spare room was the next sound Jack could hear from within the hot cupboard he was standing in, and he hoped that checking the spare room would be a simple look over, followed by a quick exit. But Jack was wrong.
"Hey guys," he heard the man shout. "I've got a little hider up here."
"Bollocks," Jack muttered quietly.
They'd found Johnny.
Chapter Twenty Two
The last half an hour had passed without incident, but as Jade decided to have a sit down, she could hear a twig snap in the suffocating greenery. She had no idea what to do, and no idea which direction to run, if she needed to.
She remained standing still; her heart rate speeded up, and she released an anxious intake of breath when she heard the rustle of a bush a few yards away. Out of the bush, a grey squirrel scurried up one of the trees. She placed her hand on her chest in relief and almost smiled. "Little prick," she muttered.
She sat on the grass, leaned against a tree and placed her head inbetween her knees for a short while. She then threw her head back and cried once again for Paul. She knew that if she stuck by his side, she would have been killed with him, but it did nothing to douse the guilt that was burning away from inside her.
Once she had composed herself the best she could, she staggered back to her feet and continued to walk, with her paranoid eyes moving continuously. She desperately wanted to rest, but she wanted to find a road so she could maybe flag down a passing motorist, but she didn't want to go back to the road she had just crossed. She assumed that the road would be now infested with those fiends, and possibly even more had been attracted now that they had made a kill.
Jade had only walked a matter of minutes into the woods until she had another run-in with one of the creatures. It appeared to be unusually on its own, and the single ghoul was still enough to put the fear of God into the twenty-five-year-old. She frantically looked around for something to use for a weapon, but there was nothing, so she decided to make a run for it.
The fitness instructor ran and swiped away any overhanging branches that were a potential threat to her face, and once she came to an open part of the woods, she ran onto the dirt path and decided that this particular path would be safer for her when she thought about the hidden animal trap that had injured Paul, and had become the first step to his demise.
How many more of those traps were there in the woods?
Her run turned into a brisk walk when her eyes told her that her surroundings were reasonably clear, and she licked her dry lips and could have murdered a drink.
Before she could breath a small sigh of relief, a rustle came from the right of her and another two could be seen shambling in her direction. She shook her head, angry more than anything else, that she couldn't have a minute to herself, and began to jog away from the two stalkers quite easily.
Jade's foot then hit an exposed tree-root sticking out of the ground, making her tumble to the floor. She fell and scraped her arm against a jagged rock in the ground, and she yelped out in pain. She could see the two walking her way, albeit slowly, and she inspected her wound.
Her left arm, just above the elbow, had been badly grazed and cut, and the blood ran down. She wiped some of the blood away with her hand, and got back into position to quickly move away from her 'admirers'.
The woodland was beginning to become heavier, and the dirt path was slowly disappearing. She looked over her shoulder and saw that the two were lagging behind. As soon as she turned back round to face forward, she was almost face-to-face with another one that seemed to appear from a huge shrub.
She released a scream, and was grabbed by the thing. It dug its nails into her shoulders and they both fell to the ground, and began to tussle. It appeared that the monster was a female when it used to be in human form, and its bloated and peeling face was trying to bury itself into Jade's neck, aching for some flesh.
Jade screamed out as she fought with the relentless thing, and as it opened its mouth to take a bite out of her shoulder, she finally managed to move it off of her. She crawled from the beast and eventually got to her feet. Her feet pounded the ground and she never looked back while she sprinted through the trees.
Up ahead, she could see the trees becoming a lot less dense and crowded, and a relieved smile emerged on her face when she realised a road was up ahead. She then looked down on her arm and her features created a look of sorrow, but she tried to shrug it off, especially when she could hear a vehicle groan in the distance.
She reached the side of the road and looked ahead to see a farmer's jeep coming her way. She held out her hand and told herself that if the vehicle showed no signs of slowing down, then she would jump in the middle of the road if she had to. She was
that
desperate.
It began to slow, and she puffed out her cheeks in relief.
When it came to an eventual stop, Jade looked down at her left wounded arm, and covered the wound the best she could with her right hand. It wasn't bleeding that bad, but she didn't want the driver to refuse her a lift because she could mess up his means of transport.
She was greeted by an elderly man of an age no younger than sixty-five. His wife was a heavy woman, of similar age, and they both greeted Jade with a warm smile.
"You okay, young lady?" the driver spoke. "Where're you headed?"
"Anywhere," said Jade, and almost burst into tears.
"Anywhere?" The old man smiled and looked at his wife. "I think that's exactly where we're going."
"I'm sorry to bother you." Jade's eyes were pleading, but she needn't have bothered.
"Just you get in the back, love," the elderly woman spoke with comfort in her voice. "We're getting out of here and heading north."
Said the old man, "Those things were everywhere for days. As soon as they dispersed a little, we made a run for it."
"We're from Heath Hayes." The elderly woman began to pick her teeth with her forefinger. "Our village was fine, then suddenly, one afternoon, we looked out of our bedroom window to see loads of those things, spilling in the street. We saw people jumping from a bedroom window onto a big prison van that was parked on a front garden. The thing then rammed its way through them and then disappeared, taking most of those things with it. But some still hung around."
"It's been a strange few weeks," the old man laughed. "That's for sure."
"You getting in, or what?" The female passenger stared at Jade and added, "You don't look too well, girl. Get in the back, but watch out for our stuff."
Jade nodded, and went to the back of the jeep. She thought that the couple's jovial attitude was bizarre, and thought that individuals of their age should have been tormented by terror. She climbed in and sat near some boxes that could have been food or household equipment, and dropped her head in her hands. She was dying to sleep.
The vehicle moved away and Jade now rested her head against one of the boxes. She was tired, and she was feeling sick. She looked at her arm and was pleased that the bleeding had stopped a little. The only thing that was worrying her now was the mark underneath the wound. The small bite she had received was the result from the tussle she had with the lone figure in the woods before she made it to the road. It was just a little mark. It wasn't that serious, was it?
Jade tried to blank all negative feelings from her head and concentrated on trying to get some sleep. She was exhausted, mentally and physically, and she was feeling giddy as if the blood was draining out of her body.
She peered down at the small bite once again, and hoped it would heal.
She looked out of the van as it moved, then closed her eyes, feeling the wind glide soothingly over her features. She quickly fell asleep, unaware that that was the last she was going to see of the world as a human being.
Chapter Twenty Three
"I'll go for a walk, while you're..."
Wolfgang Kindl couldn't find the words to finish his sentence, as the lump in his throat was strangling him.
Pickle and Karen nodded at the old man as he went downstairs and left the cabin to go outside into the garden, and the remaining two were left to glare at the tied-up woman who used to be his wife, Grace.
"Let's make this as respectful and as less messy as possible." Pickle eyed Karen, who nodded in agreement. There was an old sheet scrunched up in the corner of the room and Pickle nodded over to it. "As soon as we put her to sleep, we'll wrap her in that sheet." Pickle then shook his head and released an unusual smile.
"What is it?" Karen asked him.
"It seems all I do these days is bury people: Laz, Davina...young Thomas and Kerry."
"I buried a whole family from that attic while you were almost dying in your bed—well, I didn't do it all by myself." Karen then briefly thought about Jason Bonser, who back then had introduced himself as George Jones.
"So how are we gonna do his?" asked the ex-inmate, interrupting their brief reminiscing period.
Karen was lost in thought and looked at the machete tucked into her belt, then looked at Pickle's.
Realising what was going through Karen's mind, Pickle protested, "I'm not gonna hack her to death and make a fuckin' mess of his only bedroom."
Karen agreed, reluctantly.
"Wait a second." She ran down the stairs and peered out of the front door to see Wolf nervously pacing up and down in the garden, waiting on news of his wife's second demise. He took his straw hat off and scratched his head, then placed the hat back on, then repeated this action. His nerves were obvious. Karen felt pity for the man and shook her head a little as her mind began to drift. Snapping out of her daydreaming, she suddenly remembered what she went downstairs for.
She scanned the area of the kitchen and looked through the top drawer. It was the usual cutlery drawer, containing forks, knives, spoons and teaspoons. She put the drawer back and looked in the second drawer to see other utensils such as a corkscrew, bottle opener, etc,. She pulled out a large wooden spoon, that was probably used for cooking, and grabbed a penknife from the drawer. She opened the blade to see it was two inches in length.
Probably not enough to do the job, she thought.
She then grabbed the spoon in her left hand and began to sharpen the handle-end with the penknife, until it eventually developed into a very sharp weapon. She kicked the wood shavings away that had fallen onto the kitchen floor, with one kick of her right foot, then went back upstairs.
Karen had returned and instructed to Pickle, "Go round the back of her and pull her head back, by grabbing her hair."
Without arguing, Pickle walked round the back of the chair in the bedroom, which seemed to have excited the thing even more. It began to move that much, Karen thought that there could be a danger that it was going to get loose.
Pickle grabbed the back of its hair with one strong hand and yanked the head back.
"Perfect." Karen walked over and slowly looked at the face of the poor thing. She looked like she could have been old enough to be her Grandma.
Karen released three short breaths out, gearing herself up for what she was about to do next, and finally forced the sharpened-end of the spoon into its right eye socket until it stopped moving. Thick fluid ran down its cheek and Pickle released the hair and it remained still, with its head back. Karen reached over, took the utensil and pulled it out rapidly, which made an unsettling squelching sound.
Karen then pulled out the penknife from her pocket and began to cut the body free. Pickle took a hold of the sheet and laid it out on the floor. Without uttering a word to one another, they picked the body up and placed it on the sheet. Pickle had managed to tie the ankles and hands together with the ropes Karen had cut, before they both wrapped the body in the material.
They took the body out of the cabin, while Wolf was purposely not looking, and opened the gate to take her out onto the desolate hill. As soon as they put her onto the grass, Karen said, "I'm gonna go back and see if Wolf has a shovel. If he doesn't, she can stay there. I ain't digging a grave with my fuckin' hands."
Pickle watched Karen as she headed downhill, back to the gate. While she was away, he took the opportunity to look around and see the view of a part of Rugeley he had never been to before. He looked at the back of the Pear Tree Estate and apart from a few burning houses, and the one car alarm that could be heard in the distance, it didn't look too bad. But the view only allowed Pickle to see the back of the houses; he was aware that beyond those quarters could be many ghouls shambling around, looters taking advantage of the weak, and dead bodies strewn across the street. He wouldn't know until he got there, and that would probably be another hour away.
He and Karen were thankful for Wolf putting them up, and getting more supplies was the least they could do if it meant having a roof over their head and living somewhere on a hill, almost out of harm's way. But Pickle wasn't getting carried away.
Stile Cop only lasted a couple of nights before they were attacked. Maybe being exposed in the open wasn't the greatest idea, but Pickle thought that the Stile Cop hill was enough to keep the things at bay. The hill that they were on now, was even steeper, but the extra positive was that they had a cabin to dwell in with a solid and secure fence around it.
Heath Hayes was just bad luck, especially when Bonser brought a horde back with him, and the sports centre was doomed from the start as there were a few Snatchers already there before they climbed over, and the bloody destruction of young Oliver Newton and Lee Hayward only enticed more from afar.
Pickle then looked down at the bottom of the grassy hill. There were now seven of them, crawling up, but not moving an inch. It looked like the things were managing to get to the hill to a certain point, then they seemed to fall and were trying to crawl their way up because their legs could not manage it.
Pickle shook his head. Despite those things being relatively harmless where they were, he made a decision to remove them. It didn't seem to bother Wolf too much, or so he said, but Pickle wanted them destroyed and removed anyway.
After they had buried Wolf's wife, Pickle was thinking that they should go to the bottom of the hill, kill the fiends, then head to the estate for supplies. That was the itinerary he had in his head for this particular day.
At last, Karen returned with one shovel in her hand. Pickle sighed, and knew who was going to be doing most of the work.
"He seems a bit of a misery." Karen screwed her face and emptied her nostrils onto the grass a few yards away from Pickle.
"And why do yer think that is, Karen?" There was sarcasm in Pickle's voice, which Karen had picked up on.
"I'm just staying—"
"We're only in week three in
Apocalypse Shite
, and yer wondering why our elderly host is a bit of a misery? Is this the same guy who has seen his wife turn into one o' these things and had her tied to a chair for the past couple o' weeks? And has just asked two complete strangers to kill her, and bury her out on a hill where children used to play?"
"So what's your point?"
Pickle laughed incredulously at his female companion. "Jesus Christ, Karen. Has this situation completely killed off any kind o' empathy yer used to have?"
"Of course not." Karen's facial expression stated that she wasn't entirely sure what Pickle was getting at.
Picking up on this, he tried to explain in a calm, rational manner. "How would yer feel if we were doing exactly what we were doing now, but it was Gary?"
Karen shrugged her shoulders and her body language suggested that Pickle's comment had made her agitated and a little cross.
"I'd be..." Karen tried to answer, but her words were struggling to come out.
"What, Karen?" Pickle waited for an answer. "You'd be a little disappointed, maybe just a wee bit upset?"
"I'd be fuckin' devastated, of course," she snapped, her hands gripping the shovel tightly. "For fuck's sake, what's up with you today? How would you feel if it was KP?"
Pickle shook his head at Karen's retaliation and her poor attempt to shut him up, just because he had touched a nerve for mentioning Gary. Pickle said, "If yer were a man, I'd have fucked yer up by now."
"Fuck you, Harry."
Karen gave Pickle a filthy look, and she held the shovel in a position as if she was about to start digging.
Pickle could see that the twenty-three-year-old's face was scarlet with rage, but he still walked over and went to grab the shovel off of her. "Give me that.
I'll
do it."
Karen lifted her head up and took a swing at him with the shovel. Pickle moved backwards, enough to dodge Karen's swing, but was completely surprised by her action.
Pickle exclaimed, "Come on; let's not do this, Karen!"
Karen then threw the shovel to the floor, took a step forward, and threw a left hook, which Pickle caught with his left hand and immediately palmed her in the face with his right. Karen immediately fell to the floor and Pickle cried, "Oh God. Karen, are yer okay? Yer didn't give me much o' a choice."
Karen was lying flat on her front, and she slowly curled herself up into the shape of a foetus. She then began to sob, and Pickle immediately knelt beside her and tried to hug her. Karen fought back a little, but then succumbed to Pickle's persuasive strength and they both hugged one another tightly.
Karen sobbed loudly and her tears streamed down rapidly, staining Pickle's shoulder. He didn't say a word to her. He didn't need to. She had been bottling this up for weeks, and it had finally come to a head.
Pickle stroked the back of her hair and kissed the side of her cheek. "Don't try to speak," he spoke at last. "Just let it out."
They hugged each other tightly for a while, and seven minutes later they both broke away from the embrace.