Snatchers (A Zombie Novel) (14 page)

Chapter Twenty Four

Oliver could hear the filtering whispers of leaves in the timid breeze, and the bracken clung to his feet as if they were anxious about something. The woods were surrounded by the call of crickets that sang beneath the shy sun that shone timidly through the gaps of the trees, and the wind hushed again, but this time, the leaves' voices were slightly muffled.

He looked at his watch, it had been half an hour since Karen had fallen asleep, and it was heading for midday. He could tell by her heavy snoring that she had fallen into a deep one. He spent the last thirty minutes exercising his neck muscles, not intentionally, but his unbalanced mind suffocated his psyche.

Every snap of a twig, every rustle of a branch, and every tweet from a bird, forced Oliver to twist around to see if the coast was clear. The woods were heavily overcrowded, so it wouldn't take much to be ambushed. He tried to brainwash his mind by telling it over and over that if those things were to head for their area, he would hear their clumsy progression first. Because the things walked clumsily, it would be impossible for them
not
to make any kind of noise.

He opened up his bag, took out a bottle of water and took a measurable gulp. He looked back at Karen and looked around, embarrassed what had to be done next. He could feel his bowels loosening and took out a kitchen roll from his bag. He stood to his feet, his knees cracking as he straightened the legs, and crept deeper in the woods with his short handled axe in his left hand. He took one last look around him before dropping his trousers and squatting down.

A rustle behind him forced him to crack his neck, as he saw a figure move many yards away from him. It was a grey squirrel.

He laughed and whispered jokingly, "I can't go if I'm being watched."

As if the squirrel could understand English, it scampered off and left Oliver to complete his task. He used up six sheets of the kitchen roll, and left the evidence in a small, neat smelly pile.

As he pulled his trousers up, he felt guilty for what he had done, but it was something that was out of his control. He walked through the bushes to see Karen still sleeping, but she had become restless. Her head was shaking from side to side and she began murmuring nonsensical stuff that baffled Oliver.

He placed his hands on her shoulder, in two minds whether he should wake her up. Her murmuring was becoming more aggressive and he wrapped his arms around the distressed woman comfortingly.

She woke with a fright and pushed Oliver in the chest and screamed, "Get off me!"

"Relax." Oliver looked generally hurt at Karen's action. "You sounded distressed, I was just comforting you."

Karen breathed out and once her head became clearer, she shook her head and apologised. "I'm sorry. You caught me in mid-dream."

Oliver sat down next to her. "It sounded like a bad one."

Karen ran the palms of her clammy hands through her hair. "I was just re-living what happened this morning with Gary, and something that happened at Milford."

"I'm not being patronising," Oliver spoke with sincerity. "What you've gone through this morning is similar to what the rest of the survivors have gone through. Some have gone through worse and have seen their loved ones eaten before their very eyes. I'm not saying your story isn't horrific, but any survivors that we meet up with, if we meet up with any, they will have their own personal horror story to tell as well."

Karen reluctantly agreed with what Oliver had said, although it didn't make her feel any better. She felt he was hinting for her to stop feeling sorry for herself, but he was correct to say there were people worse off. People who had to witness their own family being ripped to pieces, their children, their parents.

Karen tried not to think about it and asked Oliver for a drink of water. She handed him back the bottle and rose to her feet and wiped the bottom of her nose with her thumb.

"Where are you going?"

"For a piss," she snapped.

Oliver tittered and joked, "That's not very lady like."

"Well, neither are blowjobs, but you men don't complain about
that
." Karen responded to his remark with disdain and disappeared for a few minutes.

The thirty-four-year-old man lay down on the grass and gazed at the broken bits of blue sky that he could see through the stretching trees. Although, unlike Karen, he had had a decent sleep the night before, he still could have gone for another hour. Now that his adrenaline had diminished, he felt exhausted. He sat back up, knowing that another minute of this tranquillity and he really
would
drift off.

*

Karen pulled up her underwear and her uniformed blue trousers, she looked at her trousers and it seemed an age ago since she worked at the hospital. Her black T-shirt was covered in grass and she brushed herself down.

She walked over to Oliver and saw that he wasn't there anymore. His bag lay on the floor, so she was definitely in the right place and couldn't wait to go further into the woods. She knew that the further they went in, the less condensed the trees were, and there was actual dirt paths they could follow. She heard the rustling, but whatever it was, it seemed too quick be a Snatcher, as Oliver called them. She stood up straight and her nerve held, as it was Oliver who jogged through the trees.

"Where have you been?" she demanded, with relief in her tone.

"I heard a noise, I went back down and I could see the cemetery."

"Idiot! There were nine of those things down there when I left. They could have seen you."

"It's okay," Oliver protested. "There's only one there at the edge of the woods, but the rest that you just mentioned don't seem to be there anymore. They must have gone back to the edge of town."

"If we make so much as a noise, it'll be up here, and could bring more up along with the rest from Draycott Park. We're talking hundreds, and then maybe the population of the town will follow. We're then talking thousands."

"It's okay."

Oliver could see that Karen was becoming agitated, and began to bite her nails. She looked up at the thirty-something male. "Give me your axe."

"Why?"

"Because if there's one, more will follow. We need to get rid of that one by the woods now."

"You don't know that, they can't communicate with one another for Christ's sake."

"Just give me the fuckin' axe."

The mild mannered Oliver Bellshaw was taken aback by the ferocity in Karen's voice. Oliver stood tall and shook his head defiantly. "No, I won't."

Karen pulled out her thick branch that she had taken earlier, and showed it to Oliver, as if she was saying that if she didn't get the axe, she's gonna do it anyway with this.

Oliver stood firm, and Karen stormed by him, Oliver grabbed her arm and took a heavy left hook into his cheekbone for his troubles.

In a matter of minutes, their relationship had deteriorated, and Karen was heading for the solitary man-eater drifting their way. She didn't want to do it; she felt she had no choice.

Oliver wished he had kept his mouth shut; he sat down, convinced Karen was going to come back with a change of heart, but three minutes had passed and there was still no sign of her.

He paced up and down the small area that was circled by trees and hoped that she would come back in one piece. He wanted to go after her, but the truth was, he was petrified. He had never killed one of them before, and was quite content to spend his life running if it meant staying alive.

A faint rustling could be heard in front of him and was relieved to see Karen had returned.
Maybe once she saw it, she changed her mind.

"Fuckin' cocksucker," she muttered, as she wiped some of the dark spray off her left cheek and placed the thick branch onto the grass, staining the green blades with the creature's blood.

Oliver gulped hard. Karen was a woman, but she had more balls than he would
ever
have. She tried to shrug the killing off, but he could see she was a nervous wreck and felt it was something that she had to do. Oliver remained silent, but he offered her a bottle of water, and she took it off him without uttering a word.

Chapter Twenty Five

David Pointer and his wife sat in silence, mesmerized by their daughter who was playing with her tea set, completely oblivious to the crumbling decaying world around her.

The daughter and the mother had both had a pee in one of the buckets while David was out, and he knew there and then, that this situation was going to grow worse as time went on. He never told his wife about the creatures and his episode in the back garden, he didn't want to worry her. He didn't want to tell her that they were almost surrounded. David was sure that this was information she didn't need to know.

He needed his highly strung wife to be as calm as she could be, and extra negative information about the situation they were in would only enhance her angst, and David was certain that if Davina began freaking, their daughter would feed off this and would know that there was something wrong.

They looked at one another and smiled thinly; the situation they were in was hopeless. They had only been in the attic for a matter of hours, and already knew what each one was thinking:
We need to get out of here
.

Davina only knew half of the situation, and even without knowing that they were being surrounded by many of those things, she came to her own conclusion that the danger out there was horrendous, and this attic situation just wasn't going to work.

The choices were not attractive.

What did they want? To be cooped up and face a fate of eventual dehydration or the fear of being torn to pieces? What kind of life is that for a four-year-old girl?

At first there was relief that they were somewhere reasonably safe, but a month down the line, they would be mentally ill with the boredom and enclosure. They would be starving, which meant David would have to leave the house and put his life in danger to loot a place. Eventually, months down the line, there would be nothing left to loot. Houses and shops would be empty.

They needed to go somewhere where there were less of them, somewhere where the population was low. A farm maybe, or a little village like Colton or Hazelslade where the area was surrounded by the woods.

"I need the toilet." David smiled at his wife.

His wife pointed at the bucket, her face telling her husband that already she was losing hope. Not just for their survival, but for the future of her daughter.

"No, " David spoke. "I mean I
really
need the toilet."

He went over to the latch and opened up the entrance to the attic.

"Where are you going, daddy?"

David gazed at his beautiful daughter, her blonde hair was getting longer and it was now nearly halfway down her back. She was wearing her favourite black leggings and her Barbie T-shirt and looked so sweet.

"I'm just nipping to the toilet, Babs."

Babs
was Isobel's nickname, it was something they had called her a few times when she was a baby, and it somehow stuck.

"Are you going to make me something to eat? I'm still hungry." She bit her lower lip.

Most of the time Isobel would finish a sentence, she would gently bite her lower lip afterwards. Each parent didn't know why this was the case, it was just an endearing trait that she had. It made her look cuter, if that was at all possible.

Davina jumped in, "I'll make you something soon, why don't we have a nice tin of cold beans?"

"Yuk!"

David lowered the ladders as quietly as he could, and walked down them, now entering his daughter's bedroom on the first floor. He walked to the upstairs bathroom across the landing and sat on the toilet. Once minutes had passed, he stared into nothingness and daydreamed about his work. Poor Tom Bellion had a driving test tomorrow, and now he wasn't going to be able to make it. In fact, for all David knew, Tom Bellion could be dead right now.

The driving instructor placed his hand on the flusher and pushed it down.
No
.

He slapped his head for his stupidity. In the situation his family was in, this was no time to forget where he was, and although the noise from the flusher wasn't that bad, it was still a noise he wanted to avoid—any noise for that matter.

He opened his window once the noise of the flush had disappeared, and looked out of his bathroom window out onto the street.

"If we don't go now, we never will," he spoke softly to himself.

His street was awash with the creatures, all mulling around. He could see frightened people across the road from him, looking through their bedroom windows upstairs, and some of the front doors of some of the houses were open, but where were they coming from?

David, Davina and Isobel hadn't left the house since yesterday morning because Isobel was complaining of a bad chest, which stopped her from going to her cousin's birthday party. Her bad chest probably saved her family, as either one of them could have got bitten or scratched. The truth was, he didn't really know how this disease was caught, he only knew what he had seen, and even that seemed to have taken the experts by surprise, although it had been hinted that it had been around for a week or so.

All he needed to do was concentrate on the now, and work out a way on how to get out of this bubble of mayhem.

He ran down the stairs and checked out the state of his windows, and was surprised to see they were still holding up, but he thought this was because
they
hadn't heard a strident noise from the house yet. If that did happen, he was certain that hordes of the things would pile around his house and force their way through the glass. The barricade would last five minutes if they were lucky, and then the realistic scenario would be to stay in the attic, whilst listening to the ravenous creatures below them moaning for food.

And what would that do to the fragile psyche of a four-year-old girl?

Her nightmares would be the least of her worries.

David sat on the bottom step and for the second time in one morning, he burst into tears. For the first time, he thought about his other family members, and would have tried to ring them from the landline if he knew their numbers, but they were punched into his mobile phone, which he had left in the glove compartment of his car. He had two older brothers; what were they doing now?

He had made a decision; he got to his feet, ran upstairs and shouted up to Davina into the attic. "Grab the bag, we're going."

"Where?"

"Anywhere, away from here."

Davina never protested; she knew that if she stayed in the attic, death would be an eventual certainty. It was an eventual certainty anyway, but she wanted some kind of life for her daughter. She wanted her daughter to be out in the open, maybe even meet up with more people on their journey, rather than living in fear, having nightmares and seeing people she cared about being eaten and ripped to shreds.

A nightmare while awake as well as being asleep, was too much for a little girl to endure. Isobel was a sensitive soul, and had nightmares for two days from watching a Disney adaptation of Scrooge.

It was the scene when Goofy was playing the ghost of Christmas past and appeared on the stairs following Donald Duck who was playing the role of Scrooge. Isobel shook with fright at that particular scene of that cartoon, and complained to her parents at bedtimes that there was a ghost on the stairs.

If that was how she reacted to a cartoon, how would she react to actually see in real life another human being eaten before her very eyes?

Davina thought that if they didn't take a chance now, her daughter would be mentally ill within a year, if they lasted that long.

David, carrying the two rucksacks, ushered Davina and Isobel down the stairs and gazed at his wife; he was holding the car keys and the backpack, and also on the key ring was the front door key.

He moved the items away from the door, and said, "It's clear on the drive, as soon as I open the door, get in the car quickly. The door's already open."

Davina was holding onto her daughter who was told to keep her eyes shut at all costs, no matter what.

"One, two, three!"

David swung the front door open and they ran out onto the drive, only one appeared on the drive but was easily dealt with by David, who kicked it in the stomach, forcing it to fall over temporarily. Satisfied his daughter and wife were safely in the passenger seat, he went to open the driver's door, threw the bags in, but was knocked over by one of the things. The thing that had originally approached their front window had now quickly turned, what little attention span it had, toward the man of the house, and more quickly followed.

He let out a shriek, as he was surprised of the quickness of four beings that forced him to scramble to his feet. He quickly escaped back into the house through the front door, and pressed the button on his fob, locking his wife and daughter in the car. He closed the front door, locked it, and could hear the muffled screams of his wife from behind his front door inside the locked car.

He went into his cabinet in the living room, knowing that it would only be a matter of time before they forced open the door, and he took out a bottle of whisky. He went into the kitchen, screwed off the bottle, and ripped off a piece of tea towel and stuck it into the bottle. He took a lighter from the kitchen drawer that Davina would use for her candles, lit the bottle and bolted upstairs. He opened the bedroom window and was unsure where to throw it.

Would this action be counterproductive? Would they be attracted to the fire or would they move away from it? If he threw it near the car, it may force them to temporarily flee or the opposite could happen. They were already dead, so what's a little fire to them? Or, if he threw it
away
from the car, it may force them to either go toward the fire, away from the car, or flee from the fire and encourage more to surround the 'food' that was teasing them inside the vehicle.

He looked down to see his wife and daughter screaming, his wife looking up at him, begging him to do
something.

He threw the bottle about ten yards away from the side of the car and the creatures dispersed rapidly and went towards the small explosion. For some reason the fire distracted them, but only for a few seconds. He ran back downstairs, only to find three of them by the car.

As he left his house for the second time, he kicked one in the back, it fell over, and knocked over the other one that fell like a domino. The other one was on fire but was around the passenger side. David clicked the button on the fob and the car was unlocked; Davina opened the car for her husband, and he jumped in, fired the engine and reversed quickly out of his drive.

He locked all the doors and put his foot down and saw up ahead Sherree Taylor running out of her house holding her four-month-old son, distress carved into her face.

They knew her reasonably well.

Her husband was a doctor and they had been trying for a baby for years, and then suddenly the little miracle happened. Davina was invited to the baby shower, and remained reasonably close friends with the thirty-five-year-old Sherree.

Sherree banged on the passenger window, but there was too many of them in the street. If he stopped, his family would be finished.

Davina wept and closed her daughter's eyes. David constantly mouthed the words
I'm sorry
at Sherree as he slowly drove past his helpless neighbour.

The street was heaving with at least a hundred of the things now, and David only looked in his rear view mirror for a matter of seconds.

Within those seconds, he saw Sherree being pulled to the ground by at least seven of them, the baby being used as a tug of war game by two of the walking corpses, as one creature had it by its arms, and the other had the legs, as if they were fighting for the flesh. He couldn't hear it, but he could see by the baby's facial expressions that it was in severe distress and could see it slowly coming apart.

That was when David looked away.

Davina turned around, as David sped away, and tried to see if she could see Sherree through her blurry soaked eyes. Sherree was a Christian woman and held gatherings on a Sunday afternoon for women only. She always politely asked Davina if she wanted to come along, Davina always politely declined her offer, but every week Sherree would still ask.

Sherree had married a Christian man years ago and had just the one child. They had tried for children for years, and ended up going through IVF to conceive which was looked down upon from some members of their church, but they went through with it all the same, and with her husband being a doctor himself, he had no problem with IVF, no matter what some members of his church thought about the situation.

After their second attempt, she fell pregnant, and Karen remembered the excitement in Sherree's voice when she had conceived, telling Davina that it was a miracle and she thanked God.

Davina was a little perplexed about Sherree's statement, as Karen knew that it was medical science that had managed to allow her to have a child, and not God, who she had prayed to for years, begging for a child and received nothing in return. It reminded her of a footballer in France who had collapsed on the pitch and a medical team ran out onto the pitch, revived him and he was taken to hospital and managed a full recovery and was playing football again after three months.