Snatchers: Volume One (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 1-3) (42 page)

Chapter Fifteen

"You okay in there?"

Karen had been standing next to the bathroom door for the last ten minutes, and although there was no sound coming from behind it, she knew that Pickle was in a bad situation.

Pickle replied, "Go away."

Karen didn't go away; she remained outside the bathroom door, knowing that her friend wasn't feeling well. She never heard him being sick, but would gladly not hear such an action anyway, as she wasn't feeling the best herself.

"Yer still there, aren't yer?" Pickle scolded, "Leave me alone."

"Once a nurse, always a nurse," Karen said, trying to justify her irritating behaviour of lingering around.

"I don't need looking after."

Karen and Pickle's first sleep in a proper bed had been a complete anti-climax for the pair of them. Karen was constantly kept awake by Pickle's sudden coughing spurts. Apart from the coughing, Pickle was disturbed by the family that lay dead above him, and couldn't get them out of his head. Both were exhausted, Pickle especially. As the bathroom door finally opened, Karen could see that Pickle's face was drained from all colour and his eyes were sunken. The smell from the bathroom also suggested that his bowels were feeling somewhat fragile, and she realised why now he was agitated by her presence.

"That's it," she snapped with a serious tone. "I'm getting you back to bed."

Pickle never had the strength to fight off Karen, as she escorted him back into the room. Pickle shivered like a senior citizen in an unheated room as he slowly trudged to the bedroom where he had little sleep the night before. She sat him on the bed; his head was lowered and Karen bent down to pick his legs up and swung them onto the bed. As he lay on his back, Pickle puffed out a breath of angst, and wiped the cold sweat off of his glistening forehead.

He asked, "What do yer think is wrong with me?"

Karen shrugged her shoulders. "Probably just a fever, nothing to worry about. I'll get you something to drink, and then I'm off to get some medical supplies, hopefully a bit of food as well to stock up what we have left in the van."

Pickle's quavering hand grabbed Karen's T-shirt gently and gave her a smile. "Don't forget to lock the door."

"I'll try and remember," she teased, and pulled her brown hair over her ears. "Once you're on your feet, you can give me a hand moving the family from upstairs."

"Good idea. I think we should stay here."

"In your condition, it's not like we have much of a choice." Karen nodded. "Even if you were hunky-dory, we should stay anyway. The more we run, the more petrol we use up. This place has a bit of food, and we're armed. Just need to barricade a bit more downstairs. I'm happy to stay here; it's reasonably quiet, and there ain't many of those things about...for now, anyway."

Pickle smiled at Karen, and patted her hand like her granddad used to. She took out one of her Brownings from the back and checked if it was loaded. It was fully-loaded and she snapped it shut. She then handed the gun to Pickle, and he took it with no hesitation.

"Don't worry," she said. "Nothing will happen. But if it does, you're better off with that, than that big ole shotgun sitting under the bed."

Pickle grinned, looked at the pistol and put it by his side.

"See ya later, partner." Karen winked, a trait Pickle was usually associated with.

She shut the bedroom door and headed for the front door. She had taken the house keys and put them into her pocket. She then pulled out the other key for the van, got inside, started the engine and pulled the vehicle off the front garden without making any observations in either wing mirror. She didn't really see the point in looking at them as drivers were non-existent, and if they were pedestrians about, they were usually of the dead variety anyway.

The van purred out of the street, and without indicating to go left, taking up a normal driving position and making the usual observations when usually emerging from a T junction, Karen allowed the van to zoom out of the junction in third, while keeping half an eye on the road and simultaneously picking her teeth with her left pinky.

Noticing the van was struggling and begging for another gear as it hit forty, she slipped the van into fourth and came to an unmarked crossroad. She knew exactly where to go. She needed to turn right, as she was aware that a further half a mile away was a chemist. Whether it was empty or not, was another thing.

Chapter Sixteen

He stood outside the village hall, and although he was only at the tender age of fifteen, Oliver Newton had had a lot of growing up to do in the last week. As a teenager, he had had everything done for him thanks to his overpowering mother. He had his meals cooked for him, his room tidied, and would always have a cooked meal waiting for him when he returned home from school.

Now it had changed.

Since that dreadful day where he woke to hear the screams fill his house on that terrifying Sunday morning, he knew that his life was never going to be the same again. As he got to the landing and saw scores of bodies crawling up the stairs towards him from the ground floor of his own house, his senses screamed at him to get the hell out of there. He did just that, by jumping out of his bedroom window and running for his young life. There were only a few to avoid, which for a fit boy like Oliver was a piece of cake. He ran out of steam once he got to the woods, then collapsed for an hour before regaining his composure and then headed for Hazelslade, where he met up with the West family who took him in.

That had happened a few days ago, but now, Oliver was standing outside the village hall next to Kevin Houston. Oliver's companion was a forty-seven-year-old man who had no family at all—or so he claimed. Kevin Houston had been a bachelor for over a decade and had no children; his ex-wife had re-married and eventually had a family of her own. He thought about her briefly, but it never plagued his mind what she could be going through. He had been on his own for eleven years and had never been with a woman since, but it never seemed to have bothered him.

As Oliver and Kevin stood guard outside once again, they passed the time by talking about football, and wondered what the managers and the professional footballers were doing now. Oliver joked, but he might have had a point, that they were probably tucked up in their high security millionaire pads, getting people to fly in food for them with their personal helicopter, while the paying football fans who used to idolise them, were being ripped to pieces in their modest, working class homes.

Oliver stood around and timidly danced on one leg to the next, like a Morris dancer.

Kevin Houston scowled at young Oliver in bemusement. "What the hell's up with you?" he cackled. "You got ants in your pants?"

"Nah." Oliver continued to dance from one leg to the next. "I need the toilet. It's actually getting painful now."

"Just go!" Kevin exclaimed, still standing outside the village hall. "I'm sure you ain't gonna miss much here."

Oliver looked across the main road and into the woods. On their shifts in the last few days, the two males hadn't seen as much as a deer, and was convinced and relaxed that they were probably miles away from any of the infected. And if there were some around, Kevin was convinced, and told anyone who would listen to his theory, that the worst of the disaster was already over, as most of the infected must have rotted away to their bare bones or died of starvation by now. He was certain that it was a matter of time before the army, British and their allies, would have the country under control. They just needed to 'ride it out', as Kevin kept on telling the group.

They were a lucky bunch of individuals; they knew that. Oliver was a believer of Kevin's theory, but was concerned how humans were going to survive once food and petrol ran out. Even with the dead cannibals out of the equation, the problems still escalated the more he thought about it.

Oliver turned around to open the door to the hall and went in, leaving his spear that was made by Paul leaning against the wall, and leaving Kevin alone, albeit temporarily. Kevin began chewing on a fingernail and left his own weapon standing against the wall. Oliver came back out and sighed like a typical teenager.

"Now what's up?" Kevin quizzed.

Oliver pointed inside the hall with this thumb. "The toilets are full. That Thomas is in there, and Sean, I think."

"Just go in the ladies toilets."

"I can't do that." Oliver began to scratch his chest, by placing his right hand under his dark green T-shirt.

"Why not?"

"I need a shit. I can't go in there and stink the place out."

"I know what your problem is." Kevin began to tease. "You've got your eye on that Jemma Marley, haven't you? What would she think if you left a stink in the ladies, eh?"

"She's hardly gonna go with a kid like me, is she?"

"I wonder what's gonna happen now?" Kevin deliberated, and saw that Oliver was now in a considerable amount of pain concerning his predicament.

"What do you mean?"

"Well..." Kevin looked around to make sure there was no one else around to eavesdrop. "That Jemma began a thing with that Jason Barton, didn't she, when they first arrived. She thought her man was incarcerated; then he suddenly turns up out of the blue like that."

The young and naive Oliver wasn't aware that Jemma had been sneaking off with Jason for casual sex, and was rather hurt by Kevin's announcement. He knew it was just a silly teenage crush, but he really fancied Jemma. Just her speaking to him briefly made his day, and whenever he had a chance, he would sneak off into the toilets and fantasise over her.

His hormones were raging, and despite the world falling into an apocalyptic state, it didn't stop him from feeling sexual urges, and according to Kevin Houston, it didn't seem to affect Jemma Marlow either. The only words the youngster could muster were: "She's an adult. Best to keep out of it."

"Just saying, that's all."

"Right, I've gotta go." Oliver nodded over towards the car park across the road. "I'll use the leaves to wipe the mess."

"Here." Kevin handed Oliver a square pocket mirror that was three inches wide and three inches long.

"What the hell's that for?"

"I use it for shaving. But you can use it to check your arse after you've finished."

"What?"

"I'm serious. Can't be too careful these days, especially with infections and all that. There's no more doctors and nurses anymore, young man. You need to look after yourself."

Oliver reluctantly took the mirror off of Kevin, only because he didn't want to hurt the man's feelings, who seemed to be acting like a surrogate father towards him. Oliver had no intention of using the mirror, smiled falsely, and placed it into his right pocket.

Oliver almost doubled over with the pain; he jogged across the road, his short, blonde hair flapping with every step, and headed into the car park area out of view from Kevin. Kevin shouted out, "Make sure you do it in the woods! I don't wanna be smelling shit every time I wanna use my car!"

Oliver never answered back, but Kevin was sure he had heard his instruction. He felt he could go himself, and could feel his bowels becoming impatient. It was almost as if young Oliver had started something off. Then Kevin's bored mind began to wander.
Do these things poop? They seem to be in a rush to eat people, so they must have something in their stomachs
.

He stood around for a long seven minutes and then suddenly he heard a yell come from over the road where Oliver was, followed by a loud string of expletives.

Kevin never hesitated and ran across the main road into the sandy car park, holding his spear, which was what Paul Parker called it. However, when it was first made and given to him, a sarcastic and ungrateful Kevin said it was nothing more than a sharp stick.

As Kevin entered the car park, he saw that just two cars were left, as three had been taken by Paul, Gary and Jack to get supplies. He gazed around the sandy area into the woods to see if there was any sign of Oliver, but he couldn't see a thing. He refrained from calling out Oliver's name; he didn't know why, he just did.

The woods surrounded the area and from his left, slowly to his right, he scanned the condensed woodland. The day was glorious; the woods were at their fullest in the mid-June period, but Kevin could not see any sign of young Oliver in the lifeless and soundless area. He crept forward to his left and looked around and noticed that he could no longer see the village hall. The car park had a bendy entrance and once in, the main road could not be seen although it was only a matter of yards away.

Kevin crept six feet into the woodland and realised that if he and Oliver never went back to their station soon, panic was going to multiply amongst the group. Leaving the likes of Jemma Marlow, Kerry Evans, Thomas Slade, Jason Barton, Karen and Sean West, Lee Hayward, Ian Jenson and his daughter, Yoler Parkinson, would cause panic amongst the rest of the group and would not be happy by their temporary disappearance. The two would, no doubt, feel the wrath of Paul Parker, Gary Jenson and Jack Slade, once they returned from their shopping expedition.

Fuck it!

Kevin felt he had no choice in the matter and went against his original idea of remaining silent. He called out Oliver's name on three occasions, each one more raucous than the last call. Nothing.

He stepped closer and went further into the wooded area, but all he could see was trees. He knew if he progressed any further, his dilemma would just increase and nothing positive was going to come out of this. He called out for Oliver once more, and then decided to turn around, leave, and go back to the village hall to inform the rest of the group that the young man might be in a spot of trouble. He wiped his eyes that suddenly gathered a little dust and had irritated his retinas.

He turned round furiously, rubbing his eyes. He then could feel a hand on his shoulder, felt a ferocious tug at the front of his neck, and then experienced a huge gush of crimson soak the front of his shirt in a three-second period. He fell to his knees and his tremulous hands reached for the front of his neck that had been torn open by the mouth of a contaminated being. He collapsed onto the floor with a slump and was unaware his body was about to be a delicious meal for three of the contaminated that now hovered over his defunct, bleeding body.

Behind the three beings, following, there were more of them. Many more.