Snatchers: Volume One (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 1-3) (62 page)

Book Three: The Dead Don't Cry

Chapter One

June 23rd

The four pairs of feet pounded the earth as the dead had taken them by surprise while they slept. Jade Greatrix was put on watch for four hours, and even that had proved a hard task for the sleep-deprived, twenty-five-year old.

It was nearly five in the morning when a hand grabbed Paul Parker, who was startled and released a shriek—a shriek that woke the rest of the group and pumped adrenaline quickly through their veins. They were awake for a matter of a second or two when they quickly got to their feet.

Pickle was the first to run and they all followed, like obedient dogs following their master. They didn't know how many ghouls were behind, to their side, or in front, and the darkness in the woods did not help to ease their consternation or dilute their confusion. Even though the group followed the silhouette of their leader, they could see ahead that the forty-three-year-old was unsure where to go himself, as he occasionally banged into a tree and sometimes stumbled as his weary feet would occasionally enter a ditch or a small hole.

Over a period of time, all four had been carrying a thick wooden branch each for protection, but amidst all the panic and confusion, and also only having a second or two to find their bearings, Karen Bradley was the only one out of the four that grabbed her club when they were rudely awoken. It was an automatic reaction to grab that thick branch that had been lying to her right, next to her thigh—the other three branches had been left where the group had slept.

They had been in the woods for three nights and they had spent their time walking, sleeping, and eating what had been taken from the sports centre. For the last couple of days, their sleeping arrangements consisted of being snuggled together by a tree, as the cold wind was becoming bitter during the night, and blankets were something they did not possess.

Not one Snatcher had bothered them over the days, until now.

"I can hear a stream," Pickle bellowed to the group.

He ran into the direction of the stream that could be faintly heard among the heavy breathing and snapping of twigs, and veered to the right. Karen, Paul and Jade followed him and were now confident that the docile creatures had been outran and were many yards behind, but the darkness in the woods still fuelled their paranoia and wouldn't allow them to relax. The freaks from behind may have been outran, but what was to the left or the right of them? What was waiting for them up ahead? The darkness meant that their vision had been disabled.

The stream could be heard up ahead more clearly, and despite the cluster of trees, the full moon had shone down on the water, creating a little light. Pickle stopped in his tracks and could just about see a man-made set of stepping stones that would allow them to cross to the other side without dampening their feet.

As soon as the remaining three got to the bank of the stream, he slowly made his way across the other side. He knew that the running water in these woods weren't deep, but he also didn't want to unnecessarily dampen his shoes and feet if he could avoid it. Wet shoes meant eventual decay of the footwear, and spare footwear was something that they didn't have. They didn't have much of anything else either.

The last one to get to the other side of the stream was Paul Parker. Once he stepped onto the bank, he copied the rest of the group and bent over to catch his breath.

"Three days." Pickle shook his head. "Three days and we haven't seen a single one o' them, and
this
happens." He then turned to Jade and scrunched his eyes and slurred, in his usual manner, "How come yer didn't hear them comin'?"

"I don't know." Jade shrugged her shoulders. She felt useless to the group as it was, without admitting that she had fallen asleep. She was on guard and had the lives of three other people in her hands for four hours, but she still fell asleep! Keeping guard was a simple task to do, and she couldn't even get that right.

"You didn't hear a snap of a twig or nothing? That is strange." There was huge scepticism in Karen's voice, but Jade chose to ignore it.

"Let's just keep moving." Paul sighed and placed a comforting hand on Jade's shoulder. He was pretty sure—they
all
were—that Jade had fallen asleep, but it wasn't as if she had done this on purpose. Pickle was calm about the situation; Paul was more sympathetic towards Jade, but Karen was certain that this young woman could be a very big thorn in their side. Karen thought that Jade's negligence could eventually lead to someone's death.

Without uttering a word, Pickle began walking up the bank and made slow steps into the deep blackness of the woods; the group followed. He quickly held his hands up to halt the group from progressing any further, and they all adhered to his silent command. Karen whispered into the darkness, "What's up?"

Pickle never spoke at first. His eyes remained looking ahead into the woods, and then he shook his head, and spoke, "There's something up ahead; something had caught ma eye slightly to the right o' me."

All four stared into the darkness until a solitary figure could be just about seen stumbling its way, unknowingly at first, towards the group. Pickle took a step back and squatted to the floor, feeling for something to use as a weapon.

Karen placed her hand on his shoulder and said, "It's okay. I've got it."

They had no idea what it looked like, but could see that it was wearing some kind of dress to suggest that the thing was, or used to be when it was human, female.

It got nearer to the group, only five yards away now, and Karen approached it, her thick branch being held with both hands. She brought the club up, as if she was waiting for someone to pitch, and swung the thing to the side of its head. It fell to the floor immediately with a noisy thump, and released a groan to suggest that it wasn't quite finished yet. Karen brought the club down three more times on its skull. The group could not see the damage that had been created, but they certainly could hear it. The cracks, the splinter of bone and a squishing sound was heard.

Karen had pummelled it to death.

"I hate doing that." Karen began wiping the bloody club onto the grass.

Pickle nodded in agreement. "It's pretty risky, that's for sure. When yer bludgeon these things, there's more of a chance o' mess. If any o' that blood gets in yer eye..."

Pickle allowed his sentence to trail off and immediately thought of Thomas Slade. He then thought about Jack. Karen also thought about Jack once Pickle had mentioned the blood getting in the eye, and asked no one in particular, "I wonder how he got on?"

Paul sighed with sadness, "I just hope it was quick, whatever way he went."

"He might not be dead." Jade provided the only positive remark amongst the group, and began to follow them as they started walking through the woodland once again.

Added Pickle, "Yer didn't see Jack's eyes before we left, Jade.
I
did." Pickle then turned to Jade and rested his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. "He's gone. He'd given up. He'd lost everything and had given up."

The thought of Jack's demise placed a blanket of melancholy over the group as they trudged silently through the woods. Four sets of eyes scanned the darkness of the condensed area that was capable of hiding these things, although what worked in the groups' favour was that stealth wasn't the Snatchers' strong point. These things could be heard from a distance with their dragging feet, and the environment of the woods wasn't the best for such creatures. They were killers, but they weren't predators in the sense that they were capable of some kind of ambush.

Five minutes later, Paul was the individual to break the silence.

"I'm knackered." Paul's feet dragged along the ground and was making enough noise in the woods for the four of them. Pickle could see that this wasn't Paul Parker being petulant and that he was doing this on purpose; he genuinely looked exhausted.

The dark blue sky that sat above their heads suggested that daylight wasn't far away. Pickle stopped and looked around. It was time for a change, he thought to himself. Dwelling in the woods was going to have to come to a close eventually. They had no vehicle, no weapons, and the food was now running short. The group were going to have to leave the place and head for different surroundings, because if they didn't soon, starvation and dehydration was going to draw them out eventually anyway.

Seeing that daylight was forcing its way through, Pickle stopped by a cluster of bushes and suggested, "Let's have a wee rest here, now that we can actually see our faces. I'll keep guard."

No one argued with him, and all members of the clan sat on the floor and tried to sleep. Karen placed her hand in the bag she was carrying. It was nearly empty. She pulled out a protein drink and took it down in one.

Karen then looked at Pickle. "Just have an hour on watch. I'll do an hour after you. Then we need to try and find a way out of here."

Pickle nodded in agreement and looked around the woods. "Yep, it was good for a while, but we need to stock up on some food and get some kind o' liquid inside our dry bodies." He then shook his head and rubbed his stubbly chin.

Karen looked to the side of her and asked, "What is it?"

"I don't know how long I can keep this up. I'm fucked. Even if we had plenty o' food and drink, the sleep deprivation's killing me." Pickle stood with his hands on his hips and took a long breath in, puffing out his chest, and released it quickly. "This is our last day in these woods. Agreed?"

"Agreed." Karen nodded, then looked over to Paul and Jade to see that they had already passed out. Jade and Paul were sat up against the same tree stump, their heads resting against each other.

Chapter Two

Johnny Jefferson looked around on the ground floor of the warehouse he had been living in for more than a week, and released a deflated sigh, which was something he had done many times before over the last week or so. He thought back to his Saturday nightshift, back on the 9th June. It seemed like a lifetime ago now.

Johnny was due to have a few days off, but agreed to do overtime with one more shift so that the car-parts company could get their order out for Monday morning. There was five of them in all, and during the week, with a full house, the company employed over two hundred people doing alternative shifts in the specially-built building.

During their Saturday overtime, one of the forklift drivers was outside and found a solitary person walking along the industrial estate. This was unusual as their company was based in Fradley, which was four miles from Rugeley, and there was nothing in Fradley apart from a dozen companies and a few residential houses. The person looked drunk and appeared to be staggering a little, which confused the forklift driver even more as there was no nightlife at all in Fradley. So where had he come from?

The forklift driver was then caught in two minds whether to climb the secured gate, that led to the company's building and car park, to see if the man was injured in any way. It was normally controlled by a security man during the week who would check deliveries, but it was always closed on a weekend as overtime and deliveries were very rare, and the key to the gate was carried by the supervisor in charge whenever there was overtime. The forklift driver called after the lost soul, but there was no response, so he climbed over the gate to see if the loner was okay.

A few minutes later, Johnny saw the fork-lift driver stumble into the building, claiming he had been bitten on his hand and told him the short story about the man that was alone outside. The man had gone for him, but he managed to push him away and climb back over the gate, despite his injury.

The injured forklift driver was then taken to the boardroom by the supervisor and fell asleep. An hour or so later, two colleagues told Johnny that they were going to the boardroom to see how he was doing, as it had been a while since they had heard anything.

Johnny was on a forklift truck when he saw three of his colleagues coming out of the office. Two of them were holding their injured arms, while behind, Ian David, the fork lift driver that had been taken to the boardroom, stumbled behind, but he looked different. He looked awful, drunk...dead!

The two that were attacked told Johnny that Ian had attacked the supervisor in the boardroom and had fallen down the stairs after them. The dead Ian David continued to pursue the men around the factory floor; there was no letting up, until suddenly the dead Ian David tripped and impaled his head on the corner of a pallet. He had stopped moving and they all came to the correct conclusion that he was dead...again.

All three were shocked at what they saw, and decided to call the emergency services, but they were constantly engaged. Then the other two colleagues began to feel unwell, and at this point Johnny was getting nervous and also was wondering how the supervisor was keeping. He went up to check on him and saw that he had been bit, had locked himself in, and refused to come out of the boardroom.

Johnny went back onto the shop floor, turned on the radio near one of the sections, but it was playing music as normal. He had heard over the last few weeks that there had been reports of biting incidents and thought it was a new teenage thing like when 'happy slapping' first came about.

His colleagues went into the canteen to have a sit down and a drink of water, and Johnny already knew that his two colleagues were beyond help; he wasn't stupid, he had seen the movies before. When he peered into the canteen a few minutes later, he saw that the two men were unconscious. He knew he couldn't leave them in there with the door unlocked. If this was anything like the movie he had seen the other week, these colleagues were done for. It seemed ridiculous, but they both had injured, bitten arms, and he was certain that it was only a matter of time that his colleagues were going to turn.

He had been watching the news over the last couple of weeks. He had heard about the attack in Newcastle's Biomedical Research Centre, the attack at Birmingham Airport where two baggage handlers were bitten by a rogue being, and a week after, the riots in Mansfield that saw twenty-eight people arrested, where eleven officers were injured with bite wounds and were transported across hospitals all across the north of England. What confused Johnny when he watched the riot, was that it seemed different to any other riot he had seen, and wondered why this hadn't been picked up by the media.

In normal riots, the crowd would be throwing missiles at the police and running away from the water cannons and tear gas, rather than walking briskly towards the riot team without a care in the world.

He continued to go to work as normal, but stocked up his house with food and water in case of the unbelievable.

It had been two weeks since those events had happened, and had spent two weeks of living at his workplace. For now, his plan was to bide his time and allow the country to get itself back on its feet while he hid in the building.

From the offices, he had peered from the first floor window every now and again and was pleased that there was nothing around. When he first did this, his paranoid head would twist to the right to make sure that the supervisor, that Ian David had attacked those few weeks ago, didn't get through the boardroom window. Since Ian David had bit the supervisor, the supervisor had reanimated in the boardroom, but fortunately the creature never worked out how to unlock the door of the room. It appeared that these things were capable of ripping a man apart, but a simple task like opening a door was beyond them. For Johnny's own piece of mind he also kept the canteen locked.

What irked Johnny, however, was that the supervisor was the guy that opened the factory, which meant that he had the majority of the keys to the place. The supervisor also was in possession of a set of keys that would have been perfect for Johnny, if only he could drive. The set of keys was for the supervisor's black jeep, and would have come in handy if Johnny could actually use a car, but he couldn't.

Even if he had the keys in his pocket and needed to escape, he would still be forced to go on foot. Driving cars had never interested him; he had never taken the driving test at all and had never taken a lesson in his life. He thought they were too ridiculously-expensive and relied on lifts to get to work and back, as the bus service in a village like Fradley was pretty dire.

The boardroom was locked; there was a solitary window, but with a thick pane. Every time Johnny went to the first floor, the former supervisor would get excited and stand near the office window, clawing at it. But Johnny was used to it now. He never flinched anymore. It wasn't June 9th anymore; it was June 23rd, and Johnny had become accustomed to living in fear and alone in the factory. What worried him the most was what he was going to do once he ran out of food and water.