Snatchers: Volume Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set--Books 4-6) (54 page)

Chapter Fifty

Karen, Shaz and Pickle entered the caravan that was issued to the girls. Pickle slumped onto the couch and threw his head back. He was exhausted. Sharon went to a cupboard and pulled out a half-litre bottle of water. She began to take a swig. She offered the liquid to her two friends, and they both took turns in draining the bottle.

"Well that was fun." Karen was the first to make a remark.

"Yer think we'd be used to it by now." Pickle's head remained leaning on the top of the couch, his eyes closed. He added, "We've had worse days, haven't we Bradley?"

Karen nodded.

"This
taking a step back
is not really working out for you, is it?" Shaz said with a thin smile.

"I know." There looked to be some guilt on Karen's face. Her actions were harmful to the baby, but felt that she had no choice in the matter. She was now glad that she had intervened as it had produced a positive result.

"Thanks for helping us out, Karen." Shaz's eyes were beginning to get glassy, and Pickle and Karen felt empathy for the woman as she glanced down to her left wrist, where the rainbow bracelet was still present. "But what's the point...really?"

"Eh?" Pickle had now sat up and his eyes were open.

"Why are we putting ourselves through this?" Shaz fought back the tears. "It's the same thing every week."

"It's just Vince," Karen tried to explain. "He made a huge risk and it didn't pay off."

"Yer don't have to go on these runs." Pickle said to Shaz. "Yer have done more than enough."

Shaz nodded, and glared at both Karen and Pickle. "I've had enough."

"That's fine, you moaning cow." Karen laughed falsely, and tried to make a joke out of Shaz's predicament. It was a desperate attempt to cheer her up. "You can stay by my side and do some medical rounds for the oldies, and then after that—"

"No!" Shaz wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her T-shirt. "I've
really
had enough."

Pickle snapped, "Don't talk like that, Shaz. Yer one o' the strongest people I've ever known."

"Not anymore," sobbed Shaz. "I nearly died today, and this is what it's going to be like, week after week, until eventually it happens."

Karen went over to her friend and placed her arm around Shaz's shoulder. "We all have good days and bad days."

"When I thought they were gonna throw me in that shed..." Shaz paused. "I was scared the way I was going to die, but I wasn't scared of death itself. I was ready."

Karen looked over to Pickle with authentic concern, and moaned with sadness. Pickle rose to his feet, and with a twitch of his head he beckoned Karen outside to talk with him.

Karen kissed Shaz on the head. "I'll be a minute."

Pickle and Karen stepped out of the caravan and into the light rain.

Karen asked, "What is it?"

Pickle turned around and began to speak, "I told Vince that I'd do a few hours watch at the Ash Tree later on, about half a mile from the camp."

"Okay."

Pickle pointed at Karen and then pointed at the caravan. "Don't let that girl out o' yer sight. She's having a bad day today, but tomorrow will be different. I've had days like that myself, and so have you."

"I won't leave her side," Karen mockingly saluted Pickle.

"I'm being serious." He shook his head at her, annoyed at her attitude, and left to see Vince.

*

Vince was still chatting to young Kyle Dickson and could feel a presence behind him. He turned around to see his father, Paul Dickson.

Vince looked at his watch. "You've only been in the caravan for twenty minutes."

"I know," Paul Dickson said in a broken voice. His face looked thankful for what Vince had done for him. Vince liked the man already. Paul added, "I was worried about Kyle."

"He's fine."

"I..." Paul Dickson gulped and tried once again. "I need to talk to Kyle about something important, is that okay?"

"Absolutely." Vince quickly got to his feet. "I'll leave you two men to it."

Vince walked away from Jack's grave and headed for the Spode Cottage to see if the men had finished unloading the food they had brought back with them.

Kyle turned to his dad. He looked vacant, lost.

Although Kyle was only seven, he knew something was wrong, and that his daddy had something on his mind. He didn't ask his daddy what was bothering him; he patiently waited, and enjoyed the peace of the camp.

"Kyle?" his dad spoke at last and sat down next to his son.

Kyle looked at his father, and waited for him to finish off what he wanted to say.

Paul uncomfortably added, "There's something I need to tell you. About mum and Bell."

"What is it?" Kyle stood to his feet. He stood awkwardly and looked around, losing interest on what his father wanted to say.

Paul's lip quavered as he looked at his son's green eyes. "It's about these monsters; remember how you become one? Do you remember the talk we had a while back?"

Kyle shook his head. "No."

Sighed Paul, "Okay. If a monster bites you, you become unwell—"

"And you turn into one." Kyle finished his dad's sentence. "I remember now."

"Well..." Paul was struggling to find the words. He wanted to use language that made the situation lighter than it actually was, but that was near-impossible. He obviously wasn't going to use a sentence like: "Mum and Bell became monsters, and were taken out by Bentley."

He decided to bite the bullet and tell him the best he could, before he turned into a blubbering mess himself. "Mum and Bell won't be coming back."

There was a silence; Paul looked up and clocked Kyle's face. The boy's eyes were narrowed in thought for a long time. He finally asked his dad, "Ever?"

"Ever."

Kyle's eyes narrowed even more in confusion, and he slowly sat back down next to his dad on the grass. He opened his mouth to say something, but no words escaped from his orifice. He tried again. "Where...where have they gone?"

Paul tucked his lips in and could feel his throat tightening, the tears filling up, and he said with an emotional squeak in his voice, "Heaven."

"Heaven?"

Paul placed his shaking hand on the left plump cheek of his special little man, and cried, "They were bit. They turned into monsters, and now they're dead."

Kyle looked at the ground, all confused. His head remained lowered, and Paul couldn't see his son's face properly, but decided to give him a moment and allow the enormity of the terrible news to sink in.

Eventually Kyle lifted his head up; his eyes were bloodshot and the tears streamed down his cheeks. His bottom lip was puffed out and he sobbed, "Maybe if I get a branch and climb to the top of a tree, I could stick my hand out and touch the sky with the branch. I could then get mummy and Bell to grab the stick and I could pull them back down from heaven, and—"

"Kyle, you can't reach them." Paul gulped and said with a shiver in his voice. "They're gone...for good."

"For good?"

Paul nodded.

"So I'm never going to see mummy or Bell again?"

Paul shifted on his backside, and placed his hands on his boy's strawberry blonde hair. "We will see them one day, big chap. But it will be a long time before we do, because they're now in heaven, and that's too far for any of us to reach."

Kyle quickly wiped his tears from his face with the backs of his hands, almost slapping himself. "But we were supposed to be going on holiday in a few weeks."

Paul created a laugh and a sob simultaneously when his son made this statement. He still really didn't have a clue about the magnitude of the situation he was in.

Paul didn't want to sit Kyle down and tell him that the planes weren't flying anymore, and that the swimming pool he wanted lie in, on his airbed with his armbands on, would probably be mouldy and abandoned.

"We won't be going on holiday for a while, big chap," said Paul, finally.

Both of them got to their feet, and more tears trickled out of the young boy's eyes. Paul took a step forward and both of them hugged each other tightly.

"I don't want mummy and Bell to be in heaven," Kyle wailed.

"Neither do I, son. Neither do I."

Kyle managed to reel off another sentence while his head was buried into his daddy's stomach, but he was sobbing so much that it was hard for Paul to understand what he was trying to say.

Kyle broke away from Paul, and gawped at him with his face scrawled in devastation. He remembered when Kyle was first born; he told Julie that he would never let anything or anyone hurt him.

He had failed miserably.

On the day he was born, because Kyle was an IVF baby, they thought that their little prince would be the only child they would have.

Paul stroked Kyle's hair and thought back to when he was born. The midwife told Paul that he was allowed to touch the head while their son was coming out, so he did. Paul was the first person to touch his son, and because Paul and Julie had spent five years waiting for Kyle, all that anguish they had gone through, and months of disappointment, were forgotten about when his boy entered the world and released his first cry. That cry was a joyous moment, but his crying
now
was killing Paul, and he had no idea how to take the pain away from the only thing left in the world that he cared about.

Paul wiped the tears away from Kyle's eyes, kissed him on the forehead and walked him back to the caravan. He stayed with Kyle for half an hour, and his little boy unexpectedly fell asleep on the couch. Paul covered him in a blanket and stepped outside the caravan.

Once he took the short walk back to where they were both originally talking, Paul sobbed on his own. He didn't want his son to see this. His weeping was turning into cries of pain, and he doubled over with grief that he had been hiding.

He would do anything to just have one last sniff of Bell's head, to have her snuggle up to him while watching her favourite programme,
Angelina Ballerina
, and for her to stroke his arm and hear her giggle, telling him that it felt just like a cat. He would do anything to have one last morning to saviour, waking up next to Julie and cuddling her, to have an evening with cheese and crackers and a glass or two of their favourite red wine, and to sit for hours on their leather couch and spend the evening talking.

His body remained doubled over. This was something he'd been trying to bury from Kyle ever since he came back from the supermarket. His mind went back to the scene of seeing his wife and daughter in that horrific state, then having to be killed, or re-killed, by Bentley so they could rest in peace...properly. It never bothered him that they never had a proper burial; he could see when they were reanimated that their bodies had already been taken over by something more sinister. Bodies are just shells, he had always said.

It took a few minutes for Paul Dickson to compose himself, and decided to go back to the caravan in a few minutes.

Kyle needed him.

Like Paul, Kyle only had one person left in the world that he loved, and even his school friends were people he was never going to see again. Paul looked up to the sky, the soft wind gliding over his features and cooling down his face.

Paul began to speak, "You know I've never been a big believer; and you know that I've always thought that when someone dies, then that's it. But if you can hear me, Julie, I promise I won't let anything happen to our boy, our little prince. I love you. I wish I could have seen Bell grow into a young lady. I wish I could have walked her down the aisle, and..." He wiped tears from his cheeks and added, "Give Bell a kiss for me, and tell her that daddy and..." Paul, angry that he'd broken down again and that his message to his wife had been interrupted, eventually continued, "And tell her that daddy and Kyle will see you all again...one day, but not for a while. Keep safe, my girls. I love you more than words can say. You are the sunshine of my life. The pair of you."

He blew out his cheeks, and for some reason this seemed to cool down his face and reduce the welling in his eyes. Paul Dickson then brushed his fingers through his dark, greasy hair and took a peek around the area he was in. He was a lucky man; he knew that. He was a lot luckier than some folk despite the trauma he was going through, and thought how different it could have turned out.

If on that day his boy had gone with them, Paul would have went looking for the three of them as soon as the broadcast was made. Maybe it would have got him killed, but if it hadn't, there was a small chance he could have found them alive. There was also the scenario of all three of them, stuck in that damn car, reanimated. If that had happened, Paul Dickson would have given up on life. No Julie, no Bell
and
no Kyle, would have been too much to cope with. If Paul hadn't have killed himself, he was pretty sure that his heart would have broken anyway.

He had no idea how the future was going to pan out for the pair of them, and he was uncertain if they would both live to see the winter, but Paul Dickson predicted that there would be darker days ahead of him.