 
SNATCHERS: VOLUME ONE

By

Shaun Whittington

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

The author uses UK English

Follow or friend request me on facebook
To my children. You are the sunshine of my life.
Author's Note

Snatchers is a work of fiction, and many of the events in the book occur in real places. However, in these areas I have taken the liberty of exaggerating certain things that suited the book. Other places that are mentioned may not be real at all, so if you are from the area that I have written about, try not to be too upset that I have twisted a few things.

This is a book about a zombie apocalypse, so it does contain tension, gore, and scenes that could upset individuals, especially scenes involving children. It needs to be as real as possible, and in reality nobody would be exempt from such an unforgiving world.

What you are about to read is the first three weeks of this saga, (Books 1 to 3) so sit back and enjoy the next 290,000 words.

Very kind regards,

Shaun Whittington
SNATCHERS: VOLUME ONE
Zechariah 14:12

Their people will become like walking corpses, their flesh rotting away. Their eyes will shrivel in their sockets, and their tongues will decay in their mouths

Albert Einstein

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil,

but by those who watch them without doing anything.

Isaiah 26: 19-20

Go, my people, enter your rooms

and shut the doors behind you;

hide yourselves for a little while

until his wrath has passed by.
Contents

The Beginning

The Dead Don't Sleep

The Dead Don't Cry
**Book One: The Beginning**

##### Prologue

June 7th

The darkness increased as the two men passed the last streetlight of the long, desolate road. The laughter amongst the two men escalated as they drunkenly began telling tales of their youth and what they used to get up to. Lee James and his friend, Vince Kindl, staggered along the road and drunkenly decided to walk home rather than wait for a taxi.

They burst into song, and sang, rather badly, tunes from Oasis, U2 and The Beatles. After five songs had been murdered, the men began to settle down as they approached the beginning of the hill. It was a steep part of the road, but over the other side was where Vince stayed. Their pace began to slow down and both began to chat to one another again.

"Remember Carol MacDonald?" Lee James asked his friend, Vince.

Vince screwed his face in thought and shook his head. It seemed like a random question, he thought. "Never heard of her."

"Aw, come on." Lee nudged Vince in his side. "She used to go out with a guy called David Pointer, before he got married."

"Oh yeah." Vince nodded, but was still unsure if he knew the woman. "What about her?"

"Passed away last week."

"Really? How old was she?"

"Thirty nine," sighed Lee James, scratching at his dark hair. "She was hit by a car. She was in a pub in Little Haywood. She went outside and crossed the road. Hit and run."

Vince ran his fingers over his badly-scarred face. "Thirty nine." He lowered his head sadly. "That's no age."

"Wouldn't surprise me if a member of the Murphy family had done it. Fucking scum."

Vince lowered his head at the mention of the family from Haywood, and said sadly, "Me neither."

"Shit." Lee placed his hand on Vince's shoulder and said, "Sorry, mate. I didn't mean to bring up their name. I wasn't thinking. It's the drink talking."

"No worries."

The two men had another hundred yards to go before they reached the caravan park, where Vince lived, and were now over the peak of the hill. They could have spent the evening in the nearby pubs of The Spode Cottage or The Plum Pudding, but both men decided to go to The Ash Tree for a change, and sink one-too-many jars of ale. Neither men had work in the morning, so decided to take the opportunity to start the weekend early. Vince felt drunk, but wasn't as bad as his good friend, Lee James.

"Look!" Lee pointed up ahead and began to giggle.

Vince screwed his eyes to improve his vision and stated, "I can't see fuck all."

Lee staggered a little and pointed again, whilst walking alongside his friend.

"Oh, I can see now," said Vince, as they both descended down the hill, getting nearer to the caravan park.

On the poorly lit road, Vince could see, what looked like, a man curled up at the side of the road. Both men began to sober up as their adrenaline kicked in, and they both jogged nearer to the figure when they realised that he could be injured. They stopped next to the body and looked at one another, wondering what to do next.

"I'll check his pulse." Lee James crouched down and felt the carotid artery.

"Anything?" asked Vince.

"Very faint."

Vince pulled out his phone and began to ring for an ambulance. It took a while, but he eventually got through. Lee tried to talk to the man whilst Vince was talking to one of the operators. "He seems unconscious," said Vince down the phone to the operator. "I think he's breathing." The two-minute conversation ended with Vince saying to the operator, "Okay, thanks a lot."

Lee stood up and asked, "Well?"

"They said five minutes."

Both men glared at the curled-up man, his face didn't look familiar. Vince began dragging his nails over his short hair. "You can go, if you want," said Vince. "I'll stay and wait for the ambulance."

Vince was only yards away from the caravan park, where he stayed. Lee lived further on, another two miles away. "No, I'll wait."

"I wonder what happened?"

"Take your pick." Lee sniffed and gaped at the man with sympathy. "Attacked. Fell over while drunk ... anything could have happened. Hit by a car. If he stops breathing we'll need to give him the kiss of life."

Vince looked at the man and laughed, "Nah, fuck that. I'd rather shit in my hands and clap."

"You always say that," snickered Lee, and pointed at Vince in a fake-threatening manner. "Get some new lines."

Staring at his friend's hand, Vince exclaimed, "What the fuck is that all over your hand?"

Lee glared at his limb and spoke with uncertainty in his voice. "Blood ... I think."

"Is he bleeding then?"

Lee shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know. I only touched his neck. He must be."

Vince bent down and tried to inspect the man's features in the dark area. He put on the flashlight on his phone and pointed it at the man's neck.

"Is he okay?" asked Lee.

Vince never answered.

"Vince? Is he okay?"

Vincent Kindl look perplexed and finally answered his friend. "I think he's been bitten."
Chapter One

June 9th

The evening was dragging gloriously to the twenty-three-year-old woman's delight, as another shift at the hospital was something she wasn't looking forward to at all. Karen Bradley's eyes reluctantly glared at the clock on the kitchen wall once again, as she supped on a cup of tepid tea. She had four hours to go. Great!

What could she do in four hours?

She could sit and watch a film, then have a long hot soak in the new bath that was fitted in five weeks ago. Then sit back on the leather couch to count down the remainder of the minutes, before having to go through the same rigmarole of putting on her uniform, styling her hair, applying her light make-up, and mentally bracing herself for another arduous shift in the accident and emergency department.

The early evening was quiet, as her partner had gone on his usual night out on a Saturday. Despite that he had been working all week, she couldn't help but feel a little unhappy with his night of drinking. Most people were going out, and she was about to endure another long shift. She admitted that her anger towards her boyfriend was due to plain old jealousy, as it had been a while since she had been out with the girls or with her boyfriend. She was looking forward to her next set of days off.

Karen poured more hot water into her cup to freshen it up, grabbed a chocolate bar from the cupboard and walked into the living room. She then threw her legs to her side and put the TV on.

The first channel to come on was the twenty-four hour BBC news. She was about to put her romantic comedy TV programme on, which came with the package of the cable deal she had received, but her fingers remained still. The remote remained untouched, as her tired eyes continued to look at the TV.

The anchorman was called Ben Foster, and the individual he was interviewing was a woman called Helen Reading, who was an author of a book about the breakdown of society. Karen Bradley brushed her short brown hair behind her ears and listened to the interview, but it all seemed very bizarre. Ben Foster was in his late forties and she had always despised him, as she thought he was a bit of a letch that leered at his big-breasted guests, as well as Alison Jones, the weather girl.

The author was a doctor—a doctor of what, Karen didn't know—and although sitting, she seemed tall, gangly and wore thick brown-rimmed spectacles that matched her hair colour that sat in an old-fashioned bob style.

Over the last week or so, Karen had noticed that the news, as well as the local news, had been reporting an alarming increase of missing persons, attacks, murders and cases of insanity, amongst people across the country. People had been attacked by their own family and violence in hospitals had increased, especially when it came to bites. She was more than aware of this, as she had three cases of bite victims in her hospital the night before.

The previous night she saw on SKY News that passengers on a plane from London to New York had been evacuated at JFK airport, after a series of bites had taken place while over the Atlantic. The six attackers had been restrained by other passengers and were arrested, but had to be rushed to hospital under police guard, due to the severity of their wounds. These kinds of incidents were becoming more frequent as the days went by, and it unnerved her.

Karen turned her attention back to the TV and saw the two individuals on the screen had began to discuss press blackout, and that it was extremely rare. On the TV, Helen Reading informed the smug Ben Foster that the occurrence of just one blackout should be regarded as an immediate red flag.

Foster argued that the violence was due to the world economy crash, but Reading seemed to already know what it was and disagreed wholeheartedly, as there were no other reports of violence in most other European countries. She was certain that any event causing the powers that be to clamp down, merited attention. Reading argued that the government knew what had been happening but didn't want a panic-stricken nation on their hands. She also claimed how unusual it was for a media-conscious government to cause a media blackout that had affected some channels, which she named, and said that the BBC would be next.

Still gazing at the TV, the off duty nurse took a sip from her tea and left her unopened chocolate bar sitting on the arm of her chair. Karen then closed her heavy brown eyes, sat back and rested her head, still listening to Ben and Helen from the TV, but a blanket of tiredness had already covered her.

She began to think about the man who was brought into casualty the night before, minutes before she left for home. Apparently, he had been attacked in a gang fight, and received bite wounds to his neck. She wondered how he was doing, as his wounds were so severe that he was airlifted to another hospital. She closed her eyes and continued to listen to the TV.

Maybe just a ten-minute dose, she thought.

On the TV, the debate continued.

Anchorman, Ben Foster argued: "So if this sudden unrest that is occurring in the UK, and in some reports across Europe, is not from welfare cuts, job losses and spending cuts, what is actually causing it?"

Reading: "We're not sure exactly—"

Foster: "You're not sure? People are getting attacked now, this is no laughing matter."

Reading: "It never has been."

Foster: "So is there anything relevant you can tell the UK before we're ... shut down, as you say?" There was huge sarcasm in Ben Foster's voice.

Reading: "We don't want to panic people, but my colleagues and I have heard that there has been a Rabies-like infection that has occurred in recent weeks." Reading sighed and reluctantly continued. "It's not actually rabies per se, but it's similar in the way it can be passed on by bites. We recently had reports of a low-level outbreak in the city of Derby, in the West Midlands. We don't know why it's happened or where it came from. We had forty-seven reported cases, which ranged over a two-week period. The infested area was small over a twenty-mile radius but had spread into rural villages and towns, and we fear it is now a wide epidemic, soon to be pandemic."

Foster: "Pandemic?" Foster shifted in his seat uncomfortably. This was news he wasn't expecting. Was she joking? But why would she?

Reading: "Yes. We believe the incident that had happened in Paris, the pockets of incidents in Murcia, and the biting epidemic that happened on the New York flight is related to what is happening here. As far as the UK is concerned, we're at a class two stage now."

Foster: "Class two? What's—"

Reading: "Class two is when urban or rural areas are infected, and we could have at least a couple of hundred of infected people, soon to be thousands. Class two outbreaks would most definitely attract media attention, hence the reason why we may be minutes—hours away from getting the plug pulled, but maybe they won't. The class one situation has been happening over the last two weeks without our knowing."

Foster: "Why didn't they inform the public straight away? And why didn't they do something sooner?"

Reading: "Because they didn't want mass hysteria. And to answer your other question, the incidents that have occurred over the last few weeks were blamed on people letting off steam, due to poverty and social deprivation. Really, it was pockets of infected people, but not all stories were reported, some had been blocked. For example, in the first week in June there were eleven people bitten in Hexham in a Pizza Hut restaurant. The following day, four were taken to hospital with bites after a fight occurred in a pub in Hartlepool. These incidents were never reported."

Foster: "Is there such thing as a class three situation?"

Reading: "Yes. Class three is when the infected are in their thousands. The mop-up process could take months. The government have already issued the military in the cities across the UK. Our army is pretty low in numbers, as we all know, with the cuts over the years. Expect riots, looters and widespread panic in the city of London."

Foster: "Just London?" Foster half-laughed. "Typical. There are other places in the UK, aside from London! You do know that? And what about the people who live in cities in the north or rural towns and villages, miles away from the south?"

Reading: "There may be pockets of armed police, but they're just humans who would want to be with their families. They will only have themselves to depend on. Governments of any type are nothing more than a collection of human beings that are fearful, arrogant and incompetent as the rest of us. Even in perfect conditions, containing anything larger than a class two outbreak is extremely difficult. Imagine trying to quarantine a city like London or Birmingham."

Foster: "A lot of people watching this will be very sceptical. We have two other experts on after you, concerning this, all with different theories."

Reading: "There will be a lot of scepticism, and many other people coming on TV, if the channels are still on, will be putting across their own theories. But whatever the real reason, this—whatever it is—whether you believe it's a science made virus or an act of God, it's happening right now."

Foster: "Is there a class four situation?"

Reading: "Yes. But you don't wanna know."

Although it was unplanned, Karen had fallen asleep. The last minute of the conversation that had occurred from the television hadn't been taken in, and she was oblivious that the world, as she knew it, was about to change for the worse.

Then suddenly her eyes opened and she could see a passionate preacher on the TV. She caught some of his words, but not all of it.

" _My fellow Christians, we shall suffer in life, but Heaven will be our eternal life, so fear not! For everyone else, all you sinners, you asked for this! Instead of leading a long life reeked with sin, Hell is coming to you now! It's coming to Earth. You have been ignoring the word of the Lord for too long, and now it's time to pay the price."_

Karen turned down the volume of the TV and closed her eyes once more. Her body rested for a full hour and when she woke, she opened her eyes to see a blank screen in front of her. She never fretted why this was so and switched the TV off to go upstairs, read her book, then get ready for work. She had a tough night ahead of her, but what Karen Bradley didn't know, was that life from now on was going to be one constant struggle.
Chapter Two

June 10th

Morning had arrived, and the clouds were slowly prised open to allow the sun's rays to spill out onto the area through the now gaping gap. His head smarted and awoke to see his old foe, darkness, had finally disappeared. His window was shut, but he could hear the faint sound of a dog crying outside, like a broken-hearted man, as he lay on his bed. He suddenly remembered where he was, and why he was there.

It was his birthday.

Life begins at forty. What a myth!

Surely the fourth decade heralds the beginning of the end? Jack Slade thought, and had a slight chuckle to himself when he deliberated about that quote, despite his fragile condition. He thought about how many people he knew in their twenties or thirties who had had heart attacks or contracted cancer. There were none! Because most of the people that he had known and passed away through the years had all been over the age of forty, and Jack was certain that he was now at a more dangerous stage in his life.

He opened his sticky, sappy eyes. He was relieved to be still alive.

It was his birthday the day before, and it had to have been the saddest fortieth party a Friday night had ever witnessed in the city. To call it a party probably was an insult to the word itself. It was one man having a night of alcohol and substances, which some members of society wouldn't have approved of. Jack was alone, and had originally planned on hitting the clubs with a friend, but he had let him down at the last minute, leaving Jack to crawl the Glasgow bars alone.

Jack sat up from his bed and moaned as soon as his body went into a right angle shape.

His back was hunched over like a ninety-year-old man, and he placed both hands on his throbbing head. He felt under the weather and he knew it was self-inflicted, as his head smarted. This had been his worst ever hangover; even more atrocious than when he took a trip to Bournemouth to visit his friend who was attending the university there ten years ago. That had been another weekend drenched in alcohol.

Jack was originally from Rugeley, in Staffordshire, and he and his friend, James, had arranged one weekend to see their old friend, and took the three-hour drive to the south of England, spending their time driving extremely fast, listening to dance music and smoking far too many cigarettes.

When they arrived at Bournemouth, they had spent a few hours in the campus and then proceeded to go to some of the nightclubs that Bournemouth had to offer. After spending most of the night drinking brandy and cokes, some of the boys had made the sensible decision to escort Jack home, as he was paralytic with alcohol and was bouncing off the walls. If they hadn't escorted him home, he was going to be escorted off the premises anyway, as the bouncers at the time were looking somewhat concerned.

Once he got back to the campus, Jack collapsed onto the floor where he slept for most of the night. When he awoke, and still drunk from the night before, he went to make himself a cup of tea and poured orange juice into his cup instead of milk—a story his friends still talked and laughed about many years after.

That was then, but now he was forty and should have known better.

He finally mustered the strength to place his feet onto the carpet of the room, and dressed in his jeans only, he stood to his feet. He was expecting the room to spin, but it never happened to his delight. He shuffled over to the bathroom and went in to deplete his bladder.

When he walked into the room, his attention was distracted. He approached the sink in the average-sized bathroom and looked in the large mirror. His short brown hair was sticking up like a toilet brush. He looked to be carrying a bit of weight, his chest and shoulders were in need of a wax, and he turned around to see that his back had too much hair for his liking. He wasn't impressed with his Teen Wolf look, and knew that sometime in the near future he was going to have to book himself another wax session in the salon that was only streets away from his work. It wasn't something he wanted to do, but it was a necessity if he wanted to remain attractive to the opposite sex—not that he was beating them off with a stick.

It would only be his third time visiting the salon, and although a requirement, he wasn't looking forward to it. The main experience that forced him to re-think his look was a year ago where he went over to a woman in a bar and spent three hours chatting to her. They exchanged numbers and saw one another the next night, this time meeting up in a restaurant. It was the second night he had seen her and she invited him back to her house. One thing led to another, they kissed furiously and began to undress one another, and as soon as she took his top off, she stared and placed her hand over her mouth.

This was never a good sign.

She made her excuses about a migraine and politely asked him to leave. Jack couldn't believe it; he was a bit hairy, that's all. It wasn't as if he had four nipples!

Jack was reasonably attractive, he had put on a little weight since his twenties, and his cheekbones had slowly disappeared. The side of his hair had begun to materialise grey hairs and at first he started to pluck them out, but he had succumbed to defeat after five years of plucking. The army of grey had still managed to multiply, despite the fact some of their early subordinates had been eliminated. They had started at the side of his hair, and it looked like their plan was to grow further up and multiply till they reached the top of the scalp.

He rubbed his stubbly face, and decided he needed a shave, as the hairs growing in the chin area were visibly grey despite the stubble only being a few days old.

Jack had never been married, and although he had had plenty of girlfriends who were not worth mentioning, there was not one he ever loved, not properly. The only girl that had meant something to him was Kerry Evans. He had met her ten years ago, and was surprised to have got her pregnant a few years later.

When she had his son, Thomas, they decided to get married. However, typical Jack Slade managed to mess things up, as he had a one-night stand with Kerry's best friend. Jack was content with keeping the shame a secret, but Kerry's best friend had other ideas. Overcome by guilt, she turned up at their house and confessed all, resulting in Jack packing his bags, as well as receiving superficial wounds to his face when a coffee mug hit him in the chin and shattered, causing minor lacerations. The marriage never happened.

There were good days with Kerry; they weren't all bad. His fondest memory was when he came out of the shower one evening, and nakedly marched towards the living room while she sat and watched TV. She took one look at him and asked him what the hell he was doing. Jokingly, Jack placed his hands on his hips and nodded downwards to his family jewels, and said, "Well, it's not gonna suck itself. But careful while you're down there, as it may contain nuts." She burst out laughing and told him to 'piss off.'

Snapping out of his daydreaming of the past, he sighed. After draining his bladder and drinking a pint of water from the tap, he felt a little cold and strolled out of the bathroom and went to the wardrobe to put on his jeans and a plain black T-shirt. He preferred plain T-shirts, especially black, as it made him look slimmer; other coloured shirts showed off his definition and bulges.

He sat back on the bed and pulled out his phone; there was one bar left on it. He needed to get home and charge it, however, he wasn't home; he was three miles from home. He was standing in a hotel room in Glasgow City Centre, and had hardly any recollection of where the weekend had gone.

It was now Sunday morning, and he had started drinking Friday night. He popped into the town and began drinking in a public house called, The Drum and Monkey. Two hours later, he began chatting to an older woman of about forty-five, who was with friends. As it was time for her friends to leave for another bar, she decided that she wanted to stay and talk some more with this reasonably attractive man that made her laugh thanks to his dark, sometimes cruel, sense of humour. Her friends were not happy with the decision, as she was a married woman. She won in the end, and her dispirited friends left and warned Jack to look after her.

After booking a night at the hotel and spending the night with the woman, she left the hotel at around 2am, and made it clear she didn't want to see him again. Jack admitted to himself that it was the worst sex he ever had since his twenties. During it, she constantly moaned about his breath, and when she told him to get off and give her oral pleasure instead, he did what he was told.

She enjoyed it and came within a minute. When he asked if she would finish him off, she said she was too tired and left the room, leaving him in limbo.

Feeling lucky, and possibly a little arrogant, he decided to splash out and booked the room for another night. He had plans to go out once again in the city centre, after all, it wasn't everyday he turned forty. The night itself felt dark, there were extra police about the city and Jack had seen some violent skirmishes between policeman and members of the public, which ruined his night for him.

As he now sat on his bed, his mother drifted into his mind. He had stopped having a relationship with his mother and his sister years ago, since he moved to Glasgow after meeting a Glaswegian girl in a club in Stafford.

He simply lost touch with his mother and sister, which was a pathetic excuse in this day and age with the technology that was available, and although it sounded harsh, the truth was that he just couldn't be bothered with them anymore, and he hadn't had a relationship with his father since he was ten years old. He wanted to be with the girl he had met, and although he felt guilty for leaving his son in Rugeley with Kerry, he still wanted to have a life. He saw his son once a fortnight and thought the move wouldn't make a jot of difference to him. His relationship with the girl didn't last long, but he decided to remain in Glasgow, as he enjoyed his office job and life in the 'big smoke.'

He looked at his watch; it was early. The maids were due in at 11am, which meant he needed to get out eventually and head for home, his real home. He headed for the bathroom for the second time, had a quick frantic shave and then it was time for a shower. He took off his black T-shirt and his jeans and stepped in the warm, welcoming shower.

The hot jets gently massaged his back and shoulders, and he slowly spun around so the whole of his body could experience this pleasure. He didn't want this experience to end, but decided to be strong and eventually turned the apparatus off.

After his shower had finished, he got dressed on his bed, putting on a fresh set of underwear and socks, followed by his jeans and the black T-shirt.

He sat and thought about his weekend experience. It was kind of sad that a man had to spend his fortieth alone in a hotel, he thought to himself. Then again, at least he got laid, well ... kind of.

He looked at his phone and snickered. There wasn't one message on his phone, despite this weekend being his birthday. He did, however, have seven missed calls, all from Kerry. He thought about his son for a second and wondered if anything had happened to him. He looked to his left, as he remained sitting on the bed, and then suddenly his phone chimed, telling him that he had received a text message. He opened the message and sighed; it was from Kerry.

What have I done now? Thomas' birthday isn't till next month, so it can't be that.

He wasn't due to see Thomas until next weekend. Maybe it was a belated happy birthday from his ex-lover? If it were, it would be his first one.

He read the first six words and smiled. Even in text form, Kerry always preferred to use, what she would call, proper English.

It read: How are you? Hope you're okay?

His eyes then narrowed in befuddlement when he read the next line. He read it again to make sure it wasn't the drink that was messing with his brain.

Thomas and I are going to barricade ourselves in until this stops. Keep safe.

He shook his head and read the whole message again. It didn't make sense. Keep safe. What did she mean by keep safe?

He had little life left in his phone, and decided to use it to call Kerry. Before he could implement his decision, the phone went off again.

Another message from Kerry!

Thomas keeps on asking after you. Are you okay? If so, please don't call me.

Jack scratched his head. Please don't call me? That doesn't even make sense.

Jack sent a message back: I'm fine. What's going on?

His phone received another message: You don't know?

He replied: No!

Ten seconds later, he received another message from his ex: Turn on the TV.
Chapter Three

H Wing had been unobtrusive all night.

Usually, when Janine Perry worked night shift, the buzzers would constantly go off between 10pm and 3am by prisoners wanting paracetamol for their headache, and then it would quieten down. She despised twelve-hour night shifts, but with doing these shifts, she got more days off in the month.

She was on with Jamie Thomson, also known as JT. He was okay, she thought. Just okay. He had dark, short hair, thirty-nine years old, quite muscular, but she didn't find him attractive. He looked like ex-military with his look, but she didn't know him well enough to be aware of his background.

Sure, they talked while on the night shift, but any personal questions would be shunned. She took the hint, and kept the conversation to basic topics such as the prisoners, television, music and films.

Their shift started at 10pm, they would turn up on the wings, sign the handover sheet, then their colleagues would perform lock-up and then go home at ten in the evening to leave Janine and Jamie to it. There were two houseblocks within the prison. On each houseblock there were four wings that consisted of seventy to ninety inmates. Once the wings were locked up and the roll count had been performed and the numbers collated, the four-slider doors that led to each wing were opened, and the officers sat in an office that they nicknamed, the bubble.

The bubble was the control section for that particular houseblock which, by computer and touch screen, opened and closed the doors to the wings and to the houseblock itself. This would be used constantly during the day with officers needing access to get on and off the wings, especially if prisoners needed to be escorted out of the wings to the canteen, the gym, the health centre, the education department or the visits area.

Janine had a reputation amongst the prison staff that she couldn't care less what she said, as most times she spoke her mind. Sometimes this had got her into trouble, but she wasn't caring. The money wasn't that great anyway, and even if she was sacked, she would just get another job. There was no pressure on her, as at the age of twenty-seven, she had no boyfriend and still lived with her mum and dad, so she had no mortgage to pay for.

This was the longest part of the night. The time between 7am and 10am was the longest three hours of the shift, because they couldn't wait for it to finish and this was also where the tiredness would kick in.

Janine gave off a loud, exaggerating yawn to break the quiet tension that had been smothering the two officers for the last hour. The conversation had dried up by 6:30am, and the officers still had a while to go. As the hours dragged by, the boisterousness from the inmates had begun to grow as the minutes progressed. Inmates were talking through their doors to communicate with their nearest neighbours. Janine began to sit up her fatigued body, and widened her eyes in a pitiful attempt to keep herself awake. The noises were becoming more audible from all four wings; some were now beginning to slam their hands on the doors.

"What time is it?" Jamie asked Janine. "I think the other shift should have been here half an hour ago."

Because no one had turned up, it meant that the two of them were powerless until the other officers arrived. It wasn't till 9am that they could shut the slider doors that would seal off the wings, and then they could start opening the cell doors.

The clamour coming from all four wings grew so much, that Janine thought that if they hadn't been in the bubble, the noise would be resounding to human ears if they were on the wings.

Something was wrong.

Being in their cells for an extra thirty minutes wasn't helping, but the cons had never acted like this before, not collectively, not all three hundred of them!

Jamie looked at Janine; his concerned face made Janine's face drain. Jamie wasn't a guy that scared easily, he was one of the toughest officers there was, and the angst carved on his face made Janine gulping a challenging job. The pair of them sat in the bubble on their seats in front of the screens.

Jamie looked to the floor in thought, shook his head softly and looked up at Janine.

He said, "Something's not right. The inmates are sounding scared, and the other shift ain't even turned up."

"What do you think it is?"

He slowly shrugged his shoulders. He didn't have the answer. "I think we should call the Governor."

Jamie stood to his feet and stretched, arching his back and raising his arms in the air. The stretching lasted seconds, before he walked over to the phone. He looked up at Janine, and she nodded her head. She was sure Jamie's look was asking if they should really call the Governor, as he didn't like to be bothered for minor incidents.

In his years as an officer, Jamie had never experienced this kind of noise and panic coming from all four wings. Before he could dial the number, the phone went off. It was an officer from houseblock one—Janine and Jamie was situated in houseblock two—and Jamie immediately picked up the phone.

"We've got a situation up here," the man from houseblock one announced over the phone.

"We have also," Jamie spoke. "What's going on?"

"You don't know?"

"No, otherwise I wouldn't be asking." Jamie could feel his temperature rising, his blood simmered.

The man on the other line said, "The TV channels are not working, so turn on the radio and call me back in ten minutes. We need to talk."

Jamie walked over to the radio and switched it on. Janine didn't say a word; they both sat and listened to the information that was being delivered.

For ten minutes they sat and listened, Jamie shook his head throughout most of it, Janine gently sobbed through some of it.

Janine remained sitting and her left hand that flopped by the side of her body opened up, and Jamie instantly held it and looked at her. His strong face told her that it was going to be okay. As for the morning shift, it seemed there wasn't going to be another officer to walk through the gates of the prison.

The two of them sat slumped in their seats; the information had mentally drained them, and were both finding it difficult to take it all in. No wonder the prisoners were going mental. They all had access to radios and were probably listening to the information also.

"You have family?" she questioned.

"Thankfully, no. Well ... not really. You?"

She nodded. "My mum and dad ... my brother."

"No point going home, you live miles away and they'll be barricaded in their house, either that..."

Jamie allowed his sentence to trail off, he wasn't thinking. His thin smile to Janine was his way of apologising for his crass, yet realistic, comment. He continued to hold her hand.

"We should stay here," Janine suggested. "There's a canteen. Fuck everyone else."

"And what about the prisoners?"

Jamie had now let go of Janine's hand, not because she made a comment without engaging her brain—that was understandable as she was in shock, he simply let go because their palms were becoming clammy.

Janine thought about her male colleague's question. They couldn't stay in the prison and eat what was left in the canteen, while six to seven hundred inmates from both houseblocks slowly starved to death. Their conscience wouldn't allow that. If they did leave them, it would make them mass killers, worse than Seung-Hui Cho or Anders Breveik.

Janine opened her mouth, and she was ready to ask her male colleague what his next plan of action was. The ringing from the phone in the bubble prevented her from beginning her sentence. Jamie walked over to the phone and picked it up.

She stared at Jamie Thomson as he listened intently to the other officer on the line. Jamie quizzed, "What about the prisoners?" He hung up and looked over to Janine.

She had to ask. "What is it?"

"They're leaving," Jamie announced.

"What about the prisoners? Our keys are different to the ones in houseblock one, they won't work."

His body language suggested that the inmates in the houseblock were going to be left to their own devices.

"What are we going to do?" She stood to her feet, awaiting his answer. This was a unique situation and she wasn't embarrassed to admit that she was frightened.

She had already made up her mind that wherever Jamie Thomson went, she would go. It was selfish, but being by Jamie's side would enhance her own survival. She had seen him in action; she had seen him take down four prisoners in one go. He was a beast of a fighter and she wasn't going to leave his side. She just prayed her own family were okay.

Jamie at last had finished his pause, and finally answered Janine's question. "There's nothing we can do about the guys in the other houseblock. But we're gonna release our prisoners."
Chapter Four

David Pointer had been given his first lie-in for months and embraced it with open arms. By day, David Pointer was a driving instructor and worked five days a week. His shifts were unpredictable as he worked for himself.

His wife, Davina, worked night shift as an auxiliary nurse at Stoke hospital. She only worked two nights a week, and spent the rest of her time keeping the house in order, shopping, taking care of the bills, and looking after their four-year-old daughter, Isobel.

Their daughter was still too young for Primary school, so the routine was to take her to nursery at 8:30am, then pick her up at 11:30am and then to think of things to keep her entertained, such as jigsaws, painting and playing with her toys. Davina preferred the old fashioned way of entertaining her daughter; she didn't want her four-year-old hooked on computer games before she was even in her first year at school.

David was awake; he looked over to the alarm clock and although it stated that he had slept for eleven hours, a personal record that David never even achieved when he was a teenager, he still felt powerless to get his body to move. He remained on the bed, his eyes glaring at the ceiling. He noticed a slight brown stain on the ceiling and made a mental note that that was his first job he was going to tackle, once he had had his breakfast.

He swung his legs to the side of the bed and managed to sit up on the side with his feet touching the floor. He looked over to a bag that was sitting in the corner of the room. He forgot it was Sunday, which meant it was swim day.

Every Sunday morning David would take Isobel to the local swimming baths; it was the highlight of the four-year-old's week. It was just her, spending the day with her daddy.

He got off the bed and, fully naked, he walked over to the bag that had been made up by Davina only an hour ago. The small Minnie Mouse rubber ring stood next to the bag that had the usual swimwear in it as well as shampoo and some towels. David pulled out his top drawer and put a pair of shorts on. On the front, was a picture of Animal from The Muppets, a fun Christmas present from Davina. He also had matching socks, but decided to go for plain black.

He opened the blinds, took a glimpse out into the garden and gawped to the left and right, scanning the neighbours' gardens. The sun shone brilliantly and David sighed with contentment. It was going to be a glorious day, he thought to himself.

He opened the window to catch a stray breeze, and could hear a cacophony of sirens and, what sounded like, children shrieking from a few houses away. He smiled to himself and shut the window. He could have thought of worse places to live.

He put on his jeans standing up, feeling his lower back smarting as it always did when he first got out of bed, and managed the task successfully without falling over.

*

Downstairs, Davina Pointer was dressed in her grey housecoat, a Christmas present from David, and wore nothing underneath it. She had on her burgundy slippers, and was making herself a cup of coffee. This had been the first time David had slept in for a while, and she looked at the clock thinking that he certainly was embracing every minute. She had been up since 7am, and had spent most of the morning with the curtains drawn, reading with Isobel, and watching Peppa Pig.

It was now after ten, and she thought that twelve hours was more than enough for her husband. Now bored after spending three hours watching children's TV, she turned on her phone and logged onto her social network.

Her eyes widened. Surely must be some mistake.

She had never been so popular. She had thirteen messages on her personal message inbox. She placed the phone on the side of the sink, and patiently waited for the kettle to boil. She made her coffee, and with her right hand holding the cup and her left holding the phone, she began to scroll through the messages. She started from the bottom, and decided to work her way up from the earliest sent to the latest.

The first message was sent at 7:46am; it was from her sister who lived in Norwich. It read: R u ok up there? Call me ASAP. Love you.

Davina tucked her short brown hair behind her ears and shook her head. "What's wrong, sis?" she muttered to herself. "Has Barry left you again?"

She checked the second message of the thirteen. It was from her work colleague, Amanda, who was working the night before—Davina was due to go in on Tuesday night. It read: Hi hun, can't make it tonight. I feel ill, gonna go to my bed and see how I feel later.

Another five messages she had received were very short and asked her to put on the television. A couple others were random bullshit, apart from the one by her mother that was sent at 8:23am. It was Davina's final message.

It read: Tried to call. Where are you? Your dad and me are hiding in the living room. They're banging on the windows, trying to get in. For God's sake, keep your doors locked. Get David to get you lot up in the attic. Look after that granddaughter of mine. Love you always, Mum.

Davina stroked her upper lip with her forefinger and thumb, as if she had a moustache to play with. It was her thinking pose, but it didn't matter how hard she thought, she couldn't fathom what was going on. She read her mum's message once again. They're banging on the windows, trying to get in. What does she mean?

She took a slurp from her piping cup of coffee and read the messages over and over. She placed her phone onto the side and strolled into the living room. Her daughter was sitting on the floor in the corner of the room, colouring in her books. Davina switched over the channel to the news.

The British news was proving difficult to get on; she punched in the channel number for the BBC and a message came up on the screen. There were four messages in bullet-points, telling the viewer that the programme was off the air due to the new circumstances that had occurred. It also advised people to stay indoors and to keep their doors and windows locked.

Davina placed her hand on her chest and immediately thought about a nuclear attack, but then she reminded herself of her mother's message. They're banging on the windows, trying to get in. It wasn't making any sense.

She decided to change the channel to CNN, as she couldn't get FOX news because it was a channel that they had to pay for, and it wasn't a channel that was in their package when they bought cable.

As Isobel continued to use her crayons innocently in the corner of the room, Davina's mind slowly managed to digest some of the information that was being fed to her. Here eyes narrowed and her forehead scrunched tightly, creating wrinkles.

Surely this has got to be a joke?

She flicked through other channels that she never knew existed, and looking at the images that were being shown on Russia Today and Al Jazeera, she realised this was no joke. She put the channel back on to CNN.

Davina looked up to the ceiling and could hear the gentle thuds coming from above; it sounded like David had finally awoken. Maybe he could make sense of all this. She got to her feet to greet her husband; her legs wobbled a little as she stood. The astonishment and surreal event of what was happening had stunned her so much she couldn't even feel her legs walking to the bottom of the stairs; it was as if she was floating.

They're banging on the windows, trying to get in.

"Morning," came David's tired greeting.

He trudged down the stairs, where at the bottom, Davina was waiting for him. Her skin was snowy white; the blood from her face had been wanted by other parts of her body. "Morning."

David stood still on the very last step and gazed at his wife; he was certain she had received a distressing phone call. A relative had died? Her mum? But then again, Davina was a sensitive soul. She also looked this way when she found out that Amy Winehouse had passed away. He didn't know what to think, so he asked her what was wrong.

She shook her head, and shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. I think you need to sit down and watch the TV. I'm just gonna double check the doors and windows are locked, and then go upstairs and get dressed."

"Okay." David's head was being suffocated by mystification.

Davina walked past him and checked the front door, as she went through the other rooms downstairs. David smiled at his daughter, who smiled back, and then sat down on the brown leather couch and gaped at the television for a minute to be greeted by shaky mobile phone footage and presenters looking like they had seen a ghost.

Shit!
Chapter Five

It had been an arduous shift in the A and E department, and it had been a typical Saturday night/Sunday morning as the grade D staff nurse was coming to the end of her shift.

Her feet ached for her shoes to be kicked off, her head pounded and she would have welcomed eight hours sleep right now. It had been a crazier night than normal. So much so, that a four-man armed police guard had to be issued in the department, which had been the first time she had experienced anything like that—albeit she was only twenty-three and had only been qualified for two years.

At around midnight the usual drunks had wandered in; stomachs were pumped, some were aggressive than normal, and a junior doctor was even bitten by one of the drunks. It took three nurses to restrain the attacker, and that was when they needed to call the police. The junior doctor was treated and taken to another unit.

Around 6am, Staff Nurse Karen Bradley, had taken her break and found that the ward had been overrun with people who had received bite wounds, just like the gang member the night before. It had been a surreal night; three nurses as well as the junior doctor had been attacked, and she was seriously considering a new career.

The Saturday before, the department had dealt with twelve drunks, two stabbings and a young girl who had been killed by a hit and run driver. There had been a lot of local media attention surrounding the town, suggesting that knife crime was rising by an alarming rate. A week later, a biting epidemic seemed to be the new thing. What on earth next?

Since the government cuts, Karen had felt like she was trying to do her job with one hand tied behind her back. Beds were short; staff were not being replaced by the ones that were leaving, so the remaining staff had to deal with what crap was thrown at them. It had come to the point that they had to start and turn away patients, and refer them to the nearest hospital in Stoke, as Stafford was heaving.

Five minutes before her shift had finished, she and another nurse were attacked by an individual who ran in from the outside and tried to bite them. Luckily for the pair of them, nobody was injured as a police officer had restrained the crazed individual. Her boss had asked her to do some overtime, but she refused. She had had enough, and welcomed her two days off that she was due.

She walked out of the department briskly, almost in tears because of the crazy night that she had experienced, and went towards her vehicle which was thankfully parked near the A and E department, and she took the short journey to her Cherokee Jeep.

She fumbled for her keys once inside, fired the ignition, and slipped the jeep into first without putting on her seatbelt. She shook her head as she saw mindless idiots in a daze strolling around the staff car park; there were three to be exact, and one even ran with a hobble towards the department's entrance.

The hospital was away from the town centre, and almost in the middle of the countryside, which was a pain for patients who had no car, but Karen liked that, as she thought if the hospital was situated right in the heart of the town they would be inundated with patients with minor problems. Minor problems that could be solved with a small bandage, or a burn, that could have been easily treated with an immediate run of a cold tap.

She pulled out of the hospital car park and headed towards her hometown of Rugeley. She was missing her bed, and more importantly, couldn't wait to snuggle up to her boyfriend who always loved his lie-in on a Sunday, as he always went out with the boys on a Saturday night.

As she exited Stafford, she headed for the country. It was another two miles before she would reach her hometown, and blasted up her iPod and began to sing out to a track from a Stereophonics album she had purchased a few weeks ago. In the distance, she saw a figure up ahead who was shuffling slowly in the middle of the road.

Fuck 'em, she thought.

She had already done her bit working in that crazy hospital; she was too tired to play Mother Teresa and give a drunk a ride home. Besides, picking up a drunken man wouldn't have been one of her better ideas. Her Gary certainly wouldn't be too impressed with her kind-hearted behaviour, if she did indeed stop for the individual.

As the man stumbled to the other side of the road, she felt comfortable that she could pass him without slowing down, and more importantly not strike the drunken fellow.

At last, she entered the town and bizarrely saw a handful of people shuffling around the streets; two were in the road. She shook her head and wondered if it had been a charity 'drink yourself into oblivion weekend.' Too tired to even care, she pulled up into her quiet street, and parked the jeep into the drive. She looked at her house and sighed with contentment.

For a twenty-three-year-old, she was lucky to have such a place. With her twenty-six-year-old boyfriend being a newly qualified lawyer, she knew it was a place she couldn't afford on her own nurse's wage.

She stepped out of the jeep and headed towards the front door. She took a gander to her left in the desolate street. Her instincts also forced her to look to her right.

She saw one of her neighbours dressed in sports attire; it was Sharon Henderson. She was a fitness instructor at the local gym, and would religiously go for her Sunday morning jogs without fail. It seemed that this particular morning, her exercise session wasn't going to take place, as she tried to chat to a person that was stumbling towards her in the street. She asked if that person was okay, but there was no answer from the worn-looking individual, just a gentle moan. To Karen, he looked like a drunk—but more than that, he looked like a drunk that had been dragged through a hedge and then beaten up.

Karen saw the woman being pulled to the floor by the being she had never seen before.

"Sharon!" Karen called out, totally confused.

Her body nudged forward to help her neighbour who was situated twenty yards away, but fear had paralysed her legs temporarily and instead of helping the distressed woman, she stood and watched the whole event that was about to unravel before her shocked eyes.

She called out helplessly once more. "Sharon!"

Her neighbour never called back, and now her attacker fell on top of the fitness fanatic and buried its head into her neck. Karen couldn't see what was happening in this bizarre, surreal situation, but the high-pitched scream from her female neighbour suggested that her throat was being ripped out by the thing that was on top of her.

This was confirmed, when it lifted its head and blood ran from its mouth that chewed at something frantically. Its mastication was rushed and it went in for another bite. The screaming had stopped from Sharon as a pool of crimson developed around her neck area, and she lay lifeless on the pavement, apart from the twitch in her left leg. It stood to its feet as if it was bored by its prey and turned towards Karen.

Its face was pale, and the sunken black eyes and its bloodstained mandible, made it look like a Halloween costume—a very realistic Halloween costume. It took one look at her, and began moving towards her, quicker than she had imagined. Her heart pumped furiously as she frantically searched for her front door key and slotted it in, and took a look to her right again. He was gaining on her and was now on her drive, and although she had only looked for a brief second, his face looked ghastly, as if he was already dead. She let out a fearful shriek, gave the key a twist with her wrist and pushed the front door open, slammed it shut, locked it, and called out her boyfriend's name.

As soon as she shouted out Gary's name, she immediately released a furious jet-like release of vomit that landed on the hallway carpet with a heavy splat. The unusual feeling in her stomach was there for a few seconds before the release, which almost took her by surprise. She spat out the remaining chunks that stubbornly refused to budge out from the gaps of her teeth. Her right angle position returned back to vertical as she stood up straight, and could hear the moans coming from behind her as the awful face pressed itself against the frosted glass of the front door, smearing it with blood.

She sat down and picked up her landline phone and called the police. She waited for a full minute but there was no answer; she slammed the phone down to try and recollect her weird thoughts.

Did that really happen?

She wondered that if she managed to get through to the police and told them her story, they would probably just laugh on the other end of the line.

She walked into her living room and peered from the blinds out of her window. The corpse of Sharon Henderson was definitely there and remained on the pavement, which proved that Karen wasn't becoming demented. She went back to her front door to see that Sharon's attacker had gone, as if his attention had been seduced to go somewhere else. She went back into the living room, sat down, and placed her juddering hands on her clammy forehead and tried to make sense of the episode that had just occurred.

It was proving difficult.
Chapter Six

Jack Slade took Kerry's advice to sit down and watch TV.

He flicked through the channels, but most of them were off. As he came across the FOX channel, he brought the volume up by another three notches and allowed the news to slowly, and grudgingly, sink in.

He blew out his lips to try and somehow release some of the tension out of his body. There were reports mainly coming from the USA, although there were three correspondents, one based in London, Dublin, and the other based in Calais.

Jack watched as the American male reporter based in London—who was originally there to report on a serial killer who had been caught stalking women for the last ten years—began his report. He could only tell the viewer mainly hearsay, and wasn't really revealing information that would benefit the public. The Dublin-based reporter could only offer the same information; it was clear they had no idea what was happening, and the Calais-based reporter told the viewers about the closure of the Channel Tunnel, and then went into the history of how it was made, stating indirectly that she also had no idea what was going on, and was trying to stretch out her so-called report.

One recorded video was played every five minutes. It was a video of a London politician being attacked by half a dozen people, and being eaten alive. The VT stopped there, as obviously the cameramen had either been attacked, or had the sense to make a run for it.

Jack watched it for twenty minutes before turning away from the TV; the reporters and newsreaders were constantly repeating themselves, experts were brought on to be interviewed and pretended to have the answers on something they knew nothing about.

Why don't the arrogant bastards just admit that they don't know?

He headed for the mini bar and pulled out a miniature bottle of Jim Beam. He swallowed it in one. This wasn't an attempt to get drunk once more; Jack's nerves were shot to pieces and the surrealism of what was occurring before his eyes had to be dealt with in whatever way he deemed fit. He headed towards the closed blinds, and stood opposite them with his hand on the cord ready to twist them open. His tried his best to control his breathing, and was dreading what was going to greet his eyes as he opened the blinds.

Without hesitating any longer and wanting to quench the intense build-up, he twisted the blinds open and pulled the cord to slowly open them fully. As they parted, he took a careful look out of his hotel window, expecting scenes of carnage.

The hotel was situated within Central Station, and as he looked out on Union Street, where opposite there was the usual shops like, Poundland and Burger King, he noticed there wasn't a soul in sight, which wasn't totally unusual as it was Sunday morning. Even on a Sunday morning, however, Jack expected Glasgow to have one or two souls moping about. Maybe a drunk here and there, a police presence, or the odd Eastern European beggar that the city seemed plagued with these days, but there was nothing.

He looked back at his room and wondered if everyone had left the hotel. But where to? Somewhere remote where they could be considered safe? Or back home with their families? He looked back at his phone and read the text messages from Kerry once more. He thought about a chemical attack and maybe the gas had caused people to become crazy, but his brain suddenly reminded him from what he had seen on the TV that the theory had been quashed by the media, as nothing had been picked up.

It appeared that whatever scientist was being interviewed, the logical answer was that it was some kind of virus. Other reports began to filter through, but they were mainly theories. One claimed it could be a gas released and was a secretive infectious terrorist attack that was made in a Taliban laboratory. Another strongly claimed it was definitely a UK based virus originally, as there was only pockets of activity in other countries, whereas the UK was almost on its knees, and he fully believed that the virus was related to the attacks at a Newcastle Biochemical Research Centre at the beginning of June.

The religious leaders, however, predictably claimed that it was the apocalypse created by God. Jack knew that even with all of knowledge and scientific advancements today, humans still did not know everything.

The TV suggested that whatever was happening was only happening in some sections of Europe, yet the Far East were in mass panic, including reports that planes from Europe heading for the likes of China and Russia, were told to turn back or risk being shot down. Due to fuel shortages, there were reports that some planes were landing in fields. But the information was very limited as the virus, although spreading rapidly, was still in its infancy.

"Idiots!" Jack snarled at the television. "You don't even know what the fuck's going on. Do you? Just admit it!"

For a full minute, he stood on his feet, his knees literally knocking with fright, and he gazed at the hotel's carpet, drifting away into a self-hypnosis state.

What was he going to do? What was the best thing to do? What about Kerry? More importantly, what about his son, Thomas? His son lived in Rugeley. Four hundred miles away!

He grabbed his car keys off the side table, and sat back down onto the bed.

What should he do? Stay in the hotel room and hope for the best? Or chance his luck, head towards the car park and drive to his house, and lock himself in for the time being?

He decided on the latter option. He picked up the remote off the bed and put the TV onto standby, and before he could move off his bed, there was a gentle knock on his door.
Chapter Seven

Jamie Thomson and Janine Perry were transfixed with panic, and nodded to one another that releasing the prisoners was the correct thing to do. The inmates' voices in their hundreds were releasing yells of panic and steel doors were being slammed, as they demanded to be let out. Jamie had tried to phone two of his officers from the other houseblock, but they were not answering the phone. Maybe they have gone, he thought.

He phoned the Governor who also never answered his phone. He did, however, get in contact with a female colleague at her home who said, in no uncertain terms, that the prison was the least of her worries now and that they should leave the place as soon as possible, because if the people in the control room decided to leave, then the electronic doors that led to the exit to the staff car park would be sealed and it'd be impossible to get through.

Jamie Thomson rang the control department again, and the two members of staff up in the control room were still there and undecided whether to leave or not. Jamie assumed that, like himself, these colleagues didn't have kids, otherwise they would have left by now. He was informed by control that his work colleagues had already left from houseblock one, meaning that nearly four hundred prisoners were locked up in the opposite building in their cells, and left to their own devices. Control asked Jamie what his intentions were.

He looked over to Janine and answered control's question. "I'm gonna open up each door on all four wings to the exercise yard; the prisoners can go through that door and jump the fence. Is there anything we can do about the prisoners in houseblock one?"

"Negative," control answered. "As you know, we can only control the doors outside the houseblocks. All doors that are controlled within the houseblock are controlled by people who work in the bubble where you're sitting, and even then you need the keys to open the cells. There's no one in the bubble in houseblock one anymore."

"Yeah, I know all that. But how come you let those officers out of the grounds, couldn't you have gently persuaded them to open up the prisoners?"

"They didn't want to open up the prisoners for fear of being attacked. The two officers have now left through the exercise yard on A Wing. They climbed the fence; they never went through the normal procedure of leaving the premises. Maybe they thought we wouldn't allow them out, or they assumed we, up in control, had already left. We can still see them now on the cameras, climbing another fence, they're nearly out of the grounds but the barbed wire is cutting them to shreds."

"Barbed wire?" Jamie shook his head. "Fuck. Forgot about that; better tell the prisoners to throw their bed sheets over, before they climb over."

Control said, "They're now in the car park, leaving with their cars. Both officers have families. Right, Delta Seven, I mean, Jamie, we're going. Good luck."

It wasn't that he didn't believe control, but he hung up and called the houseblock once more, just to be sure. He looked over to Janine and shook his head.

She asked, "What's wrong?"

"The officers have left houseblock one."

"They've just let the prisoners in there to starve, in their cells?" Janine placed her hand dramatically on her head, the sweaty palms sticking to her blonde hair.

Jamie nodded. He held up the phone to acknowledge that there was no one answering it. "Yep, looks like they've definitely gone."

"So what are we going to do?"

"I've got an emergency key to open or close the sliders, each door that leads to the wing. Here." He threw the key at Janine. "I want you to close all slider doors apart from E Wing. I'm gonna open every door that leads to the exercise yard on the four wings, but I'm gonna do it one by one. Don't want these fuckers attacking me, I'm sure they won't, though."

"What makes you think they won't?"

"Three things: One, I'm doing them a fucking favour. Two, I'm opening up the cells slowly, so the wing won't get congested. And three, by the time I've opened up the next cell, the prisoners from the previous one will be practically over the fence. If we open all four sliders, they may take their frustration out on the bubble. But like I said, we're doing them a favour so I can't really see that happening."

Said Janine, "I'll announce it over the speaker."

Janine spoke loudly in order for the rowdy, panic-stricken inmates to hear her. She forced a thin smile at her male colleague. She wasn't fully convinced that this plan wasn't going to backfire, but they couldn't leave them in there to starve like the prisoners in houseblock one. She put her lips to the microphone. "Attention inmates. Attention inmates." She paused to allow the prisoners to be quiet. "You've heard what's happening out there. Don't worry. We are going to let you out. We will start with E Wing, followed by F, G and finally H. You will leave via your exercise yard, and be sure to take sheets and duvets with you to protect you from the barbed wire. Forget that we are officers. Go home to your families; we are all in this together now."

She looked at Jamie and shrugged her shoulders as if to say, how was that?

Jamie nodded in approval, but couldn't help a sarcastic remark. "Very moving." Jamie continued, "Right, I better start. Just keep on repeating what you said before, while I unlock them."

Jamie left the bubble, and threw his radio to the floor, which was something he didn't need as it was mainly used to contact control. He saw the slider doors to wing F, G and H close, while E remained open.

He walked into the loud and boisterous wing that was drenched in voices of male panic that was building momentum once again, and opened up one door that stood next to the small wing's canteen. He walked into a short corridor to open the final door that let in welcomed air; it was the door that led to the exercise yard. It was a beautiful feeling when the wind brushed his face, and then suddenly doubts surrounded Jamie's mind.

Surely this is some kind of joke? Is letting the prisoners out really the correct decision?

He stopped arguing with himself and went back inside E Wing and opened up the door to the exercise yard. His heavy boots clonked up the metal staircase to the first floor. He started on the top floor, and sure enough, the first two prisoners that were unlocked never even gave Jamie any eye contact as they both ran with rolled up sheets under their arms and ran straight for the door that was opened on the side of the wing, the door that led to the exercise yard.

All four wings had taken nearly thirty minutes to complete, and not one prisoner verbally or physically attacked Jamie. He was a respected officer, and they were frightened individuals who wanted to be with their families or wanted out of the prison no matter what dangers lurked outside. Not all prisoners left immediately; some lagged behind and others wanted time to think about what they were about to do. Was it the right thing to leave?

Once all cells had been opened, he walked past the bubble and into the staff room for a pee; then came back out again minutes later.

Jamie returned back to the houseblock's control unit, nicknamed the bubble. He knocked on the door and Janine pressed a button to electronically allow the thirty-nine-year-old back in. She turned to him and wondered what he was going to do next. Was this the moment they went their separate ways? She was too scared to go out there on her own. She bit the bullet and asked him, "Where are you going to go?"

"If I can get to the gatehouse, I can break into the reception area, open the main doors where the deliveries turn up, and get a set of keys."

"Keys? What for?"

"So we can take one of the prison vans that we use to transport the cons to court and back."

Janine sighed and forced out a smile. "We?"

"Well, I assume you're coming with me, aren't you?"

She smiled and nodded her head, two tears appeared in each of her eyes, but refused to fall. "Definitely!" she exclaimed.

"Before we go, I think we better raid the staff's fridge and take bottles of water. We can toss them over the fence as we climb over."

Janine added, "We could just stay here, and get our food from the prisoners' cells. They all have food; there would be plenty of tea, coffee and water. I'm sure the prison has back-up generators. We could sleep in the bubble on a night, we—"

"We would go mad within a week. I could think of better places to go, besides, not too sure how long this place can go on until the electricity dies, and the generators won't last forever. If this thing is as bad as they say it is, it'll be like living in the dark ages. Could you spend your time on the wings in the darkness? Even in the daylight it's dark in here."

"At least we'll be alive."

Jamie shook his head; he didn't agree. "It's no way to live. Are you coming or not?"
Chapter Eight

David Pointer reached for the remote and put the TV onto standby; he had seen enough. He then looked to his shaken wife, Davina, who was clearly distraught and confused about the news that was finally being soaked up by her brain.

He asked in a soft voice that was coated in shock, "So what happens now?"

She shrugged her shoulders; she was hoping that he would have some answers.

He quickly stood up; the room span once as he got to his feet too quickly. He looked over to his daughter, Isobel, who sat in the corner of the living room, innocently playing, oblivious to the catastrophe that was being broadcasted around the world.

He walked over to his daughter, stroked her blonde hair and kissed the back of her head; he then looked over to his wife. "Go upstairs, both of you get dressed."

"What about you?" Davina wiped her eyes.

"I'm gonna stay down here for a bit, get some food and water. We're going into the attic."

David walked over to his unopened living room blinds, and nervously placed his fingers inbetween them and carefully pulled them apart about two inches. The street was desolate; he shook his head. There doesn't seem to be anybody about.

David walked briskly around the house, as his wife and daughter began progressing upstairs. He checked the patio door in the back room; he pulled the blind down to the floor and struggled to move the leather couch against the door. As he dragged the couch towards the door, it had made a huge scratch on the wooden floor, something that would normally anger Davina, but under the circumstances David was sure it was something he wasn't going to be in trouble for.

Satisfied that the back room was secured, he shut the door behind him, went to the reception area and made sure the front door was locked. He knew it wasn't that strong and recognised that this was probably the weak spot of the house. It was locked, and he moved everything that he could think of against the front door, TVs, tables ... any kind of furniture that would cause an obstacle.

No wonder the street is empty. Millions of people across the UK, possibly the world, are, or have been, doing exactly what I'm doing now.

He went into the living room and kitchen to make sure windows had been secured, then went into the cupboard under the sink and began to fill bags with food, bottles of water, medication—he was practically emptying the cupboards. He had two rucksacks full of food and water, and took one upstairs where his wife stood in their daughter's bedroom. Isobel was now playing with her play-kitchen.

He dumped one bag onto the floor; the couple never uttered a word to one another, they just looked at each other briefly, and then he went back downstairs for the other bag. Once he returned, he grabbed the metal pole and opened the latch to the attic that was situated in Isobel's room, and pulled down the metal ladders. "I'll do my best to block off the downstairs. From now on, we use the upstairs only for washing, baths ... obviously not sleeping, 'cos that would be too dangerous."

Davina queried, "What happens if they get in?" She was hoping for a they won't response, but it never came.

"Then we stay in the attic."

"We can't survive in the attic alone."

"No, but there's a skylight. Which means, I can get out of the skylight and walk across the roofs of the houses and check other skylights, maybe break into the neighbour's house and see what the neighbours have left, food ... whatever."

"David," Davina half-laughed and began to lecture her husband. "You can't just break into peoples' houses and rob them."

"Do you honestly think the neighbours are coming back? They're in New York for a week, and even if they do come back after this mess has been finished, do you think they'd be pissed with us for breaking into their house in order to survive?"

"We live in a terraced block of eight houses; what happens if the other neighbours have already done that?"

"Then that's fine. They need to do what they need to do to survive."

"And what happens if things get so desperate, they try and break into our house, even though we're in here?"

"Then I need to protect us." David pulled out a knife from his jeans, and he pointed over to the rucksack where Davina could see a hammer popping out of the bag. He said, "I'm off to get the other bag, want anything else?"

"Not that I can think of," she whispered. "Tooth brushes, deodorant—we can leave that sort of stuff for later."

"I should think about filling the bath upstairs."

She looked at David with bemusement.

"Just in case something happens to the water system, whether it's turned off or gets polluted. We can't survive without water."

She looked over to Isobel and went over to her cupboard to pick out her clothes. She had her back to her husband and he could see her head lowering. He walked up behind her and placed his hand on her shoulder. She turned around to reveal her tearstained cheeks; they gently hugged one another. Both of their tears rolled and ran onto each other's shoulders. When they broke away from one another, they began to adjust themselves. It was a brief moment of sadness, but they both felt better for letting themselves go for a minute.

As David left the room, he could hear his daughter asking, "Mummy, are you okay?"

He trudged down the stairs and cried harder than before. Now with his family out of the way, he broke down and cursed himself for doing so. He was supposed to be the strong one, and wasn't doing a very good job of it.

David looked behind him and made sure he was out of earshot from Davina and Isobel, and once satisfied that he was as alone as he could be, a cocktail of emotions burst out of him.

He ran the cold tap from the kitchen sink and cried hard, with his head resting on the kitchen worktop. He remained there for minutes until his psyche had instructed him to pull himself together. He closed his mouth and his lips in an attempt to keep the emotions in check, but like a bad cough or trying not to laugh in a hilarious situation, he couldn't manage this, and his mouth widened again as his sobbing continued.

He splashed his face repeatedly whilst still crying, and washed out his burning eyes with the icy water. He had never cried that hard for years, not since the day of his mother's funeral in fact. His heartfelt emotion wasn't for himself, it was for his family, and it was for other families across the UK, possibly the world—if it had spread that far. He was certain that the world wasn't indestructible, and that the end of life, at least human life, was a threat that was very realistic, but he wasn't expecting this! And why now? Why in his lifetime did it have to happen now?

Whether it was ten years from now, or two hundred years, David Pointer was aware that the possibility of a global threat was very real. The KT extinction and the Clovis comet were realistic scenarios that scientists claimed had wiped out the dinosaurs and had changed the shape of the Earth, as people knew it now. David had read once about the Clovis comet and that thirteen thousand years ago it exploded over the Great Lakes, ignited the forest, spurred global cooling and killed a lot of species like mastodons.

Since the fifties, nuclear threat had always been around; that threat had diluted somewhat since the fall of the Soviet Union, but it was still there from other sources.

Despite David trying to get his head straight, he was finding it hard to fathom that some kind of virus was spreading through Britain like wild fire. The Spanish flu killed the same amount of people in two years than what the Black Death did in two hundred, which was only a matter of decades ago, but back then, bodies weren't coming back to life and attacking other people.

He sniffed hard and could feel the mucus running down the back of his throat and spat into the sink to clear it. Stop acting like a pussy. He splashed his face once more, turned the tap off and jogged back upstairs.

He had a family to protect.
Chapter Nine

Karen Bradley looked around her house carefully; her body shook as she strolled through to the living room, but there was no sign of Gary there. For some reason, her instincts were telling her not to call him. She walked with gentle and careful feet from the living room to the kitchen, and content that there was no presence on the ground floor of the house, her thoughts focused about going upstairs.

He had been out the night before and she wondered if he was in at all. It wouldn't be the first time that Gary had got so drunk that he ended up on a friend's settee, or even a prison cell for the night, which happened the once—not a great move for a young lawyer.

She crept upstairs and was half-sobbing once she appeared on the landing. She stood motionless and couldn't stop thinking about her neighbour. She then heard a thump coming from her bedroom, as if someone had fallen out of bed. She blew out her cheeks and was now convinced that her boyfriend had made it home and was now getting up, possibly with a sore head and probably needing some TLC from Karen. But after witnessing the demise of Sharon Henderson and knowing that there was a killer on the street, she'd be lucky if she slept at all for the next few days. As soon as she talked to Gary, she promised herself that she would try the police again.

She stepped carefully towards her bedroom door, and gently pushed it open with the three fingers of her left hand. The door opened soundlessly, and she saw Gary standing in the corner of the bedroom with his back to her. She shook her head, convinced that the naked man was still drunk and had only got up for a pee.

She was unsure. About what, she didn't know.

Something wasn't right.

She called out his name with a whisper and he turned around. He looked awful; his skin was ivory, his eyes looked bruised and sunken, his overall physique looked...dead, and he didn't look that much different to the crazed man out in her street. What the hell is going on? As soon as he saw her, he released a groan and quickly shuffled towards her, which forced out a gasp from Karen and a gallop in her heartbeat.

"Gary, what's wrong?" was the only three words she could muster.

He was yards away from her, and his demeanour alerted her senses to run, she didn't know why, but she responded to those senses. She ran away from the naked, lifeless soul and galloped down her stairs.

Wait! What the hell was she doing? This was her boyfriend. This was Gary!

This was the same Gary who had proposed to her only a month ago, the same Gary who cried when she told him that she would marry him, and the same Gary who massaged her feet until she slept every time she came off nightshift.

She stood at the bottom of the stairs and could hear him stumbling about upstairs, and in no time, he appeared at the top, and he looked unsure whether to go down or not. She looked up at him. She gasped once she looked at his naked body again. It was strangely riddled with blue visible veins, and covered in contusions. That was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with? It didn't look like Gary; it didn't feel like Gary.

She placed her hand in her pocket and searched for her phone; she switched it on and she glared at what his next move was. He took one step forward and she took a sharp intake of breath; he took another step and progressed down by one step, getting a little closer, then another, but the fourth step didn't materialise. His clumsy and docile footing missed the next one and his body stumbled violently and quickly down the stairs. Karen let out a scream and moved out of the way of his path as his head smacked against the radiator with a hard clunk at the bottom of the stairs.

"Gary?" she sobbed.

She knelt down and touched his pale face, convinced he had knocked himself out. She now began to call for an ambulance and the police. Even before the fall, it looked like that he had somehow caught a virus, a virus that her knowledge had no answer for. He looked ill.

As she patiently waited for the call to be answered, she took another look at his naked body and ran her fingers down from the middle of his chest down to his stomach.

Like his face, his body was ashen, and he felt freezing. Exasperated by her phone, she hung up and said to herself that she'd try in another minute. Before she had time to check for breathing and for a pulse, her nose twitched the longer she remained by his side.

Her nose picked up an indescribable smell, almost like rotting meat or rancid fish. She knew it was coming from Gary, and this only added to her confusion. She put her fingers to his carotid artery and couldn't find a pulse. She now started to panic.

She suddenly got off her knees and ran to the downstairs toilet and for a second time she threw up, this time so violently, some of the vomit forced its way through her nostrils as well. As she spat into the toilet, she got to her feet, rinsed out her mouth and ripped off some toilet paper to blow out the remaining puke that grudgingly refused to leave from her nose. She wearily left the bathroom, and stepped over her boyfriend's body.

Now that her phone had been switched on, her phone began to vibrate furiously. At first she thought it was ringing, but when she pulled it out she noticed that she had seven missed calls and sixteen text messages.

She had a text off her half-sister, Kelly Bradley, who lived in Glasgow with their forty-five-year-old father, James, who she hadn't seen in years. She scrolled through her phone and most messages were telling her to be safe or telling her to put the TV on. She adhered to the latter and whilst standing and watching the TV in the living room, she called the emergency services once again. Her eyes gazed at the information that was being forced into her stubborn mind on the TV, and the more information her brain soaked up, the less important the phone call and her boyfriend seemed to be. After two minutes, she eventually hung up, put the TV onto mute and called her mum.

Thankfully her mum answered.

"Mum," she spoke with angst in her voice. "Are you okay? What's going on?"

She sat down on the sofa, as her frightened mother informed her daughter about what she had heard on the news so far. Karen could see for herself what was happening, as the pictures were being broadcasted like an advertisement for a new Hollywood horror flick.

It was a lot of information to take in, but the main words that came from her mother was: Virus! They're dead—but they're not! They'll try and bite you! The whole of the UK is infected! How's Gary?

Shit. Gary.

After she hung up, Karen turned around to see Gary slowly and clumsily getting to his feet.

Shit! Is he one of them?

He stumbled towards her rather quickly than she had anticipated. She called out his name constantly, hoping that something inside of him would click and he would return to his old self, but he looked dead, he looked like something out of a Hammer Horror episode.

He grabbed her and his grip startled her; he was a strong man anyway, but his stumbling gave her a false sense that he was weak or had been weakened by the illness, and as he stepped forward, his naked body forced himself on top of Karen who yelped as they both crashed to the floor.

It was obvious that the nature of his grip—and the fact that his gaping mouth tried to force its way towards her neck—convinced that whatever this is, it wasn't Gary anymore.

She used her hand to push under the chin to stop the mouth from progressing any further. She noticed his chin had a scratch underneath it. His cold, heavy body writhed on top of her. She screamed at the top of her voice to increase her aggression, raised her knees up and twisted her body with one swift turn to her right.

The thing that was once Gary, fell to the side of her. She got to her feet quickly and ran out of the room, grabbed her car keys and left through the front door, still wearing her nurses uniform. She jumped into her Cherokee Jeep and reversed out without looking behind her. As she headed out of her street, she noticed that there were two bodies shuffling around in the road, including the guy she had saw before she entered her house, the same one that killed Sharon Henderson.

Although it was hard to take in, she now knew what they were—or what her mother told her what they were—and what they were capable of. Considering there was a virus sweeping the nation, she expected there to be more than two bodies stumbling about the street—not that she was complaining.

As she headed towards the end of her street, she was tempted to run down one of the male stumblers, but decided that at such an early stage it would be better to try and keep her vehicle in pristine condition for as long as possible. She didn't know what lay ahead of her, and a damaged radiator before she even had left the street, would have been a massive inconvenience for her own survival.

She looked in her interior mirror and saw the two bodies mooching around.

Where was everyone else? Hiding in their houses? Dead?

Shit! She cursed mentally. She had left her phone in the house.

It was too late now. There was no chance she was going back in that house unarmed. Her mother's place was too far away to drive to, and she wanted to use as less fuel as possible, but firstly, she needed to find a place to park up and think.

At the moment it was impossible to think.
Chapter Ten

"Who is it?"

The person behind the hotel room door never answered Jack Slade. He walked towards the door and placed his ear next to the wood. He jumped when the gentle knock appeared behind the door once again. Jack spoke through the door. "Who's there?"

"Open the door," the voice urged in a whisper.

Jack blew out his cheeks in relief, and immediately opened the door. He was greeted by a large man, who looked at least thirty pounds overweight. His heavy breathing suggested that he needed to change his job, as his fitness was non-existent. Jack looked at the man's uniform; he seemed to be a security guard.

"Is there anybody else with you?" Jack asked the guard, who walked into the hotel room without waiting to be invited. Considering the crazy circumstances that were occurring, Jack was unbothered by this rude intrusion, and shut and locked the door once the rotund man was inside.

Still trying to catch his breath, the security guard shook his head and let out a breathy, "No." He sat on Jack's bed and placed his hands on his clammy head.

Jack needed answers. "So what's happening? What do you know?"

The man raised his hand at Jack, telling the impatient, panic-stricken man to hold on for a minute while he caught his breath.

"What's happening?" the man half-snickered, his accent was Glaswegian, and was still breathing like an asthmatic in a feather factory. "The end of the world, that's what's happening. And what do I know? You watched the TV?"

Jack nodded.

"Then you know as much as I do. As for the hotel—"

"What about the hotel?"

"I've had to lock it up. It was crazy this morning."

"Crazy? How?"

"People leaving in their droves this morning; some people are refusing to come out of their rooms, but it's not my problem anymore. I even had one guest who hadn't seen the TV and went down to the kitchens, pissed off that there was no breakfast. I told him to either go back to his room or leave, and explained to him what was happening. It's not everyday you need to inform someone that the apocalypse is happening."

Jack taunted, "I wouldn't actually go that far."

"Really? Have you seen the news?"

"I've seen enough."

"This is gonna be global, mark my words. You can't escape God's doing."

Jack Slade never responded to the security guard's comments, and had just remembered that he didn't even know his name. As if the guard was psychic, he suddenly held out his hand and introduced himself as Robbie Owen.

Jack smiled and told Robbie his name, and then the usual ramblings of do you have a family? began and they discussed their family in a brief one-minute summary.

Jack informed Robbie that he feared for his six-year-old son, who lived over four hundred miles away in England. As far as distant relatives were concerned, like uncles and cousins, he wasn't caring too much about them, and he didn't expect them to be putting him on top of their agenda either.

Robbie, on the other hand, was in a horrific quandary. He wanted to get back to his wife and three children in a place in Glasgow called Nitshill, only a few miles from where Jack lived in Pollok. Jack did mention that he lived not so far away, and Robbie's eye lit up once that information was given to him.

Robbie quizzed, "So you gonna stay cooped up in here, or you gonna try and get home?"

Jack smiled thinly at his new companion and spoke. "I'm gonna try and get home. Why? You want a ride?"

Robbie lowered his head and half-laughed. He nodded and Jack could see tears forming in Robbie's eyes. "That would be great. Have you managed to contact your family?"

Jack responded with a single nod of the head. "You?"

"Can't get through, I've text her though. If she's watched the TV, then she's probably taken the advice of going upstairs and barricading herself in the room with the wee 'uns. Anyway, make the most of technology. It won't be long before everything goes down, even carrier pigeon will be difficult."

"What are you talking about?"

"Think about it. We all have phones, right? How long before they cease to stop working? Who's topping up the phones if there is nothing on the end of the other line? Look at the complexity of the Internet. Who's gonna pull the levers? I remember seeing a documentary on the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe; those poor people were in a state for two months. Mobile phones were useless, and there was no Internet access. The only thing that worked was world band radio, and CBs that people worked by using a car battery. Where was the government? Nowhere to be found for five days."

Jack grew confused at Robbie's passionate rant, and he seemed a man that could lose his temper quite easily. He appeared to be someone not to get on the wrong side of. "What's your point?"

Robbie added, "My point is, when the shit hits the fan, you're on your own, my friend. I saw that places in London and other cities are being quarantined by the army, but if you live in a village or a wee town, you're fucked. I wonder how long it'll be before our army gets here?"

Jack said, "Probably never. We don't have the personnel. I think London will be the government's main priority. Can people still use the Internet though? I couldn't get anything on this shitty phone of mine."

"So far, but what's the fucking point, apart from e-mailing or Facebooking loved ones? If this thing goes on for more than a few weeks, people are going to be running out of food and water. The Internet is the least of their worries when you have an empty stomach and starving children. Even if electricity is still working, do you think when people are struggling to survive, people will be popping into the local cyber cafe for a wee hour if it was open?"

Again, Robbie's vexation grew the more he spoke and the more Jack asked questions. Jack felt it was understandable. Like everyone else, he was frightened, perplexed, and beleaguered that there was no support of any kind.

"I'm just saying, that's all," Jack spoke defensively.

Robbie smacked his lips together and bowed his head. Jack thought that that was the nearest he was going to get from Robbie as far as an apology was concerned, but it was something that didn't bother him, and something he didn't want to dwell on.

"So do you want that ride or not?"

Robbie smirked. "You bet. Please tell me you're parked in the hotel car park."

Jack Slade shook his head, and gave off an apologetic grin. "Afraid not. I'm parked at a NCP on Jamaica Street."

"That's a few streets away."

"Take it or leave it." Jack began to adjust himself, as if he was getting ready to leave.

"Lucky I brought these from the kitchen with me. We might need them." Robbie took out two kitchen utensils: a carving knife and a cleaver. He handed the cleaver to Jack, who immediately put it into his belt.

Jack tried a smile, but the moment he attempted it, his lower lip shimmered. "Shame."

"What?"

"You're a security guard. If we were in America you'd be carrying a gun."

"And attract attention with the noise from gunshots. What good would that do? We're trying to avoid these things, aren't we?"

"I don't even know what these things are. I just hope your God is looking down on us." Jack snapped, before opening the door.

"Just because evil happens in our world, does not mean that God is neither in control, nor sorrowful." Robbie walked over towards the window and pulled back the netting. His eyes widened, then narrowed as if he was trying to focus on something in particular. He continued to glare and waggled his head.

"What is it?" Jack was intrigued to know what it was that was disturbing the huge Glaswegian.

"This is the kind of shit that's happening across the country." He gestured with his hand for Jack to go and take a look.

Jack walked over to Robbie in no hurry at all, and half-closed his eyes as he usually did when a tense moment was building in the horror movies he used to watch. His eyes opened carefully and he could see three people crouched over a poor individual who was wriggling around, trying to get free. Jack reached for the handle and slowly opened the window, still transfixed on the scene that was occurring below him. As the window opened, the screams began to fill the room, they were horrific, and Jack was unaware that a grown man could make such a noise. The pain must have been indescribable. He shut the window tightly and looked at Robbie.

"Are they ... eating him?"

Robbie nodded; his face was expressionless.

"But...?"

Jack couldn't find the words to finish his sentence, but Robbie understood the shock, as he felt the same when it first burst onto the television. The scenes of people being attacked on FOX and CNN were horrendous, although Robbie found it slightly funny in a black way that despite what was going on in the real world, he could still find a comedy channel and watch Fawlty Towers, Cheers or The Big Bang Theory if one felt the urge.

He obviously decided against it, and decided to see if people in the hotel were okay. He walked around the hotel, checking numerous doors for which he had the cardkey for all of them. Most people had already left the hotel; some stayed, and there were three occasions that Robbie never received an answer and opened the door to see that the people that were staying had reanimated, and had probably caught the virus while out. Unless, they were attacked, bitten or scratched by an infected rogue whilst out in the town, and then came back to the hotel, feeling unwell. He didn't have the answers.

This was a piece of information he didn't want to share with Jack, as he looked a nervous wreck as it was without informing him that some of these things were in the building, albeit, now locked in their rooms.

He wasn't sure if this was an airborne or a rabies-type virus that they were talking about on the TV. What he did know, was that it was happening, and he needed to be with his family. His priority wasn't to work out how this happened, it was to stay alive for his family and protect them.

But Robbie couldn't just go home.

For a start, he relied on public transport—which wasn't going to happen for the foreseeable future. The fear of the outside had kept Robbie in the hotel temporarily, but was still planning on leaving eventually. Thank God he had met Jack, he thought. He was ready to go home and be with his family. Luckily, instead of walking it, he now had a lift, thanks to Jack Slade.
Chapter Eleven

"Where're we gonna go?"

Jamie Thomson already had the answer to Janine's question. "Anywhere in the countryside. The less populated, the less danger."

He grabbed a stave from the bubble's locker and went into a storeroom on F Wing.

Janine was left alone while Jamie was on the wing, and she could feel a quiver in her throat that slowly made its way up into her face. Her cheeks wobbled, her bottom lip palpitated and her eyes watered. She was trying her hardest to contain her sobbing and was doing it successfully to a certain degree, and although it was abundantly clear she was upset, her emotions were being refused by the young woman to surface. She gulped hard a few times as if that would help, and to her surprise, it did.

She thought about her parents and knew they would be safe if they locked themselves in the house and didn't try anything rash or stupid. To her own surprise, her mind wandered and she thought about her ex-boyfriend, Chris, who she had been with for three years. She didn't know why she thought of him. Chris had been with someone else for the last six months, but what was happening now had somewhat proved that she still had feelings for him.

I hope he's okay.

She loved Chris; although he was hopeless in bed, it never bothered her too much. Chris was less endowed compared to her previous two lovers and this clearly affected his confidence, and even after three months of being together, the sex was a routine. Bedroom—Lights off—Same position—Two minutes—No orgasm.

She didn't want to upset him and dent his confidence even more, so the bedroom situation was never brought up, as it ended up becoming something to get out the way. So her astonishment was justified, when she found out he had been cheating on her with a work colleague at his branch. She wished nothing but the best for him as he left, and despite the cheating and his lack of desire and excitement in the bedroom, he was still the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with and have children with.

Jamie returned with a rolled up duvet under each arm; he threw one to Janine.

He put the bag on his back; Janine didn't ask him what was in it. She assumed it was the contents of the staff's fridge. They both left the bubble and walked onto H Wing and walked through the door that led to the exercise yard. Their sensitive eyes were greeted with the blinding sun. It was twenty-three degrees, a cold day for the population of Mexico City, but it was considered a hot day for the British.

They both looked at the top of the exercise fence, and both simultaneously dropped their duvets on the floor. There was no need for them, as the top of the fence that used to be covered in barbed wire was now covered in eighty cells worth of duvets, pillows and sheets from the prisoners when they escaped—or when they were released. They both approached the fence. They could see that they were a few hundred yards from the exit. They could see the huge slider door near the gatehouse, and two escorting vans that were used to take prisoners to court and back.

They both tried to climb the fence; the holes were so tiny it made the task a lot more difficult than it should have been. Behind them, dozens of frantic male voices could be heard coming from the windows of the other houseblock, all begging for their lives to be spared. There was nothing either Jamie or Janine could do for them.

"Try and ignore them," Jamie said to his female colleague.

Janine managed to get her petite frame over the fence before Jamie. Unfortunately for Jamie, he had the bigger hands and feet that were making it near impossible, but the heavy goods on his back as well didn't help. He thought about throwing the bag over the fence, but was worried if the tins and bottles inside would burst.

Janine waited at the bottom of the fence as she watched Jamie swing himself over to the other side, and began to climb down slowly and tentatively. Janine was guessing that Jamie might be scared of heights.

Once he reached the bottom, they wordlessly jogged towards the ten-foot slider door, which was the only thing that prevented them from getting to the outside. Janine looked through the gap of the slider door and nudged Jamie in the side and pointed towards a field outside the prison grounds. Jamie also took a look through the gap and they could see about twenty figures walking away from the grounds; they were definitely inmates and must have been the last lot Jamie had released. They didn't seem in too much of a rush, but then again, they weren't escaping; they had been released. The danger was now waiting for them in the outside world, so the cons' hesitancy was perfectly understandable.

As both officers approached the gate, Jamie placed his hands on his knees, bent over, and waited a minute to catch his breath. He refrained from reaching for a drink of water in his bag, and took out his class two key. He had three sets of keys, class one, two and three.

The class one key was for doors such as the linen room, the workshops, etc. The class two key was for outside gates, and the class three key was for the cells on houseblock two. Houseblock one keys were different. Officers couldn't use a houseblock two key on houseblock one. It was all to do with security, and it had been successful, as the prison had not experienced any escapes, until today.

Jamie opened up the gatehouse office with his key, not surprised to see it deserted. The gatehouse was the entrance that was used by officers and visitors. Each individual would enter the gatehouse, sign in, and then empty their pockets, take off their shoes and walk through a metal detector.

Jamie took a look around as Janine waited patiently outside; there was no sign of panic or disorder, and the gatehouse office was immaculate, apart from one coffee cup that had a full cup of cold coffee in it. It belonged to Alan Davies. Jamie knew that because he recognised the cup. In red print, it had: Sex Instructor! First lesson free.

He half-smiled to himself when he saw it; he hoped that Alan and his family would pull through this crisis—whatever it was.

He noticed a can of cola sitting on the desk; he looked behind him and selfishly opened the can and finished it within thirty seconds, wetting his rusty-like throat. He felt guilty for not telling or sharing with Janine, but the action had taken place now, and there was no time to dwell on it.

He took a set of keys off one of the hooks, and he looked at the key fob to look at what license plate number had been typed onto it. He then turned the red switch that opened the main slider, which was a huge steel door that was opened and used when vans came back from court and whenever deliveries would arrive. The huge slider could only be operated from the gatehouse, so once the slider was opened, and the officers had left, it would remain open. Jamie knew that a handful of prisoners had decided to stay behind, but the slider remaining open never concerned him. The cons were given an opportunity to leave, so it was up to them to take it.

Once the large door eventually opened fully, Jamie took his work keys and threw them to the floor. They were of no use to him on the outside, and the radio he had disbanded earlier only worked on an internal network within the prison grounds and was controlled by people from the control room.

He left the gatehouse for the last time, the door automatically locked behind him once he closed it. Janine also disposed of her equipment, and the pair of them headed for the carrier van.

There were two prison vans. The one that they took was a white INVESCO, ten thousand kilo diesel van. It had seven cells, a guard seat, a storage locker and a fridge. The other van was similar, but bigger, and Jamie was quite happy to stick to the smaller one that he had chosen, simply because it was smaller, and would need less petrol to move about.

Janine got into the front, once Jamie opened it by pressing the button on the key fob.

"Hang on a minute," Jamie spoke to his female colleague.

He ran to the back of the van and began to empty his rucksack, putting the assortment of food and bottles of water into the van's fridge. He threw the bag into the store cupboard and was pleased to see two large jerry cans full of gas. It was probably only enough to fill half the tank, but it was better than nothing. Jamie had a feeling that most petrol stations may have been sucked dry, and with no individuals to deliver more fuel, it wouldn't be long before the whole country would have to use their feet as transportation.

He double-checked the seven cells to see if they were empty—he didn't know why he did this—and jumped back out, closed the back doors and got into the front. He started the engine and saw the fuel gauge was full. He blew out his cheeks and a smile developed on his face. Janine looked at the gauge and she also smiled.

The van left the premises and drove onto the car park; both individuals looked back at their cars sitting on their own. In the car park sat Janine's Renault Clio and Jamie's beloved Porsche, but they weren't practical now; a bulky van carrying food and water was far more practical and safer than their vehicles. Janine's phone was hidden in the glove compartment of her car, as they weren't allowed to take them into the prison in case an inmate somehow managed to steal one of them. Jamie knew that she always kept hers in her car.

"Do you want your phone?" he asked Janine, as the van slowly pulled out of the car park. "Mine's at home."

She looked at Jamie with suspicion. And what if you've changed your mind and drive off? Get the van all to yourself.

Soaked with paranoia, she murmured, "Just go."

Their smiles turned into frowns, as they knew things would never be the same again. A lot of situations went through Jamie's head, things that he had forgotten to do. He thought that if he and Janine had stayed behind for a bit longer and had more time to think, they could have broken into the numerous vending machines around the prison. It was only chocolate and crisps, but it was food nevertheless and could come in handy one of the days. He also thought about the huge bottles that were inserted into the water coolers; they could have raided the storage cupboard and filled the back of the van with a few gallons of water. And what about the other prison van? If he wasn't in such a panic, he could have spent a few minutes trying to siphon the fuel out of the other van.

It was too late now; he didn't want to stop. At least they had some food and water. He knew why Janine wanted to stay behind, but what kind of a life would that be? There were resources out there in the big world: fuel, food, and maybe even shelter. Jamie wanted to live the best he could in such a dire situation, not hiding in some cold, dark prison, munching on crisps and eating cold tins of beans stolen from the inmates' cells.

Their windows were down on this glorious day—weather wise, and both individuals had their elbows resting on the side of the door. As soon as they spotted danger, the windows would be immediately up.

Janine finally spoke. "I wonder how all of this happened?"

Jamie kept his eyes on the road; he never looked at Janine or made any facial expression to suggest he had heard what she said. Jamie's answer to Janine's question wasn't quite the answer she was looking for, but he felt he was correct with his attitude.

"Doesn't matter what the cause was, or where it came from." He finally looked at Janine with his face devoid of any emotion. "Whatever it is, it's here. It's how we deal with it from now on, that's all that matters now."
Chapter Twelve

David Pointer made sure he was the last to get into the attic, and after he pulled up the ladders, he closed the hatch. What used to be used as storage was now going to be their home for God knows how long. Of course, they would be allowed to stay on the first floor during the day and use the toilet, etc., but David wanted his family in the attic right now, on the second floor.

He didn't know how many of those things were out there or how strong they were. He had come to the conclusion that if they remained in the attic for a day, and he checked out the house to see that there was no destruction and no sign of those things trying to get in, they could live on the first floor of the house, but would have to sleep in the attic for safety purposes.

The downstairs was reasonably blocked off, making it difficult for even a normal human to get in. He and Davina had also moved a cupboard on top of the stairs for added protection.

David said, "I'm gonna go and search next door, see if there's any food we can have. We don't have that much."

"What? Isn't that stealing?"

"Let's not go through this again. I don't think the Nobles will be too bothered; they're in New York for Christ's sake."

"I dunno."

David walked around the small attic, and his anxiousness was already annoying a nervy Davina. "Remember that documentary we saw the other month?" David queried.

"Funny, I was thinking exactly the same thing. Are you talking about the Toxoplasma Gondii thing?"

"I think it was that."

The two of them were interrupted by young Isobel, and Davina continued to speak. "Just seems a tad hard to believe that a housecat can infect a thousand people every day with Toxoplasma just for eating an infected rat, and causing people to go...well, mad. Do you think that could be what's happening?"

"What else could it be? What did you make of what we saw on the TV?"

Davina never answered, as she didn't have a clue.

David kneeled down and kissed his wife who was sitting on the floor, now playing with her daughter. He kissed her on the lips and gave her a playful wink; as he stood up she grabbed his trouser leg and glared at him with consternation.

She said, "You don't have to do this."

He placed the knife and hammer by his wife's side, and put the rucksack back onto his back.

"I know." He placed his hand over his mouth before he released a cough. "But we need to get as much food as we can. We have a fridge and a cooker that are downstairs, but if the electrics go we'll be eating out of tins for the foreseeable future, and we don't have enough tins. And how long do you think the milk's gonna last? Did you bring enough cutlery with you from the kitchen?"

Davina nodded.

"Better get the tin opener to some use." David placed a comforting hand on his wife's shoulder. "Our Babs is gonna be hungry soon."

"Cold macaroni it is," Davina said with emotion that forced her to put her hand over her mouth. Here eyes glistened, but the tears remained in their home.

"What's wrong, mummy?" Isobel looked up, holding one of her dolls. "What's daddy done now?"

Both parents began to chortle audibly; David could feel his heart murmuring as he stared at his little girl. What kind of future was she going to have?

Then Isobel asked, "Mummy, can I play with your iPad?" Isobel was referring to the educational games that Davina would allow Isobel to play on as a treat.

"I forgot it, love," Davina spoke regrettably, and she then turned to David. "I left my phone downstairs as well."

"We'll get everything up, eventually. Don't worry."

David leaned over and kissed both his girls on the forehead, opened the skylight and popped his head out and looked all around. He was hoping that the roof tiles weren't as slippery as they looked. He could see his neighbour's skylight that sat twenty yards away. "Pass me that hammer and knife."

Davina passed him the claw hammer and knife; he blew her a kiss and told her to shut the window.

"What's it like out there?" she asked from below.

David was now out of the house and crouched on the roof; he looked at the sun and cloudless sky and took a deep breath in. "Peaceful."

He blew his bemused daughter a kiss who was wondering what he was up to, and she remained glaring at her daddy, perplexed. The window was shut and a nervy David Pointer stood to his feet. He put the hammer into his belt and carefully climbed his way up to the pointy roof; a couple of tiles slipped off, but it wasn't enough to unnerve the thirty-nine-year-old. He got to the roof's highest point and sat down; he looked out onto his road and could see other streets as well.

The area was reasonably quiet; the sun blazed down on his head, and he thought that the day itself had become an oxymoron: It was a beautiful day, but below the sun, was a world where butchery was occurring, and David didn't have a hint on how or why it was happening.

To his left, he saw a family in their drive quickly and frantically packing up their car. Where were they going? He was dying to ask them. Did they know of somewhere better to go? Was staying in the house a recipe for disaster?

In the distance he could hear screaming; the curiosity had got the better of him and he decided to risk standing up on the highest point of his roof. He could now see the street behind his. There were about a dozen of those things spread out on the street; some were in the road, but others were banging on the windows of some of the houses. He could hear the screaming once more, and said under his breath. "Shut up. Don't you realise it's the noise they're attracted to?"

David didn't know this for sure, for all he knew, they could probably smell a human, but what gave him the idea of his noise theory was that a series of car alarms were going off, and these things seemed to ponder over towards the vehicles to check them out before moving away, probably because there was nothing to devour.

And then he saw it.

It was like a car crash, horrific, but he couldn't keep his eyes off it. It was a natural instinct, a morbid curiosity embedded into every human being. His body remained standing, but his legs almost knocked together with panic as he saw at the end of his own street, a woman running out of her own house.

She was being pursued by two of the things, and what unnerved David was that these things seemed slow at first, but once they spotted her, they ran clumsily after her like a couple of drunks. They couldn't run fast, it was more of a brisk walk, and this worried David so much he could feel his face move with fearfulness.

She fell over onto the road, and the things continued to pursue their feed. Knowing that she didn't stand a chance, David decided to avoid watching what had probably happened to thousands upon thousands of people. He sat back down onto the roof and placed his hands over his ears to drown out the woman's faint, yet, blood curdling screams as she was being ripped to pieces.

David stood back up to his feet and walked the short journey carefully to the next skylight. He crouched down, and despite what was happening to the country—possibly the world, a twinge of guilt hit him as he pulled out the hammer from his belt to break into his neighbour's house. It only took a gentle knock to create the first crack and two attempts later, the glass fell through onto the floor of the neighbour's attic. He heard a clatter from underneath him and saw that his knife had fallen, and was making its way off the roof and landed in the guttering.

"Oh crap."

Shrugging off the loss of a weapon, David carefully removed the remaining fragments of glass and jumped straight through, landing onto the bed. It looked like the attic had been converted into a bedroom.

His weight caused the bed to make a loud crack. He got up and scanned the room. It looked like the little girl's room. He looked down to the floor and saw that it was open-design, and that the small spiral staircase led to the first floor to the bedroom below. He stepped carefully down the staircase; it didn't seem too steady and it rocked as he progressed down. Maybe it was only designed for a child to go up and down.

The bottom of the staircase led to another bedroom; it seemed like the girl was spoilt as it looked like it was her second bedroom. It had pink walls and had Minnie Mouse matching curtains and a lamp shade. David exited out of the room, and with the hammer in his right hand he checked every room before making his way downstairs.

He walked into the kitchen, and was disappointed to see the fridge was almost empty. He cursed himself and called himself an idiot. Of course it was empty! Why would you want to stock up a fridge if you were going to New York for a week?

There were a few tins of tuna, a tin of pineapples, tomato soup and two tins of beans left in the cupboard. David took them and popped them into his bag. He took a walk into the living room; the blinds were drawn so the room was reasonably dark. He opened one of the cupboards and saw a collection of whiskeys. It was tempting, but he decided to refrain from taking them. It wasn't necessary; maybe if he was on his own he would fall into a well of self-pity, lock himself in a room and get terribly drunk. But he had a family to think about and to take care of.

He noticed by their landline phone that a green button was flashing. There was a message. He pressed the button and sat down as he waited for the beep to sound.

The voice sounded distressed and out of breath.

" _Hey, it's Mark Noble and his family. We don't know if anyone will hear this, but this thing is starting to happen over here in New York, so it doesn't look like we're coming back for now. If any members of our family are listening to this, Tricia, Robert, mum, dad and Aunty Beryl, we love you all. We're stuck in our hotel and we don't know what to do, as all flights are grounded indefinitely."_

David could then hear a girl and a woman screaming in the background.

" _I've gotta go, they're trying to get in. God help us!"_

The message came to an end, and sent a large shiver through David's skeletal frame. He puffed out his cheeks and reached for the TV remote. David switched on the Noble's TV and scanned through the channels. The foreign channels were no longer broadcasting, at least in the UK, and the only channel he could find was the BBC. It was a black screen with white writing and had a list of bullet points.

*We believe it is a rabies-type virus.

*If you're bitten. You ARE infected. Stay away from your family.

*If attacked by more than one, there's a strong chance you'll be devoured, making reanimation impossible. Remember! They're not here to create more beings, they're here to feed and feed only.

*They can't be reasoned with and will not feel pity. They may be slow, but they are determined.

*They're attracted to warm flesh, sound, light and noise.

*Stay indoors! If you stay indoors, you cut off the food supply.

*Avoid them at all costs. However, if you damage the brain, you take out the beast.

*Stay put for more information.

The channel seemed to have a lot of information considering this thing had just happened, David thought. Maybe it was just guesswork for now. Or maybe they had known for days...weeks even, but didn't want to cause mass hysteria. He switched off the TV and half-laughed nervously. It was so surreal.

He got to his feet, ready to get back to the rooftop of the Noble's house. He thought about them for a brief second, and now presumed that they were probably deceased. It made him heavyhearted, but he needed to be strong for his family. He needed to shrug this feeling off; it was harsh, but he needed to do it, otherwise he would fall apart.
Chapter Thirteen

Karen Bradley's Cherokee Jeep screeched its way over the Milford countryside; she was now two miles away from her hometown and didn't have a clue where she was going. At last she saw signs of life as she saw two vehicles. The two cars flashed her as they sped past, which at first pleased her.

It was hard to establish what the flashing actually meant. According to the Highway Code, flashing of headlights should only be used to let others know you are there, and not to use them as any other means. At first, she interpreted the flashing headlights by the two drivers as a good luck sign, but the more she thought about it, the more her mind went down a more macabre road.

Maybe they were flashing to warn me. Maybe what the flashing headlights actually meant was: "Turn back, it's too dangerous!"

She didn't know what to think now; she expected the road to be busier than this.

She could imagine the only people who went out in their cars were people from the cities, and other populated areas. Or people wanting to get back home from work or from holiday—or like Karen Bradley, not knowing where the hell to go to as nowhere seemed safe.

She was still driving in the small town of Milford, and turned left up a road adjacent to the Barley Mow public house, which was also near a house that was involved in a shooting incident in 1988, where Sir Peter Terry was shot at his home by the IRA.

She pulled into a desolate car park that was surrounded by nothing but greenery, which was used by teenagers in the summer. The kids would drive up to Milford greenery and park their cars on the grass, drink alcohol, and blast out music from their car stereos. She had done it herself once upon a time, when she was much younger.

She switched the car engine off and broke down in tears. She had lost Gary; she would never experience him massaging her feet ever again, or being a clumsy fool, or making the annoying grunting noise every time he started a sentence. She had lost him for good.

She took a bottle of juice out of her glove compartment and took a generous swig; she then wiped the tears from her cheeks with the palms of her hands. The sun was burning her skin through her windscreen, and she squinted as she turned the key in her car and put on the music system. She tried to search through the frequencies to see if any stations were working; she had found only two.

One was actually playing music. She couldn't believe it. Despite what was going on, there was still a station playing music, although she was certain it was on a loop, and there wasn't a DJ stupid enough to stay behind whilst all this mess was going on.

Not wanting to attract unnecessary attention, and also not being a Depeche Mode fan, she turned I Feel You off and searched for other stations. She eventually came across a station that had a male voice. His message seemed robotic, and after a minute of listening, it repeated itself again, suggesting that it was definitely an automated message and although the radio station was up and running, there was probably no one actually in the building.

It told people to stay indoors, not to make any noise, ration food, and try to avoid using light on an evening in case it attracted the beings. This information that was being given out suggested to Karen that this could be something that had been known about for weeks.

How did they know all this, so soon?

'Beings' was the word that it chose to use, and so far Karen had only had two experiences with these beings, one of them being her boyfriend.

If it was a rabies-type virus like they were guessing, she could only assume that it was the huge scratch that she saw on Gary's body during their struggle that had changed him. It must have happened when he was out with his pals, as there was no bite on his naked body; he then probably staggered home, then never woke up again—not as the real Gary.

Her tears fell once more, and she wondered how anyone would survive in this situation. She contemplated going back to her house; it would mean killing her own partner, but nowhere else appeared safe.

The situation was hopeless.

Maybe she could kill herself. But what with?

She shook her head and thought that many people across the country might have already used that option, not just people on their own, but families as well. She contemplated her situation, and then she thought of a direr scenario that there could be: Distraught parents out there, killing their own kids before taking their own lives, because if the beings didn't get them, then starvation and dehydration would kill them, and who would want that for their babies?

If these parents were convinced that their little souls were better off in heaven, rather than allowing them to live in a hell on Earth, who could blame them?

Karen wiped her eyes and had made a conscious decision to go back to her place; there were sufficient fluids there, and it was her home after all. Although the fridge was half-empty, it could be enough for her to survive for a week or two.

She stepped out of her jeep and opened the boot; she peeled back the cover where the spare tyre was kept and saw, next to it, the tyre iron. She took a hold of it and went back to her driver's seat. She blew out a stress-filled breath, and knew that this was the choice of weapon that was going to end Gary's life for a second time.

To massage her guilt, she kept on reminding herself that technically he was already dead, and it worked a little. The man that she loved was never coming back. The only thing that she would be destroying was his shell, which he wasn't living in anymore.

It had to be done!

She placed the tyre iron onto the passenger seat and put her head on the steering wheel. She was feeling nauseous; she retched a little, but nothing was brought up apart from a little acid that stung the back of her throat. She had never vomited so much in one morning, and was hoping it was finished with. She looked up, and in the corner of her eye she could see five figures stumbling towards the car. They were near the exit, and must have come from around the corner, where the six-foot bushes stretched along the main road.

Karen Bradley looked aghast, her eyes stretched as wide as they could, her heart galloped insanely as they quickly shuffled towards her Cherokee Jeep. Her quavering hands reached for her keys, still sitting in the ignition, and she pulled the vehicle towards the left. She was now facing parallel to the exit of the car park.

She stared at the five ghouls that were now fifty yards away, three of them looked like—what used to be—young men. Their skin was pale; eyes were sunken and almost black with contusions of some kind. They literally looked like moving corpses, and the other two beings looked like an elderly lady and a young girl, no older than fourteen, dressed in only her pants and her naked chest half-covered with fresh blood as if she had just fed. Her body was snow-white and bruised. She had a bite mark on her left forearm, whereas the others looked untouched.

Karen slipped the jeep into first and hesitated for a while. If she ran into five bodies, what could that possibly do to her engine? The last thing she needed was to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with a damaged engine surrounded by these beings, as the radio and the TV had called them.

Fuck it!

She took off the handbrake, the gas pedal was down by two inches making the vehicle groan in fury, and there weren't many other options she had.

If she reversed, she would end up in a ditch.

She slowly brought up the clutch and the car moved and squealed towards the exit; she closed her eyes and could hear thud after thud as the jeep struck the bodies. She opened her eyes and cried out as she found herself on the wrong side of the road. She braked to a sudden halt, and looked behind her to see what carnage she had created.

Two of the individuals in the car park remained on the floor, two were struggling to get up, but the elderly lady was the one that shuffled towards the vehicle. They were unrelenting, had no fear, and only had one goal: to attack her and others. Maybe she missed the old lady, she supposed. But then, she swore she heard five quick thuds.

She pointlessly looked to her side to see if there was any traffic coming, and noticed ahead of her, a young girl with her mother that were out of harm's way and untouched by these things. They were both watching the event unfolding in the luxury of their own bedroom. The little girl innocently waved at Karen, which brought a surge of emotion to the young woman.

She looked into her rear view mirror to see the elderly lady only yards away from the back of her vehicle. With her hand, Karen instructed the mother to take her daughter away from the window. She did just that.

Karen selected reverse, she didn't know why, she could have easily drove off and headed for home. She put her foot to the floor and the jeep shot backwards; the elderly woman's head was in line with the back window and made a noisy thud as her head made impact. Karen looked behind her and saw dark blood, almost black, cover the back window where the head received its massive trauma.

She used the back wiper to clear her view and saw the elderly lady writhing about on the floor in front of her. She saw some of the others making their way towards her and that was when she had decided to leave, before she dug an even deeper hole that she couldn't get out of.

She pulled the vehicle forwards towards the writhing elderly woman, and drove over her head; the head popped underneath and spilled out its contents, as the one and a half tonnes of jeep that rolled over her had finally put her miserable second life to a devastating end. Karen refused to look back at the carnage behind her, and could only imagine what kind of mess her beloved motor had caused, and what state the tyres were in.

It was time to go home. She looked over to the passenger seat at the tyre iron and knew she had to destroy Gary, if she wanted back in the house.

She had to do it.
Chapter Fourteen

Jack Slade and his new friend, Robbie, jogged their way through the hallways of the hotel. Jack felt uncomfortable doing this, as he didn't know what was lurking around the corner. Robbie assured him that the hotel was secure, and there had been no reports of people feeling unwell during the night and the chances of the things being in the hotel were nil, which was a blatant lie. Robbie felt he needed to protect Jack from this information from a selfish point of view. He needed to get home, and Jack provided the wheels. He didn't want to freak him out so much that the guest would lock himself back up in his hotel room, remain there, and hope for the best.

Robbie was officially coming to the end of his twelve-hour night shift and Jack thought that once his adrenaline wore off, his heavy colleague would be exhausted. They got to the staircase and jogged down flight after flight. It seemed to have taken ages to get to the bottom of the stairs. Robbie pulled out a set of keys. He unlocked the door that led to the reception area. It was lifeless, and Jack didn't remember it too much.

"Wait a minute," Jack spoke up.

He went over to the vending machine and kicked in the glass; he pulled out a couple of bottles of water and threw one to Robbie. Both men drank the bottles dry, threw the empty bottles to the floor before proceeding to the exit doors. They stepped out onto the barren streets of Glasgow City Centre, and Jack urged the security guard to follow him.

Jack pulled out his cleaver and Robbie did the same with the carving knife, both men were clearly shaking. They jogged past the building of Central Station and saw three cars that had been driven into one another. The cars were abandoned and the opened driver's side of the doors suggested that the drivers had fled on foot.

Was it due to panic? Or were they being chased?

They both turned left onto Argyle Street and headed under the bridge, heading for Jamaica Street. They both stopped running and turned their progression into a brisk walk. Jack by no means was a fit individual, and Robbie was glad of the change in pace.

"Hold up!" Robbie's voice echoed under the massive steel bridge where above, trains would normally move across. His voice echoed, piercing the quiet morning.

They continued to walk under the bridge, passing numerous shops on their travels to Jamaica Street. Two figures appeared from around the corner about twenty yards away from the two men. They were definitely not living anymore. These two figures literally looked like death.

Both characters looked like they used to be young men. One was dressed in a white bloodstained tracksuit, which told the two men that this thing had already attacked some poor soul. The other individual was dressed in a suit.

As humans, the two of them couldn't be so different, but now they had changed, they were now both the same and had the same goal in mind. They stumbled towards the men; the one in the tracksuit leading the way, with the suited individual being three yards behind.

"Cross the road," Jack instructed. He could feel the agitation flowing through his body.

Robbie shook his head. "Nah, we can take 'em."

"Just cross the fuckin' road! I thought you wanted to avoid them!"

Robbie wobbled his head in defiance. "They'll just follow us. Besides, if we do this now, it'll desensitise us for the next time. There'll be a time when we can't run away from these things."

The suited figure fell over its own feet and was struggling to get up.

"Stand back," Robbie commanded.

To the two men's surprise, the tracksuit individual sped up with a decent pace. Robbie jumped back and brought up his carving knife, ready. Now, he was almost face to face with the thing. He could see the pale skin, like polished ivory, and the blackness around the lifeless, milky doll-eyes that were wider than golf balls, and the coal coloured lips. It was a hideous sight to witness.

Although initially he hesitated, he pulled his knife back once more and rammed it through the left eye socket of the being. Black tar-like liquid dribbled out, as his weapon mashed up the eyeball, but the creature was still trying to progress forward, its arms now grabbing onto Robbie's shoulders.

A surge of panic shot through the man, and he used the last of his strength to force the knife deeper into the eye socket. It worked. The thing twitched like an epileptic, as he pulled the knife out. The black liquid ran off the knife onto the floor; it fell to its knees and fell face down with a deathly thump.

The other corpse was still struggling to get to his feet, and once it managed to get on all fours, Jack stepped forwards and brought down the cleaver. These were tools that belonged to a professional kitchen, so he predicted they would be sharper than the average household instrument, and he wasn't wrong.

The cleaver embedded four inches into the skull quite easily, however, trying to retrieve the instrument seemed a little more difficult. Jack struggled a while before the weapon came free, he received splash back from the skull, and was sprayed by the black gunk that spat on his face. It was just a sprinkle, but it was enough to make him stand in fright.

Jack screwed his eyes in confusion. Robbie patted him on the back and pulled out a hankie. "Don't worry, I don't think you can get the virus by their blood hitting your skin, or whatever it's supposed to be. If you get it in your eye or an opened wound however..." He glared at the gentle black spray that Jack was wiping off his face with the hankie. Robbie nudged Jack and pointed at the suited-being corpse. "No wonder he fell over, look at the state of his ankle."

Jack threw the hankie to the floor and took a look. The ankle was twisted so badly that it had turned ninety degrees to the right, facing inwards.

Said Jack, "He probably did it when he was in human form, running away from those things."

Robbie agreed. "Maybe it was the twisted ankle that cost him his life. Hard to run from these things when you're in that state."

Jack shook his head. "I couldn't believe how quick the other one sped up, when he was heading for you." Jack was still panting and said to Robbie, "I'm gonna have to get home soon, and get drastically fit. These fuckers are not as docile as they look. Like an alligator, they seem lifeless, until they attack you. I'm knackered already; that was hard work killing just one of them."

Robbie looked up. "I'm trying to think if there's a gun shop in Glasgow."

"A sword would be better. It's quiet, and you don't have to re-load a sword." Jack shook his head. "Let's just go, the car park is just around the corner by the St Enoch Centre."

Robbie nudged Jack and pointed to the floor. Jack could see his mobile phone smashed in two pieces and he mumbled an expletive under his breath. He picked the thing up, but immediately dropped it back onto the floor once he knew it was defunct.

The two men both bent over and wiped their utensils on the clothes of the deceased. They continued to walk under the bridge on Argyle Street, and finally came to Jamaica Street that was situated to their right. To their left was Union Street, and they both noticed seven figures shuffling about further up near the Burger King restaurant. They looked down to the rest of Argyle Street, which seemed devoid of life, human and the others.

They strolled down Jamaica Street, getting near the River Clyde; the car park was to their left which was situated around the back of the Matalan clothes store. They ran around the back and went inside the multi-storey car park and began to jog up the ascending road that curled round like a helter skelter.

"What floor is it?" Robbie asked with what little breath he had left, his voice echoing through the concrete-sheltered car park. His belly swung to the left and right like a pendulum, as his feet slapped the concrete with each step.

"Second," Jack shouted back, he was ten yards in front of his new friend.

"Thank fuck!"

Robbie stopped and placed his hand on his knees, he was exhausted. His panting was hard, and there didn't seem to be any sign of his body recovering.

He thought to himself that maybe he should just wait for Jack to come down with his car, as it seemed frivolous that the pair of them needed to run up to the second floor, but Jack was already way ahead of him and had disappeared. For a brief panicky second, Robbie thought that maybe Jack would go without him. In a situation like this, it was pretty much every man for himself. Still looking up the steep road, Robbie began to cough. He then yawned and began to stretch out his arms.

He suddenly felt a hand on his thigh, which made him shoot up, straightening his back. He turned around to see three creatures almost ambush him. They looked like they were teenage girls, and seemed dressed in attire to suggest that they had been clubbing, but they were now not of human form.

Where the fuck did they come from?

Robbie lashed out manically with his knife, catching two of them in the face, although the wounds were only superficial. He kicked one of them that was wearing a mini skirt and it fell over. The one nearest, felt Robbie's wrath, as he brought down his carving knife that embedded deep into the top of the cranium of a blonde girl.

Fuck, they're strong!

The scantily dressed thing immediately fell, and he felt the bite of the other that had its hands on both of his shoulders and had bitten through his uniform and into his deltoid. He let out an angry shriek and pushed the girl over easily, thanks to the fact they were on an uphill and Robbie was higher than the rest on the incline. They both clambered back to their feet, and Robbie somehow managed the energy to run up to the remaining rest of the road. A Vauxhall Meriva pulled up beside Robbie, and Jack ordered him to get in and Robbie duly obliged.

"What happened to you?" Jack screamed.

"Fucker bit me."

"There are more of them? Maybe I should go out the proper exit, rather than down this road again."

"Nah." Robbie shook his head. "The proper exit has safety barriers, you would have to ram them to get by."

"But I'm gonna have to ram those things to get past the other way."

Robbie looked at Jack with demonic eyes. "Are we really having this conversation? Just fucking move. Let's get to your house first, so I can get myself bandaged up. I don't want the missus and the kids to see me like this. I hope you've got alcohol back at your house; this wound may be infected with all kinds of shit."

Jack hit the gas pedal and headed back down the way they had ran up and sped at twenty around the curly road. He almost stopped when he saw the two figures, as his instincts told him to come off the gas and hit the brake. He hit the gas pedal harder and saw the two female things bounce off the car and roll along the ground like thrown dice.

"Well, that was fun." Robbie winced, and held onto his bleeding shoulder.

Jack shook his head. "This is such a fucking weird day. This is possibly weirder than the time I was sleepwalking as a teenager, and my dad woke me up and found me in my sister's room as I was about to piss in her ear."

Robbie, still clutching his wound, gazed at Jack in disbelief. "Thanks for sharing that."

"Sorry."
Chapter Fifteen

They both travelled with their windows down; the cool air was a welcomed feeling as the sweat trickled down the officers' backs. Once they got to a residential area, Jamie informed Janine that the windows would have to go up and they would have to make do with the air conditioning the van had to offer.

Janine looked around at the countryside they were driving in, and had gone by this way every day mostly, and never had time to appreciate how beautiful the area was. It was also a great area for a prison. If they had had escapes, there weren't many hiding places for the cons to use. The nearest residence was a mile away, and finding the escapees would be no problem as there was no building to hide in, no crowd to be lost in, or any vehicle to break into to enhance their escape.

They had only been travelling for three minutes and Janine had an announcement to make to Jamie before they went any further.

"You're gonna have to stop. I need the toilet."

"Seriously?" Jamie frowned at his partner, the corner of his lips dropping towards his chin.

Janine descended her head, and made a nodding gesture.

Jamie looked around; they were still in the countryside, everywhere was flat and the sign of trouble was non-existent. Even though it was early days, if they did need to stop, it may as well be now. "I suppose I'll go as well, seem as though it's clear."

Janine was still a little paranoid that Jamie could drive off and leave her, but her trust of him had grown a little, and she could hardly sit and piss herself.

He stopped the van and allowed Janine to jump out first. The engine was still running, and while he was waiting to kill some time, he tried the radio stations once more. By the time he had exhausted every station on the waves, Janine had returned.

"Right," Jamie opened the driver's side of the door, "my turn."

Janine took a swig of water from Jamie's bag and wondered how her family were. She unbuttoned her top button and took off her blue clip-on tie. She had noticed Jamie had already done this. It was too hot for the attire that they were wearing, and it didn't matter now. The world had now become a different place, they had no governor to answer to and had no job either.

Jamie noticed that Janine had literally emptied her bladder behind the vehicle as the golden puddle sat there a yard away from the back of the van. He wondered why she chose that particular area. Didn't she trust him? Was she paranoid that he would watch her by using the exterior mirrors?

He didn't want to dwell on it too much, as they hardly knew one another and only engaged in conversation on a professional basis when they were at work. He chose to use the side of the road and peed on the grass; it was a short affair as he didn't need to go that badly, but he thought he may as well try while they had stopped because he wasn't sure when would be the next available time to go. He returned to the van.

The van began to move again, and as they approached a tight bend that veered to the right, the pair of them took in the scenery and appreciated it. They both looked at a farm that was to their left in the distance and both peeped at one another. Were they thinking the same thing?

Go to the farm and beg the owners to put them up for a few nights while all this blows over? The thought had caressed Janine's mind, but Jamie himself suspected that they were onto a winner driving a secured van with food and water. Janine would rather have saved the fuel and just sat in the prison car park with the van locked and munched on the food they had, but Jamie was convinced there would be more food and fuel just waiting to be taken before thinking about some kind of refuge.

The van took a left and as it appeared on the new road, they could see four figures in the distance, walking with their backs to them. They both knew they were prisoners immediately, as all four were wearing the same clothes. They all donned blue trousers and red T-shirts.

"What do you reckon?" Jamie questioned Janine.

"Seriously?"

Jamie nodded.

Janine sighed unhappily, "If we pick them up, we pick nobody else up."

"I agree with that; we're definitely better in numbers. I'm just gonna slow down, see who they are."

"You don't think they'll attack us and take the van for themselves?"

"Nah, not these fellas." Jamie pointed at the four figures who were now facing them and frantically waving. "That's Pickle. He's a notorious drug dealer, but as honest as they come. If it was a member of the Murphy family, then I'd just drive on. We're better in numbers; don't worry about the food, we'll find more eventually."

As the van gained alongside the diminutive group, the four men held out their hands, desperate for the vehicle to pull over. The van pulled up adjacent to the cons, and Pickle was the first to approach Jamie's side of the door.

"Wanna ride?" Jamie smiled.

"Absolutely," Pickle cried, and all four inmates wore a relieved and excited grin. "I owe yer one, Jamie boy."

"Forget it, we're all in the same boat. As far as I'm concerned, considering what's happening out there, any fracas we've had in the past is forgotten about now." All four prisoners nodded in agreement. "We're all equal; to get through this we're better off sticking together."

Jamie switched the engine off and got out of the van, then Jamie and Pickle shook hands. Jamie knew that being in numbers would be more beneficial for his own safety. He knew Pickle; he didn't really know the other inmates, but knew Pickle would keep them in line.

Pickle had short brown hair, was a violent drug dealer, and slurred his words occasionally, but he and Jamie had always had a decent relationship on the wing. He knew that if Pickle was on his side, the other three wouldn't dare speak up or attempt anything untoward. Why would they? Not only had he released them from their cells, he was now giving them a ride!

"Let me introduce yer to these three fine gentleman," Pickle spoke; Jamie already knew one of the inmates but decided against on interrupting Pickle. "This is KP, he looks like a dick, but he's okay."

"I already know KP," Jamie spoke, nodding towards the inmate.

Jamie was unsure about KP; he was another violent thug, but his violence wasn't related to drugs. He was a repeat violent offender, who spent most of his time in and out of jail.

"Of course yer do." Pickle beamed. "What about the other two?"

Jamie frowned, his face suggesting he was struggling for names. "I think those two only came in a few weeks ago, plus they're both from E Wing."

"This is Laz." Pickle pointed to a weedy-looking prisoner who looked middle-aged. "And this fine looking kid is called Grass."

Jamie waved at Grass, whose real name was Conor Snodgrass. Now Jamie remembered him!

Conor Snodgrass was only twenty years old and was in for rape, but he had told prisoners he was in for GBH. Jamie knew that if Pickle knew the background of Snodgrass, he would kill him there and then. He didn't feel comfortable having a rapist on board, especially with Janine in tow, but he knew that if he opened his mouth, the young boy would be kicked to death for sure by all three prisoners.

On a wing, rapists and child molesters were usually protected by officers to stop them being attacked by other inmates. Some prisons across the country would have separate wings for these types of criminals, but in Stafford prison, they had them on E wing where ten sex offenders lived, and these were protected by opening them up at different meal times, escorting them to the toilet, etc. Jamie hated them, not just because of the crime that they had committed, but the fact that he had to behave like a personal babysitter for them, but he wouldn't want young Grass to be killed, no matter what crime he did in the past.

"No offence," Jamie indicated to Pickle. "But we need to throw you guys in the back."

"That's perfectly fine with us, ain't that right, lads?"

All three of them agreed, with no reluctance on their faces.

"You got any food in the back?" KP called. "I could eat the scabs off a donkey's ring piece."

Jamie and Janine took a gander at one another.

"Don't worry!" Pickle exclaimed, almost as if he could read the two officers' intellects. "We won't eat all yer food, besides, once we make a stop off at ma house, we can get all the food we want and store them in the back o' the van."

"Got a place in mind?" Janine asked.

"Just name yer supermarket. Besides, I think there's a garage up the road, apart from petrol, there should be plenty o' food there as well."

"Sounds like a plan," Jamie responded excitedly. "We can get plenty of jerry cans from the garage and fill them up, but if the electrics go down in the gas stations, we're fucked, 'cos you need to use a switch to activate the pumps. What's at this house?"

"Guns," Pickle declared bluntly. "And there's plenty. So we need to head for Rugeley; there's a place that I think will be perfect. But firstly, I need to make a little stop on the way there. Agreed?"

Jamie smiled, the day was beginning to get better and stopping for Pickle had become a commendable idea.

Jamie spoke with zealous, "Right, Janine, let's get these guys in the back. We've got a garage to go to. By the way, lads, we'll keep those cells open, you're not prisoners now as far as I'm concerned."

Jamie pulled out the specially-designed cell key for the seven tiny cells of the van and put it into the glove compartment.

Janine let them in the back one by one; the cells were already opened and each inmate picked one for themselves. Janine gave them all polite smiles.

First to get in was young Grass; he gave her a shy look and she felt sorry for the young boy, he looked scared out of his wits. The next to go in was Laz; he looked about fifty and was very skinny, his head of hair was completely grey. KP was next to go in; she had heard of him being a tough nut, and despite donning a beard, which was something she didn't find appealing herself, he was an attractive man. He blew her a kiss as he got inside; she responded with a shy smile. It had been a while since she had been with male company.

Last to go in was Pickle. "Don't yer worry, kid." He pointed at Janine. "I'll keep these wee monkeys under control, okay?" He winked and got straight into one of the tiny cells.

"The toilets are at the back," she announced, forgetting that these men had been in before.

Pickle gave her the thumbs up. He was six foot in height, and his muscular frame was almost as fierce as his reputation, but the forty-three-year-old seemed to be a genuine guy—although shouldn't be crossed.

Janine was a little put out that the guys had turned up; she thought that her and Jamie were getting on great in the short space of time they were out together. Although she did see the benefits of them being around, as she felt safer in numbers especially now that one of them was going to give them guns, she was hoping that it wasn't going to turn into one big boys club. She had only just shut the door to the back of the van, and she was already feeling a little left out.
Chapter Sixteen

As he got to the top of the roof of his neighbour's house, David Pointer had stood up quite easily, putting too much faith in the roof tiles beneath his feet. He side-stepped the short journey to his own skylight and took off the rucksack from his back; he knelt down and saw his wife playing with his daughter, and a languishing smile emerged on his face.

He gently knocked on the glass of the skylight and Davina stood up and opened it. David handed his wife the bag.

"Be back in two minutes," he announced to his now unhappy wife.

"Where are you going?"

"I just wanna check on the Bairds."

"Jesus, David, you can't be everyone's saviour, just stay here with us. With your own family."

"They're a nice family, I just want to see if they and the two girls are okay."

Davina snarled, "And what about your two girls? Can't you just ring 'em?"

"My phone is in the car. It's only next door-but-one, I promise I won't go any further."

Davina didn't agree with her husband, but it was pointless arguing with him. She shook her head and waved at him as if to say, do what you want!

He shut the roof window—or skylight—and made his way back to the top of the roof once more, and the scenes had become more incredible since the last time he had looked. There was more of them roaming around the streets, at least six in his own street, and dozens in the next one. It was frightening to watch, and he turned around with his back facing the macabre scene, and stepped carefully—like a tightrope walker—across the roof.

The houses were built in an eight block of terraces, and David and Davina's was the one at the end, which meant they had one less bedroom, but they had a bigger garden and a drive.

He had finally made it to the third skylight across the block, his being the first, and peered in. People used their attics for various reasons. He used his as a storage room, the Nobles converted theirs into an extra bedroom for their daughter, the Bairds seemed to have given up on theirs, as it looked like the inside of a shed; it was in a bad state. It looked like it was used for storage.

At least ours is neat and tidy, David thought. Which is where Davina could take all of the credit for that one.

David went to knock on the window of the skylight, but suddenly saw that it had been left slightly open, probably to let the air in on such a stuffy night. He opened it up and his instincts were telling him it was okay to go in.

He jumped inside, his feet slamming the wooden floor so hard that the soles of his feet stung. He had misjudged the height; it was higher than he had thought.

David walked over the closed hatch, bent down and spoke through it.

"Gerry, it's David Pointer from next door-but-one. If you can hear me, give me a holler."

David waited for a whole minute. He knew this for certain because he timed it on his Accurist wristwatch. He tried again, and repeated the same sentence. Once again there was no answer, but this time he thought, fuck it.

He stood over the attic door and brought the heel of his shoe on top of the latch, although he was wary that there was a small chance he could fall through. He felt it give way a little, and brought it down once more to see it swing open, his momentum almost made him fall down the hatch. He fell backward onto the floor of the attic, and decided to gather his breath before descending to the first floor.

He was about to shout through the now opened hatch once more, but then he bit his lip. He wasn't sure there was anybody in; for all he knew, they could have fled. He couldn't remember if their car was sitting outside or not, so he wasn't entirely sure. Another scenario that entered his mind was that one of them could have been bitten; they could be one of them and still inside, and all he had was a hammer!

There was no spiral staircase in the attic, as their attic was like his. It had a set of ladders that needed lowering down. This is exactly what he did; he lowered them as quietly as he could. At least now, if he was to be attacked, there would be a convenient escape route. He stepped down carefully and once he finally reached the bottom of the ladders, he adjusted them so they were easier to climb in case of an emergency.

He crept out of the bedroom and was on the landing; the set-up was the same as his house. There was a bedroom to his left and another two doors to his right; one was another bedroom and a bathroom.

He looked to his left, and with the tips of his fingers, he gently pushed the door open to reveal an empty bedroom. He walked across the landing and looked down the stairs and shouted hello. He was confident that if his voice attracted unwanted attention, as far as the beings were concerned, he could outrun them and be on the roof by the time they got to the top of the stairs. After what he had witnessed from his roof, one thing he was certain of was that, individually, they didn't posses too much of a threat to the average man, but when they were in their hordes or packs, there was a bigger reason to worry.

He continued to glare down the stairs, but there was no answer. He looked behind him and began to check out the two doors to the landing's right. Convinced that the house was empty, his bladder had decided that it needed draining. After doing so, and not flushing just in case the noise attracted unwanted attention from outside, he left the bathroom and went to the door next to it. Again, the door was closed like the other bedroom, but it hadn't been closed properly.

He placed his fingers on the door and pushed the door ajar, his psyche wasn't prepared to take in what he was about to see.

The first thing he could see was the cupboard up against the wall to the right, and he could also see the end of a bed. He stepped inside and walked further into the bedroom where he could now examine the whole of the bed, and the four lifeless figures lying at peace under the duvet. David knew the family well; they were the kind of family that kept themselves to themselves, but broke that rule with the Pointers because their daughters played with Isobel quite often. He tried his hardest to stop weeping.

Tears fell, but he held back his emotional outburst. He thought that the scene he was witnessing, was a scene that was probably happening to many families across the country.

Why would a parent want to bring a child into a new world like this? It was bad enough when humans ran the show.

David moved closer towards the front of the bed; the father was lying on his back with one of the twin girl's arms wrapped around him. The mother was on her side, spooning her other two-year-old daughter. Like their mother, the little girls were gorgeous things, blessed with long golden hair like a field of corn.

What must have those parents gone through at the time, knowing that they were responsible for their deaths?

They must have felt there was no other option. Their short little lives could leave the world sleeping with their parents, or being ripped to pieces by those...things!

Some people were holding out, others, like the Bairds, were not taking the chance.

David thought back to the scenario when the twin towers were burning and people began jumping to their deaths. Whatever option they chose, they were going to die anyway, so in this case, the parents picked the less cruel way to leave this Earth.

On the father's side of the bed, was a side table. On it, was a bottle of water with two empty bottles of painkillers lying on their side, and the powder that could be seen on the table suggested to David's mind that the tablets had to be crushed for the children to take them. The bodies, as well as the evidence how they died, was heartbreaking to see, as he could just imagine the scene and the build-up to it.

He shook his head and tried to erase it from his mind, as David Pointer being mentally ill wasn't an option, especially when he had a wife and a four-year-old daughter relying on him.

Although David wasn't an avid churchgoer, he dropped to his knees and began to say the Lord's Prayer. It was the only prayer he knew from his school days. He felt he needed to do or say something, before leaving the family alone.

He got back to his feet, and left the family in their bed. For a minute, he thought about going downstairs to see what food was available. He was sure his family had enough to keep them going for a week or two, besides, now that the family were dead, it seemed disrespectful to empty their cupboards, and his bag was back at his house anyway. He promised himself that if the supplies began running low he would go back and see what there was to consume. He was hoping it wasn't going to come to that. He was sure that there would be some kind of government/army intervention by then—or at least, he hoped.

He crept downstairs out of interest, and not on the lookout for food, and peered into the kitchen, the bathroom and then finally the living room. The window of the living room had two of the infected against it; the crack on the window told him that they were trying to get in. As soon as they saw him, a new lease of energy was released and their groaning grew more boisterous. Their pale hands bashed against the huge pane of glass that had no chance of standing that kind of pressure for another ten minutes, he guessed.

One of them, who was dressed in works overalls as if they used to be a mechanic, banged on the window desperately with its fists, blood spat out of its mouth as it continued to moan, tormented that there was food inside, and the only thing that stood in the way was a pane of glass.

David decided not to hang about and ran upstairs; he got to the landing and began to climb the ladders back to the attic. He stopped climbing once he heard the shatter of glass from downstairs, and then continued to the top. He reached for the ladders to bring them back up. He was sure that the things weren't capable of climbing ladders, or stairs for that matter, due to atrophy.

Within a second, a seed of ambiguity was quickly planted in his psyche, and now he was thinking that maybe he wasn't entirely sure this was the case after all. So as an added precaution, he brought up the ladders and closed the hatch as extra insurance.

He could now hear the groans coming from the ground floor. They were in the house!

He didn't know whether they had the ability to climb in, or maybe they had just fallen in through the window after the glass had shattered, and then got back onto their feet. Whatever the reason, they were in, and it sounded like there were more than two of them.

He didn't hang around long enough to count them, and lifted himself up through the skylight. This was hard work; it had been a while since David had been to the gym, and even then, pull-ups were not his strong point. He only needed to do one to get him to the roof, but he struggled nevertheless.

He finally managed to get himself back onto the roof, and welcomed the sunshine that greeted him warmly. He had grazed his leg slightly from a stray tile, but with the way the world was at the moment, there were other things that were going to keep him from sleeping tonight.

He thought about the message from the Nobles. If it was happening in the UK and New York, then surely this could be a global catastrophe.
Chapter Seventeen

Karen Bradley's jeep roared like a beast and turned right at the Globe Island, that was now being swarmed upon by at least twenty of the things, and she headed for Draycott Park, back to the area where she lived. She took another look at the tyre iron on the passenger seat, and kept saying to herself under her breath, "He's already dead. He's already dead."

The seventh time she said it, she broke down for a few seconds and cleared her throat, mentally reprimanded herself for being weak, and widened her eyes into the shapes of flying saucers to stop them from crying. She wiped her eyes to clear her cloudy vision, and took a deep breath, as she turned left into her secluded street. She immediately touched the brake and didn't progress anymore.

She could see her street had at least ten of the things roaming around her road. If she went back to her house, she was convinced that they would bang on her windows until the glass eventually caved in. She didn't want to spend her time locked in her bedroom while these things roamed in the downstairs of her house. At least with wheels, she could move about, get food, get gas, get water, and go somewhere where it was less populated.

"Cocksuckers," she whispered with disdain. Her plan was up in the air. So what next?

She slipped the car into reverse and drove away from her street, heading towards the countryside. Her area was situated on the outskirts of Rugeley, and once she left the town, she would be greeted by two miles of countryside before reaching another populated area. If she continued to go straight on, she would end up in a smaller town called Hednesford. If she took the next left, she would drive up a steep hill and at the top was a secluded wooded area called Stile Cop, it was the highest point in Rugeley. It was popular with ramblers and dog walkers, and to the left and the right of the main steep road were the woods.

She planted her right foot on the gas pedal and sped out of the area. Suddenly her windscreen cracked. It gave her the fright of her life, and she let out a short shriek and lost control of the steering wheel, which span towards the left as she released it. The jeep veered sharply and smashed into a brick wall of a garden, belonging to one of the residents of Draycott Park. It was one of the last houses before the beginning of the countryside.

She straightened her back to compose herself; her neck felt a little stiff, but was aware that the damage to her would have been more extreme if she had been travelling at a higher speed. Her hand took hold of the key once again, and before she had chance to fire the engine once more, she had received another fright as her driver's door suddenly swung open.

A knife was held to her throat and she was told to get out. A middle-aged man leaned over and unbuckled her seatbelt. She scratched the man's face, and for her troubles received a light punch in her stomach. The wind was taken out of her and she was callously dragged out of the jeep; she tried to grab the man and ripped his pocket seeing his wallet fall to the floor. She was then plonked onto the warm tarmac, and as she tried to get up, a younger man, no older than twenty, swung his boot into her midriff. She curled up like a frightened hedgehog. Her weary eyes saw the individuals get into the jeep and the vehicle shot off and turned left as if it was heading for Stile Cop, but it could have been going anywhere, Hazelslade, Upper Longdon or Lichfield. All these places were only a few miles away.

She coughed and couldn't believe the way she had been dealt with. She would have stopped for the men if they'd flagged her, but they had other ideas. It was literally every man for himself.

Why didn't they have a car themselves? She couldn't fathom where they had come from. Maybe they had ran out or were short on fuel. Or maybe the jeep was more beneficial than their own vehicle, because it had more room. Another reason for her carjacking was probably for the vehicle itself. It had a hard steel bumper on the front, it was higher up than the average car, and as proved at Milford, was capable of creating damage to the things when it was going forwards or backwards, and it was less likely to cause engine damage when hitting the beings full-on.

She dragged herself to her feet, coughed a little and was finally beginning to get her breath back, although her stomach was still smarting.

She was on the outskirts of her town and ran over to the cars that sat on the drives; one by one she started to try the doors. She knew there was a chance that the residents were in, but what were they going to do, call the police? She was certain that a police force of any sort probably didn't exist anymore.

She suddenly stopped what she was doing. Why was she trying the cars? She didn't have keys for them, and she certainly hadn't watched enough American TV shows to know how to hotwire one.

She looked around on the main road, and she could see that every house had their curtains drawn. She ran over to the very end house that had a Vauxhall Corsa on the drive. She began to hammer on the front door of the house with her right fist. The commotion she was making was so rambunctious, it was loud enough to wake the first dozen houses, but she didn't care, like the men before her, she had become desperate. At last, a bedroom window opened above her where an elderly man peered over, he looked frightened to death.

"What do you want?" he whispered in fright, and looked over to his left.

"Let me in," Karen ordered with desperation.

"No chance. Besides, I've blocked up the entrance to the door now."

The man was on his way to closing his window when Karen spoke out. "At least give me your car keys."

"Fuck off," was the final reply from the old man as he shut his window.

Karen peered behind her, and once her eyes reported to her brain what she was seeing, her body furiously pumped with adrenaline. The pain in her stomach had miraculously disappeared, and her body had been given a new lease of energy. Without hesitation, she ran as fast as her legs would go. To her the legs weren't going fast enough as if they were made of lead, but it would have to do.

She could hear the shuffling behind her and could only assume that the noise from the initial carjacking, as well as the strident banging of doors from herself, had attracted these things. She took a quick look behind her, her neck cracking as she twisted it; there was nine of them and there was one particular one who moved quicker than the others. Some of the others were clumsy-looking, like drunks after a Saturday night, but the now solitary figure that was yards ahead of his compatriots, was even gaining on an unfit Karen.

She cursed out loud, and told herself not to turn around and to concentrate on running as hurriedly and as hard as she could, but she possessed an abhorrence image that played in her mind. She was scared that, as she was running, a hand would eventually reach out and pull her to the ground. If she was going to be attacked, she would preferably be face to face to give herself a fighting chance.

She turned left, and now was heading up the long, steep hill that led to a well-known beauty spot called Stile Cop, as well as the woods itself. She cried out in frustration, as even though her life depended on this, she knew she wasn't going to make it. She took another glance behind her, and could see that the hill didn't seem to be a problem for these creatures; they may as well have been moving on a flat surface. She was exhausted and could see the Stile Cop cemetery up ahead before where the incline started; she veered left to find the gates shut and locked. She placed her foot onto the railing and used every last bit of her strength to pull herself up and swing herself over the six-foot gates, and landed on her back onto the grass with a painful thud. She looked to her right as she lay on her back, her lungs burning with pain, aching for oxygen.

She could see the hideous beings all crowding around the gate, their arms reaching in, desperate to touch her, to grab her, to bite her. She was confident that the steel gates were strong enough to hold them, and she remained on her back for a further minute, trying to get her breath back, before getting to her feet.

Her heart skipped once she saw a dozen hands grabbing the gate and trying to shake it open, but it wasn't budging. She looked at the poor souls and saw that amongst them was a little boy called Harry—he lived in her street. Although recognisable, his face was pale; his mouth was bloody as if he had already fed on some poor individual. It was a strange predicament to be in.

Karen was in the local cemetery, and the boy who she had taught to whistle was desperate to rip her to pieces. She thought about if the worst came to the worst. There were nine of them, and she wouldn't stand a fighting chance, as she would be eaten in minutes; devoured before her very eyes until she passed out before her death. It was a death she wouldn't wish on her enemies—not that she had many.

She ran across to the other side of the cemetery, to the disgust of her admirers as they let out disgruntled-like groans as she moved further away. She climbed the fence and jumped onto the other side of the cemetery, and she was now in the woods.

If she ran through the woods to her left, she would be led out to another town called Brereton, but her plan was to avoid populated areas, as she thought the more populated, the more danger there was. She decided to head upwards through the woods; this would eventually lead to the Stile Cop beauty spot that was half a mile away. She could achieve this quicker by running along up the steep hill, but Stile Cop wasn't her intention, staying in the woods and being hidden was. She thought that there was a small chance that those things would eventually work out that if they walked around the perimeter of the cemetery fence, they could get into the woods and be on her trail, but it was a risk she was willing to take.

She decided on the woods for two reasons: one, she didn't really have much of a choice, and two; there were more obstacles for the things to get around. They didn't seem the brightest beings on the planet, but what they did have was a desire, their only goal—like hers—was to feed and survive, and they were determined in achieving that goal. They seemed devoid of much emotion, which told Karen that they had no sense of danger and feared nothing, which also made them extremely dangerous, and she guessed that they probably didn't sleep either, if they were classed as dead.

She had already tested out the theory of outrunning them on a flat road, and it was a battle she had nearly lost because of her already heavy and tired legs from working nightshift. The woods would provide a different scenario for them—or so she hoped. They walked and even ran awkwardly, and Karen was hoping that the woods would slow down their progress if they tried to follow her in.

She remembered playing in there as a kid, and if the place was similar to her memory she had of it as a child, then there was numerous obstacles that should slow them down like chopped down trunks from wood poachers, ditches, and a lot of rocks to climb, as well as the incline itself. Despite their persistence, balance didn't seem to be their strong point, even on a flat surface.

She waved her hands in front of her, brushing away the branches as she strolled through the condensed woods. She took one last look behind her before she progressed deeper, until the trees began to cover the sight of the cemetery. They were still at the gate, although one began to wander away back onto the road and headed back towards Rugeley. She could just about see this through the gaps in the trees, and it made her think that maybe the rest would follow the solitary figure back to the town.

She was convinced, however, that it was only a matter of time before they began stumbling their way up, following her trail. She still didn't understand too much about them; the only information she had was what she briefly saw on the television. She wasn't aware if they followed movement, or if they could actually pick up a scent the way animals did. She didn't have the answer, but she was aware there was a brook up ahead and that the first thing she was going to do was walk in it.

The two reasons she wanted to do this was to cool her body down—she was perspiring heavily and had no water on her. The other reason was to throw off a possible scent in case their instincts told them to enter further into the woods. Of course, she was unsure whether this would do any good and if it would slow down their progression, but she thought it couldn't do any harm. She had seen it many times in the movies before, where the bloodhounds were chasing the escaped prisoner, so she thought that it was worth a shot.
Chapter Eighteen

As they finally left Glasgow City Centre over the bridge, Jack Slade turned the car right and drove through a small place called Tradeston. The traffic lights were still working, but obviously he wasn't adhering to their command.

As he passed the Springfield Quay, alongside the River Clyde, he saw another car in the distance and it flashed its headlights, and the driver gave Jack the thumbs up as he speedily passed his Vauxhall Meriva. Another two cars could be seen speeding out from a junction and waved at him as they went by. The two cars looked like they had children in them, and Jack hoped that wherever their destination, hopefully they would get there in one piece.

He zoomed through the lights, still naturally looking to the side to see if there were pedestrians waiting to cross, even though Paisley Road West was deserted. He looked to his left to the passenger seat; Robbie was still in an uncomfortable position. His head was back and he continued to grab his injured shoulder from the car park incident. Jack had promised Robbie that when they got to his home, he would strap him up and try and call Robbie's family to see if they were okay. He looked to be having a fever, the blood looked drained from his face, and cold sweat emerged in pearly drops on his forehead. He then closed his eyes.

"Don't fall asleep on me now," Jack warned.

Robbie responded immediately by opening his eyes, and looked over to his driver and said, "I nearly dropped off there. Don't forget I've just done a twelve-hour nightshift."

"You can get some sleep when you get to my house," Jack said sternly.

As he began passing Bellahouston Park, he saw to the right of him, the large police station. "Wait a minute."

He pulled over, and got out of his car and ran over the empty road to the entrance of the police station. His feet stopped once he saw seven bodies lying on the tarmac of the police station's entrance. The bodies looked fresh and had been shot, and the concrete around them was covered in blood.

He attempted to shake the image off and then tried the large double glass doors that led to where the public would walk in for enquiries, but the doors were firmly shut, in fact, there were a few obstacles put in front of the door—a filing cabinet and a couple of tables.

He looked up to the first floor and saw the twitch of a set of blinds.

A police station would be perfect, he thought; they had guns, protected vans, and a secure building.

He shouted up at the first floor window, but there was zero response. The blinds twitched once more; he saw briefly two people gazing at the cause of the commotion.

He half-laughed at what was happening. He looked up at the sign over the reception area where a banner hung, it said: Strathclyde Police: To protect your community. He shook his head with dismay, and was certain that there was probably dozens upon dozens of uniformed officers in there. He really was on his own.

Jack lost all control and banged on the glass of the doors and began to sob. No words came out of his mouth; it was noises, noises of frustration and faintheartedness. He didn't really blame the police; if he was in their position he may have done the same, they were only human after all. He obliterated his tears and saliva with his uncovered forearm, and tried to compose himself.

Jack took another look up to the window, and lowered his head in defeat. He looked around to see no sign of life, no people and none of those beings either, just the seven bodies that lay on the tarmac behind him. The closer he looked, the more it appeared that they had been shot more than once. They had been massacred.

He then looked back at the police station and thought, surely not. Did our own police force shoot these people? Why? Because they wanted to get in? Because they were scared and demanded why their police force had abandoned them? Were they shot because of the noise they were making?

As he began to walk away he heard the window of the first floor open; in the background he could hear a few voices protesting about the opening of the window. Then he heard a voice say to a colleague, "It's just a man on his own."

The face of a middle-aged man peered out. The policeman above Jack finally spoke. "We have an armed unit inside, waiting for those...things. We can't help you; we're under strict instructions. I'm sorry; don't come back here. Good luck, wee guy."

Jack looked behind him and glared at the dead bodies, their blood covered the concrete steps. "And what happened to these people?"

The policeman then began to sob, and cried, "God, forgive us." He was then pulled away from view by a pair of hands and the window was shut firmly.

Jack stared at the bodies again in disbelief. After a thirty-second misbelieving gaze, he jogged over to the car to see Robbie had fallen asleep. He got into the car and drove away.

Five minutes later he was in Pollok. He was home.

He lived in a large and long street called Broomlaw Road, and although he had passed a dozen of the infected, the reasonably populated street was bare of human or other kind of life.

He pulled up on his drive and tried to wake Robbie up, but he wasn't budging. He tried slapping his face but the big man was in too much of a deep sleep. Unless Jack opened the passenger side of his door and kicked him out onto the floor, there didn't seem to be any way of waking him up, even then, he wasn't convinced that this would stir him.

He decided to leave the man inside the car; he wasn't bleeding heavily and providing the car was locked up, he was sure he would be safe, besides, Jack Slade wasn't preparing to hang around for too long. The sooner he dropped Robbie off at his home—wherever that was, the better. At least then the only thing he could concentrate on was driving south to see his son.

He had already made his mind up.

If he was going to die within the next week or month, he wanted his last days to be spent with his boy.

Jack got into his house and locked himself in; he needed caffeine and the first thing he did was fill the kettle. He got a teaspoon from his drawer and took two spoons of coffee and placed them in his mug. He then went into the cupboard and pulled out his bag; he walked back into the kitchen and began to fill his bag with whatever he thought was edible and drinkable, also some toiletries were placed inside.

Although extremely heavy, he was satisfied that his bag was as full as it could be. He opened the front door again and nervously scanned his street; one curtain twitched from across the road, and he could understand why the roads were not so busy. If people thought there was a chance they could die, they would rather die in their own homes with their families. But there were others, like Jack, who had no choice but to travel. He would rather stay in his house and wait for the situation to pass, but the waiting and not knowing whether his son was well or not, would torture him.

After putting the bag in the car and closing the boot, he walked back into the house.

He made his coffee, and plonked the bloodied cleaver that Robbie had given him by his feet as he sat down on the sofa.

He switched on the TV and found that the channels had been ditched apart from an announcement on the BBC. He reached down for his mug and took a noisy slurp of his coffee, and continued watching the TV for any movement. After ten minutes he stood to his feet, and walked to his bathroom to go for a pee, then returned to the living room.

In bemusement, he stared at the cleaver and picked it up and then scrunched his eyes outside and finally turned his attention to the mirror. "Well...this isn't weird at all." His sentence was drenched in sarcasm, but that was Jack Slade. Sarcasm was a part of his defensive mechanism, and the truth was, he was frightened to death at what was occurring. It was either sarcasm or tears.

He took a deep breath, took a bandage to wrap Robbie up, and was now ready to leave. He needed to wake Robbie up to ask him where he lived, then once he was dropped off, he could concentrate on seeing his boy. Danger or no danger, Thomas was his main priority and he needed to be with him. Hiding in his house and hoping that his son survived, would mentally torture him and wasn't an option as far as Jack Slade was concerned.

With the cleaver in hand, he headed for the door. He opened the door to the outside and his eyes immediately saw the sight of Robbie convulsing in the passenger seat of his car. It looked like he was having an epileptic fit.

As Jack stepped onto his drive and got nearer, he was sure that that wasn't the real situation that was occurring. Robbie had turned into one of them. Jack could tell by the look on his face that he was no longer human; his face was deathly-white, his eyes looked sunken and bruised, and he was foaming at the mouth, his arms flapping, desperate to get out of the vehicle, desperate to get to Jack.

Knowing that he needed the car, Jack approached the passenger side with apprehensive steps. He had to let him out.

He blew out his cheeks and reached for the passenger handle with his left hand; the defunct Robbie was smacking his head against the window of the door, desperate to get out. Blood emerged the more it smashed itself, and Jack thought that if this continued, then there was no chance he could drive nearly five hundred miles down south with a broken window, as it would be too dangerous.

Okay you fat fuck, calm down!

He opened the door immediately. The thing fell out onto the floor easily, as initially Robbie and Jack were not wearing seatbelts, and then it struggled to get to its feet.

Jack stepped backwards and was now back near his front door; the beast was by the car and was ten yards away from Jack. He looked at the wounded shoulder of Robbie, and had come to his own conclusion that that was how he received the infection.

The cleaver was held tightly. He ran at Robbie and took a swipe at the thing and caught its face. Jack felt his heart beating out of control, like it was going at the speed of a drumbeat from a frantic dance tune. He raised the cleaver once again and struck it across the face again, the thing was unfazed from the slice to its cheek. It was five yards away and Jack had promised himself that if the next swipe failed, then he would lock himself into the house. Why ain't you going down?

What was going on? He was supposed to be a poorly paid office worker in Glasgow City Centre, and now here he was, aiming a cleaver at an infected being who would gladly rip him to pieces with its own teeth!

He didn't have time to dwell on the surrealism that was unfolding, he knew that a lack of focus could cost him his life.

He then remembered how he and Robbie had taken care of the things in the city centre. He released one more strike that penetrated the front of the cranium. Jack let go of the embedded cleaver and took a defensive jump back. It stopped walking and then the thing overdramatically fell to its knees, like Dafoe in Platoon but without the outstretched arms, and collapsed face down two feet away from Jack's shoes. The dark blood oozed slowly out of the wound like thick oil.

He moved his shoes out of the way before it reached them. Thank fuck for that. He removed the cleaver and took a look at the passenger window and sighed; it desperately needed a clean. He went inside to find some cleaning utensils, but first, he needed to sit down before he passed out. He was still feeling fragile from his alcoholic indulgence over the weekend, and this strange pandemic wasn't helping matters as far as his nerves were concerned. He thought about Robbie's family and felt the suffocation of sadness, but appeased himself when he reminded himself that he was already dead before he hacked him to death.
Chapter Nineteen

Their journey was wordless as they left the town of Stafford; there was a cloud of nervousness above them, as they didn't know what would greet them as they headed towards Cannock Chase. They didn't want to take the scenic route to get to the town of Rugeley, but they knew that there was a petrol station not so far away and Little Haywood was also a destination that Pickle wanted to stop at.

They had also agreed that getting food in a populated area could be counterproductive because of the amount of things that could be strolling about, and also there was more of a chance that the kiosks had been already looted in the more populated areas.

The van pulled up at the station. Apart from a blue abandoned Mazda snoozing on the forecourt, the area was barren. Jamie Thomson pulled up the parking brake and looked around; he then heard banging to the back of him, the prisoners were hinting to be let out and he assumed the hammering mainly came from Pickle.

Jamie jumped out of the van and opened up the back. All four prisoners jumped out and Laz headed towards the kiosk, followed by Pickle and Grass. As the three inmates began to loot the kiosk with no hesitation, Jamie asked Grass to find the authorisation switch in the kiosk, and once he flicked the switch, Jamie tried to top up the van with more fuel. It had only been running for a minute before the fuel began to spill out. The tank was already full.

Janine cocked her head out of the passenger window. "I thought you had a full tank, and jerry cans?"

"We have," Jamie called back. "Just topping up, just dunno when the power will go down."

KP walked to the passenger side and gave Janine a smile. She smiled back and said, "I know your face, but I don't think I ever worked on your wing."

"Oh, I certainly know you." KP grinned. "You're the prison pin-up."

Janine assumed that this was supposed to be a compliment, but with most of the prisoners being incarcerated for so long, it was understandable that their chatting-up techniques had deteriorated over the years, due to lack of practice.

"Really?" Janine sounded unimpressed. "I'm about fourteen pounds overweight with a fat rear, and I'm the pin up?"

She used her fingers to comb back her short blonde hair over her ears; her body language made KP aware that although his patter was substandard, she seemed flattered by the male attention.

Two minutes later, the inmates came back from the kiosk with bags of food, pre-packed sandwiches, crisps and chocolate.

"Not the healthiest o' food," Pickle admitted. "But it's food all the same. Once we get to ma place, we can stop off at the supermarket and get some real stuff."

"Thanks for the help, KP!" Laz spoke with sarcasm.

KP held up his hand apologetically.

"There's plenty more water in there if yer no' too busy," Pickle moaned as he struggled with the four bags of food, two bags in each hand.

"I'm on it," KP said, and blew Pickle a kiss.

KP jogged towards the kiosk and was followed in by Jamie; they grabbed carrier bags and put the two litre bottles of water in them. They had managed to get three in each bag, which meant they were now leaving the establishment with twelve bottles—twenty-four litres of water. They placed the water in the back where Pickle seemed to be the organised one, by using three of the seven cells of the van as a store cupboard for the food.

"Need water?" KP asked Pickle.

Pickle nodded. "Got another cell that I could fill. Get plenty o' water and juice, even cans."

"What about tea and coffee?" Jamie queried, but nobody had time to answer him.

"Guys!" Janine called out from the van. "I think it's time to go."

Jamie, Laz and Grass turned to their right to look at Janine peering her head out of the passenger window. Pickle looked out also and saw Janine pointing towards the farmers field, next to the garage.

There were seven of them; all stumbling around as if they had just escaped from a psychiatric ward. They were spread out; the two at the front were reasonably close at about fifty yards away, and the others were further behind. The furthest away was about two hundred yards away. This was the group's first experience with the beings.

"Where did they come from?" Jamie asked.

"Must be the wee village about half a mile away from here," Pickle responded.

"Better get outta here," Jamie spoke, and began clapping his hands to hurry everybody up, forgetting he wasn't in the prison anymore.

KP tittered, "No way, this is an opportunity not to be missed."

Pickle agreed and patted Jamie on the chest. "This is legal killing; us inmates have got some tension to get rid off. Remember what the radio said, KP. Damage the brain."

Jamie shook his head as the two men began to trot towards the field; Jamie looked at Grass, who cowered and went back into the van. Jamie knew that Grass would probably come unstuck against one of those things one on one, and although it may have looked cowardly, he picked the correct option in retreating to the van. Laz was the same; he was middle-aged and shook his head in exasperation at the two fools who were treating it like a big joke.

"It's ridiculous, if you ask me," Laz blabbed to Jamie, he looked about sixty probably due to his excessive drug taking on the wings, but Jamie was sure he was only in his forties. "All they're gonna do is get exhausted and possibly get blood over the only set of clothes they've got. Fuckin' idiots. What happens if one of them gets bitten? We'd have to leave them. We heard about this virus on the radio and TV in our cells before you let us out."

Jamie and Laz couldn't do anything now, but to watch as the two inmates let loose their fury and frustration on the first two beings. It was a fair distance away, and Jamie, although keeping his eyes on the 'fight,' walked around to see Janine.

"Don't ask," Jamie said before Janine had the chance to demand what on earth the muttonheads were up to.

Janine looked tetchy as the inmates struck the lifeless figures; the five others that sauntered behind them had managed to find an extra release of energy, and were gaining on them. Pickle and KP were now seen stamping on the head of one of them. As the other struggled to get to its feet, Pickle booted it in the face and stamped on its head three times. Noticing that the other five were half-galloping their way towards potential food, the prisoners retreated, which forced Jamie and Janine to breathe a sigh of relief as Pickle and KP began to run back towards the van.

Pickle looked out of breath when he returned, and spoke between breathing once he got back to the van. "T'was harder than I thought. We're gonna definitely need those guns," he laughed, almost out of breath, then pointed to Jamie. "Little Haywood first, then Rugeley."

"What's in Rugeley again?"

"The highest point, and possibly the safest place to go."

"If you mean Stile Cop, it's not technically in Rugeley."

"Just go," Pickle half-laughed, who was in no mood for a geography lesson, and got into the front of the van. Jamie and Janine looked at one another, wondering what he was doing. "We may be out in the open at Stile Cop, but we'd be out o' the way o' the carnage and it'd be easier for us to escape with a truck and the open roads in the countryside."

"Err," Jamie began, "are you sitting in the front with us?"

"Well, I need to show yer where to go, don't I?" Pickle jokingly protested.

KP arrived a second later. Also out of breath, and waved his hand in defeat. "Let's go." He took a look over at the abandoned Mazda and decided against it; it was tempting, but being in a secure van was probably the safest way to travel at the moment, even though he wasn't driving it.

He jumped into the back, and Janine got out to shut the back of the door. Jamie looked behind to see that the bodies of the dead were fifty yards away.

"Wait a second." Pickle raised his hand, and Jamie, although he had taken off the parking brake, kept the van stationary using clutch control. The five remaining creatures shambled onto the forecourt, behind the van, and could be seen in the side mirror.

As soon as Janine returned to the van, Pickle ordered, "Slip it into reverse, and hit the gas hard."

Jamie did what he was told and hit the gas pedal, feeling the thuds hitting the back of the van.

"Ooh, that's gotta hurt," Pickle cackled, and clapped his hands in delight.

Jamie wasn't moved by Pickle's little plan, but was surprised to see Janine smiling to herself—she obviously found the incident funny.

Jamie was hoping that Pickle was going to be a bit more responsible once they were all carrying guns. The last thing they needed was a psycho with a gun and began using these things as some sort of duck shoot.

For the first time, Jamie began to have doubts about picking up the inmates. He hoped that he would be proved wrong.

Jamie looked over to Pickle, who gave the officer a cheeky wink.

The officer drove the van out of the forecourt and took a look at Janine, who gazed at him with a smile so small and thin, it looked like a stitch sitting under her nose. Her eyes looked glassy and her face was soaked in concern for the future. Jamie could understand how she felt. The inmates seemed pleased just to be free, and the whole enormity of what was happening to the country hadn't hit them yet, especially KP and Pickle.

Jamie blew air out of his mouth and gazed at the road ahead, wondering where it was going to take them. The future didn't look bright, but for now, he was still alive, and had to be thankful for that.
Chapter Twenty

According to her watch, it had been twenty minutes since the incident at the cemetery, and Karen Bradley had now finally calmed down. Her heart had stopped jabbing the inside of her chest, her breathing was now similar to a normal human being, rather than a person who sounded like their face had been temporarily covered with a polythene bag. Her perspiring had subsided, as before, her forehead was reminiscent of a dripping shower-head that hadn't been turned off properly.

She looked at her undecorated fingers and thought of Gary. When he had proposed he gave her a ring, but she always refused to wear it for work, as she was paranoid in case she lost it. It was still in her dresser drawer, but she was never going to get it back now. She had stopped walking for the last ten minutes, and as soon as she sat down, a heavy duvet of tiredness had covered her, and despite the horrendous situation the country was in, her body was aching for sleep.

Her head fell forwards an inch, and she bolted up as her sleep deprivation gave her a fright. She rubbed her hands over her face and playfully slapped herself. Her nightshift at the hospital was catching up with her, and now the adrenaline was wearing off and she was finding it difficult to keep her eyes open. She looked at her watch and knew that normally she would have been in bed for at least an hour by now, after a ten-minute foot massage from Gary.

*

She shot up, and her body was in a right angle shape and her back was now straight with tension. Karen placed the palm of her hands on the grass to compose herself and took a look at the time, she had been out for an hour.

She couldn't believe it.

She couldn't believe how stupid she had been.

It was an hour her body needed, but she was exposed out in the woods, and the cemetery incident happened only five hundred yards away. There was no guarantee that those things wouldn't follow her into the woods.

She brushed the grass and twigs out of her dark brown shoulder-length hair, and mustered up the energy to get to her feet. As soon as she did this, she heard a crack, and wasn't sure if it was her knee or a twig being stepped on in the distance—she was hoping it was her knee.

She heard another crack that confirmed that her knee wasn't the original culprit. And although she was certain she could outrun one of those things, now her body was refreshed a little, she still shook with trepidation.

It came from her right, deeper into the woods. She glared at the full bloomed, condensed, suffocating trees, and could see nothing but outstretched branches. She took a paranoid look around her, before glaring back in the same direction, in case she was surprised by one of them from behind. The more she stared, the more she wanted something to be there, so at least then she would know which way to run. It was the waiting that was killing her.

She looked around to see if there was anything she could use for a weapon; she moved five yards to her left and found a branch the same weight and length as a club.

She ripped off the smaller branches that were attached to the broken branch and kept it in her right hand. Now that the smaller twigs had been removed, it now resembled something that could damage an individual, if need be.

She took a practise swing as if she was playing softball, and was appeased that it wasn't too heavy to use if the moment of desperation arrived. She continued to gander into the crowded wood and thought that she saw a flash of a garment. Whoever was in there, they were wearing a red top. She was seriously thinking about running, but needed to see for definite that it was one of those things first.

Although she appreciated that it was a wacky thing she was executing, her mind was focused on following the figure that seemed to be twenty yards in front of her. Now she was walking deeper into the woods, and even though her own walk created the sound of rustling and the snapping of defunct twigs beneath her feet, she continued to pursue the figure that looked to be on its own.

The figure had stopped moving and as she crept closer, she was appreciative that her breathing was becoming less clamorous as the agitation intensified within her.

She wasn't certain that whatever she could see, had not seen her. As she was now only ten yards away from the motionless figure that remained on its feet, she dropped gently to her knees to get a better look, and grabbed the thick branch tightly, now with both hands wrapped around it. She waited for it to make a move. Despite only being ten yards away, the condensed area still hid most of the figure and the only thing she could make out was that it was wearing a red top and combat trousers. She was beginning to feel pain in her left calf and moved off her knees to a squatting position, which created a light rustle.

"Who's there?" a male voice quizzed in a threatening whisper.

Her eyes widened once the person spoke. It was human, a male human. She wasn't on her own. He asked the question again.

Karen stood to her feet. "Hello," came her short salutation.

His hands grabbed some of the branches that were disguising the female he could only half-see, and once he released the last branch, he walked into a spatial part of the woods where she was now standing. He was tall, had blonde, short hair, had a prominent chin and was carrying a sports bag on his back.

"Thank God." He placed the palm of his hand on his chest. "I thought I was all alone. My name is Oliver. Oliver Bellshaw."

Karen lowered the club, and never realised it was possible to release a half-laugh and a half-cry simultaneously, but she somehow managed it, and the relief she felt was immense.

"Karen," she began and held out her hand. "Karen Bradley."

As soon as she shook his hand, Karen sat down on the grass and put her head in her hands, she waved her dukes at Oliver apologetically. "I'm sorry, I'm just off nightshift and I'm knackered."

"Ah, I noticed the uniform. How did you get here?"

Oliver decided to sit next to Karen, and let out a lengthy sigh.

"It's crazy what's happening," Karen said, oblivious that she had just ignored Oliver's question. The tiredness was mashing with her head.

Oliver nodded. "I woke up and went down to my local shop for a newspaper. Got attacked on the way there by two drunks ... at least at first I thought they were drunks. I ran off, but they followed me back home. I tried to call the police, couldn't get an answer. Then I made myself a cup of tea to calm myself down and I put the TV on. The only channel I could get was the foreign channels. I couldn't believe what was happening. Then I left again to see if my mother was okay, this time in my car, but I got stuck in a ditch."

Karen felt her nose all blocked up and unashamedly turned away from Oliver and emptied each individual nostril, by blowing out and pressing the other with her thumb. "What about your family?"

Unbothered by Karen's action, Oliver answered her question. "Well, I don't have kids, if that's what you mean. Me and the wife tried for years, but it never happened. Should be thankful now, I suppose. I only have my mum left."

She wiped her nose on her forearm once. She never made eye-contact when she asked him the next question, as if she wasn't really that interested. "Where's your wife?"

Oliver shrugged his shoulders. "We separated two years ago; I tried to ring her, but she has a new guy now. I suppose she's not my problem anymore, and I'm not hers either. She never tried to call me."

"Maybe there was a good reason for that." Karen pulled an awkward face once she said what she had said; it wasn't something that she could take back. She probably thought that Oliver had thought about this as well, but to hear from someone else that maybe your wife was dead, probably wasn't the easiest thing to hear.

Clearly upset by Karen's remark, Oliver cleared his throat and asked with a shudder in his voice. "What about you?"

"I had a boyfriend." Karen felt a dull ache in her stomach; a mixture of emotions and the beating she had received from her carjacking experience was the cause of this. She knew that she was seconds away from bursting into tears. "He turned into one of them."

"Bitten?"

Karen shook her head and screwed her face, creating wrinkles. "I don't know. I didn't see a bite. I think he was scratched, and then went to bed unaware he was infected."

Oliver shuffled his backside to get comfortable. "According to the TV, before I lost the picture, there has been some kind of rabies outbreak in the north. It seems that they're passing on the virus through the mouth."

Karen placed her hand over her mouth, and gulped to prevent her sobbing, forcing some contents to escape from her nose. She sniffed hard immediately, trying to hide her embarrassment and said, "I just can't believe it."

"They reckon if one of them bites you, you're screwed. If you get ambushed by a gang of them, then prepare for a fate worse than death. Being eaten alive isn't my way of going, I can tell you that. Crazy isn't it?"

"What is?" Karen quizzed.

"Our family members, whether it's cousins, nieces, nephews ... are either dead, or are somewhere frightened to death, and for some reason I don't feel anything, not yet."

"You're probably numb, it's shock. I've had a few breakdowns already, I can tell you."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly sad, but don't feel the urge to cry yet."

"Probably the best way to be."

Karen yawned and Oliver noticed a little white gunk at the end of her lips; she looked dehydrated. He took off his bag and ruffled in it, then pulled out a litre of water and handed it to her.

"You sure?"

Oliver smirked. "Drink the lot, I've got more in here."

He also took out a chocolate bar and handed it to Karen, and then took out a can of coke for himself. He cracked the can open, and swigged it furiously, two drops of coke ran down each corner of his mouth. He scrunched the can and let out a huge belch, which made Karen smile, and he tossed the crushed can into the bushes.

"So what now?" he picked Karen's brains.

She shrugged her shoulders.

He added, "It's gonna be dark in ten hours, and we can't stay here permanently."

"What do you suggest?"

"Well, I was gonna try and walk along the main country road to that little village, Hazelslade. See if any kind people would put me up. I suppose putting up a camp at Stile Cop would be the safest bet, depends if the place is swarming with the Snatchers, I suppose."

"Snatchers?"

"Short for Bodysnatchers." Oliver smiled. "My little nickname for them—okay, so I heard it on the radio," he confessed. He looked at Karen, as she yawned once more. She looked exhausted.

"Look," Oliver began. "Let me make a suggestion. I know you hardly know me, but you look shattered. Why don't you get an hour, I was planning on resting myself anyhow."

Oliver was expecting Karen to spew out excuses that she didn't need any more sleep, and was surprised to see her nod in agreement. "I think we're pretty safe in here...for now."

In such a short space of time, she trusted him. This flattered him. He smiled at her and took a short handled axe and a jumper out of his bag. He suggested that she could use the jumper as a cushion if she wanted.

Overwhelmed by such a small gesture, she accepted his offer, pecked the kind man on the cheek, and was asleep within the minute.
Chapter Twenty One

After taking in valuable seconds of sunlight onto his face, David Pointer side-stepped his way across the Baird's roof as all four family members lay dead in their bed beneath him. He was getting nearer to his house and was now on his neighbour's roof that belonged to the New York-stranded Noble family. He scanned the area below him with his scared eyes, and saw that his own street was becoming busier with the things.

He stood and eyeballed intently, trying to count the beasts using his index finger. In his street alone, he counted twenty-three. He felt that in a week, if no help was provided, he and his family were going to have to spend their days in the attic. It was surely only a matter of time before the creatures forced their way into his house. His front door wasn't very strong and could be kicked in by a ten-year-old; they never felt the urge to replace it, as the crime in the town was non-existent, apart from the odd drunken misdemeanour. He lived in a great community where everyone knew each other, and only one household in his street had a burglar alarm, proving how crime-free the place was.

He heard a groan coming from underneath him, and turned to see one of the creatures shuffling about in the Noble's back garden.

Shit! The gate at the front that leads to an alleyway into the back garden must have been opened. Which meant, if one of them could get in there, the back garden could be eventually entertaining the whole street.

His left foot slipped on one of the tiles and it brought back memories of David telling his neighbour that his roof was a disgrace, and that he should get it re-roofed in the next five years.

His neighbour claimed that they couldn't afford the ten grand that it cost, and that David should rightly mind his own fucking business. Even though it was none of his business, David was anxious for them to get it done, because it was making his house looked untidy, and it was the only house of the block of eight that hadn't been re-tiled in the last ten years. From the outside it looked dirty and grimy, and it certainly felt like that under his feet. He hadn't noticed it before, as previously he walked across the spine of the roof, but now he was in the middle of it, desperate to get back to his family.

Thinking that the spine method was more than likely the safest way to get back to his own skylight, he headed upwards. A tile from underneath his left foot fell loose, causing him to fall flat on his stomach, and felt a dull sensation in his middle where he landed on the hammer that was tucked into his belt.

He could feel his body slowly sliding downwards, only about two inches per second, but it was enough to send panic through his body. His desperate hands tried to grab onto something that would stop his momentum, but all that happened was that he grabbed a tile that would immediately come away. His slow momentum was held up by the weak guttering where his two feet were pressed up against. He was unsure how to get out of the situation, and frantically looked behind him to see where the thing was.

He couldn't see where it was, so he accepted that it was probably underneath him by the house, waiting for his fall, and the falling tile that slid off and shattered on the concrete floor was to blame for attracting the thing.

He looked down to his left and saw the start of the house drainpipe, and thought that if he could somehow slide to the side and fall down to the drainpipe, he could hold on and swing himself back into his own garden. Then he could climb up his own drainpipe, providing he hadn't broken his leg, and head upwards onto his own roof, where the climb to the skylight should be a little less troublesome. Trying to climb upwards, back towards the spine of the roof was suicidal and not an option.

He wasn't thinking about the knife that was sitting in the guttering, he had completely forgot about that incident. The knife sat in the guttering only inches away from his feet, but he didn't even notice it.

Without an ounce of dawdling, he released his grip and allowed his body to slip, and threw his feet over the guttering to continue the slide and wrapped his arms around the drainpipe. It was easier than he had envisaged.

He could see beneath him, and his assumptions from before were correct, the ex-human being was underneath him. It was waiting on his fall, impatiently, and made an awful growling noise. The thing looked like it used to be an elderly gentleman. If it was a resident from his own street, he didn't recognise it.

David slid further down the drainpipe and looked to his left, seeing that his garden was only feet away. If he timed his jump wrong, there was a large chance that he could make contact with the six-foot wooden fence, which at best would leave him with broken ribs and he would fall back into his own garden. And at worst, he could be left with broken ribs and into the garden where his predator stood.

As he slid further down the pipe, the desperate groans became more audible. David was now eight feet from the ground, and this was the moment he was going to use his feet to spring off the wall and land very uncomfortably on his grass lawn.

He feared that a damaged shoulder was going to be inevitable, but he preferred this option rather than facing what was waiting underneath him.

He leaned back, whilst clinging onto the pipe with desperate hands, and before he had the chance to push himself off over into his own garden, he could hear and feel the pipe giving way to his two hundred pound frame. It was now or never, but his reluctance to jump became his downfall, as the pipe moved further away from the house. A bracket that was drilled into the wall had come away, and David Pointer jumped backwards, facing the house, and landed on top of the thing that was waiting for him.

He quickly clambered to his feet, frightened that he was going to get bitten, and ran to the end of the Noble's garden like a frightened child.

The creature slowly got to its feet and staggered towards him. David looked at his fence, and thought that he could climb over it before the creature reached him, but something stopped him from doing this.

He felt that if he didn't dispose of this thing now, it would see him escaping and climbing to his roof. Meaning, that this almost unstoppable being would relentlessly try and get into his garden and this would also attract the attention of others. He needed to do this for the safety of Davina and Isobel.

He pulled out the hammer from his belt and saw the thing snarl like some prehistoric creature. He remembered what he saw on TV. Aim for the head. David was unsure whether one hammer blow would be enough, but with both hands he rained the first blow as it came into striking range. The thing fell to the floor, and David ran over to the other side of the garden, scared witless he was going to get grabbed or feel the awful teeth sinking into his warm flesh.

He went over and closed the wooden gate that led to the front of the house, in case others tried to get in. It slowly got to his feet, and sped towards him. The quickness of the thing took him by surprise the second time round; he nearly dropped the hammer but he autonomously rained another blow, this time catching the side of its head. It was a weak effort compared to the first one, but David put that down to lack of preparation because of the scare he received as the beast galloped towards him.

The thing wasn't that quick, it went after him about the speed of a gentle jog, but because initially the being looked docile and clumsy, the unexpected speed of its attack scared the shit out of him.

He ran to the other end of the garden once more; he saw a curtain twitch five-doors down, telling him that his family wasn't the only one trying to survive. He envisaged the whole street peering out towards the back, egging him on, urging him to kill at least one of those fuckers! He hardly felt like Crowe in Gladiator, neither did the back garden feel like the Coliseum, but knowing he was being watched spurred him on.

It trundled towards him, the same way a man would after consuming a bottle of vodka, and David's third and final blow smashed through the front skull of the creature; dark liquid spat out and went over his shoulder, thankfully missing his face altogether.

Its eyes rolled. The hammer was still embedded into the top of the skull as the thing fell to its side and collapsed onto the grass. David didn't have time to wallow in his victorious battle, or bow before his audience, as the wooden gate that he had just shut was being rattled.

There was more trying to get in from the street!

Many more!

Taking the hammer, he climbed the fence, and swung his body over to his own back garden and landed on his feet. He looked to his own gate, satisfied that it was bolted, and ran towards the back of his house, and although out of breath, he began to climb his own drainpipe, hoping that this one would hold out. It did.

Many tiles were lost as he climbed his way to his skylight, and before he knocked on the glass for his wife to let him in, he took a look over his right shoulder to the Noble's back garden. Fuck! They're in!

He shook his head with despair, and cursed himself for being so moronic, for being so nosey and for trying to be a damn hero! He had now put his family in danger, something a father should never do. He wondered even more now, if staying in his house was the right thing to do as he glared hypnotically at the garden.

"There's fucking loads of 'em," he muttered under his breath.

At least twenty of them roamed around, but they were still pouring into the back garden via the forced opened gate from the street. It was like a garden party for the dead, but where was the buffet? Some of them looked up at David and strolled towards the six-foot wooden obstacle that prevented them from getting to the house from the back.

David thought that the fence didn't matter, all they needed to do was go around the front and try and get in through the living room window. It was blocked off, but it hadn't been tested yet.

Surely it was only a matter of time before they forced their way in.
Chapter Twenty Two

Jack Slade finished slurping his tepid coffee and decided to go to the toilet before embarking on his journey south. After he had finished, he picked his landline phone up, and dialled Kerry's house number, as he didn't know her mobile number off the top of his head—that information was in his smashed phone on Argyle Street. It rung out, and after four rings, Jack Slade didn't know if calling Kerry would be a counterproductive action, but he needed to tell her that he was coming. There was no way he was going to stay in Glasgow; he wanted to be with his son, whatever it took.

Inside his head, a voice was telling him: If they live in a remote or sufficiently defensible area, they may be safer than you are. Don't get yourself killed by rushing to them assuming they need your help.

Jack knew that the greater distance between him and his son, the more difficult it would be to reach him, and there could be a good chance that he wouldn't be there when he arrived.

He thought about the loudness of her landline phone and if it would attract any of the things if they happened to be lurking outside while Kerry and his son, Thomas, was hiding away somewhere.

He contemplated hanging up, but then the phone was picked up.

Kerry whispered hello down the phone.

"It's me," Jack said.

"What are you doing? Why didn't you ring me on my mobile, e-mail me or chat to me on the network."

"My mobile's fucked, and I wanted to hear your voice, I wanted to hear Thomas' voice."

"Well, don't call again."

"What have you told him?"

"I had to tell him the truth; he saw someone get attacked in my street, and asked me what was going on. But I still don't think he really understands. He's only six. He was hysterical for ages, but he's okay now. I'll put him on."

There was a silence on the other end of the phone, and a minute later Jack heard the familiar voice of his six-year-old son.

"Hi, daddy."

As soon as those two words were spoken, Jack Slade's lower lip trembled with emotion. He sniffed in and cleared his throat. He didn't want his voice to be coated with fright; he already had a six-year-old boy who was probably scared to death at what was happening, and didn't want to concern him any further.

"Hi, son, what's happening?"

"Me and mummy are playing upstairs."

"Oh, that sounds good."

There was a long pause and his son spoke once more. "Daddy?"

"Yes, son, what is it?"

"There're monsters outside."

Jack could hear the emotion in his son's voice and tried to reassure his son that things were going to be okay, but Kerry had returned back onto the phone.

She snapped, "He's upset, don't call again, I'm unplugging the phone now. Stay safe, Jack."

"Kerry, I'm coming down."

She never heard the last sentence as she hung up the phone. Jack could understand why. Her priority was to keep her son safe, and he was the only thing that she was concerned about.

Jack didn't know the real situation that was occurring where Kerry was staying. For all he knew, there could have been dozens of them banging on Kerry's window, aching to get in, but he wasn't sure. Despite Kerry threatening to unplug the phone anyway, he promised himself that he wouldn't try and call again, no matter how much he wanted to hear his son's voice. If his phone hadn't have smashed in the city centre when he was with Robbie, he could have pre-warned her that he was coming down by text.

Jack carefully opened his front door and could see at least seven of the things moping around the street, and he saw the body of Robbie lying in front of him as he got into his car. He threw his bag in the back and started the engine and reversed quickly out of his drive. He slipped the car into first and stamped his foot down on the accelerator, and he swerved to his left to avoid hitting two of the beings that were in the middle of the street. He turned left at the roundabout and headed for the shopping mall, which also had a petrol station.

He finally pulled up at the petrol station, hoping that not all the pumps had been drained and that the electricity was still working, as that was what controlled the pumps.

Jack was aware that most cities had standby diesel generators that automatically kicked in if the power grid stopped performing, but he had no intention of staying in a city like Glasgow; he wanted to go back to his hometown. Would there be any electricity there?

Jack knew that if there was nobody to check the electricity transmissions, and nobody left to use the electricity in the lines and the nuclear plants kept churning out power, the lines would overload and the grid would die. So even if the pumps were full, without electricity they were useless, and this was the reason why Jack wanted to get some jerry cans.

The forecourt was empty as he pulled up; he tried the opened door of the kiosk and went behind the counter to flick the authorisation switch, then went back out and filled his car. He looked around at the huge mall car park to find that there were a handful of cars there, probably workers who had decided it was too dangerous to go back home. Although he felt for the people that may be inside, his main goal was to stay alive for his son, and after he filled up, he headed towards the kiosk for the second time.

He headed towards the pre-packed sandwiches and ate two. One was a chicken mayo, the white bread seemed a little stale, and the other was a BLT. He wasn't hungry, but he didn't know when he would have the chance to stop and have something further to eat.

He took a small carton of milk from the fridge and washed the stubborn bread down with the white stuff. He drained three quarters of the milk and dropped it to the floor like a thug.

He walked around the small area, and had a look round to see if there was anything that could come in handy. He couldn't see any jerry cans on display, and thought they would have been perfect to top up with petrol. He was disturbed by a thud coming from the door that read: Private - Staff Only.

He heard the thud again and stepped towards it. It was a wooden door, but had a rectangle window about a foot long in the middle of it. He tried the door but it was locked. He peered into the window but he couldn't see anything, it was too dark. So he stepped closer, and gulped hard as his curiosity overcame his cowardice. His face pressed up against the glass, but like before, the darkness tried to persuade him that there was nothing to see.

He took a step backwards away from the door and saw to his right a light switch. Convinced that the switch was for the room he couldn't see in, he reached for it and flicked it.

The bright light rapidly filled and drenched the room with its yellow glow, and Jack could see one of the things on its knees eating what was left of a human. The thing looked up at the bulb and covered its eyes and made an awful cry; it seemed to despise the light, like a human would if they were drenched in darkness for a while.

Jack pressed his face against the glass and could see that the thing on its knees was wearing a uniform, probably someone who worked in the forecourt. It was unaware of Jack's presence, and continued to feast. All Jack could see was a huge dark pool on the floor, entrails strewn around like spaghetti, the legs were intact and hadn't been touched, but the head lay separate in the corner of the room. A uniform of some sort was also seen on what was left of the person that had been devoured. Jack thought that it might have been a work colleague.

Jack turned the light off, leaving the creature to eat his meal in peace. He had seen enough and was proud of himself that he never threw up his pre-packed sandwiches, although his stomach was performing cartwheels.

He couldn't understand how the two individuals were in that situation; the only conclusion he could fathom, was that the two workers were working nightshift and a creature attacked one of the workers. Maybe they then hid in the staff room, not knowing that one was infected.

With his cleaver in hand, he decided to leave the kiosk and headed back outside. He looked out to the car park once more and could see two of the things that weren't there previously; they were about five hundred yards away. He saw the revolving doors to the mall, and decided to check the place out.

The place had only been built five years ago, and was just what the community needed—not just for the shops, but for the jobs it created as well. It had over eighty shops and restaurants and attracted people from afar to visit the place.

He was going to need more clothes eventually as the weeks went by, and thought of a few stores that he could walk into and take a bag full of jeans, shirts and underwear to stick into the back of the car. The extra clothes didn't cross his mind back home, it didn't seem important, but he was here now, and if the place was empty then he was going to take the opportunity.

It was an idea that was quickly quashed as he trotted towards one of the entrances of the mall. There were three entrances in all, and his heart galloped as he saw a grisly sight.

The mall was packed; there were hundreds of the things moping around inside and some noticed Jack, standing, watching aghast. Some of them stumbled towards the glass and clawed at the windows, sometimes vomiting dark blood onto the pane. Also, the revolving doors, thankfully, appeared locked, and some of them were trying to get out via the revolving doors, but they weren't budging. It was like a prison for the dead.

Like the kiosk incident, Jack tried to guess what had happened in there. He assumed that either security had locked the place down to contain the incident, or it had been locked down by accident by the things entering the security office.

The place closed at 7pm, which was roughly around the time the breakout was being broadcasted on the Saturday, and Jack's theory was that the place, under instruction, had been locked down to stop other potential attackers from coming in. But unbeknown to them, a massacre was taking place on their own shop floor as people inside already had the virus, and may have already began attacking unsuspected shoppers.

Jack thought that all it took was one shopper to be bitten or scratched and then to walk into the mall, be taken to a room by security, if they were not feeling well, and then for the thing to attack security and cause a biting epidemic to rapidly spread among the confused shoppers. According to the BBC, the bitten ones took anything between an hour or longer to change, depending on the severity of the bite, as the virus from the mouth of one of the creatures would infect the bloodstream.

Jack was sure that it was all guesswork. No one knew a damn thing! Each theory contradicted another and he certainly didn't believe it was God's work. Had the big man finally tired of our selfish and greedy ways?

He shook his head like a parent's disapproval of a naughty child. The clothes would have to wait. He was then surprised to hear a female voice coming from above him.

He looked up to see two young girls, no older than twenty, looking out of one of the windows, about four floors up. There was a series of windows across the building quite high up, and Jack guessed that they were staff rooms, canteens and storage rooms.

"I can't stop," Jack informed the two frightened girls, apologetically.

"Please!" the blonde girl begged. "A woman collapsed, then got up and started attacking people. I only live up the road; just take me to see my parents. They're okay, I've been speaking to them by phone."

"I can't get up!" Jack protested. "There're hundreds of them inside, it's impossible."

She placed her hand over her mouth and began to cry. She looked behind her to the room she was in, and announced to someone, "He said there're hundreds of them downstairs."

The other girl also broke down and pleaded to Jack to help her. He knew why they were still there. They couldn't possibly escape by jumping, as the height from the window wouldn't necessarily kill them, but it could at least sprain an ankle or break a leg. And an individual with a broken leg would be an eventual limping meal for the determined man-eaters.

"Look." Jack was being suffocated by emotional blackmail, but his son was his top priority. "Just sit tight, and someone will come and rescue you."

"Who?"

"I'm sorry. I've gotta go."

Jack Slade jogged away from the complex and tried to hum in his head to drown out the desperate pleading and screams that were coming from the window. He turned around to see another three people hanging out of the window. The further he went away from them, the more the begging turned to vociferous verbal slandering. It went from: Please help us! We're begging you! to You fucking pig! You're going to hell for this!

Jack shook his head. There seemed to be dozens of people trapped, but he couldn't help them. He took a look behind him to see the two beings in the car park following him.

He never panicked, as they were too far away. He took hold of the cleaver and thought of striking them for a second, but changed his mind.

They were now ten yards away and he quickly opened his driver's side, threw the cleaver onto the passenger seat and drove out of the forecourt. One of them slapped the rear of his car as he sped off, and that was the nearest they got.

He drove the car out of the car park, and once he got on the main barren road, he pulled up at a bus stop once he was clear of danger and took another look behind him and then broke down.

Once he got himself together, he reprimanded himself for being so weak and shook his head at himself.

You shagwit, Slade!
Chapter Twenty Three

"Just stop here," came Pickle's instruction once they reached Little Haywood.

Jamie adhered to the inmate and pulled on the handbrake of the van. The street had only one of the things moping about, but the main road they had turned off to get into was swarming with at least thirty of them shuffling around not knowing where to go, and clumsily bumping into one another.

Pickle jumped out of his van, confident that they wouldn't drive off without him, as he had the guns, and kicked his own front door in. He called out to see if his cousin was in, but there was no answer back. The fact that the door was easily kicked in, suggested that the lack of barricading meant that his cousin who was staying there had fled to go elsewhere once the news filtered through. Most probably to his mum's, Pickle thought.

He ran upstairs and went into the main bedroom. His cupboard had been ransacked, making him aware that his cousin had hurriedly packed a bag before leaving.

He got to the bottom of the bed and squatted with his hands underneath it. He lifted the bed and forced it to stand upright against the wall. Certain that the bed wasn't about to topple over him, he pulled out a piece of cut carpet and easily lifted three of the floorboards, where a small, yet, heavy bag hid.

He pulled out the sports bag, and tossed it round his shoulder. The space in the floorboard area was almost empty, apart from one object. He pulled out his prized possession, a weapon he had only used for practice. It wasn't something that had been used against another human being, the handguns dealt with that.

He pulled out his Browning B725 sporting shotgun, and blew the little dust that sat on the black barrel. In the bag, over his shoulder, were Browning hi-powered semi automatic pistols, nine millimetres, with cartridges for his shotgun and eighteen magazines for the pistols, excluding the ones already in the guns. Pickle was now ready to leave. He heard the hooting of a horn coming from outside; it came from the van and he knew something wasn't quite right.

He looked out of his bedroom window and saw eight beings surrounding the van; there were more pouring into the street. The hooting of the horn didn't help matters, but Pickle was sure that Jamie only did it out of anguish.

Pickle quickly took off his prison jumper and T-shirt and picked out a plain black V-neck, he then doused himself with deodorant and ran down the stairs to the front door. He opened the door to be greeted by a street full of the things, at least thirty of them, and half of them scampered towards the front door, aching for a piece of his flesh. As he shut the door, they began to smack the palms of their hands against the glass. Pickle ran back upstairs into his bedroom. He opened his window and made a circular motion with his finger, ordering Jamie to turn the van around and back it up so he could jump onto the roof, as there was no way in hell he was going to get in it leaving through the front door.

Jamie knew exactly what Pickle meant, gave him the thumbs up and reversed the van around, crushing some of the hapless things underneath its seven and a half ton weight. None of them showed any facial expressions of pain, as their legs and chests were crushed. Those that had damaged limbs continued to move and dragged themselves towards the house. Pickle opened the window once the van gained nearer, and once it had reversed onto the front garden, he crouched onto the window ledge in preparation for his jump.

He was only going to have one chance at this, and knew if he messed it up, it could cost him his life. Holding his shotgun and with the bag around his shoulder, he jumped onto the roof of the van and was thankful he never slipped or rolled off onto the hard pavement. He banged the top of the cab to inform Jamie it was safe to go. Pickle lay on his front and held on in case there were any sudden movements or jerking.

He had a vision of the van jolting forward, and throwing him off into the crowd of the hungry scavengers. He knew that that kind of death had happened to many a people, but he couldn't think of a worse way to go than being eaten alive.

The van slowly drove off; Jamie, being aware that Pickle's position was rather dangerous, never slipped the van into anything higher than second. The things grabbed desperately at the van, the windows were clawed by the walking corpses, a wiper was almost ripped off as one desperately tried to climb onto the front.

The van shook from side to side as it slowly ran over some of the resolute barbarians. Bones continued to be crushed and on three occasions, heads popped like crushed grapes from the weight of the hefty vehicle's wheels, temporarily decorating the van's wheels with their mashed infected brains.

As soon as they exited the street onto the main road, which was now more congested than the street they had just left, Jamie increased the gas and put the gear into third to finally rid himself from the monsters. He frowned in his right wing mirror to see the last of them, slowly fading into the distance once they got onto the country road. They were now only a mile away from the town of Rugeley.

As they approached the Wolseley Arms public house, Pickle, who still clung onto the roof like Colt Seavers, banged on the roof of the van. The van turned right at the roundabout and pulled up on the country road.

Pleased that there wasn't a soul in sight and with the bag around his shoulder and the shotgun in his right hand, Pickle slid down the front of the van and jumped onto the road. He gave Jamie and Janine the thumbs up, and both officers exited the vehicle. The van was parked up in the pub's car park that was yards away from the River Trent.

"That was fucking mad!" Pickle exclaimed. His adrenaline was clear for all to see, as his body shook with excitement like a five-year-old child on Christmas day.

"There were loads of them." Janine shuddered. "Makes you wonder how places like London and Manchester are coping if that's what can happen to a little village."

"I'm sure the survival rate would be the same," Pickle expressed. "At least in the cities there're high up places, apartments and offices to hide in for a few days."

"Not much use if those things are already in your office or apartment," Jamie snickered falsely, the same way someone would politely laugh at a bad joke in order not to offend the storyteller.

Pickle went to the back of the van and opened up the vehicle; the three inmates spilled out of the back and groaned as they were introduced to sunlight once again.

"That was scary shit," Laz spoke, running his trembling fingers through his greasy grey hair. "Was that noise what I think it was?"

Pickle, Jamie and Janine all nodded simultaneously.

"Are you okay?" KP asked Pickle.

Pickle nodded and appeared a tad embarrassed with KP's concern, which baffled Janine.

KP sauntered over to the car park of the Wolseley Arms and stroked his short beard. He looked around at the pub and saw the sight of the River Trent that he hadn't seen in years. "Why don't we stay here for a night?"

"Why?" Pickle asked, and looked over at the pub. "So we can spend all night getting drunk?"

KP beamed. "And what's wrong with that? Besides, there should be plenty of food in there. I quite fancy a rib-eye steak myself. In the morning we can put whatever's left in the back of the van."

Jamie looked to Pickle. "He's got a point. We could stuff our faces for a night on good food, before we move on and have to eat what's in the back of the van."

Pickle stroked his chin, and a thin smile emerged on his face. "I think it's fair to say, I haven't had a decent meal in years." Pickle turned to Jamie and then said, "Yer do realise that four inmates who haven't had a proper drink in years and being allowed in a pub, isn't the greatest idea in the world? It's gonna be messy."

"That's all right," Jamie tittered. "We're all on the same side now, as long as they don't do anything stupid and attract unwanted attention. The pub looks solid enough, just make sure we lock up and we'll be fine."

Pickle took out his Browning shotgun. "Let me check the place out first."

"Erm ... and where're our guns?" KP joked.

Pickle patted his sports bag. "You'll get them as soon as I've taught yer how to shoot 'em."

"And when will that be?"

"After I've checked the place out. This is the plan: Jamie and Janine have been on nightshift, so we should let 'em sleep for a few hours. Then we do a bit o' shooting practice, I'll show yer how to load, reload and take yer pistol apart, as it needs to be cleaned. We won't shoot much, don't wanna waste the bullets or attract too much attention. Then we can lock the place up, eat and get drunk. Then we head to Stile Cop in the morning."

"I'll cook," KP chipped in.

Laz looked at Jamie. "KP worked in the prison kitchens; he's a great cook."

Jamie nodded his head. "I do know. I used to work there."

Janine, who was standing next to Jamie, said to Laz. "He doesn't say much," she spoke, referring to Grass, who was propped against the van, chewing on his fingernails.

"Nah," Laz responded. "He's a quiet one; he's just a boy really. Probably just frightened; we all are."

Pickle left the group to stretch their legs; he tried the main door of the pub and was pleased that forcing it open was unnecessary as it was already unlocked. He walked alone into the establishment and entered the lounge. It was an old-fashioned country pub that sat next to the bank of the river, and there was a fireplace at the end of the lounge, and all the seats and tables looked heavy and made from oak.

He looked into the barren bar area and was pleased to pick up a set of keys for the place as well as some menus. He put the shotgun down and looked through the menus. Everything that wasn't available in the prison was on the menu: Burgers, steaks, pizza, ribs, the more he read, the more he salivated and his stomach growled impatiently.

He carefully took the stairs and went to the first floor and checked the living arrangements. He checked the living room and bedrooms, and was satisfied—although a little baffled—that the owners had decided to leave once the crisis had been announced. There was no car in the car park to suggest that there was any sign of life inside, but he needed to be sure.

There was one more place to check.

The cellar.

Every pub had a cellar.

In the bar area there was a small wooden door; it was padlocked. Sure that the door led to the pub's cellar, Pickle placed his ear against it. He could hear faint groaning, and sighed as the moans told him that at least one of them was inside.

How did it get in there? Was it a worker?

He used the butt of the gun to break the lock, and after three attempts, it began to give way, but he felt the noise he was making probably enticed the thing to the door. He was correct, as the noise that he had made seemed so severe that he could hear thuds coming from behind the wooden door. He had attracted the attention of the creature and with no hesitation he opened the door, which revealed a former young girl dressed in waitress attire. It immediately raised its arms, reaching for Pickle; its face was grey, the eyes were lifeless and her mouth was almost purple. She looked more like a victim of domestic abuse more than anything else.

He responded by striking the thing hard in the face with the butt of the gun; it fell backward down the concrete ramp that was normally used to roll barrels of beer down. If it was steps, Pickle was pretty sure the thing wouldn't have been able to climb them to the door. It had struggled and crawled to get up, tumbling hard. He, at last, managed to find the light switch to the cellar that was situated outside to the left of him. The place lit up once he flicked it and it was like any normal cellar, apart from the body at the bottom of the ramp.

It had wine racks with numerous bottles, and barrels of beer situated in the corner. The body at the bottom began to flinch, and Pickle quickly trotted down and stood over the thing. It appeared that the frightened owners may have put the infected girl in there themselves, locked her in, and fled the establishment. He couldn't think of any other scenario that made sense how she got there in the first place.

Because the being was already in a precarious position and there was no danger to Pickle's life, he decided to save on a valuable cartridge. He turned the gun around and used the butt of the shotgun to hammer at the young girl's head that still lay on the floor.

He slammed the gun at the skull, and it eventually cracked like an Easter egg. A black substance oozed out of the top of the skull, and more followed as he delivered the final blow that revealed a black and diseased brain that half-slipped out like a stone from a ripped open peach. He felt queasy, but knew it had to be done.

He carefully placed his shotgun on the floor and dragged the body to the corner of the cellar; the smell from the body was foul, like a sewer full of dead fish. Pickle guessed that the body had already been technically dead for many hours, as only death could smell that bad.

He trotted back upstairs and wiped the butt of his pride and joy with a dusting cloth that sat on the bar. He walked through the lounge and stepped out into the glow of sunshine to greet his new friends.

"It's all clear."
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 thinking.

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 awkwardly, 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 into 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 to 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 both had a pee in one of the buckets whilst 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 whilst 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's 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, towards 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 towards 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 vehicle.

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 motor was unlocked; Davina opened it 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 thirty-five-year-old Sherree.

Sherree banged on the passenger window, but there were 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 almost like 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 they fought 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. 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. He was taken to hospital and managed a full recovery and was playing football again after three months.

Davina remembered the footballer in an interview, whilst he was in hospital, thanking God for his survival and had said that the episode had furthered his faith, if that was at all possible. Davina remembered David sitting and watching the news when it came on, shaking his head and saying angrily: "What a slap in the face that is for the medical team. If someone on the operating table dies, the surgeons get the blame. If the person on the operating table survives, the families thank God. What a peculiar world we live in."

Davina looked back as the car exited out of the street, and looked at the dead that sauntered around the streets, looking for more warm human flesh to devour, now that Sherree and her baby were no more.

Where was the husband? Work? Hiding? Dead?

Where's God now?

David had hit at least a dozen of the things as the family left the street in his Renault Clio, and turned onto Sandy Lane. David's third breakdown of the morning came as he drove, it was brief, but it was still a breakdown.
Chapter Twenty Six

The Vauxhall Meriva had been doing a hundred on its journey south. Jack Slade couldn't believe how empty the roads were. He had only passed three cars so far and put that down to the fact that people had either already got to their preferred destination, or they had decided that the safer option was to stay at home. He was expecting the motorway to be heaving, but it seemed that fear or maybe not knowing about what was happening was keeping the roads reasonably clear. He had seen a few cars on the forecourts of some garages he had passed, and seen a few vehicles going the other way, but other than that, nothing on his side of the motorway.

Why were some people heading north? Was it safer? Had they heard something?

There certainly wasn't any sign of the creatures making an appearance on the motorway itself, but Jack was sure that once the things decided that there was nothing left to eat in the towns and cities, that was when they would spill out into the countryside and motorways.

It was animal instinct.

If foxes found that there was nothing left to eat in the woods, they would risk themselves by trotting through the suburban streets in hope of a hearty meal. It was all about survival.

He had reached Blackpool and knew that in another two hours he would be in Rugeley. He took a glimpse at the fuel gauge and saw that it was a quarter full. He saw a sign coming up, stating that the next service station was ten miles away. His foot slammed the gas pedal down and pushed the car a further twenty. In a matter of minutes, the service station was clear up ahead and Jack slowed down as he came to the entrance.

Apart from two cars dosing idly, there was nothing else on the car park at the service station. Normally, he hated these places; he always found them too expensive.

He got out of the car and held the cleaver. The service station was like any other; it was like a mini shopping mall. It had a Burger King, a cafeteria, a Starbucks, a newsagents and an amusement arcade.

The garage was separate and situated behind the service station. Jack found the door to be open and walked slowly by all the shops and nervously looked in every one of them. Happy that the place was empty, he decided to use the toilet.

Once he came out of the toilet, he walked into the newsagents and picked up a couple of packets of Marlboro and a handful of lighters.

"Fuck it, I might be dead tomorrow. If the lung cancer doesn't eat me alive, they probably will."

He lit up a cigarette and had to sit down once he took his first drag. He hadn't touched a cigarette in five years, and this one was making him feel giddy, as if he had just stepped off the waltzers, but in a good, relaxed way. He only finished half of the cigarette before stamping it out onto the floor. It was a bad idea.

He walked into the Starbucks area and helped himself to a pre-packed sandwich and a caramel cake. He made himself a cappuccino and sat down with it at the end of the café, with a double dip chocolate muffin.

His cleaver sat on the table next to his free purchases. He knew he was wasting time relaxing, but he had to be focused, and driving that fast with no hazards to look out for, was exhausting for the just turned forty-year-old.

He looked at his watch, and informed himself that in two minutes he would move his derrière, top his car up, and get back on the road. He got out of his chair and helped himself to a bottle of water, and headed back towards the entrance. He stepped outside and looked up to the grey army of puffy clouds, threatening to ruin the beautiful, yet macabre day.

He peeped over towards the large car park and could see the garage. He saw that behind the car park was a farmers field. A farm would be the perfect place to be in this situation, Jack Slade thought.

They were in the middle of nowhere; there was cattle and poultry—so plenty of food. They would also be able to see the creatures coming from a mile away with all the flat land they had. Farmers were also well equipped with guns to shoot pesky foxes, and they also had heavy duty machinery like tractors and combine harvesters—ideal to use to escape or even use as a weapon if they wanted to save on cartridges and run over gangs of the dead.

Jack deliberated on the idea of taking Kerry and Thomas to a farm once he arrived at Rugeley. Although a more negative thought that crossed Jack's mind was that if he was the farmer, he would shoot any trespassers, not just creatures, but humans as well. It was all about survival now; things had changed and he was sure that the farmers would do anything to protect their family, and another mouth to feed would be detrimental to their food supply.

He looked to his left, away from the farmers fields, and saw three of the fiends walking lazily around the empty car park where the HGVs usually parked. He hadn't noticed them before, and realised that they must have appeared when he was inside the service station.

But where did they come from? A house nearby? The farm itself? Or did they used to work in the service station?

Jack didn't know the answer to the question, but he thought that the three would make good target practice if ever he were in possession of a gun.

His short daydream had been disturbed once a pair of glacial hands wrapped around his neck, and he instantly dropped the cleaver to the floor in fright and turned to see one of them face to face. He pushed it in the chest, but it stumbled back only a few yards, then it came at him with more ferocity. It was a large female and was wearing a Starbucks uniform. Where did she come from?

Aware that the others were gaining on him, he tried to push the female thing away from him, as they wrestled in the car park. He was surprised how strong it was, and the decaying smell from its mouth was awful, its mouth and tongue was almost black. Jack wasn't sure if it was from feeding or decay.

He pushed the ex-Starbucks worker back again and ran to his car. He took a look behind him and saw that if he stayed around for another three seconds, the other three would have caught up and he would have been killed for sure.

He started up his car and floored the gas pedal, making the car squeal out of the car park. The girl smacked her hands on the back of the car and almost ran after him.

Jack shook his head at his stupidity. He couldn't believe how stupid he had been. His unnecessary daydreaming had cost him the cleaver, and could have easily cost him his life.

He slammed his hands on the steering wheel in frustration, and was flabbergasted at the unpredictability of those things.

In such a short space of time, he had experienced that they would stop at nothing to get to their victim; he also realised that they shouldn't be underestimated. At first glance, they looked slow, but once they had a victim in sight, the speed in which they approached soon changed in some of them. The last experience was a learning curve for the forty-year-old, and the way the last one almost ran after his car was a frightening episode. In his limited experience, he had never seen any of them move that quickly. If he wanted to stay alive for his son and be able to protect him, he needed to be sharp at all times.

I wish I had a gun.

He then thought that having a gun in his possession could end up resulting in an accident, and the gunfire itself would probably attracted others towards his presence.

He changed his mind about a gun the more he thought about it.

Maybe not.

He joked to himself that maybe a crossbow would be more beneficial, as at least it was quiet. But where was he going to get one of them? In most city or town centres probably, but the last thing he wanted to do was to drive into a populated area, to see if there was a gun shop.

The only populated area he had planned on going was the town where his son lived.

He was now in Stoke, and he was an hour away from his town; he was still trembling from his near-death experience. He suddenly heard a pop coming from outside, his steering became heavy and his car veered to the left down a bank.

Not now.

He had a flat, and could feel himself losing control of the vehicle. He prepared himself for impact.
Chapter Twenty Seven

Pickle had managed to find a beam from the pub's roof that would take his weight. He jumped up and grabbed the beam and began his pull-ups. Now being out of the prison and having no gym to attend, he was going to try and exercise whenever he could. He knew that the lack of exercise would make him feel agitated eventually, and that was something that only affected him, and wasn't something the rest of the group was going to lose sleep over.

After finishing his five sets of fifteen reps, he urged Grass to go outside with him and join KP and Laz, who were sitting outside drinking almost their body weight in lemonade. Pickle had issued an alcohol ban until 7pm until the establishment was locked up. It was going to be their lodgings for the night.

Grass followed behind him and they entered outside into the warm, inviting sunshine, although the temperature had dropped somewhat. The sweat glistened on Pickle's forehead like a small army of pearly drops that refused to run down, and he welcomed the cool air that decreased his body temperature, and also welcomed that all around they could see for miles and there wasn't a single being in sight in the fields.

"Any signs?" Pickle walked over to Laz and KP who were sitting on the bank, staring into the River Trent.

"We just came back," Laz stated. "Checked the main roads, nothing."

"What about the wee garden centre over the road?"

KP sniggered, and looked up at Pickle. "What about it? We're not going inside a building that could be populated with those things, not until you give us the guns."

Pickle nodded and patted KP on the shoulder; he understood his concern, and wouldn't have entered the area himself if he had no sort of weapon on him. As he and KP found out by the garage, they were not easy things to kill, despite their lumbering ways. A head injury was the only way to put them down permanently, and a head injury with bare hands was a hard task to execute, as well as an exhausting one.

"I have a shotgun and four pistols," Pickle declared. "The shotgun's mine. I can't give that away."

"Don't worry about me," Laz expressed. "I don't want any gun, don't trust myself for a start. Besides, best thing about not having a gun is that I can just stay behind you whenever we enter buildings. I'm a coward, guys, always have been."

Pickle admired Laz's honesty. There was no point giving someone a gun if they didn't want one.

"What about you, Grass?" KP had a long blade of grass sitting in the corner of his mouth.

"Err...I dunno." He shifted uncomfortably and looked a bag of nerves.

"That's settled then." Pickle nodded. "KP, myself and the two officers get the pistols."

"Do I get the shotgun as well?" KP asked mischievously.

"No chance," Pickle snapped back, not picking up on KP's ribbing.

"Right then." KP got to his feet and began to brush himself down with the palm of his hands. "So you gonna show me how to use one?"

"Probably best if we wait till the officers wake up," Laz spoke; his wiry frame had sat down and begun sucking on a cigarette.

Laz was referring to Jamie and Janine, who had found a welcoming bed when searching through the property. Jamie trusted Pickle, and it was the ex-inmate who suggested that the two officers, who had been on nightshift, should get a few hours in the afternoon because they looked dead on their feet.

"No need," Pickle said, and he nodded towards the entrance of the pub.

Jamie stumbled out, still wearing his work attire, but now with his creased white shirt hanging out of his black trousers. He covered his eyes with his hand, as the sun greeted him.

"Where's the other one?" KP grilled gently.

Jamie answered, "Still sleeping, I guess. How should I know?"

"Oh...I thought you two..."

"No." Jamie smiled. "We're just work colleagues."

Jamie never thought about Janine in that way; he was never short of female company and was in no way strongly attracted to the young woman. He hadn't been in a relationship in years, but always kept himself 'busy' with a female here and there, thanks to the dating websites he visited.

Janine was reasonably attractive, Jamie thought. She had short blonde hair and blue eyes, but Jamie was more of a brunette man and wasn't overly keen on short hair on women. Also, she was a little heavy for his liking. She was hardly obese, but her extra pounds were evident on her behind, and he also liked the fitness type.

Jamie knew it was down to taste, as Janine detested too much muscle on a man as she said it looked unnatural. Jamie was one of those men.

"Ready for yer first lesson?" Pickle waved the gun in his right hand. "I'll show Janine later tonight."

Jamie shrugged his shoulders, still tired.

Pickle held the gun up. "This is what the army used to use before we started using Glock 17s." He looked over to Jamie to make sure he was paying attention. "The slide-lock back, means it out o' ammo. This gun is empty, but in times o' apprehension, cock it, so it's ready."

Jamie pointed. "Does that hammer ever pinch anybody's hand? It looks awfully close."

Pickle shook his head. "I've shot it before. Never had any bother with it. This is one o' the most accurate and smoothest recoiling guns ever made; it also has an amazing trigger. I know yer all novices, but if yer can't hit something from ten feet with a hi-power, I don't know what gun would possibly help yer."

Pickle handed it to Jamie to have a feel. Then Jamie handed it to KP.

He handed it back to Pickle, who put a magazine in, and said to them, "The down side to this gun is the magazine disconnect. Bad enough that it's even there, but it rubs against the face o' the magazine every time the trigger is pulled. The finish o' every magazine yer have can alter yer trigger pull."

The group all stared at one another; they had no idea what he was rambling about and Jamie decided to speak up. "All I want you to do," Jamie began, "is to show me how to reload, and show me where the safety catch is."

"Feeling pretty confident then?" KP giggled, stroking his thin dark beard.

"The only shooting I'll be doing is close-range shooting. Besides, if we start shooting practice, what's the betting that those things start making their way over here? I don't know about you guys, but I'm looking forward to locking myself inside of that place tonight, drinking too much beer, playing cards, eating whatever I can get my hands on, and drinking even more beer after that for just one night. Because I don't know how long I've got left, and I don't know if I'll ever have another night like that. And I don't want it to be spoilt by being surrounded by those things banging on the windows to get in. Don't get me wrong, the windows are solid thick, but how are we supposed to escape if there's three hundred surrounding the pub?"

"Fuck," Pickle began to chortle. "That was some kind o' speech."

"Just show me the basics, and I'll show Janine myself once she wakes up."

"I'm already awake," she yawned and stepped out into the daylight. "How am I supposed to sleep with you lot making a racket?"

*

Time dragged on and the moment came at last, and by Jamie's watch it was 7:07pm. KP had rustled up a fine banquet from what was available in the kitchen and the only negative of the night so far, was when Janine wanted a decent bottle of red to go with her steak.

Pickle showed her where the cellar was and a scream later, he realised he had forgot to tell the group about his experience with one of the people who used to work at the fine establishment.

After finishing the bottle in just under an hour, Janine had almost forgot about the corpse she had witnessed with the head opened. If she was told about it beforehand, it wouldn't have bothered her, but because she wasn't given any warning, it came as a shock.

The men played poker for hours, and a bored Janine decided to go upstairs and watch an old DVD while finishing the second bottle before passing out on the bed. She noticed the bedroom had no lock, and never even asked about sleeping arrangements. She assumed that she would have the room that she used for her nap, and went there without telling any of the guys.

She placed the dressing table chair against the knob of the bedroom door. She trusted Jamie, but the other four individuals were prisoners, and they were prisoners who hadn't been with a woman for a while.

She kind of feared that if she got drunk within the company of the other five, sexual tension might be increased within the room. She knew she wasn't supermodel material, but was pretty certain that most men were animals and would sleep with anything with a pulse.

Once satisfied nobody could get in, she cried for ten minutes to release some pent up stress, before watching the DVD. Hours later, with a little help from the alcohol she had consumed, sleep had beaten her once again and the rowdiness of the men from the ground floor faded away.
Chapter Twenty Eight

Oliver Bellshaw and Karen Bradley had been in the woods for hours, and had reached an amicable agreement. Still exhausted from her nightshift and after a run-in with one of the creatures, she had decided to grab another hour in exchange so Oliver could also go for a nap. The thirty-four-year-old divorcee had a decent night's sleep the night before, but the whole event seemed to have exhausted him.

His story wasn't as exciting, as far as the other survivors were concerned, but he was alive, which he was sure that thousands upon thousands of individuals no longer had that pleasure anymore.

As Karen slept, he revisited his surreal morning.

As soon as Oliver was attacked outside the newsagents, he grabbed his phone, packed his bag, took his car, and drove the short journey from his house in Hednesford through the countryside, heading towards the outskirts of Rugeley in order to get to his mother's.

As soon as he went by a tiny village called Slitting Mill, where he used to regularly go for meals at a public house called The Horns, he saw the presence of a dozen of the things wandering aimlessly around the streets. He reversed harshly to turn the car around and head the opposite direction, but his right back tyre slipped into a ditch.

Naturally engulfed in a cloud of hysteria, he opened the door unhesitatingly, took his bag that was sitting on the passengers seat, and began to run along the country road that headed back towards the main road that would lead into Rugeley if he turned left, or back to Hednesford if he turned right.

He decided on left, as he knew the state of the place back in his small town. He saw a couple of, what he called, Snatchers, roaming around on the outskirts of the part of Rugeley he wanted to enter, and knew that this was also a no-go area.

He cut across a fence and ran across a farmers field, as he was hoping that he wouldn't be seen and be followed. He was still unsure about what and who they were, and only knew what the TV had informed him on.

After spending five minutes running through the long grass, he decided to chance his luck back on the main road. He went over to the fence on his left and jumped over, and was now on the main road that led to Stile Cop and was facing almost opposite the cemetery. He ran by the cemetery and headed to a beauty spot, where a lot of people used to park and used the place as a picnic area, or as a base to park the car and go for a long walk.

Stile Cop was the largest beauty spot and was at the highest point. The one where Oliver arrived at was small, secluded, and lower down, near the bottom of the main road. On the main road, the vast amount of the woods were to the left, whereas to the right, was the farmers fields.

He wanted to head for Stile Cop but not the main road route, as he was paranoid that he may be seen from a distance by one of those things, resulting in him being tracked down by an army of the slow moving cannibals. When he arrived at the secluded area, he had made a decision to get to his destination through the woods. It was the hardest way, but he felt it was the safest, as on the road he felt exposed. He was certain that they would have trouble following him through a condensed wooded area that was on a slight hill.

Snapping out of his daydreaming, Oliver looked at his watch, it was nearly 5pm. Time had little relevance at the moment, but what it could still do was tell Oliver how near or far it was away from becoming dark. He had allowed Karen to sleep longer and now that his brain was active again, he now felt that his short sleep wasn't needed anymore.

He planned on eventually getting to the top of the hill at Stile Cop beauty spot. Then, he and Karen could make a camp temporarily until he decided what to do and where to go next. He was dreading the darkness that was only a matter of hours away, and knew that they both could easily get to the beauty spot within half an hour on foot, but other things needed to be considered. Oliver dreamed that not only a camp would have to be built, which could take hours, but some sort or perimeter fence or tripwire would have to be incorporated to let them know through the night if they had company. All of this could take up to half a day to complete.

It would be a tense night, taking turns sleeping in the woods for the one night, but both exhausted individuals agreed that rest was imperative before making their way up to the beauty spot. The macabre hours would drag and the pair of them would be fortunate if any type of sleeping would take place. He thought that, despite this, their predicament was a lot safer than other situations he could think of, and staying in a populated area was definitely something he wouldn't consider again.

He still felt troubled that one of them that Karen had dealt with had attempted to make its way through the woods. If one of them had now tried that, maybe others would attempt again in the near future once food in the town began to run out.

The options were few and far between for the two of them, but he had camped before, many years ago, with a girlfriend at one of the beauty spots, and with the season being in summer, and with a full or even a half moon out, the area wouldn't be as dark as it could be. Oliver suddenly heard a car go by and smiled to himself. Any sign of life brought small joy, because it meant there was some hope.

He remained sitting up; his head constantly swinging to the left and to the right. He felt more relaxed than he did when he first entered the woods, but the paranoia was still there, although not as strong as before. He stared at a sleeping Karen and for the first time, realised that she was an attractive woman.

Her dark hair was tied back with an elastic band, her face was facing away from Oliver to the left, and he glared at her exposed neck, as a few drops of pearly perspiration sat on her neck, threatening to escape.

Despite the few droplets of sweat, Oliver thought about what it would be like to kiss that neck. He hadn't been with a woman in months, and thought to himself that despite what was happening in the world, a man was a man: pathetic, weak, and controlled by an organ that—for most women—was never enough to be satisfied with.

He held out his fingertips, and they shook with fear and excitement. The fear was in case she woke up and wondered what the fuck he was doing. And as for the excitement... that was plainly obvious. He was doing something he shouldn't.

He told himself that if she suddenly woke up, he would inform her that he was trying to remove a bug off of her. His fingers eventually reached their destination, as they gently slid down her neck and stopped near her collarbone.

The black T-shirt she was wearing was a little soaked with perspiration at the front, but it didn't stop his fingers running over the T-shirt and following the outline of her perked breasts. The more forbidden the area, the more he shook with excitement and trepidation. He contemplated on removing his fingers, but he couldn't help himself.

He gave Karen's nearest breast a gentle squeeze through her T-shirt, and she responded with a moan. He began to touch himself.

Oliver undid his zip; he was so aroused he couldn't stop himself. He looked around as if there could be somebody watching him, and began stroking the shaft with his right hand as Karen lay to his left, oblivious to what he was doing. He was dying to moan as he rubbed the palm of his hand along the shaft up and down rapidly, but he knew her waking up would ruin the moment altogether.

He was getting close; he lay back next to the sleeping Karen Bradley, and always felt the orgasm was better when the penis was pointing upwards. Whenever he masturbated, he always lay on his back as he felt the intensity was better, and when he used to have sex with women, he always preferred and encouraged his partner to go on top whenever he was getting nearer.

He was seconds away from ejaculating, and now he was fantasising that Karen was giving him oral pleasure. As the feeling grew stronger, the more adventurous he became, as his left hand wandered towards Karen's breasts. He knew he'd be in serious shit if ever she woke up, but the danger and the fact he was caressing the breasts of an attractive woman he could never get in the real world, was heightening his pleasure.

He released a solitary grunt as he came, and his hand slipped under her bra and gently squeezed her breasts. He stroked her nipple with his thumb as the ejaculation was taking place.

As soon as the adrenaline started to wane, the regret and shame began to surface. He released his hand from Karen's breasts carefully, stood to his feet and walked over to a tree with his trousers round his ankles. He wiped his hand on the bark of the tree and his stubborn pee eventually cleaned out the tubes. It had been a while since he had performed any sexual activity, and only felt the urge once he saw Karen sleeping.

Now clean, and relieved he wasn't caught, he sat next to her and looked at her once again. The sweat glistened on her head and the top of her breasts, which complimented her body perfectly. Oliver shook his head at himself and felt a twinge in his groin once more. He felt that he could go again. He hadn't felt like this since he was a teenager. When he was fifteen, he watched a porn movie in his bedroom and managed to perform three times in a row.

He didn't know why this was happening; whether it was because he was stressed, or hadn't had it for a while. Or was it the simple fact that a beautiful woman was lying next to him? He didn't have the answer.

He cursed himself for his action and promised himself he would try and control himself. He took another look at Karen and was finding his second arousal a little disturbing. This time he decided to leave himself alone, but if he was one hundred percent certain that Karen wouldn't wake up, he was sure that he would probably have repeated what he had just done earlier, but maybe took it further.

He understood that in the old world he would be looking at a jail term, but then again, in the old world he wouldn't be hiding in the woods with this beauty in the first place.
Chapter Twenty Nine

They had driven around their town for a while, stopping, then filling up, and sometimes allowing the car to be stationary for a while. They had been driving around for an hour now and managed to stock up from an already-burgled bakers store. All that was left was some bread, milk and cakes, but it was better than nothing.

The town was empty, devoid of all life, and David Pointer felt reasonably relaxed when he solely went into the bakers to stock up with two bags of food. His wife and daughter remained locked in the car that was parked only twenty yards away and their destination hadn't been considered yet.

He jumped back in the car and looked at the fuel gauge; they had a full tank after filling up at a station near St Augustine's Church. They had come across pockets of beings, but never quite as bad as they experienced in their own street.

They had left their town of Rugeley, and after a mile of driving through bendy roads, their Renault Clio pulled up at the side of the country road.

"Are you sure about this?" Davina quizzed him.

"I'm not sure about anything anymore," was his honest response.

He got out of the car and walked towards a road that veered to the right. He knew where the road led to; it was a place he liked to come out to for a meal with his wife now and again, as he always liked the country style.

In the past, they would walk into one of the pubs to be greeted by a roaring coal fire; the country pubs had rooms with old fashioned wooden beams in. The food was of the highest quality as the place was surrounded by farmlands, so it didn't take a genius to know where they got their fresh produce from.

It was now impossible to get to, as he stared at the entrance to the village. He looked over to his wife who was glaring at him from the passenger side, and he shook his head. The slump of her shoulders told him that she was disappointed, but there wasn't a great deal he could do to overturn the situation.

They had friends there in Colton and were certain that they would put them up for a few nights, although they weren't answering their phones. The only entrance to the tiny village had been cordoned off. It looked like the barrier had been the idea of the villagers themselves and it consisted of a huge wagon parked across the main road, with a sign reading: We are full. Outsiders will be shot.

He stepped closer towards the sign to see if he could get a look under the wagon; there was no sign of life until he got to his feet. A shot rang out and David ducked and crouched. His shocked wife went to leave the car to see how her husband was, but he reacted by furiously waving his hand, telling her to get back to the car with their daughter, who was still sleeping in one of the back passenger seats.

He then heard a voice saying, "There's one of them behind the barrier!"

David remained in a half-crouched position; his hands were behind his head as if an officer of the law had pointed a gun at him, and decided to speak before another shot rang out. "I'm not one of them! I'm from Rugeley. Me and my family are looking for a place to stay!"

He could hear the boots of men heading his way, and the voice commanded him to stand up and put his arms by his side. David did what he was told.

He looked to the side of the wagon, looking for the two men and heard a whistle. He looked up to see the two men standing on top of the cab of the truck, their shotguns were not pointing and he felt no threat anymore.

The one on the left looked no older than twenty, and looked like he hadn't had a bath in weeks. The one on the right was in his forties, dressed in typical farmer attire: checked shirt, Wellington boots and a flap cap sitting on his head.

"Turn your car around and go back to where you came from," the man on the right spoke vehemently.

"We just want somewhere to stay the night," David protested meekly. "We have friends here. We wanted to get somewhere before it gets dark."

"Not anymore," the young boy on the left snapped. "We're looking after our own from now on."

"That's right," the man on the right nodded, "and anyone trying to get in will be shot, no matter who you are."

David almost showed his tears to the two men but fought them back swiftly. "So that's it?"

"That's it," the older one spoke. "Don't get me wrong, I wish you the best of luck, my friend, but we need to survive. We've only had two episodes of those things in a village of three hundred, so as far as we're concerned, that's good going. This is our way of keeping the situation under control."

"What happened to them?"

"Some kind of biting virus. I've seen it in dogs and foxes, but never in people. I shot them both, we burned them in a field afterwards."

"I don't know where to go. Any ideas? We're from Rugeley."

"You have guns?"

David shook his head.

The two men looked at one another, and David was waiting for them to burst into hysterics. The mocking never materialized, and the older gentleman said, "Then I'd go to the highest point."

"Etching Hill?"

The man shook his head, and this time almost laughed. "Etching Hill is high, but it's densely populated. I was thinking along the lines of Stile Cop or the industrial estate on the hill on the Hednesford Road. Just stay away from Little Haywood, that's where the Murphy family stay."

David nodded in agreement. He knew where the industrial estate place was; he once had a job there working for a painting and decorating company. There was also a cafe there that his dad religiously used to take him to on a Saturday for a cooked breakfast.

David turned around to head back to his car, and heard the voice of the man in his forties speak out one last sentence before he got into his vehicle. "Good luck, my friend. No hard feelings. The last thing this village needs is more mouths to feed."

David never responded, and was still miffed that the small village was prepared to send a family-of-three away back into that horrific world. Surely an extra three people wouldn't have made that much difference to the village. He came to the conclusion that their way of thinking was that, if you let one in, then others would follow.

David had turned the car around and headed back into Rugeley.

He didn't want to venture too far because he wanted to stay somewhere where there was familiarity. If he was going to get chased by these things, he would rather be chased around the streets where he knew and lived, rather than a place where he could easily become lost and further the danger of his family even more, by driving into an area that was even more populated, or into a dead end.

He looked at Davina and gave his wife a comforting smile; she placed her hand on his cheek and a tear fell from her face, as if squeezed from a teat pipette. She looked behind her and saw Isobel, still asleep in her booster seat. Her head flopped forwards and even though she never usually had a nap anymore, they decided to leave her be.

"We're going to Hazelslade; see if it's quiet there. If it is, we'll see if someone might put us up. We'll stop off at Stile Cop first and get refreshments."

Davina nodded in agreement. "When Isobel wakes up, she'll be needing the toilet."

"We have one toilet roll in the bag, it'll do for now."

The car went by Power Station Road and headed back into the town. As they passed St Augustine's Church for a second time, David and Davina had noticed that the once empty street that ran across the circumference of the town centre, now, had at least twenty to thirty visitors, lifelessly wandering the streets.

Davina looked at David with horror scribbled on her face. As if he knew what question she was thinking, he began to speak.

"Maybe more have been bitten; remember what the TV said?"

She shook her head. "Vaguely."

"Maybe they were still changing."

"What do you mean?" Davina asked and leant to the right as David swerved around one of them.

"Think about it. You go out on a Saturday night, you go back home to your family after being bitten or scratched, and then you go to bed, not knowing that you've caught this virus. You then die in your sleep; then you reanimate and attack the rest of your family. Next thing you know, you've got one house with three or four of these things in it.

"You see, the reason why the streets were so quiet before, wasn't just because people were barricading themselves in, it's probably because some houses were infested with the things, and they just couldn't understand how to get out."

Davina nodded at her husband's theory and saw that some of the windows were smashed, and thought that they were probably smashed not just because some of them were trying to get in, but maybe some had changed inside and were trying to get out and feed.

Davina tried to joke, "You've been listening to that radio too much since we left."

Maybe his theory was correct.

Whatever the real reason, the episode had seemed to increase with terror, and as soon as they found a quiet place to stop, the better.

David was now leaving Rugeley and headed towards Sandy Lane; his car bypassed Draycott Park where there were more of them, but didn't seem to notice them as much. A lot of the creatures were crowded round in a small street, like young pupils watching a playground fight, and David could only assume that they were feasting on some poor bastard.

They left Draycott Park, exited the town, and continued along the Hednesford Road and turned left onto the Stile Cop Road.

"Nearly there," he said. As the car reached the top of the hill, they turned left into the quiet and surprisingly uninhabited beauty spot, and pulled the car up.

The engine was switched off, and although they had been travelling by car, David was panting as if he had ran up the road. His eyes met Davina's and gave her a reassuring wink.

As David got out of the car to stretch his legs on the sandy surface of the beauty spot, Davina turned to her daughter and tried to wake her up by gently shaking her, whilst trying not to alarm the young four-year-old. David looked around and thought the place was almost perfect.

It felt like it was in the middle of nowhere, and it was high up. The only part he didn't like was the wooded area.

He stood facing the entrance of the secluded area; to the right of him was the woods, but to the left of him was a steep hill that was on such a decline, it would be humanly impossible to walk down without falling over. The decline was covered in grass and fresh bracken. It would be impossible for those things to get up. The only way they could get up was through the woods, if that was possible, or by walking up the steep Stile Cop Road—an impossible task for David to cycle when he was a kid.

His thoughts went back to Sherree from his street, and his throat began to swell hard as he saw the destruction of her four-month-old baby being replayed in his head. He tried to shake the memory off and knew that keeping busy was the only way to stop this thing from sinking in.

There was no point running away from it mentally; it was happening, whether he liked it or not.
Chapter Thirty

June 11th

It was early Monday morning, and Jack Slade released a strident and exaggerated yawn. He looked at his watch; it was nearly 7am and his stomach was grumbling for food.

He sat up and couldn't understand why the car was in the position it was in. It then came back to him that his tyre had burst and he must have blacked out. His head was throbbing so hard, it was making him feel woozy. Wondering why the airbag never worked, he stepped out of the vehicle and stretched his elastic legs; he checked his body for any kinds of injuries, but the only injury he had sustained was minor whiplash.

He took a look at his car and saw that both tyres had burst. The front was badly damaged at the side, and the rear was in an even worse state, so much that Jack couldn't get the boot open. "Fuck!" he yelled. His bag was in there.

He began to rub his aching head and couldn't believe he had been out for so long.

Cursing his luck, he headed back for the main road. He knew he was totally exposed, but at the same time, he didn't want to be somewhere enclosed where he could get ambushed. If he could see one of those things it would be a simple feat to outrun it, or so he hoped.

The road was bendy and he had made this journey numerous times by car, and was sure that he was about forty miles from his old town. Forty miles was a lot for an individual on foot, and he deliberated that as soon as he clocked a car or any other type of vehicle, he would try and hitchhike it back to the town. He thought about stealing a car, if ever he came across an abandoned one, but he had never hotwired a car before, he didn't know if it was even possible. If the worst came to the worst, he would have to break into a house and find the keys to a car. It seemed a little drastic, but he was desperate to get to his son.

Fifteen minutes and two miles later of thinking about crazy situations he could end up in that were filling his head, he saw a car in the distance. Just seeing the car furiously pumped adrenaline through his bloodstream, and a newfound energy overcame him.

He began to sprint towards the car, and as he approached nearer, he could see it was a Ford Focus. His jog turned to a brisk walk once he was ten yards away from the vehicle, and his walk slowed as he soon realised it had been left vacant.

He popped his head through the already-opened door, and took a look into the front to see the keys still dangling from the ignition. He looked around; making sure it was safe. He was surrounded by a lot of shrubbery and it had briefly crossed his mind that a gang of desperados could jump out on him and kick him to death if they wanted the vehicle for themselves. It seemed unrealistic, but Jack knew that if this thing continued for months, fuel, food, water, and even medication would be fought over. Jack had never thought to raid a chemist. It would have been handy, even if it were just for a first aid kit.

As soon as his eyes finished scanning the front of the car, his misbelieving eyes stared at the passenger seat. He turned away to vomit on the road, his black jeans almost paying the price with some splash-back, as it slapped the hard concrete ferociously. He wiped his mouth and spat the last chunk of vomit lodged inbetween his teeth.

He used his thumb and index finger of his right hand to wipe the water in his eyes, and looked back into the car to make sure he wasn't dreaming. The left of the passenger seat was covered in blood. The belt was strapped together and hadn't been unclipped, and the only thing that was left of what used to be sitting in the seat, was one little finger, some entrails and a severed arm that sat to the right. A pair of headphones and a pocket games console sat covered in blood. A teenager possibly.

Jack came to the horrific conclusion that because the seat hadn't been unclipped, the person must have been eaten there and then, and was devoured so much, they came away in pieces. But he couldn't understand why the person didn't try and escape, and why the driver's seat was clean.

Maybe the driver got out to fight off the things as his or her daughter or son sat innocently in the back, unaware what was happening, and too engrossed in their game. Or maybe they simply ran off.

He couldn't believe that the second theory had happened; it was unthinkable for a parent to leave their child to a horde of human-eating beings. He couldn't make out what had happened, or even why the car couldn't have driven straight through the things. What was blocking the road? Maybe they decided to fall asleep for the night in what at first looked like, a long and harmless, uninhabited road.

Whatever the reason for the tragedy, he knew he had to switch it off from his mind, as scenes like these were not unique anymore.

He shut the door of the car and continued to walk along the road. He was desperate, but he wasn't prepared to take a car that was in that state. The fact that possibly a young person had been killed in the vehicle, unnerved him, and from a selfish, and some would say, a harsh point of view, he didn't fancy driving the remaining forty miles of the journey with the horrendous smell of death tormenting his nasal area.

He was hoping for some wheels soon, as his stomach was now aching to be fed, and he wasn't sure how much energy he had left in him, especially now that whatever was left in his stomach wasn't there anymore.

More monotonous minutes passed as his tired legs soldiered on, and he saw something else up ahead that made his heart gallop. He came to another scene after another mile was completed, and this time, from what he could see, it involved two cars and a motorbike.

The two cars looked to have collided with one another as both front bonnets were crushed a little. A head-on collision, it looked like to Jack. The motorbike lay on the grass and Jack thought that the rider might have lost control of the vehicle and came off, leaving the bike to slide across the road before hitting the grassy bank. But where were the accident victims? There was no sign of blood or body parts, so he could only assume that the individuals involved in the accident had fled the area in panic. Maybe this road used to be swarming with the beasts.

After what he had witnessed earlier on, he carefully stepped towards the carnage. To his right, was a wooded area, and he was aware that danger could be prowling all around him. He peered into both cars, but both of them were empty. There was no sign of carnage, no blood, no dead bodies.

Both cars were spotless and Jack couldn't fathom on what had happened. Inspecting the front of both cars, he was sure that they were un-drivable, most probably with radiator damage, so he set his sights on the motorbike. It had been years since he had ridden one, especially one of this size.

Its bodywork was lime green, and it looked like a BMW with a 1300cc engine. Apart from a few scratches, it appeared that the bike was in working order, and like the car a mile down the road, the keys were in the ignition. There must have been some of those things here. It was the only conclusion he could come up with on why someone would leave a perfectly working motorbike.

Whatever the real reason, his or her loss was Jack Slade's gain. He was taking it. The motorbike would expose him and provide no shield like a car would, but it was all he had, and there were positives with this vehicle, especially if it were needed to escape through a field or an alleyway. Jack convinced himself that there were pros and cons riding a motorbike or driving a car.

A motorbike in this current climate, Jackie boy? Are you completely insane?
Chapter Thirty One

He stepped out of the Wolseley Arms pub and breathed in the country air. It smelt wonderful to be free, but he knew that, not so far away, the smell of death was awash in towns and cities all across the nation and possibly other countries. It was something he was trying not to think about and was glad to a certain degree that TVs were down, as the only thing reporters would show the world from now on was the carnage across the country, and would give an insight to the average human on how they were going to eventually die.

Harry Branston felt his freshly shaven face, that was achieved with cold water and a used razor from the owner—he guessed—and span slowly around, gawping at the area he was in. He was now standing in the middle of the pub's car park, yards away from the van. He saw the river, and the main road leading to Stafford, and he could see the garden centre and the road that led to Rugeley and Little Haywood, where they were the day before.

It was only a mile up the road, where dozens upon dozens of the things were when the van left the premises, and he was reasonably surprised that he couldn't even see one of them.

He spent the night with KP, and slept restlessly, and could have sworn he had heard noises outside. On two occasions he went downstairs into the dark, barren lounge of the pub, only to find nothing inside. He checked the doors and looked out of the windows. He saw shadows moving, but wasn't sure that it was anything untoward.

For minutes, he glared until the tiredness and the effects of the alcohol that had been consumed were beginning to take their toll once again.

He checked his watch and knew he was the first to rise; the rest seemed to have over-indulged more than him as far as the booze was concerned. He walked slowly over to the river; it looked to be in a dirty condition and he was surprised if any fish dwelled in that murky watery place.

Pickle—Harry Branston—screwed his eyes and continued to walk towards the river. He was now out of the car park and stood on the grassy bank that had a reasonable steep decline. He saw a hundred yards down the river, a body. When he was in the car park, that's what he thought it was, but he wanted to make sure. Poor soul.

He took a deep breath in as he saw the washed up corpse on the bank and didn't understand why he—he assumed it was a he—wasn't walking around with the rest of the dead. Maybe he tried to escape as a human via the river and drowned.

His thoughts were shattered when he heard the rest of the group talking in the background and KP shouting his name, wondering where he was.

Time to go back.

He whispered a prayer for the dead man, turned around and went back to the car park to meet his nervous group who were wondering where he had gone.
Chapter Thirty Two

They shared an orange juice between them, and sat eating a cold tin of beans. Twenty-four hours ago, Karen Bradley would have turned her nose up at such a breakfast, but her stomach ached for food, any food.

The two of them had decided to take turns in sleeping the night before. Oliver slept from 9pm to 4am, whereas Karen managed another four hours sleep afterwards. The pair of them both admitted that the sitting around was killing their psyche. The boredom was self-evident as the conversation, once it had covered most of their personal and private life, went onto the subjects of politics, religion and why what was happening, was happening.

Karen spoke up, "So now we're all fed, and refreshed, do you think we can make our way up to Stile Cop? It should only be a thirty to forty minute walk if we take it easy."

"Sounds like a plan." Oliver smiled; his gaze lingered a little longer for Karen's liking. "The incline's a bit of a bitch, but it has to be done."

"If I wasn't so exhausted, we could have made it last night."

"Maybe." Oliver nodded. "I do sometimes think we'd be better off in here, where no one can see us."

"True, but up at the beauty spot, we could set up camp nearby; the higher we are, the safer we are. Besides, a lot of other people might have the same idea, so there may be a few of us eventually. Safer in numbers."

Oliver smiled. He was thinking along those lines not so long ago, but there was still a fraction of him wondering if the woods would be a better hiding place.

The two remained sitting on the grass, their knees tucked into their chest trying to muster the energy to get to their weary feet and make the walk to one of the highest points in the area. Karen knew the day before that the incline of the walk was the main factor why she couldn't go on as well as the lack of sleep she had received since the virus outbreak. She now felt reasonably refreshed—normal even, and combed her brown hair back with her fingers, and tightened up the bobble on her short ponytail.

"I need a shower," she gasped.

Oliver smirked. "Oh, I dunno. You look good to me."

"Oh, please." Karen shook her head.

"What's wrong? You're an attractive woman."

"Am I really?" There was a huge tone of sarcasm in Karen's voice and she wasn't impressed with the compliment from this man.

"Well, I wouldn't say no."

"I lost my boyfriend yesterday and it hasn't even hit me yet. I was attacked and carjacked by two men, we've only just met, I haven't washed in more than twenty four hours, and if you want me to be brutally honest, I'm not attracted to you anyway."

"What harm could it do?"

Karen took a look at Oliver's face; he had changed somewhat over the last few hours, his eyes looked demonic. "Are you serious?" Karen laughed when she asked the question.

Oliver leaned over and placed his hand inbetween Karen's thighs, just above her knee. His hand then gently stroked her inner thigh and slowly made its way upwards. Karen stopped the progression with her own hand. He pushed her hand away and grabbed her crotch; she tried to push him away and said, "What the fuck are you doing?"

Oliver was losing control; he grabbed her by the hair and Karen let out a small shriek. He threw her to the ground and sat on top of her, his knees resting on her arms, preventing her from escaping. He leaned over and began kissing the side of her neck and using his tongue to inspect her facial features. His right hand slipped under her light blue uniform trousers and she shrieked as his clumsy, clammy hands pulled out a few pubic hairs as he felt for her opening. He stopped what he was doing, and leaned over towards her and went to kiss the side of her neck while he unzipped his own trousers.

Karen threw her head forward, her forehead connecting violently with Oliver's nose. He let out a shriek as immediately his nose bled; she then used her bodyweight to throw him off and he landed to the side; she then grabbed her club and smacked him across the face as he lay on the floor.

"You can stay away from me from now on!" Karen screamed. "Or I'll kill you, understand me?"

Oliver wearily got to his feet; his face was unrecognisable with the blood he was losing from the damage to his nose and to the side of his cheek. His face looked disfigured, and Karen assumed that the blow from her club had probably fractured his cheekbone. He ran at Karen, which took her by surprise, and she responded by pushing her foot forward into his stomach, winding the man, but also making him fall to the floor.

"What the fuck? What are you doing?" she yelled.

Oliver slavered, "I just wanted to make love to you."

Karen laughed and scrunched her face in befuddlement. "You fucking men," she said with disdain. "You only think with your dicks, and you don't even know how to use them properly. We're living in an apocalyptic world, and you want to empty your balls? Seriously?"

There was no sign of Oliver letting up as he struggled quickly to his feet, and as he did this, Karen bent down and reached for his small axe lying on the grass. As he hobbled within her vicinity for a second time, she never panicked and seemed in control as if she knew exactly what to do.

As he staggered towards her, she suddenly crouched and swung the axe into the side of his left knee. He let out a painful scream and fell to the floor. She wanted to disable him, not kill him. At least this way, it would prevent him from following her. It may have put his own life in danger by now having a handicap, but it was him that chose to attack her, she was just protecting herself.

The blood seeped through his combat trousers, and with the axe in her hand, she walked over to the damaged Oliver Bellshaw. He flinched as she stood over him, and using the small axe to lean on, she crouched down towards him.

"I want you from now on to go that way." She pointed to the outskirts of the woods by the main road. "I don't want you anywhere near these woods anymore, got it?"

He nodded pathetically, and continued with his whimpering.

"Right." She stood to her feet. "I'll be keeping your bag. If I see you again, I'll kill you next time."

Oliver began to sob; his bloodied face looked full of regret, but Karen wasn't falling for his pathetic response.

"Just go," she snarled.

He stood to his feet painfully, as she took a couple of steps backwards, and he turned around and hopped uncomfortably away from her, towards the main road. It wasn't too far away, but for a man with his injuries, a yard would feel like a hundred.

She remained stationary for a few minutes and could hear the sound of a vehicle in the background. She cocked her head to one side to get a better listen and found that the vehicle was groaning louder. It was coming up the main road; she was split in two whether to flag the vehicle down and try and catch a ride before Oliver got to it first, or just to stick it out on her own.

She had enough food in her bag to last another three days if she rationed it. She decided to stay on her own, as flagging down a vehicle could be potentially opening up another can of worms, she thought. Oliver was initially a nice guy, but twenty-four hours later, he had changed. There was destruction happening across the country, but not everybody was pulling together for the sake of mankind.

Karen thought that, now that there was probably no police presence and a feeling of lawlessness across the land, the surviving humans might take larger risks and think that they could get away with violence, because there was no law to break anymore.

She suddenly heard the engine of the van to the right side of her, she obviously couldn't see anything because of the condensed trees, but a thud was heard as the van's engine began to decrease in sound as it travelled further away, making its way to the top of Stile Cop Road.

It sounded like it had hit something...or someone.

Oliver.
Chapter Thirty Three

"How much food have we got left?"

Davina had come back from the trees to drain her bladder, and sat with the passenger seat door open. She looked at her watch; it was nearly 11am.

David never answered her question; he was singing songs to Isobel who had decided to give breakfast a miss. Father and daughter were standing by the boot of their Renault. David now had a stick in his hand, and was scrawling figures with the stick in the sandy surface of the beauty spot. He was teaching her how to play noughts and crosses.

Davina never repeated her question, and walked around to the boot of the car and opened it to ruffle through the bag. "Not much," she sighed.

David told Isobel to give him a minute, and he walked over to his wife. There was a silence amongst the couple and Davina looked at David with sadness in her eyes. "How do you think it's come to this?"

David shrugged his shoulders and looked over to Isobel, who gave him a cheeky wave. He said with a hint of sarcasm, "Take your pick. Are our alien overlords returning to reclaim the planet? Maybe it's a government conspiracy to curb population growth? Is it God's doing?"

"But...are they dead or alive? If they're dead, why do they eat?"

David sighed and took on a more serious tone. "Look, I only know the same as you. Are they alive? What is your definition of alive? Spiritual? Biological? As for eating; is it just to spread the virus or do they really need the food? Does their digestive system work? But they don't breathe and their heart doesn't pump, or does it? All it needs is the brain and nervous system to move, but without a digestive system and a working heart, the body would shrivel up and dry up and decompose within weeks."

"So what are you saying?"

"Remember what the TV said. The best hope we have is to keep away from these things for as long as possible, and hopefully necrotic degradation will eventually kill them off."

"Necrotic degradation? What's that?"

"I thought you were in the medical field?"

Davina wasn't in the mood for David's sarcasm. "David, as you know, I'm...or was, an auxiliary nurse, which means, all I do is take blood and change beds. I'm not fully qualified."

"Basically, what it means is that they're rotting. So if we humans can steer clear, hopefully they'll wither and collapse. But, even if they did all die, we'd still be in a world where life would never be the same."

"What do you mean?"

"What would you rather face? A gang of unarmed stumblers, or a group of armed human vicious males, desperate for food?"

"Neither," Davina cackled.

David leant over and kissed her on the forehead. "Me neither."

She went to the dashboard of the car and took out his phone; it had one bar left and she tried to ring her mum again. It was the answer machine once more. She shook her head in frustration and almost threw the phone to the floor. She was disheartened that there were no text messages either. She switched off the phone to try and preserve its life, and placed it back into the glove compartment.

David walked towards her and placed his hands comfortingly on her shoulders. "We'll get through this."

"Will we?" She sobbed gently, trying not to attract the attention of their daughter. They both tried to keep their emotions in check for the sake of Isobel, but it was easier said than done.

"Daddy," came the innocent voice behind him.

"Yeah, Babs."

"It's your turn." She handed him the stick.

David took the stick off his daughter and gazed at the beautiful little thing. She was so innocent in such a macabre world. How on earth was he going to protect her?

David looked to his right to see the shoulders of Davina shuddering up and down, as she was still crying.

Tinged with sadness, David delicately brushed his fingers through his daughter's blonde hair and almost fell to pieces himself once again. He made his mark on the sand, and she excitedly took it off him and made her mark and threw her hands in the air. "I win, I win."

"Right, you go and practice on your own for a while, and I'll be back in two minutes."

"Okay," she responded with no protest.

He walked away from his daughter and kissed the back of his wife's head. He then made his way to the driver's side, put his keys into the ignition, and put the radio on.

"I thought you already tried that?" Davina spoke from behind.

"Just seeing if there's any new info."

The only station that was working was a BBC station. It was still broadcasting the same information. It was on a loop, and after a few minutes the same information would be repeated, but David wanted to see if anything new had been added.

It was still the same: a bitten human would be infected; they could be killed by damaging the brain, and they believed that they were attracted by noise and light. There wasn't anything else that had been added since the last time he listened.

Davina was sick of crying, but she couldn't help it.

"Mummy, what's wrong?" Isobel had walked up to her mum, and saw the distressed thirty-four-year-old clinging onto the boot of the car, the tears rolling down her cheeks rapidly.

Davina wiped her tears with the back of her hands and turned to face her daughter who was now becoming upset herself. The youngster was feeding off the negative vibes that were occurring around her, and Davina knew it would be impossible to completely protect her.

Davina knelt down and embraced her daughter, and squeezed her hard. Although Davina knew that her baby had no idea what was happening, she was aware that something was wrong; she had been caught up with the emotion of it all.

When Davina went to her friend's mother's funeral, she felt the tidal wave of emotion in the church procession, and although she never really knew her mother that well, she cried all the same, as if she was a family member herself.

Isobel was feeling the same, feeding off her mother's foreboding.

David walked around to the boot of the car and watched his girls hugging one another; they both broke their embrace and stared at David. He smiled weakly, and approached the girls and crouched down to Isobel's level. They all embraced as a family.

"It's gonna be okay. I promise," David spoke softly, and kissed both of the tearstained cheeks of his girls.

"How do you know that?" There was anger in Davina's voice. She stood to her feet. "You keep saying that! We should have stayed in the house; there's no going back now!"

David stood up himself so he could speak to his wife at eye level. "We couldn't stay in there, it was too dangerous. You knew that!"

David halted his rant and looked down to his daughter; she looked frightened, her face shook and her tears fell freely. She knew there was something wrong, but had no clue what it was. She was four years old, but she wasn't stupid.

"Could you stop arguing, please," the little thing spoke delicately. "I'm feeling sad."
Chapter Thirty Four

The lime green 1300cc BMW roared its way along the Stafford Road. It passed the Wolseley Arms pub and now continued to growl audibly along the Rugeley Road. He looked around, and was still feeling queasy about a fly he had accidentally swallowed as he rode past the Darlaston Inn, back in Stoke.

He was enjoying the newfound freedom on his new toy, but the downside of not riding without a helmet was the suicidal insects that hit him in the face the faster he went through the country roads. There was two occasions where his eyes were nearly damaged from the kamikaze blue bottles, but a third paid the price by flying right into Jack Slade's mouth.

The journey was uneventful, apart from the odd sighting of the beings, but Jack put this quiet episode down to the fact that he had remained on the country roads, and stayed away from the populated areas by going the long way around. He knew being on the bike was plain stupidity, but it was only temporary. He knew that if there were groups of them, he would probably have to turn the vehicle around for fear of being pulled off.

When he reached Rugeley, he rode the bike into a street called Crabtree Road; it was adjacent to a Primary school called John Bamford, which his son, Thomas, had started attending.

The bike was parked up by seven Crabtree Road, and Jack looked at the old house. He hadn't been back for a while. It had been too long. He had been a crappy father, and it was typical that the week that he promised himself that it was all going to change before it was too late, disaster had struck.

He looked around the barren street; curtains were drawn, and people were obviously inside but probably scared out of their wits. He walked towards the house and peered around to check the back garden. It was all clear.

He knocked the window, but there was no answer. Were they hiding inside? He couldn't tell if Kerry was in by looking for her car, as there was no drive and the street was full of parked cars. Jack was unsure if Kerry possessed a car or could even drive at all!

He looked and could see there was no sign of barricading, which told him that they were out. To be certain, he picked up a rock from the garden's rockery and gently tapped the glass of the living room window. He thought that breaking in would make them vulnerable, but promised to board the broken pane up if Kerry and Thomas were in the house.

The glass gave way gently, and Jack slipped his arm in and opened the side window. The side window of the living room was just enough for him to squeeze through, and he jumped onto the burgundy carpet of the living room. He scanned the room and, even though he had only checked one room, he was certain that the house was barren. The disappointment on his face was self-evident knowing there was nobody home, and weighed down with frustration, a surge of anger ran through his frame.

He didn't even call out for Kerry; he jogged his way upstairs and checked the remaining rooms nevertheless. The last room he checked was the bathroom, and as soon as he saw the toilet, his bowels reminded him that they were due to be emptied. Aware that he was in the middle of some kind of apocalypse where flesh eating beings roamed, he felt reasonably relaxed spending time on the toilet, and took it a stage further when he had a quick cold shower for two minutes, before putting his clothes back on.

He went down to the ground floor and took a look in the fridge. There was no bread or milk. He made do with a huge slice of Wensleydale cheese, a packet of crisps, and a packet of jaffa cakes. To add some health to the equation, he devoured the almost black banana and drank the remains of the OJ that sat under the sink.

He couldn't comprehend where she could have gone, so he decided to pick up her landline phone. He thought about calling her mum's to see if she was there with Thomas, but he didn't know her number, and even if he did, he remembered the verbal he was given by Kerry when he phoned her back in Glasgow. He didn't know what the situation was at her mum's; it could have been reasonably peaceful, or the house could be surrounded. He was going to ride there instead. It was only two miles away; it was the only place he could think of where they could be.

She had to be at her mum's!

He left the house with a full stomach and started up the bike. It squealed its way away from the empty Crabtree Road, heading towards Fair Oak. He turned left and headed out of Rugeley through a place called Slitting Mill, which sat on the outskirts of Cannock Chase. That was when he saw his first group of beings sauntering along the main road, just outside the Horns Pub.

The noise of his cycle made their heads turn and all eleven that were there, including one that looked no older than eight, outstretched their arms and desperately tried to grab Jack as he weaved around them. The last one he had passed almost ended in an unhappy ending, as he felt the tight grip of the thing grabbing the sleeve of his T-shirt, forcing Jack's arm to lash back at the fiend, forcing him to drive the bike for a couple of seconds one-handed.

The short incident had made him temporarily lose control of the bike, it wobbled slightly and it headed towards the crash barrier.

Only quick thinking from Jack had prevented the episode ending in a bloody result. He slowed the bike down and turned it to the left, missing the barrier by three yards. He was almost stationary before the bike increased its speed once again. The slowing down of the vehicle had given the creatures false hope. They turned and made an awful groaning sound; their decaying mouths open at the thought of warm flesh. Jack sped off, and took a quick look behind him, as the bike growled and taunted them.

Jesus Christ, they're almost running!

Jack was pretty confident that outrunning those things would be a task that could be achievable, providing there were obstacles that could prevent them from attacking him. If he ran up a jagged hill or a set of steps, that would halt their progress, as they seemed clumsy and unbalanced. Running away on a flat stretch of road, however, could be a different story altogether.

They weren't going to win any races, but what they did have was a will never to stop. Jack thought that as a human, eventually you would have to stop to get your breath back, they, on the other hand, would not, and probably had no breath to get back anyway.

He was sure that they didn't feel the burning sensation people got in their lungs, or pains in the chest, or even tiredness. They would probably continue, robotic like, until something or someone stopped them from achieving their feeding goal.

He had experienced his first encounter with a large group of them and nearly paid the price. He knew the bike had to go eventually.
Chapter Thirty Five

They were reasonably stocked up with supplies that they had in the van, but Pickle told KP to head for the nearest supermarket to stock up even more. If they left it any longer, most of the food would be off or gone, taken by other desperate looters. There wasn't much room in the back as it was, but with six mouths to feed the supplies weren't going to last long.

The group had tried to convince Pickle to stop and check if there were any vacant houses that had been fled, but he was adamant that Stile Cop was their safest bet. It was in the open so they couldn't get trapped, unlike being in a house, and it was high up and in the middle of nowhere, away from populated areas.

With Pickle opting to go in the back for a change, KP was driving the van and turned to his right to see that passengers, Jamie and Janine, were daydreaming, their eyes staring into nothingness. The trees and shrubs whizzed past their eyes as the van reached forty, and the streetlights, with their long necks, look to be giving them and their vehicle the guard of honour as they progressed along the road.

As they ventured into Rugeley, they saw a few beings and realised that Pickle's theory was correct, and that staying anywhere residential so early was a recipe for disaster. The people who were trapped in their houses had no choice and had to stay where they were, but the group did have a choice, and the middle of nowhere seemed an appropriate destination.

KP decided to go the quickest way out of the town and went through Slitting Mill, rather than through Draycott. The van turned left and travelled along the Hednesford Road as if it was re-entering Rugeley the Draycott Park way. All three could see a few of the beings deep into the estate, and small gatherings of the dead were in their dozens around the town. They were roaming together, but why? Were they herding together out of instinct?

The van turned right onto Stile Cop Road and it was a road KP knew well. It was a road he and his friend used to cycle up on a weekend, when he was a child. When they were children the feeling of relief once they had cycled to get to top of the hill was immense, and once they were at the top, they had three options as they came to a crossroad.

Option one was to turn left and head into Brereton—Rugeley's neighbouring town. Option two was to go straight on and ride into a village called Upper Longdon. The third option would be to turn right, cycle for another mile and enter another small town called Hazelslade. Very rarely, a fourth option would be introduced. That fourth option would be to turn around and head back down Stile Cop Road. Any cyclist going down that hill could pick up a speed of twenty, easily.

As they bypassed the garden of death and its headstones—Stile Cop Cemetery—they looked to their left to see the condensed woods. KP looked at the digital clock fitted into the van's dashboard. It was nearly 11am.

KP's daydream of yesteryear came to an abrupt end when he heard a scream.

"Watch out!" Janine shrieked.

KP saw a figure for no more than a second that stumbled out into the middle of the road. The face was covered in blood, and its left hand was holding onto its left knee. KP's right foot applied more pressure on the gas pedal and the figure in the middle of the road was hit instantly. The van and the people inside it jumped up as the wheels of the heavy vehicle went over the body.

"Was that one of them?" Jamie said, his voice raised and filled with concern.

"Absolutely," KP answered, but he was unsure.

They turned left as they drove by the beauty spot where they were going to park after their visit to the supermarket, and Jamie saw that there was a family there already. KP then made the short drive to the supermarket and almost collided with a green BMW motorbike on the way. The supermarket was situated on Power Station Road, and they had taken the long way around, but KP was under instruction by Pickle that they should drive the circumference of the town, rather than through it, in case they attracted unwanted attention from afar.

The drive lasted another seven minutes, when at last, they reached their destination.

"Well, here we are," KP announced. "Let's get as much food as we can, providing the place hasn't been looted already."

Jamie jumped out of the van, into the car park of the twenty-four hour supermarket, and saw that the place had a few cars in it. He scratched his short brown hair and sighed hard. How did it come to this?

"Do you think there's anyone inside?" Janine probed.

"Dunno." Jamie shrugged his shoulders. "There're cars here. Why would people leave without their cars?"

Janine tried to quickly scan the car park as Jamie opened up the back to let out Pickle, Laz and Grass. She estimated that at least twenty cars were in the car park, and she was hoping they all belonged to staff that were hiding.

"Right, guys," Pickle announced. "Guns ready. Remember what I showed yer."

He then pointed at Grass and Laz. "You two grab a trolley. We're all going."

In a loose four-two formation, the four being the gunmen and the two being Laz and Grass with their trolleys in front, they entered the place through the main entrance of the automatic slider doors.

On the first floor was the food section; there were thirty aisles where customers paid for their items. To the right, was an escalator, where a huge range of clothes were normally sold. Four of them held Browning pistols, and Pickle's shotgun was strapped loosely on his back with a homemade strap that was made from a belt that he borrowed off Janine when they were in the Wolseley Arms pub.

"Once we get some food, I'm going up there," Jamie snorted, and pointed towards the escalator leading to the first floor clothes section. "Can't wait to get out of this uniform."

"First things first," Pickle cackled.

"Get plenty of fruit." Janine turned to Laz, who now had a smouldering cigarette hanging out from the corner of his mouth. Laz looked at Janine; he could see her physically shaking, holding the pistol. She'll be no good to anyone, he thought.

"Not too much fruit," KP snapped. "Be lucky if the fruit lasts a day, look at those bananas, they're almost black."

Janine felt that KP had a good point; the aisles of the place were reasonably well-stocked, and only looked half-empty. The advantage that they had was that the supermarket was a mile away from civilization, so it was hardly walking distance for the average human, and even less so because of what was happening.

The place was built purposely near an industrial estate to attract, not just the residents of Rugeley, but people from afar like Armitage, Brereton and other small towns.

They shuffled together in a loose oval shape and KP turned to Pickle and looked at the way the group was slowly moving, and said, "Do you think this is absolutely necessary?"

Pickle smirked thinly and shook his head. "Probably not. We'll probably get things done a lot quicker if we split up."

"Why don't you guys take a look around?" Jamie suggested to KP and Pickle. "Janine and I will stay with Laz and Grass."

"Good idea." KP winked at Jamie and didn't need to be persuaded to stay. He walked off on his own and disappeared behind an aisle.

Pickle took a bottle of apple juice and opened the bottle, and turned to the group. "KP has left the back o' the van open, so once yer loaded the van, meet us at the bottom o' the escalator for those of yer who want fresh clothes. For those who don't, yer can stay by the van. Who wants fresh clothes?"

All four put their hands up. Pickle grinned. "Okay, see yer all in about half an hour then." Pickle walked on and left the four to their own devices.

"What next?" Jamie announced, and looked over to Laz.

"Erm ... some of those already cooked chickens!" Laz said with excitement. "They smell nice."

After finishing their shopping trip, they then loaded the already-opened van. The four returned back to the barren supermarket, headed for the escalator and saw KP appear at the top, his Browning tucked into the front of his trousers. He was now wearing blue chinos and a black dressy shirt with a collar. Pickle appeared dressed in camouflage gear. He wore combat trousers and a round-neck-shirt to match.

Jamie sniggered to himself, and made a joke with Grass and Laz that Pickle thought he was Rambo.

"It's all clear," Pickle shouted down.

The rest of the group responded by running up the defunct escalator, excited about their new change of clothes. The place was half the size of the supermarket's ground floor; the other half appeared to be offices, staff rooms and canteens.

The clothes section was like a maze and the clothes racks were at six feet in height, so most of the group couldn't see over. The group had excitedly split up and were spread out among the first floor. Janine had already a handful of clothes and was heading towards the changing area.

Laz walked away from the group and walked along the balcony that looked onto the ground floor. He walked by the toilets and staff room, and headed towards the offices.

"Where're you going?" Grass shouted after Laz.

"Gonna see if any of these phones are working in these offices."

Grass immediately followed Laz, and didn't want to waste the opportunity to phone his mum and dad.

Laz tried the door and was pleased to find it was open. He stepped into the offices and began checking the phones. Grass had decided to take a different route and went into the toilet to drain his bladder.

Once the twenty-year-old had finished, he washed his hands and exited out of the area. He was now on the balcony, looking over the ground floor, and to his right he could see the clothes section from afar. To his left, he could see through the windows of the offices, and saw Laz frantically checking the phones. From what he could see of Laz's body language, it didn't look good.

Grass walked on and could smell the unmistakable aroma of ground coffee coming from the staff room, but there was something else he could smell mixed in with the aroma of coffee: The smell of rotten meat.

Maybe I've got time to make a fresh pot.

With zero hesitancy, he tried the door, and as it opened he was suddenly engulfed by an accumulation of bodies and the awful odour of death and groaning.

The momentum of their strength forced Grass to scream out and he almost went over the balcony. The dozen or so creatures spilled out of the room and grabbed and tore at him as he desperately tried to flee. He felt the first bite sink into his neck and he let out a terrifying, blood-curdling scream that attracted the attention of the rest of his group, including a horrified Laz.

Laz looked on in horror from the offices, as at least twelve of the things brought down the youngster and began to attack him. He could see at the other side, the group coming together to witness the destruction of young Conor Snodgrass. Three of the things ignored the bloody feast that was happening, and advanced towards the group at the clothes section instead.

Laz was safe for now. But what was going to be the end product? Him, stuck in the offices with these things trying to get in, as the group safely retreated back to Stile Cop with a van full of food and water? No chance!

Laz opened the office door and was now standing back on the balcony. He saw the remains of Grass being devoured by seven of the things that looked like they used to work at the place, as they were all dressed in similar attire.

He felt queasy as he saw one of them pushing its hand into the ripped-off head of the young man and scooping out the brains and shoving the findings into its mouth rapidly, as if someone was about to steal it from them. Another two were biting into his legs and the torso couldn't be seen at all, apart from what used to be inside it, which had spilled out all over the balcony.

Laz assumed that the frightened staff must have locked themselves in as the outbreak was announced, and maybe one of them had already been bitten or scratched by an infected customer or member of staff. He could only imagine what carnage had taken place in the staff room as they changed into these mindless freaks. It appeared that they had no idea on how to get out of the staff room once they had turned. That was until Grass came along and kicked the hornet's nest.

"What shall we do?" Jamie asked; his face was etched with panic, as slowly, three of the creatures dragged their feet towards the group.

"Shoot the fuckers!" KP exclaimed. "In the head!"

The group adhered to KP's advice and did exactly that.

It was self-evident that target practice hadn't been introduced, as some bullets from the four pistols that were being unleashed, hit the torso of some of those things. It took a few seconds before the first one fell to its knees and fiercely hit the floor face down.

Seeing that there were some bullet holes in the wall that had completely missed them, Pickle spoke out. "Wait till they get nearer!"

There were now seven of them about thirty yards away, the nearest two were ten yards in front, and the remaining five that were devouring the rest of Grass, seemed unruffled about the noise that was being generated by the weapons.

The first one in front of the group of the beings was an obese-looking young girl; she was virtually unrecognisable now as her face was ashen, her mouth and clothes stained with other peoples' blood, and she walked as if she had spent twelve hours in a pub with Oliver Reed.

KP stepped forwards, pointed his Browning at the girl and took her out with one clean shot, which took him by surprise. The rest followed suit and one by one, they fell. Some of the shots were still not hitting the target, but they eventually fell like dominoes, as if someone had just kicked over a line of mannequins.

Seven of the bodies were slumped on the floor; black fluid left the entrance of the wounds from some of the bodies, like a slow oil spill. Pickle and the rest of the group walked forwards onto the balcony; the four creatures that had devoured Grass, got to their feet. They looked up and began walking towards the group, except one. Its attention was distracted by the presence of Laz standing outside the office. Laz went back into the offices and hid himself in the ladies toilets that were situated near the photocopier. Pickle aimed from afar, and took himself by surprise when he released a shot and saw the lone ghoul take a fall before it got to the offices.

As the three others staggered towards the gun-wielding group, two went down immediately from Jamie and KP's guns. Jamie and KP continued to pull at the triggers and found that their magazines were empty.

Pickle smiled and said, "Allow me." The third, now twenty yards away, speeded up at the same speed as a jogger.

"Let me," Janine jumped in nervously. "I don't think I've got one yet."

Pickle stepped to the side and Janine shook so much, she needed two hands to hold the gun. She finally fired two rounds; one skimmed the outside of the neck. As it got closer, she made no mistake with the second shot that hit the thing in the left eye socket. It fell with a heavy thump.

"Well done." Pickle patted Janine on the shoulder. It was never meant to be a patronising comment from Pickle, and Janine never took it that way. She was almost in tears and her hands shook violently from her first experience of firing a handgun.

Pickle said, "Back in a minute."

Pickle saw something from afar that unnerved him. He marched his muscular frame over the balcony. He tried not to look at what was left of Grass, and stepped over the bloody remains that were scattered across the area.

Pickle could see Laz, now wrestling with one of them as they both fell out of the ladies toilets in the offices. The thing was on top of him, and Laz was trying his utmost to fight off the creature, but Pickle felt Laz was too weak to last too long. Laz was weedy; he was unfit and was on the wrong side of forty.

The creature turned around to see Pickle enter the offices, holding the shotgun the wrong way round. The butt of the shotgun hit it twice; its head cracked open and left a dark stain against the wall as it fell to the floor. Another violent crashing blow would have surely emptied the contents of the head, but Pickle temporarily refrained himself from doing so, unlike what he did with the female worker back at the Wolseley Arms pub.

He stood back as Laz tried to recover his breathing, and this time instead of bringing the gun down, he delivered a blow by swinging the butt of the shotgun like a baseball bat, into the side of the head of what used to look like, a teenage checkout girl. What she was doing in the toilet, he didn't know. It lay motionless on the floor, and Pickle was satisfied that the incident wasn't quite as messy as it was back at the pub; he was now feeling nauseous after witnessing what had happened to young Grass.

Almost in tears, the exhausted Laz staggered to his feet, and tried to speak but was finding it an arduous task.

Pickle wiped the butt off the gun on the office carpet and strapped the gun back around his shoulder, the belt hanging loosely. "Where the fuck did she come from?" Pickle quizzed.

Said Laz, "I dunno. She was in there when I went in. I opened the door to get out as soon as I saw her, but she grabbed me..."

"This is fucking mental!"

"Her fuckin' breath stunk." Laz tried to make a joke about a situation that had made him piss his shorts.

"Not too sure they can actually breathe, aren't they technically dead? Must be the decay in the mouth area yer referring to."

Laz looked out of the office windows and his saddened eyes glared at the middle of the balcony. "Fuckin' shame about Grass."

Pickle sighed and smacked his lips together. "I'm gonna have to take responsibility for that one."

"It's not your fault, Pickle!"

"I should have checked the area properly. It was me that said all clear and I shouldn't have allowed two unarmed men go into that situation."

"If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I just fucked off and he followed me."

"Whatever; we'll talk about it later. We need to get out o' here."

The two men heard the groaning of the girl that was lying on her back.

Fucker's still alive!

An exhausted Pickle asked Laz politely to step aside, and pulled out his pistol from his belt and responded to the noise with two short sharps bursts of gunfire to the cranium from his Browning pistol. The back of the head began to re-decorate the beige carpet with the black liquid that ran out of its damaged skull.

"Let's hope that this isn't a regular thing." Laz looked at his hands that were shaking violently and winced as he touched his right arm. He began to light up a cigarette.

"Tell me about it," Pickle spoke, taking the cigarette directly from Laz's mouth and took in a long deep suck, then handed it back to him. "Between the four o' us, we wasted about forty bullets on twelve of those things. Jamie and KP had emptied their magazines and there was some still left standing."

"Probably first time nerves. I know I couldn't do it."

Pickle approached the window that was situated in the office, and looked out onto the car park. He could see six more shuffling about in the car park; all were spaced out and the threat seemed pretty low, but he didn't want to hang about, especially the way his inexperienced group fired their pistols.

"Think we better leave," Pickle announced. "We've got company."
Chapter Thirty Six

It had only been a day and a half since the warning came through on the radio. At first he thought it was a hoax, or he had accidentally received a station that was broadcasting a science fiction audio book. The more he listened, the more the information was sponged by his disbelieving brain.

This was no prank, and this was no audio book either...this was the real thing. It seemed ridiculous that something like this could happen.

But why not!

He thought about the documentary he had watched on malaria, which kills millions a year, one every thirty seconds.

Hundreds of years ago it was the bubonic plague that killed twenty five million people across Europe, and another twenty five million across the globe. Just because medical science had moved on dramatically over the centuries, it didn't mean that man was safe from every living virus that threatened mankind.

To Gary Jenson, it was the nature of the virus that unnerved him and had caused mass panic on his wing. Paranoid that the officers had known about this through the night and had left them to their own devices, the prisoners banged their doors with their fists, and he was one of them hammering the steel. His hands were still smarting from that panic-stricken incident. Some prisoners were irate, some even wept, as there was no immediate response to their torment.

When Jamie Thomson finally opened his door, Gary's panic had subsided once he had time to think. He sat motionless on his bed and calmly slurped on his coffee that he had made five minutes before. He heard the excitement of the voices, as one by one the doors were opened, and after ten minutes, the wing fell silent.

Gary didn't understand the excitement of the other prisoners that were being released. Sure, they were now free men, but free in what kind of world? Maybe they had family they wanted to see. Maybe they were confident of getting to their homes, being with their families, and remaining there until the virus had passed. Maybe after the virus had passed, they thought that they could start again, and live as free men. Despite it turning into a horrific world out there, Gary thought that the opportunity for most of the inmates was too much to resist.

He, on the other hand, had other ideas. At first he wanted to stay. He thought he was the only one stupid enough to stay. The plan was to stay behind and hope in a matter of weeks that this virus would blow over. He was too much of a coward to go out there into the unknown.

He had a girlfriend, but aside from that the only family member he had left was his father, and the abusive drunken old man was a waste of space who Gary wouldn't piss on if the old man were on fire. Gary had already come to the conclusion that he would rather take his chances inside. Even more so once he stepped out of his cell.

Now with a coffee in his right hand, he walked out of his cell and stood on the first floor balcony, looking over the ground floor of the wing. The slider doors were left open, and the crack of light that spilled onto the wing near the canteen, suggested that the exercise yard door had been left open, too.

Gary raised a wry smile once he had noticed this. In his own cell, he had a huge jar of coffee, plenty of cigarettes, tins of tuna, and bread. On the wing's canteen, he knew they had cupboards of biscuits and sandwiches, and whatever else was left in the other cells from the inmates.

He walked across the balcony and trotted down the steel steps with his mug still in his right hand. He walked the full length of the ground floor to the slider, and peered into the other three wings. There was one inmate that he saw, who was strolling around the place on his own. He seemed to have the same idea as Gary. But what if there were others, many others, and they were still in their cells?

Gary took one last gulp of his coffee and placed the mug on the floor and took the black liner out of the plastic bin. Fortunately, apart from some cans and a banana skin, the bag was empty, as the bin had been recently changed.

He went round all the cells on his wing and was pleased to see every inmate, apart from himself, had left. He was unsure whether the rest of the wings were vacant and told himself that he would worry about that another day.

He collected as much food as he could and put them in the black bag; this process took thirty minutes to execute. He had enough to last weeks, and felt he needed to do this on that particular Sunday before someone else beat him to it. He had spent most of his Sunday sitting around on his bed, smoking cigarettes, and waiting for other inmates from other wings from houseblock two to introduce themselves, but it never happened.

It was now Monday afternoon, and the boredom was killing him. He couldn't possibly survive in his cell with no working TV. He had a working stereo, like other inmates had, but he felt it was too early to announce to the whole of houseblock two that someone else had stayed behind. He decided to do the inevitable and creep around the wings to see if there were signs of others. Initially, he was too frightened to do this, but he couldn't hide in his cell forever.

Maybe they could work together. Or maybe they would kill one another over food in order to survive. That was the risk, he thought. That was probably why the remaining inmates were keeping themselves to themselves, as they didn't know who had decided to remain inside.

Gary left his wing with ease, as each slider door of the wings were left open by the officers. It felt peculiar to leave his wing without the presence of an officer walking beside him. He walked through the opened slider door, went by the bubble, and peered into G and F Wing. Although he never stepped inside, the wings were eerily soundless and this gave him a shudder. He entered E Wing and like the others, it seemed desolate, but he knew that wasn't true, as he had already seen the figure on E Wing lolloping around. He could tell it was an inmate and not an officer, because they were all dressed the same, with their blue trousers and red polo shirts.

Gary hesitantly walked around and decided that calling out was a bad idea. He gently walked up the steel steps to get to the first floor, trying to make as little noise as possible. All the cell doors were opened, and he peered in each cell. It appeared on this wing that everyone had decided to take their chances outside, except one. He didn't recognise the face but the poor young boy had decided that cutting his wrists was a better option than being out there, where humans were now considered food by certain individuals.

Maybe he had no family to turn to, Gary thought.

It never baffled Gary where the young boy could have got a blade from to make the cuts, it was sometimes easier to get drugs and weapons in prison than on the outside. He stared at the lifeless body; his face was light blue, he was curled up like a frightened hedgehog and the sheets were heavily stained.

"Poor bastard," Gary uttered under his breath.

He checked the last few cells and decided that he should return back to his own wing.

"Damn shame," a voice appeared behind Gary.

Shocked by the unexpected presence, he gasped and turned around.

The man was in his thirties, stocky build and his head was shaved bald. The tattoos on his forearm suggested that he was in, or used to be in, a gang before being incarcerated.

"Jason Bonser," he announced and held out his hand. "You might have heard of me."

"Gary."

The truth was, Gary hadn't been in prison long and didn't know who he was, but didn't want to say so. He felt that men like Jason Bonser thrived on reputation and the last thing he wanted to do was disrespect a gang member who was twice the size of him, and inform him that he had never heard of him.

Gary shook his hand, and Jason squeezed his very hard. He didn't know whether it was done on purpose to make a statement, or if it was natural. If it was natural, then Jason Bonser was as powerful as he looked as far as the strength department was concerned.

"So this is it then." Gary smirked. "Just the two of us."

"Three of us, actually," Bonser corrected.

"Three?"

"A guy called Kyle Horan is on the other wings checking the place out. We decided to lay low for a day, now we're seeing who's stayed behind. Not many."

"What's he like?"

"He's a good guy," Bonser appeased Gary. "He's one of my crew."

"Oh."

Gary wasn't sure that two members of the same gang and him, was a great combination. Nothing had been said yet, and already he felt threatened. What happens if they want him out the way? What would they do if they found he had a cell full of food? He wished he had stayed in his cell now, but with the two of them now starting to search the wings, he came to the conclusion that it would only be a matter of time before he would be found anyway.

Kyle Horan finally made an appearance and bellowed to Bonser. "Well, that's been taken care of!"

"Erm ... Kyle." Bonser turned around to his colleague and pointed at Gary. Noticing him for the first time, Kyle stopped in his tracks.

"A new guy," Kyle spoke, but his voice seemed mocking and a little threatening to Gary. "I don't know his face."

These two individuals were hardcore, Gary had convinced himself. These two figures that stood before him were probably inside for gang killings, whereas he was in for stealing cars. If these two began to turn nasty, he wouldn't stand a chance.

"So what cell are you in, Gary?" Jason asked him.

He didn't have time to think. "H sixty-seven," he lied.

"H sixty-seven? Let's have a look in your cell."

All three walked onto H Wing. Gary walked in front of the two menacing men and was certain that a blow to the back of his head was going to occur, but it never came. He took in a deep breath and walked into H sixty-seven.

"Stand outside," Kyle demanded.

At this point, Gary knew he was in bad company. These guys now weren't even pretending to be nice.

They both searched through the cupboards and under the bed as well as the mattress.

Jason looked over to Gary, who was standing by the side of the door. "What did you stay behind for? There's nothing here, no food or nothing."

Gary shrugged his shoulders. "It just seemed too bad outside to leave, the radio mentioned people being attacked."

"We have a stash of food," Kyle informed Gary. "But you're getting fuck all."

This is it! This is the part where they're going to kick me to death. I'm another mouth to feed, so technically to them, I'm a threat. Come on, man. Think!

Gary shook his head. "I don't want anything to eat. I just want to hide in my cell, and die peacefully."

Bonser glared at Gary. "What?"

"I have no family on the outside, so what is there to live for?"

Jason and Kyle looked at one another and burst out laughing like a couple of teenagers. Gary kept his straight-face on, and stared intently at the two men, trying to prove that he was serious about the words that had fallen out of his mouth.

"This guy's crazy," Kyle snorted. "Once we've cleared the cells, I think we better stay away from this wing; the place will be stinking once he pops his clogs."

"Well," Jason held out his hand, and managed one last chuckle, "I wish you luck, my friend, but I know I'd rather be out there than stuck in here, starving to death."

"I have nothing out there," Gary responded. "No family or nothing. Why didn't you guys leave?"

The two men both smiled at one another, and Jason pulled out a mobile phone from his trouser pocket that had been smuggled in. Most dealers would try and get phones snuck in, most failed. "I've called people, family members, gang members, and it's fucking gruesome out there. A lot of people are dead. The last call I made was a few hours ago this morning. I called my sister, she was hysterical and as I was speaking to her, the fuckers were trying to get in. I heard windows smashed and then the line went dead."

"But you guys can't stay in here forever. Surely, the food will run out soon enough."

"True, and that is when we jump the fence, not while this pandemic is at its highest. Why put yourself at risk? Hopefully, by the time me and Kyle get out, most of these fuckers will be dead or the army would have control over the country by then. I dunno, we just need to survive, and an extra mouth to feed is not what we need. But if you're convinced that sooner or later the world's gonna go to hell in a handcart anyway and would rather die slowly in your cell, then that's up to you, brother."

Kyle grinned. "I could make it quicker for you, if you want."

"No, I want to do it this way. It'll give me time to pray and think about my loved ones from the past," Gary spoke with conviction, fooling both men convincingly. "It's what I want."

Bonser looked around the cell. "Well, there ain't any food in here, so I suppose I believe you."

"What if he's bullshittin'?" Kyle sneered. "I reckon he's only stayed behind 'cos he's too chicken shit to go outside."

Gary screwed his eyes and bravely taunted, "So why are you still here, then?"

Kyle never answered Gary, but his face was full of rage.

"And if you decide not to die and leave?" Bonser snarled a little, whilst asking the question.

Gary knew where Bonser was coming from.

Gary was certain that apart from the extra mouth to feed, him escaping would also be seen as a risk for the two men. If Gary was out in the world, he would have information about a certain prison that was stocked full of food and now only had two inmates in there. That kind of information could be detrimental for Bonser and Horan, especially if the information reached armed bandits or other types of desperados. A full or a half-full prison would be impossible and suicidal to break into, but if the houseblock only had two prisoners left, it made them vulnerable.

Gary finally answered, "I won't. Don't worry; if I wanted to leave I would have done with the rest of the cons. I'm staying, whatever happens. At least in here I get to choose the way I die. Out there is a different matter altogether. How many of the four hundred inmates will survive out there, if what they say on the radio is true?"

Bonser gulped hard. "Not many ... I suppose."

"We're all gonna die." Gary was convincing with his act. "Might as well be in here."

Both men nodded with satisfaction.

Gary sighed, "Think I might go to the exercise yard for some air."

"I wouldn't go out there," Kyle chuckled. "It's grim."

"I'll go anyway."

The two men patted Gary on the back and headed back to H Wing's slider and strolled back onto E Wing.

Gary could just about hear Bonser saying to Kyle, "I believe him. We'll check the cells on his wing for food in a few days. We have enough at the moment."

Gary reached the ground floor, and breathed a sigh of relief. His real cell was H fifty-six which was across the balcony, and if the pair of them knew that that was his cell and found out that he had food stashed away in his toilet cubicle and under his bed, they would know he was lying and kill him for sure. It had now turned into a game he couldn't win. Better change the name cards on the door in case they come back.

He was sure that they would be back to search the wing and cells for food, and Gary had an idea to take the food out of his cell and spread the food out into various cells. So when they came searching, it wouldn't look so suspicious, rather than finding a stash of food in the one cell.

He was relieved that the two men didn't ask him about the photograph of a family that was stuck on the wall of cell H sixty-seven or had noticed the name card on the cell door actually read, Frank Jones - Remand.

He looked out to the opened exercise yard door and wondered why the two intimidating men encouraged him not to go out. It's grim? One thing was for sure; he couldn't stay on his wing anymore. Jumping the fence wasn't an option either, as now it was a necessity. If he stayed and they came back to check on him in a matter of days and found that he hadn't lost a pound of weight, suspicions would be at their highest. And he needed to jump the fence when they were away; if they saw him climbing the fence, they could catch him and kill him. He would only have one chance at it.

He stepped outside into the humid air, where his ears were immediately assaulted with screams of panic from all around and above him. He could make out at least six voices and the longer he stood in the exercise yard, the voices increased and felt like they were multiplying.

He looked over to where the noise was coming from, to see the usual sight of A Wing from houseblock one. He could see arms hanging out of the narrowly opened windows, cups were being hit against the window to attract his attention, but they needn't have bothered. A cacophony of sentences were thrown at him, and he couldn't make them all out, but the half dozen he could understand, informed Gary that prisoners from the other houseblock had been locked up and left to starve to death.

Even if Gary could somehow get into the houseblock, he would have trouble trying to get the steel cell doors open anyway. He felt helpless, and all he could do was apologise continuously.

He finally understood what the two men meant now by avoiding the yard, and decided that the next time he went out there, would be when he eventually climbed over the fence.

He then looked ahead and saw that the huge main slider door—the entrance/exit to the place for vehicles—was left open.

Oh shit!

At least with the slider open, he didn't need to jump the wall, but what it did mean was that the main gate to the prison grounds was open, meaning, any of those things from the outside could get in, and he was sure that the two inmates inside didn't realise this yet, as their exercise yard on E Wing had a different view altogether.

Do it now! The voice screamed in his head, but he refrained from doing so. Gary wanted to be properly rested, fed and hydrated before he made the jump, as he didn't know what he was about to face on the outside.
Chapter Thirty Seven

The green BMW bike was now entering the small town of Hazelslade. The first thing it rode by, as he turned left down the steep declining road, was the pub on the right and the primary school to his left. He could see beyond the road about half a dozen of them in the distance. He turned right at the next road, which was opposite the huge fishing pond that was situated near the woods, and turned right into the street of Kerry's mum's house.

Two of the things sauntered around the street and Jack was unsure whether the noise from his new vehicle would be a hindrance for him and could attract the attention of the fiends from afar. The two creatures immediately turned and noticed his presence. They were fifty yards away at the bottom of the street, and Jack was now standing and keeping the bike upright. The house he wanted was the end one to the right of the street.

He allowed them to gain on him and waited patiently for them to approach him. As they approached nearer, he saw that the two males looked no older than twenty, and both wore black attire, matching their dyed hair to represent the gothic music they used to listen to before they were turned.

Their T-shirts had bands on them that Jack had never heard of, and the one on the left had a spike-piercing through its nose. Their ivory skin was noticeable as they managed another five yards, and Jack thought that as humans they probably looked the same as they did now.

Once they were ten yards away from him, he thrashed the accelerator and drove the bike around them; with the Slitting Mill incident still fresh in his mind, he didn't want to give them a sniff of a chance of grabbing him. Jack then turned into the drive and dropped the bike onto the front lawn of the garden, took out the keys, and climbed the garage, as the two hapless things desperately and clumsily walked towards him.

He jumped off the garage and was now behind the fence. He walked and peered into the living room of Kerry's mum's, but there was no sign of life. He could now hear the groaning of the things from behind the fence. Suddenly he heard a voice from above him. He looked up to see an elderly lady whose face was quivering with fear. She looked like she was ready to burst into tears.

"It's okay." Jack raised his hand apologetically. "I'm looking for someone."

The old woman spoke, "They might be in the church, some of them left for the church; others went to a village hall. It was a big group of people from here."

"What about Kerry? Was there a woman here called Kerry Evans?"

"I know Kerry. She was here. She came up to see her mum."

He looked up to see the elderly woman; she looked no younger than seventy. "Did they have a little boy with them?"

"Yes, young Thomas," she said tearfully. "Please leave, you're putting us all in danger being here."

She shut the window slowly and he heard the beginnings of her sobbing, until the closed window prevented him from hearing any more. He didn't have great knowledge of the area outside the small village, but he knew there was only one church and it was situated half a mile away, he had no idea about any village hall. All he needed to do now was distract his small fan club so he could get back onto his bike.

He pulled himself back up onto the garage, where he was now overlooking the things that were staring up at him. He was certain he could outrun them. He jumped off the garage and rolled to the side as if he had just performed a parachute jump. They didn't waste any time on pursuing the man, and he quickly ran to the front garden to pick the heavy bike up. He started the engine first time and sped off before the things were anywhere near him.

He looked behind to see that these weren't quite as persistent as the creatures he bumped into at Slitting Mill. They stumbled around the street as if they had already forgot about his presence, whereas some of the group from Slitting Mill were almost running after him.

Nothing was black and white with these creatures, and Jack wondered how long it would be before someone could work out how these things ticked, if anything could cure them, and what was being done in terms of help for the UK population. It was only a couple of days in, and Jack was hopeful that the country was weeks away from cures and help, as the country, and possibly the world, would be in a state of shock and consternation for a while before a metaphorical slap in the face was needed.

One of Jack's fears was that if this was a UK problem only, the rest of the world would cut their losses. It was an island, and the problem could be contained, especially with military intervention. Considering that the Western world had been ignoring the atrocities in Sudan or civil war in Sri Lanka, then why suddenly bend over backwards for the UK?

It was difficult to know what was happening with the lack of knowledge he had and information available. The only thing he could concentrate on was to look after himself and make sure his son was still alive. Some none-western countries may feel that this was exactly what Britain deserved for the hardship they had caused on the world. Was this God's way of finally punishing the United Kingdom, for the British Empire's atrocities that had been committed over the centuries?

Jack pulled up at the main road, which was adjacent to the fishing pond. He pulled the bike off the road and slowly rode the beast through the long grass where he came near a wooden fence. He stepped off the bike to see that the pond was surrounded by the wooden fence where the panels went across horizontally.

The fence was only four feet in height, and the thickness of the panels already told him that he was going to need something hardcore to break or saw through them, if he wanted to take the bike as well. He had two choices. He could ride around and find another way in. Or, he could ditch the bike temporarily and go on foot. He was aware that walking into the woods unarmed was a dangerous option, but finding his son was the only thing that kept him going.

He made the decision to temporarily leave the bike and finish the remainder of the journey on foot. He laid the bike on its side in the long grass, so that when he came back it would still be there, sleeping, waiting for its new master, hopefully with Kerry and Thomas in tow. He was certain it wouldn't get stolen, as the long grass was the perfect camouflage for a 1300cc BMW that had lime green paintwork on its body, but the sooner he could get a car with keys, the better. He wouldn't know where to start if he wanted to hotwire one, but the Slitting Mill incident had highlighted that he'd be better with a sheet of metal around him whilst travelling.

He looked by the pond and into the condensed wooded area. It was a part of Cannock Chase he didn't know well at all, most of the Chase surrounded every town. Cannock itself had acres upon acres of wooded area around its perimeter of its town, as well as Hazelslade. Some would mistake the Stile Cop woods on the outskirts of Rugeley as a part of Cannock Chase, but that was a smaller, separate wood on its own, which ended at the top of the hill of the large beauty spot.

Jack trounced through the grass and kept on looking at his feet to make sure there was nothing untoward hiding in the grass. The forty-year-old continued to scan the grass and was feeling the wetness under the arms of his black T-shirt. He could murder a cigarette.

As he got to the pond, he sat down on one of the wooden benches. It was a beautiful place and he could understand why people would choose to live in such a small town.

My clutch has gone. Can't get my arse into gear.

He cursed himself for being lazy and got back to his feet. The only way he could get to the woods was to walk around the pond, and he wanted to look for his son and make his way back to the bike before daylight began to diminish.

He glared into the pond. He wondered why grown men would pay a fee to sit and fish there; the water looked filthy and he couldn't fathom what kind of fish lived in the pond, if any. What was the point of fishing? All it was to Jack was grown men drowning maggots.

Lost in self-hypnosis, Jack slowly came around and managed to get his brain in gear; he had returned to reality. It was surreal reality, but it was reality all the same, whether he liked it or not. He could feel a pain in his stomach and put his hand there.

Before he managed to make another step forward, the sound of rustling came from the side of him. It was one of them. He quickly snapped out of his daydreaming and ran away from the solitary being as it stumbled through the long grass.

Jack could feel the surge of nervous energy pumping furiously through his frame, and he knew if he continued to run, it would only follow him into the woods. He turned to face the thing. It released a groan and looked bloated. Jack allowed it to get nearer and then brought his foot into the stomach of the vagrant. It fell backwards, giving Jack a little time.

Jack began to run the circumference of the pond, his eyes scanning for anything that could be used as a weapon; the cleaver would have been perfect right now.

The thing chased after him slowly, like a deformed butler you would see in one of the old horror movies. Jack finally found a jagged rock that fitted perfectly in his hand, and it was more than suitable for an execution. He turned around and stood his ground, waiting for it. He felt sick with nerves as it gained on him, and he pulled his right arm back as if he was about to throw a baseball. Once in range, he narrowed his eyes and threw his arm forwards and connected with its skull. He was surprised at what he witnessed.

Jack didn't know whether it was his strength, the fact that the thing was heading towards him, or if it had a weak skull, but the mess that his solitary strike had created was almost on a par of what a shotgun could have done. He felt the fragments of bone brush his hand as the rock smashed straight through, causing irreparable damage from the skull down to the nasal area.

Black blood splashed out onto his shirt, little splats was felt hitting him in the face and covering his hand and rock, and the creature fell immediately as the damage to the brain was self-evident. Jack didn't need a doctor to tell him that the brain had been severely damaged. Just looking at the extent of the damage to the head and face, made it obvious that the creature wouldn't be getting up again.

Jack dropped the dripping rock onto the ground, and gaped at the body and the black oily hole where a face use to be. His sickness had only increased once the ordeal was over, and he walked over to the pond to splash his face and wash his hands.

He looked at his hand where it was scraped by bone fragments, and was pleased that the attack hadn't broken his skin. He used some of the pond water to drench his shirt. He wanted to get rid of the oily stuff off his shirt, and cool himself down from the humidity as well.

He sat down and his thoughts raced through his mind of the insane weekend that he had endured so far, and how close he had come to being killed. He thought about Robbie and having to execute him in his own drive with a cleaver. Even that thought alone was surreal. He reminisced about the dead bodies outside the police station, being attacked at the service station, the abandoned car, and being grabbed at Slitting Mill, and now being practically ambushed by one of them—although he admitted to himself that if he had been paying attention, he would have spotted the thing through the tall grass a lot earlier.

He looked at the pond and understood that going into water would be a futile and suicidal thing to do if ever a gang of the beings were chasing him. If these things were already dead, then it was impossible for them to drown.

Was nowhere safe?

He understood that in the major cities, the carnage would be even more distressing, and would be swarming with the things. In his small experience so far, he had witnessed hordes of them in some areas, and other areas were relatively quiet. He shook his head. He had to find his son and go somewhere safe soon, as the more he travelled, the more he was likely to be attacked.

Still feeling sick, Jack placed his weary head into his lap and waited for the feeling to pass. The food that he consumed at Kerry's home had managed to stay down, and the only thing Jack released was tears.

The unreal disaster to mankind had begun to hit him hard. He cried for his son, as he didn't know whether he was alive or dead. He was unsure about his other relatives who he had hardly gave a second thought about so far, and for the first time, he wondered about his friends, his work colleagues and even his neighbours.

There was so much going on in the last few days, and with survival being the only goal, his brain never had the time to think about anything else or other people.

He wiped his eyes and made a start to get to his feet; he felt thirsty and could taste in his mouth that his breath wasn't the best. Shit. Smells like a monkey's arse. He had more things to worry about than bad breath.

He headed for the woods, and it was a task he wasn't looking forward to as he mentally prepared himself for the worse case scenario, but he needed to find his son, whatever it took.
Chapter Thirty Eight

The van turned into the beauty spot of Stile Cop; it was the highest point of the area. The men and Janine got out of the van, still shocked from Grass's death, and waved at the Pointer family. The Pointer family waved back, although unsure of their new guests. Pickle walked the short twenty-yard journey towards the Renault Clio and held out his hand.

"Harry Branston," he greeted warmly with a smile. "But people call me Pickle."

"David." David Pointer shook Pickle's hand. "But most people call me David."

"At least yer still have yer sense o' humour; that's what got our forefathers through the Second World War."

David introduced his family to Pickle, and he returned the favour by introducing the Pointers to his own crew, although Laz remained in the back of the van, as he was feeling unwell.

KP walked over to the edge of the beauty spot. It had a steep decline of bracken and grass and it overlooked the town of Brereton. Further on, he could see Rugeley's power station, and as he turned around to the back of him, he could see the woods.

"Where do they lead?" KP asked David Pointer, referring to the woods. David was taken aback by KP's presence, and stared at the individual for a few seconds, making David glare back. "I'm trying to be friendly."

David answered, "The woods lead nowhere really; a farmers field, the cemetery. If you continue by the woods and turn right, you come to the town of Rugeley, and there's a little place called Draycott Park."

KP said, "I know some of the area, but I only lived here for the first ten years of my life."

The two men stood in a bubble of unsettling silence, but both men refused to turn their back on the view, and remained transfixed hypnotically at the miles of land their eyes could register.

David cleared his throat and with KP, he continued to stare out at the view from the edge of the beauty spot, and spoke up. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

KP nodded the once, and his unimpressed remark was, "It's okay, I suppose. Is that your wife and daughter?" KP nodded over to Davina's direction. She was sitting in the Clio, helping her daughter get fed.

David nodded. "We couldn't think of anywhere else to go. Wanna meet them?"

"And why would I want to do that?" KP felt a little agitated that there was already a family at the beauty spot. The last thing he wanted was more mouths to feed and people who were incapable of defending themselves, but it was a troubling subject he wasn't prepared to bring up, not when there was a little girl involved.

Pickle and Jamie watched KP and David talking to one another and he winked at Janine. "I think this will do for a while."

"We could have stayed in the pub for a few more nights," Janine snorted.

"There was only enough food in that kitchen for another day. And what happens if we were trapped? Where would yer run to?" Pickle looked around the spacious Stile Cop area and took a large breath in. "Up here, we stand a better chance o' survival and there's more options to escape, if we really have to."

Pickle walked over to the driver's side of the Renault Clio that was already open, and peered into the car and gave Davina and Isobel a friendly smile. Davina looked at Pickle nervously as he spoke. "I suppose yer wondering why we've turned up in that big ole van?"

Davina never looked at Pickle and made the remark, "You escaped from prison?"

Pickle smacked his lips together and nodded once. "Yes, but we mean no one any harm. We just want to survive like everyone else."

Davina gave her daughter the last spoonful of cold macaroni and cheese; Isobel winced every time she swallowed the cold substance. Davina sighed, "We'll probably be leaving soon, so we won't be in your way."

"There's no need for that." Pickle glared at Davina's short brown hair; she was very attractive, despite that she donned no make-up. It looked like she suffered from sleep deprivation, and her breath was malodorous, probably from the lack of hydration or not cleaning her teeth for a while.

"Everything okay?" David Pointer walked over and Pickle stood up and turned to face the lucky man that was married to Davina.

Pickle looked at the slight man of average height, his dark hair needed a wash. Pickle said, "Listen...David."

David raised his eyebrows.

Continued Pickle, "There's no need for you and yer family to leave. It's bad out there, and it's only gonna get worse. We have plenty o' food, water, we have toilet roll, soap, toothbrushes."

"I could rustle you up a cooked chicken salad right now," Janine interjected with a warm smile. She felt empathy for the frightened family.

David looked over to Davina and they both smiled.

"We were just going to stay here a little while," David tried to explain.

"Well," Pickle said. "I think this place is perfect. We have a van full o' fuel, food and water, and we're at the highest point o' the area. We couldn't be any safer."

"We could be in a secure house." David smiled thinly.

"Being in a house, means being in a populated area. And being in a populated area—"

"And we have guns." Jamie pulled out the Browning out from his trouser belt.

Pickle smiled at the family. "But we're not very good with 'em."

Jamie stood next to Pickle and said softly, "We're gonna have to think about getting an itinerary made up; someone needs to keep watch round the clock."

"Good idea." Pickle nodded. "As harsh as it may sound, I think we'll use the van to temporarily block the entrance off. It's not just for those crazies out there; it's also for any more travellers that may want to use this place as a base." Pickle turned to David Pointer. "No offence to you and yer family, David, but I think we have enough mouths to feed now."

David looked over to where KP was standing and looked back at Pickle.

"Don't worry about him," Pickle spoke with assurance. "He's not good with new company, plus, we lost someone only minutes ago and it was horrific to see. But yer probably have seen worse than us. There's one more o' us in the back o' the van, but he's a little ill. Stress...probably."

"What do we do when the stuff runs out?" David asked, referring to the supplies Pickle had been speaking about.

Pickle shrugged his shoulders; he didn't have an answer to the question, as he wasn't looking that far forward. He was living his life, from now on, day by day. He could understand why David was so concerned, though. He had a daughter; he wanted to see her grow up and live a normal life—whatever normal would mean from now on. Pickle looked over to Jamie for support.

Jamie responded, "We get some more, until the supermarket is cleared."

David asked, "And once it's cleared?"

"We go to another, and another." Jamie smiled with confidence, but was becoming a little agitated with David's realistic concern.

"And when the fuel dries up? And the shops are empty?"

Pickle laughed and patted David on his back due to his lack of optimism. "Then we get ourselves some crossbows or make some bow and arrows and start hunting deer, like we used to when we were young boys. Don't worry about tomorrow, live for today. Take each day as it comes if yer can. Today we're still alive and have food, there're others out there who are in a worse situation than we're in right now."

"Anyway." It was Jamie's turn to speak. "It'll probably be over by then."

"Probably," was the negative response from David Pointer. He didn't have the optimism that the new people shared, but was glad of the extra food and felt even better when he saw them carrying weapons. Not only did his family have food now, but there was security as well.

Half of Pickle's body went into the Clio, and as he reached over to the opened glove compartment, he pulled out a mobile that he had spotted.

Davina was affronted by Pickle's cheek, but this was a man who had a crew carrying guns with a van full of food. He wasn't somebody she should upset; she needed to keep Pickle sweet for the sake of her daughter.

Pickle looked at the phone. "Could yer get a signal up here?"

"Sometimes," Davina answered. "Trouble is, it drains the battery."

"Tell me about it. It's flat." He placed it back into the glove compartment, and then he joked to Jamie. "I take it, Stile Cop doesn't have WiFi."

"Excuse me, Harry," Davina spoke from the back of the car.

"Yes, treacle."

"Do you think me and my daughter could use some shampoo, a toothbrush and some toothpaste, if you have any? Don't worry about water. We won't need good drinking water to wash. There's a brook in the woods not far from here."

"Of course yer can."

"Thank you, mister," Isobel spoke at last. "My teeth are beginning to hurt."

Pickle looked perplexed, and Davina explained to him that if ever Isobel forgot to brush her teeth, her teeth would start to ache.

Pickle stared at the little girl; her hair was golden and had the biggest beautiful eyes, like saucers.

"I'll get what you need," Janine spoke, and walked to the back of the van, and then put some products under her arm. She came back and leaned over to Davina. "I have other things available if you need them." Janine winked. Davina shook her head, as she didn't know what Janine was getting at.

Janine sighed comically, "Woman stuff."

"Oh, right." Davina snickered a little. "I'm okay for now. I think I have another two weeks before I need to worry about that."

"Where is this brook?" Pickle quizzed and took out his Browning. "You two are not going in there alone."

"I'll go with them," David insisted. "They're my family."

Pickle laughed and shook his head. "Don't worry, Mr Pointer. I wasn't inside for rape if that's what yer were thinkin'. I tell yer what; all four o' us should go. Janine, Jamie and KP can get the barbecue started."

David looked at Pickle with surprise.

Said Pickle, "Oh yeah, we have a barbecue as well." He bent over and playfully squeezed the cheek of Isobel. "We'll get this little one a proper meal, not cold beans or macaroni out o' a can."

Isobel's face beamed with excitement, even though she had just eaten. "Can I have a beefburger?"

"Yer can have whatever yer want, darling?"

The group of four, being David's family and Pickle, began their small journey into the woods, and Pickle informed KP that they would be fifteen minutes at the most. They walked away from the sandy area where the van and car was parked.

David Pointer turned around before entering the woods and could see KP staring at him. KP wasn't happy that there were more mouths to feed, and David Pointer knew it.
Chapter Thirty Nine

An anxious Gary Jenson crept from his new cell back to his old cell, and began to pig out on a couple of sandwiches. He grabbed a plastic bottle of coke and walked back to his H sixty-seven cell; his eyes were staring at the slider, making sure he wasn't being watched by the two thugs.

It took a while before the mastication process could be finished, as he had put too much bread into his mouth. He tried to speed it up by taking a swig of the coke, which moistened the ball of food, which he then managed to swallow with ease.

He was in two minds again whether to stay or jump the fence. It seemed far more dangerous outside, but at least if his life was in danger, he would have somewhere to run, but now that the entrance slider was open, he didn't seem to have a choice.

He sat down on his bed and flicked the kettle for another drink of coffee. Realising he had left his mug on the ground floor of the wing, he got to his feet and pulled out another cup from his shelf and put the generous spoonful of coffee into the mug with a splash of milk. He turned on the radio and found that the original station where the information had come from, the one that caused the mass panic on the wings, was no longer working.

He fiddled with his radio and managed to find a station, but the language was in French. He turned the dial very slowly and managed to get another reception; this time it sounded like an American station, either that or it was an American host on a British station.

For the first minute, Gary couldn't make out what was being said. Gary didn't know whether it was live or a recording on a loop. The crackle infuriated him a little, but considering where he was, it was a miracle he could get a signal in the first place. He thought about going outside, but the sound of the individual on the radio would only be drowned out by the screams and wails of the prisoners from houseblock one, demanding and begging to be let out.

He stuck his ear to the speaker of the small radio and realised he had missed the beginning of the programme, and it sounded like the host was interviewing a so-called expert on why the pandemic was happening.

He couldn't make out the remains of the answer, to whatever the last question was, and listened out for the host's next question. The person being grilled was a Professor of Sciences from Edinburgh University.

By listening to the next question, it appeared to Gary that the interview was in its early stages.

Host: "So do we know what caused the virus?"

Professor: "They don't know. The same answer to the question: How was the universe created? Why do we yawn? Does the G spot exist? They don't really know, but are sometimes too arrogant to admit they don't know themselves. But we understand that the first recording of an attack, as such, was the first week in June in the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, in Newcastle."

Host: "Which countries are affected?"

Professor: "They're guessing that the virus is mainly in the UK, although pockets of the virus has been reported in other countries thanks to aviation, such as France, Germany and New York, as well as Dubai. Everyone from Russia, China, or India are in a state of sheer panic and paranoia. There are reports that China, Russia, Belarus and Poland have already put up borders, but we'll see what happens."

Host: "What about our army?"

Professor: (laughs) "Our army is not even the top ten biggest in the world, which is not great. We have nearly two hundred thousand personnel. Even the army of Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, Egypt and Brazil are bigger than ours. We also need to take into account that some of them are still overseas, and others may have fled to be with their families. Two hundred thousand army personnel to protect sixty million UK citizens is a tall order."

Host: "Will we get help?"

Professor: "In a word, no. Is anyone giving France or any other countries help? So what makes us so special? Countries are scared of the virus getting into their own land. To be perfectly honest, I think it's going to be hard for the world to contain this, as it's probably already a global threat thanks to aviation."

Host: "What are these creatures called?"

Professor: "There are various terms, and nicknames. The so-called experts basically called them "things" but I've heard all kinds of names in such a short space of time. Ghouls, Deadheads and Snatchers—short for Bodysnatchers. I suppose it's like asking the question, what do you call the USA? Is it the USA? United Stated of America? The United States? America? or North America? Is it Britain? Great Britain? United Kingdom? Or the UK?"

Host: (sighs impatiently) "How are they killed?"

Professor: "If you stab or shoot at them in the body, it won't do a jot. They bleed dark liquid because they're technically dead. It's the brain that keeps them moving. If you penetrate their head and damage the brain, it will cause the same damage as if you attack a human. That's the only part of their body that's still alive."

Host: "So really, they're alive?"

Professor: "No, they're dead, they have no heartbeat. Although the brain is still working, it has been ravaged by the virus."

Host: "How many people are affected?"

Professor: "We all are!"

Host: (sighs) "How many people are infected?"

Professor: "No one knows yet, but I'm guessing that there are possibly a few million in the UK. At the moment, there are probably millions of survivors in the UK. Think about the families that have barricaded themselves in their houses and army personnel having to remain in their barracks. Because the news broke on a Saturday and Sunday, most people, thankfully, were at home. If this had happened during the week, with every one at work, getting taxis, trains, children in schools, etc, it would have been carnage to the extreme."

Host: "So there's a lot of hope for people?"

Professor: "Well, this is the easy bit. It'll be interesting to see what happens once the food and drink supply runs out. It may take weeks, months, once the food has gone from every household. Those who are brave enough to go outside and loot the shops for more food will survive longer, provided they don't get caught by one of them, but once the supermarkets have been stripped bare, what happens next? I think it's fair to say the suicide rate in the UK will rocket in the next couple of months. Also, if these things don't die out in the next few months, then some people will starve to death."

Host: "What about food aid from other countries? Is this where our army can be useful and deliver food to quarantined places?"

Professor: "It will be happening in the near future. Supplies will only being dropped in quarantined areas in London, but we know of other quarantined places in Manchester, Birmingham and Cardiff. Then it's up to us to spread it evenly across the UK. Can't see it somehow, there's too many mouths to feed in London alone, and probably not all countries will come together and help us out. There would be too much fear of entering our air space, plus, we're hardly the most popular nation in the world, are we?"

Host: "What's the government doing?"

Professor: (laughs) "Nothing. They're hiding, probably underground or somewhere where there is a huge military presence, having a nice roast beef dinner as we speak. I can see there will be a lot of the food supplies heading their way. Some sources claim that the Prime Minister has left the country, nice eh? Everyone is scared. No one knows what's going on. Russia could nuke France right now, and no one would give a hoot, apart from the French, because this contamination is so big, it's the only thing people are thinking and worried about."

Host: "Any reaction from our allies overseas?"

Professor: "Oh yes! They're showing huge concern." (There was sarcasm in the professor's voice).

Host: "That's it?"

Professor: "That's it!"

Host: "We're hearing a lot of planes have been grounded, is this a safety precaution?"

Professor: "Of course, just think if you're on business or on holiday in Scotland or England, and you're scratched or bitten and you fly to the USA or India. They reckon that's how it spread to London. Also, local flights were turning up at Heathrow and Gatwick, with possible infected people. Then people were falling into comas and being transported to hospitals across the capital; you can guess the rest. By the time they decided to ground all flights, it was too late; people were getting bitten in crowded airports. There was also reports of a train load of infected spilling out on Kings Cross."

Host: "Isn't the virus already in America?"

Professor: "An outbreak occurred on a flight heading to New York. The Captain announced that panicky passengers were banging the cockpit door to get in; he made an emergency landing. They thought it was a terrorist attack and once the plane landed, the doors were opened and the army opened fired on the passengers, most were reanimated. One army officer was bitten by a reanimated four-year-old boy; the soldier in question shot the boy in the head, and then turned the gun on himself. But yes, it is rumoured that New York has been cordoned off, but thankfully, like ourselves, it's an island and the rest of America is pretty safe for now."

Host: "We had to rely on USA news such as Fox and CNN, why?"

Professor: "Our newsreaders, cameramen and reporters are only human, too. In this time of crisis, what would most people do? Keep reading the news, or try and be with your family and flee or barricade yourself in? I know what I would do."

Host: "Is it true that the Chinese Air Force have shot down all passenger flights from the sky over their airspace?"

Professor: "We've heard the rumours. If it's true, then thousands upon thousands of people from all nationalities have been killed needlessly. Once this has all died down, there will be an investigation into that particular incident. Apparently, they were told to turn around and go back where they came from. Obviously some planes don't have the fuel to do that, so refused to do it and paid a heavy price."

Host: "There have been a dozen unconfirmed reports that the USA have also shot down planes from Europe. Is this true?"

Professor: "Yes. There were also two reportedly shot down in the Canadian skies. Basically, all planes that refused to turn around were taken care of. Other governments have done it, too. I know it sounds bad, but there are twenty three thousand flights in the USA alone, thirty thousand in Europe. Even if a thousand had been shot down, the governments had to act, because if the infection does get overseas, it's because of aviation that it has spread, and then we've got a serious world pandemic. Remember, the virus is spread through biting. It's not airborne, so it can be controlled to a certain degree. I was brought on here to discuss the things that are plaguing us; I don't have much idea what's happening regarding flight paths or government control, I'm not a politician. I thought we were here to discuss these things, to try and help the people of this country?"

Host: "I'm sorry, these are just random questions. I don't actually have a list in front of me. Let's go back to the ... Snatchers, I think you called them."

Professor: "Bodysnatchers, that's right."

Host: "Do they bite you or just eat you?"

Professor: "Depends. If there are a couple of them, and they bite you and you manage to escape, you will reanimate. Could take an hour, maybe longer, maybe less. We don't know. Depends on the severity of the wound. A little infected nick may take longer to reanimate than a bite. Why do they bite? I'm guessing...instinct."

Host: "So if they scratch you, would you be infected?"

Professor: "Yes. If you're scratched or the bite is not so deep, it could take a while before the infection kicks in; we don't know why this is the case. If you run into a horde of them, and can't escape, they'll eat you alive, and you won't reanimate because they'll be nothing left of you. Their purpose is the same as yours. It's to survive. They don't care about creating other ghouls, they want to feed."

Host: "What are they attracted to?"

Professor: "They're attracted to noise... you! If you go hiding in a supermarket or in the woods—remote places where there's no people, don't be surprised to wake up surrounded by these things. Like wild animals, if the food supply starts to die, they'll go elsewhere to find it."

Host: "So they can smell you?"

Professor: "I don't have the answer to that. Probably! But if you live in the city, and the food supply is running short, they're going to explore other places like any normal animal would."

Host: "So if their purpose is to eat, then is it safe to say that a lack of food would see these things die out eventually?"

Professor: "Well, technically they're dead from the neck down, so we still don't understand why they feed anyway. If it's not instinct, then we're hoping that lack of food could be one of the reasons for their eventual demise, but we're assuming that general decomposition is our best hope. Only time will tell."

Host: "Most people can't use their mobile phones anymore, why is that?"

Professor: "There are simple reasons really. Ran out of money, battery dying. You might be an office worker trapped, and your charger might be at home. Also, if they're on an automated system, then they would shut off without payment being made. Also, think about who's going to power the towers? Who will give maintenance to these towers? You?"

Host: "If a normal person is shot in the heart, could they rise as a Snatcher?"

Professor: "No, the dead are not rising. This isn't something out of a Michael Jackson video. There are no corpses digging themselves out of graveyards. The only way you can become one of these is if you are bitten or scratched by an infected individual, or if their blood gets into your eye or an opened wound."

Host: "Ever heard of nanobots?"

Professor: "Of course. Scientists have already created a nano-cyborg by fusing a tiny silicone chip to a virus. Within a decade they reckon they'll have these things crawling inside our brain and setting up neural connections to replace the damaged ones. So they could end up re-wiring our thoughts. Some day they'll be in our heads and will be programmed to continue after we've died. They can form their own pathways, which means they can use your brain to keep operating your limbs after you've died right up until you rot to pieces."

Host: "Is there a good chance that this is already happening?"

Professor: "Absolutely. But that is completely different to what we're dealing with now. I'm still convinced this all started on the 2nd June, when a researcher from the NICR was attacked by a lab rat where it had been injected with a genetically engineered variant of the measles virus."

*

Gary switched the radio off; it sounded grim outside and he came to the conclusion that there was danger everywhere whatever option he chose. Being beaten to death was something he wouldn't wish for, but being eaten alive and ripped to pieces by a pack of cannibalistic infected humans, wasn't the best way to go either.

He shook his head at what his next move was going to be. It was obvious. With the slider door open, he was going to have to make a move. Gary was indecisive at the best of times but knew one thing for certain: He needed to make the jump.
Chapter Forty

Jack Slade had spent an hour in the woods and apart from coming across two deers and a grass snake, there was no sign of life or any sign of the beings either, and more importantly, he hadn't found his son yet. The church that the old woman had been mentioned was empty, and he felt the old woman might have told him that story just to get rid of him.

Jack had a feeling that Kerry wouldn't take his son alone in the woods unless there was a group of them, and he knew there was a village hall at the end of the small woods, and was going to investigate the area while he was there.

After checking out the empty church, he re-entered the woods and continued walking through the clustered area and was feeling his legs growing heavier with every step he made. He was coming towards the end of the wooded area; he knew that, because he could see the main road through the trees. In ordinary circumstances he would have known earlier that he was coming to the end of the area, as he would usually be able to hear the sound of engines moaning past in the distance.

As he came out of the other side of the woodland, he felt the cool air massage his build. The heat from inside the woods was intense, and he was pleased to be in the open air. He could feel soft trickles of sweat running down and tickling the middle of his back, and he looked along the main road to try and get his bearings. Walking along to the right would lead to Cannock, a populated town that should be avoided. To his left, would take him to Brereton and back into Rugeley.

He decided to go left, not because he wanted to go through Brereton and into Rugeley town centre, but because he knew that there was a village hall half a mile away. He didn't want to venture too far away from the bike, as he wanted to keep using the vehicle for as long as he could until a suitable car was available.

He felt a little vulnerable and should have taken a knife when he was at Kerry's house, but his vulnerability would double if he lost his bike and ended up on foot for the foreseeable future. He had made his mind up that after searching the village hall, he would head back through the woods and back to the bike before the darkness snuck up on him.

His pace began to slow as he finished walking around the bendy road, and he looked up into the white cloudy cotton sky and embraced the breeze that glided over his features. He wiped his clammy forehead with the sleeve of his shirt and headed towards the huge oak door of the village hall. He wanted to walk around to stare through the windows to make sure it was safe first, but the windows had been blacked out.

He envisaged about knocking on the window, but two scenarios stopped him from doing so. If there was a creature in there, the last thing he wanted to do was arouse its senses. On the other hand, if there were people in there, knocking on the window may inject fear into the poor souls, as they would wonder who and what was out there. He decided to try the door. If it was locked, then there was a strong chance that someone may be inside.

He placed his trembling hand on the steel handle of the huge Victorian-like door. His disappointment increased when the door soundlessly opened. He peered his head around the door and saw the main hall was bare. There were chairs stacked up in the corner, a place probably used for town meetings, etc., and further along the main hall was a door. Jack assumed that the door led to other rooms such as offices and toilets. He allowed the door to close gently by itself and crept along the wooden floor, unsure whether one of the floorboards would cry out in pain with his heavy footsteps. As soon as he reached the end of the hall, he placed his ear to the door and listened out for anything untoward. Satisfied that behind it the danger was low, he entered through the door that led into a small corridor. An office was to the left and further down, as he had guessed, was a set of ladies and gentlemen bathrooms.

Jack went to the office entrance and placed his hand on the doorknob. On the door was a bronze plaque and it gave the name, Harold Balding. He was about to try it when he heard a ruffling sound. It sounded like a distressed animal. He went to twist the knob and could feel it was locked. It twisted, but the door wasn't budging.

He placed his ear by the door once again and the disturbed sound was getting more audible as if it knew Jack was there. Jack hadn't checked the doors to the bathroom, and decided to check them out before attempting to speak out. He walked into the ladies bathroom and found that the area was small with only two cubicles; they were both empty. The next room was the gents; he didn't know why, but he was more cautious with this room, and almost never went in because he was petrified. He quickly took a look in, and again found the place lifeless.

Once it was obvious that there was no sign of Thomas or Kerry, he strolled back down the corridor and his curiosity had now got the better of him. He tried the door to the office once again, and decided to lie on the dusty floor to see what was happening in the room he couldn't get in.

He lay on his stomach and turned his head to his right; he peered under the rather large gap. He could see what looked like the wheels of a wheelchair, with a body writhing around on the floor like an epileptic under a strobe light. Although he couldn't see too much, it appeared that this wriggling figure, which looked like a man who was wheelchair-bound, had got the virus. He had either locked himself in the office for other peoples' protection, or someone had done it for him.

Whatever his situation, it seemed he was beyond help, and Jack stood up and moved towards the main door and left the small village hall. He walked back out into the nippy air and his eyes were magnetically attracted to something in the left corner of his vision.

He saw one of them, stumbling away from him.

He crept across the road and decided that apart from finding his son, his number one priority was to find somewhere to stay before darkness fell, as it would make his adventure a lot more perilous. He contemplated getting to his bike and riding back to the village hall, but with knowing that some of those things were walking around the area as well as the noise from the thing inside the office, sleep would be virtually impossible.

He jogged through the woods and occasionally looked to the ground, aware that the area was full of adders—the only poisonous snake Britain had—and found that as the day marched on and as the clouds fused together, it seemed darker in the woods than before.

His running continued for a few more minutes before he stopped and saw another one of the things on its knees, eating something. He remained transfixed at the uncomfortable scene, and screwed his face as if he had just sucked on a lemon. He was prepared to run, but the creature was fifty yards away, at least, had its back to him, and didn't know he was there, as its full attention was on its new feed. He felt it would be more advantageous to finish off his journey by walking. He would be less exhausted and create less noise on doing so.

As Jack walked on, his paranoia made him look back several times as he walked away, but the ravenous beast continued feasting on what now looked like a fawn. His mind projected a brief image of the beast hearing Jack, and then getting to its feet and leaving the animal to pursue him in the quickest way it could. Jack's continuous looking back had eventually stopped once it disappeared from view, and he was glad. He rubbed the side of his neck and it felt he had minor whiplash from all the twisting and turning, but it was probably from where the tyres blew out in his silver Meriva on the M6.

How did it catch such a quick animal? Was it just by chance he managed to snare it?

He came to the edge of the woods and was greeted by the pond once more. The body remained lying to the side of the pond with its face caved in, and Jack made a decision to walk around the other way, as he didn't want to be anywhere near the corpse. As soon as he jumped over the fence, he went over to the bike and stood it up. A thought had scurried across his mind, thinking back to the scene of the fawn being devoured.

Jack shook his head to shake off his daydreaming, and started the bike. He needed a place to stay. And as for Thomas, where was he going to look now? He was running out of ideas. He didn't have his phone since it shattered back in Glasgow, and he wasn't sure that Kerry had hers anyway.

The situation was becoming melancholic. He sped off and knew that being allowed in by one of the houses was not going to happen. He didn't want to break into any of them either, in case it resulted in him being attacked by those things inside, or by an overprotective family that hadn't reanimated. It was too risky.

It was a warm night, so he decided to sleep on top of one of the garages that were attached to the houses of the street he was on. He thought that there was a miniscule chance of Kerry coming back to her mum's, so remained in the street, but refrained from actually breaking in, just in case they did come back. Although he had done it at Kerry's house in Crabtree Road, he thought that a broken window or lock was not a good idea while this was going on, but if the nights got any cooler, he may not have a choice.

He was sure that the residents wouldn't mind his presence while they were boarded up, although the noise of the bike was a concern and he decided to travel slowly with little revs.

He noticed the street was empty, switched the bike off and walked it to a house at the end of the street and noticed there was no car in the drive. Either they never possessed a car, or the owner had fled the scene and tried their luck elsewhere.

He stood the bike up and peered into the living room. It was barricaded. There were people inside. He walked through to the back garden and was greeted by three of the beings in the garden, moping around looking for a way out, and there was more in the next one. They hadn't noticed his presence and Jack decided that sleeping on the garage was the only option he had. He was deadbeat, and couldn't possibly continue any further.

The garage was eight foot in height and he was super confident that, unless they could smell him, they would be unaware of his presence if he remained quiet enough, and if they were aware he was there, they would be unable to climb the garage anyway. Whatever the outcome, he was preparing himself for a restless night, but sleep was necessary. It seemed insane to sleep on top of a garage where there was three man-eaters to the back of him in the garden, but this was the most exhausted he had ever felt.

His ears picked up the shuffling from underneath and behind him, as he lay down with his arms behind his back, staring up at the sky. The roof was hard and bumpy, as he could feel the gravel digging into the back of his head. He lay on his side and curled up, already feeling a slight chill. His eyes were getting weighty, and his exhausted body finally succumbed to tiredness.
Chapter Forty One

Pickle stood guard with his Browning pistol tightly gripped as the Pointers, with the exception of David, washed their bodies in the cold brook and brushed their teeth.

Pickle was aware that the paranoid father was eyeing him to make sure he wasn't lusting after his wife, and more importantly, his little girl. Pickle was on high-alert despite the father's paranoia, and occasionally the inmate had to look over the direction of his wife and daughter, making sure that nothing was about to attack them from the condensed trees. The brook wasn't the cleanest of waters, and only drinkable if it came to desperate times. Pickle was hoping that that situation would never materialise.

He looked around the wood and found that the darkness had fallen quite rapidly.

"We're gonna have to hurry this up," Pickle politely announced to the family.

His neck twisted from left to right, constantly, as his eyes were straining to focus around the dusky area. Noticing Pickle's consternation, David ushered his wife and daughter away from the brook.

Davina put the toiletries in a carrier bag and carried them, as David picked up his daughter and placed her on his shoulders. Isobel was complaining about the tree branches scraping her head, and David was trying to quicken his pace as the long walk felt longer with extra weight on his shoulders, and even more so with his stomach groaning to be fed. His thoughts dreamed about the barbecue that was going to be waiting for them.

Chicken breasts, burgers, sausages and steaks!

He was salivating just at those words alone, and he hadn't even smelt anything yet.

Isobel turned around to Pickle who was walking behind the family; his Browning was held in the right hand, cocked and the safety catch on.

"Mr Pickle?" she said in a sweet voice.

Pickle chortled and shook his head. "Just call me Harry, darling."

"Harry, are you a police officer?" Isobel bit her lower lip.

Pickle laughed again and probably thought it was the gun that gave her that impression; David and Davina joined in the hilarity, and laughed with their daughter.

"God no. I'm the opposite."

He could see her little face working overtime, and she finally asked, "What do you mean?"

"I used to be a bad man, who the police didn't like."

"Why? What did you do?"

The parents were wondering the same, and David was praying that it wasn't for a sex crime.

"I used to sell bad substances to desperate people," Pickle said honestly. "But no' anymore."

They were two minutes away from the beauty spot, and David was convinced he could smell burning red meat, unless it was his imagination.

"What's that?" Isobel queried.

All three adults stopped in their tracks; the area was becoming less condensed since they left the brook, which was a sign that they were getting nearer to the beauty spot. The ground was bumpy with small ditches and broken branches, and the slight incline increased their energy that was needed to make it.

It obviously felt so easy on the way to the brook, but now that they were walking up and were getting hungry, they were becoming a little impatient and agitated, especially David.

"What was what, honey?" David was wide-eyed and glared at Pickle. "What did you see, Babs?"

Isobel said, "I thought I saw something."

Pickle ushered the family to continue, and once they got to the edge of the woods and the beginning of the beauty spot, they could see KP standing over a small fire, with the van parked across the entrance, and their own car in its original place.

As soon as he put Isobel back on the floor, David was startled when Pickle grabbed his shirt. "I'm gonna check it out, I won't be long. If it's one o' them, we can't let it wander around while we're up here."

"Do you want me to get the others?"

"No point worrying them; tell them I'm takin' a piss."

David nodded.

Pickle turned back into the woods, and knew there was little time to waste, as the blue, bruised-looking sky was growing gloomier by the minute. He sneaked roughly where Isobel thought she had seen something, and his senses were alert once he heard the snap of a branch.

His eyes narrowed, but it didn't enhance his vision in the dusky light; it was night vision goggles that he required to see anything. He took a step closer, and could feel the tension rushing through him. Should he shout out if there's anyone there? He was caught in two minds; whatever or whoever it was, it was going to have to be confronted nevertheless.

Suddenly the sight of trees fell downwards from his vision; he felt a violent thud hit him in the middle of his face and fell backwards as his eyes pissed out salt water, which was a reaction to his smarting nose. All he could see now, was a blurred version of the darkening, starless sky.

"I'm sorry," came a female voice he wasn't familiar voice. "I thought you were one of them."

Pickle slowly sat up, and touched his nose, it wasn't broken but it was definitely bleeding.

"What are yer doing here?" he spoke at last. "Jesus, I could o' shot yer."

"Same as you, trying to survive."

Pickle looked at the woman; she was attractive and there was something else about her that he found endearing. There hadn't been many people that had managed to put him down over the years, certainly not a woman. She brushed her brown hair behind her ears and looked generally sorry for her understandable action.

"Pickle." He held out his hand, and placed his gun into the back of his trousers.

She stared at the hand suspiciously, and Pickle was confused by this behaviour and took a look at his hand. Realising it had his blood on it, he wiped the hand on his combat trousers and held it out for a second time.

"Karen Bradley." She shook it this time, and asked another question. "Where you from?"

Pickle laughed, and dabbed his bleeding nose on his camouflage shirt that he had earlier took from the supermarket. "Prison," he replied.

He could tell by Karen's face that she didn't understand, so he explained it to her in short, as daylight was nearly over. "I have a crew, we got out o' prison, there's five of us, and two o' them are officers."

Again, the facial expression of Karen suggested that she was finding his explanation hard to fathom.

"I'll explain later; there's also a nice family up there. Obviously we're all frightened to death, but we have guns, a van full o' food and water. Come and join us."

Pickle realised that he had earlier made a statement about blocking the entrance with the van so other people couldn't get in, which would give them another mouth to feed, but he liked Karen, he liked her a lot, and she was on her own. It wasn't as if she had turned up at the spot with a van full of hungry people.

"Sounds too good to be true." She smiled with suspicion.

"How have yer managed so far?"

She turned her head over her shoulder and nodded through the trees. "Got a bag full of tins over there."

"Fancy a barbecue?"

She nodded with a grin. "Now that sounds magic."

She sniffed and emptied the contents of each nostril onto the floor, by using her thumb. She sniffed hard as she finished her nose-emptying and apologised to the muscular inmate.

"That's okay." He beamed. "It's not as if we live in a civilised world anymore, right?"
Chapter Forty Two

He had made his decision; it was going to happen sooner or later and there was no chance he could pull off his fake starvation, and the opened slider door was messing with his head. He had no bag to take with him and decided on his original plan: stuff his face till he was almost sick, and then escape.

He was hoping that the food would keep him going for a day or two if need be, and wasn't worried about hydration. He was going to hydrate himself before he left as well as leaving with a half litre bottle.

Gary Jenson had so far eaten two pre-packed BLT sandwiches, two scotch eggs and a full packet of chocolate biscuits that accompanied his piping hot mug of coffee. He took a generous swig of water and decided, despite the darkness outside, he would jump the fence, and if there were no cars to break into, he would spend the night hidden on the grounds until daylight. So long as the two thugs thought he was out of the way, he was convinced that he would be safe.

His bowels were telling him that a clearout was needed before he proceeded with his adventure. After the action had taken place, he peered out of his cell, and saw the two inmates walking on the ground floor of E Wing. Gary was convinced that Jason Bonser and Kyle Horan had probably killed any remaining prisoners that had decided to stay behind, but he wasn't entirely sure, as he hadn't been on F or G wing.

He trotted his way down the steel steps, and bolted out of the door into the exercise yard.

Gary was aware that his escape would fuel the men's paranoia. In their eyes, if this prisoner escaped and told people from the outside that there was a prison full of food with only two inmates inside, Gary could come back with other people and could break in, especially with the main gate being open, which they still didn't know about yet.

He breathed in the fresh air and mentally embraced it; it was the first time he had experienced the night air for months. He looked up to the houseblock one windows, and it seemed relatively quiet.

God, they must be starving in there, Gary thought.

He looked at the fence that would lead across the football pitch and into the reception area of the prison, and thought to himself that the 'escape' looked fairly easy. The huge slider door near the reception area that was used for deliveries and taking prisoners to and from court, was already open, and that was going to make his escape less troublesome.

He looked around and saw the fence in front of him; it looked unsteady, probably because it had felt the weight of prisoner after prisoner climbing it the other day, and with the barbed wire being covered with duvets, sheets and pillows, the only thing Gary had to fear was if he lost his grip and fell to the floor.

Being injured and out in this new world that was developing, wouldn't be the best way to start his newfound freedom. He needed to survive, and the only person he could think of who would put him up was Jemma.

Jemma Marlow had the patience of a saint. Her parents had scolded her for being in a relationship with a jailbird, but she was in love. Before Gary's incarceration, he had set up a place in Hazelslade with Jemma, a few months before Christmas, and as usual, had messed things up by being caught stealing a car. In the past, that was how he made his money. He would steal a high-quality car, hand it into an associate, he was then given a small cut, and then he would do it all again.

He had promised Jemma that he would get a real job and try and keep on the straight and narrow. It lasted only months. The only job he could get was working in a cafe, flipping burgers. Outside of the job, he was making extra pocket money by stealing a car a night, and then heading home without arousing suspicion. His downfall was to steal an unmarked police car in the car park of a supermarket. Unbeknown to Gary Jenson, the officers were inside the supermarket's café, eating their breakfasts.

It wasn't a story a criminal like Gary would brag about, but somehow the story about the stolen police car had surfaced on the wing and had made Gary a little bit of a hero, but also a figure of fun.

He jumped onto the fence with his small hands just about being able to grip the wiry pattern of the fence, and although having trouble getting his toes in the gaps, he never fell once. Now, the tough bit.

His body lay on the top where the duvets were, and despite the protection he had, he could still feel the barbed wire trying to pierce its way through the sheets, duvets and cushions that sat on top of it. It made him wonder how sore it would be if he ever became tangled up in the stuff for real without any kind of protection. Not entirely calm with heights, he swung himself over to the other side of the fence, where the floodlights lit up the football pitch.

"Where the fuck are you going?"

Gary nearly released his grip in fright, and quickly climbed down as Kyle Horan and Jason Bonser marched over to the other side of the fence on H Wing's yard.

"I thought you wanted to die in here," Kyle snarled, and pushed the fence with the palm of his hand, making it rock. "Were you making a fool out of us?"

"I changed my mind."

"What are you playing at?" Bonser intervened.

Gary sighed, "Look, I lied to you. I thought it'd only be a matter of time before you guys were gonna kill me, because if I stayed, I'd be another mouth to feed. And if I left, you'd be paranoid that I could tell people about the abandoned prison that's got weeks of food with only two inmates inside. Not only that, I've just noticed that the slider door is open. Within a few days, the grounds could be crawling with those things. All of that combined, I don't feel safe here."

"Shit." Bonser stared at the huge opened door from afar. It was the first time he had noticed it, as their own exercise yard on E Wing never had the same view as H Wing. "Just come back," Bonser spoke with assured calmness. "There's enough food for everyone, it's too dangerous out there."

"Everyone is dead out there," Kyle Horan spoke.

Gary shook his head, and was certain that they wanted him back so they could finish him off. To them, Gary was a dangerous source of information and could be a massive threat to Bonser's and Horan's food supply. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe paranoia was playing with him. "You don't know that."

Bonser added, "You don't know either."

"Look, guys, I won't tell anyone that there's only two people left on the houseblock and a prison full of food, if that's what you're worried about. Why would I? I have no intention of coming back. In fact, go to H fifty-six."

"H fifty-six?" Bonser's eyes narrowed. "What's in H fifty-six?"

"A shit load of food, that's what. Don't come after me guys. I'll be gone before you make the fence. I'll even see if I can get that slider door shut for you."

"You'll never get inside a secure building like that." Bonser pointed at the gatehouse.

Gary turned his back, half-expecting the fence to be rattling with the two men climbing after him, but it never materialised. He jogged across the football pitch, which caused a few begging voices, from behind him in houseblock one, to restart their stories of woe.

He shut out the noise and heard from behind him, "Hey fella!"

Gary stopped running and turned around, it was Bonser; he raised his hand at Gary. "Good luck."

"You too," Gary responded, and continued to jog towards the slider. Maybe he was being paranoid? Maybe they had no intention of doing him harm?

Kyle turned to Bonser. "If he so much as tells anyone about this place and that there's just the two of us left, we could be in a shit load of trouble if a clan comes back in numbers...with weapons."

Bonser sighed, "I trust him. Besides, we're in the middle of nowhere. You're gonna have to be pretty desperate to break into this place. Let's not forget, we're not going to be in here forever ourselves, just until we run out of resources. By then, this...thing should have died down, or at least be under control by then."

"I hope you're right." Kyle then nodded over to the opened slider. "If he can't get that thing shut, what happens if those things come in through there?"

Bonser gulped then shrugged his shoulders. "Let's worry about that if it happens."

Gary ran with ease. One thing Gary hadn't lost when he was incarcerated was his cardio fitness; he had spent four days a week in the gym, using the treadmill. At the time, this was looked down upon by most inmates, as the preference was to lift weights and bulk themselves up as much as they could, whereas Gary preferred to keep his heart in good working order and remained slight in body shape.

He stopped running once he walked past the huge main slider. Bonser was right, there was no chance he could get into the gatehouse. Gary continued to walk and was now in the car park, where only two cars remained sitting under the yellow flooded area thanks to the lights from above.

He looked around to see if the area was unthreatened; he had heard about what was happening, but so far he had no first-hand experience with any of the deadheads—which was one of the names given to them by the media.

The area was clear, but he didn't want to hang around too long. Thank goodness there were two cars in the park; he didn't fancy walking the country roads of Stafford in the darkness, and the safer option of staying on the grounds until daylight never really appealed to him either.

The first car that he walked over to was a white Clio, not his first choice of car and a bit girlie for him. He remembered his friend Gavin Johnson had bought a cherry coloured Clio and was ribbed by his friends for weeks for his purchase. Gary went along with the ribbing, but deep down thought the car looked decent and only joined in because of peer pressure. It even came to the point where they refused to get in the car, if ever they were taking a ride out somewhere. Gavin Johnson stuck to his guns for as long as he could, but eventually caved in and sold the car for a black Astra.

Gavin Johnson. I wonder what he's doing now? I wonder if he's alive?

The Clio held his attention only shortly as he began to salivate over the red Porsche 911.

Gary was bemused that it was still sitting there. He thought that the slider door was only opened when the officers had left last, as he noticed a prison van missing. Most of the prisoners left the exercise yard and scaled the wall at the sides of the prison. If they were allowed to simply walk out of the front gate, there was no chance those cars would still be sitting there, Gary thought.

Forgetting that the surveillance cameras around the car park weren't being watched and controlled by no one anymore, out of habit, Gary took a look around before he unscrewed the aerial off the Clio and used it to prise the door of the Porsche open.

The looking was an automatic rule of his, and he released a breathy laugh as soon as he made his careful observations, realising they were unnecessary.

He then sat in the driver's seat and looked under the steering wheel; took off the cover, and took the wires from behind the ignition. He put the cables together and twisted them tightly and then predictably, the car started. He had done this a hundred times before. Different cars had different methods, and normally he would go to 'work' using a screwdriver, a torch and some strong tape to keep the cables together.

As the engine came alive, he hit the gas pedal a few times to get a feel of the car, and a smile scattered across his face. He hit the gas pedal once more and could feel the excitement rushing through his bloodstream; he took a sharp intake of breath and blew out his cheeks to try and dampen some of the excitement that was making him shake.

He made himself comfortable, and reached over for the door handle to shut the door. He locked all doors as a safety measure, and the car excitedly squealed its way out of the car park.

Next stop, Hazelslade.
Chapter Forty Three

KP had spent an hour slaving over the coal barbecue, and everyone seemed satisfied, apart from Jamie who was standing a hundred yards away from the camp, as it was his turn to stand guard in case of any unwanted surprises emerged out of the woods.

The barbecue was at the end of the beauty spot, where over the edge was a steep hill full of bracken. Jamie looked to his left and saw the prison van doing its job by blocking the entrance successfully. He had another ten minutes before he would be released from his duty, as David Pointer was next. David didn't have a gun, but the whole point of standing guard was to inform the rest of the group if anything untoward could be seen or heard, which would result in the unarmed to hide in the vehicles, and the armed to remove the problem, or problems.

Jamie had had a burger and a chicken breast washed down with some lemonade; his stomach was full and he was looking forward to resting his weary legs, as the campfire was looking incredibly inviting. Once the unarmed David walked over to Jamie to relieve him, Jamie walked over towards the campfire and sat in a circle with the others. It was hard work standing in one position for a certain amount of time, and it reminded him whenever he did extra shifts back at the prison in the visits hall.

Janine puffed out a bored sigh, and bemoaned, "How long is this gonna be, staying out here, exposed like this?"

"Stop your whining," KP snorted. "You're alive, you've got food, and once this dies down a little, you can break into any house you want. But for the time being, we need to stay away from populated areas."

"Has anyone checked on Laz?" Jamie asked.

KP shook his head. "He doesn't look good; he's pale."

"I gave him some medicine before, but he's still the same." Janine said, she looked over to Jamie and asked him to sit next to her.

Pickle was chewing on his last burger and said with a mouth full of food, "I'll check on him in a moment."

KP looked over to Pickle and felt uneasy. Pickle smiled thinly and gave him his trademark, reassuring wink.

"I'm gonna go and see how Laz is," Pickle announced to the group; he stood to his feet and stretched, then slowly wandered over with his tired feet dragging on the sandy area, reluctantly being forced towards the back of the prison van.

KP took a swig from the small bottle of water and handed it over to Jamie. He took it while Janine's head wearily rested on his shoulder.

"Not quite as good as the Wolseley Arms." KP tried to break the silence.

"Nowhere near," Jamie half-laughed. "I think it's gonna be a while before I drink like that again."

"Ever wondered how it came to this?"

For the first time, Jamie could hear fretfulness coated in KP's words.

It was a question that everyone was probably wondering, but with all the madness, they hadn't had a chance to think about it too much. "Well, they reckon it's an aggressive form of rabies, or it could be some kind of new and unknown airborne virus."

"A bit like SARS or the bird flu?" Karen questioned, picking out a strand of chicken with her index finger in her front teeth. She was new to the group, but wasn't shy in any way.

KP giggled mockingly at the new girl and shook his head, making Karen feel enraged. "Nah, you and me know, Missy, that it's a little bit more serious than that."

"I have been out there."

"Really? When was the last time you saw someone being eaten right before your eyes?"

"Cut it out," Jamie said with a sharp whisper, aware now that Janine was asleep on his shoulder. "It's not a competition, for Christ's sake. I'm sure we've all got our own personal story from what has happened over the weekend, but it's how we deal with it. That's all that matters now."

KP smirked at Karen from behind the yellow flames of the fire that licked the air; his smirk disappeared when she mouthed the word cocksucker in his direction.

"What are they?" KP asked. "I mean, what's wrong with them, are they sick? Are they dead? Undead? Their brain still kinda works, but they have no heartbeat, but yet they still move. They do seem to have some instincts."

Karen spoke up, "I class them as dead. Radio reports say they have no heartbeat; they don't breathe. So if they are alive, they're not really human. Whatever they are, they're now the enemy. They're a threat to mankind's existence."

"Maybe it wasn't an accidental virus," a sceptical Jamie spoke up. "It's probably these scientists. Look at cloning and stem-cell research. I read that the Chinese had created something in order to vastly reduce the population, to free up reserves like food, water...even fuel."

"That's bullshit, JT," KP laughed, and even Karen managed a smirk.

"It's true. According to this website I was reading, it's called reanimation. The Chinese scientists inject a person, and the brain then dies from the outside in. The outside being the cortex—the nice part of you that makes you human, and what is left is the part that controls basic motor function and primitive instincts. You don't need the cortex of the brain to live, you just need the stem."

"So let's get this straight," KP was confused by Jamie's story. "You take a brain-dead patient, use these techniques to re-grow the brain stem, and you now have a mindless body shambling around, no thoughts and no personality, nothing but a cloud of base instincts and impulses?"

"Pretty much."

"What do you reckon? You're a nurse." KP looked over at Karen, waiting for an answer.

"I think the rabies-type theory is the one that seems more likely. I heard that the virus started in this country, in a lab, not China, or anywhere else. Rabies is caught when saliva enters your bloodstream, and animals that get it have a tendency to bite, become aggressive and some get a fear of water. But this is obviously a different, more aggressive type."

"How d'ya mean?" KP quizzed.

"Well, for one, it's quicker. It could take ages for symptoms of rabies to occur, but with these things...I dunno, it seems to take them less time."

KP smirked and looked over to Karen. "What did you call them again, I forgot?"

"Snatchers," Karen said.

"Snatchers, I like that. Okay," KP said, waving his hands to get everybody's attention. "I have a joke. Why did the Snatcher cross the road?"

"To eat the chicken," Karen answered with a grin, knowing she had ruined KP's moment.

*

Pickle and Laz walked along the sandy area. They passed the small laughter of the group by the campfire, and at one point, Pickle had to take hold of Laz's arm to stop him from falling over. He was weak; he had lost his appetite and wanted nothing more than to stay in the back of the van and sleep, but Pickle had insisted that he needed fresh air and being stuck in the stuffy van was doing his temperature no favours.

They walked to the edge of the spot, and Pickle insisted that they should go down further a few more yards. The steep incline put Laz off, but Pickle helped him down, although there was a minor incident that involved Laz falling, which almost caused them both to tumble. The two of them had disappeared from the view of everyone else, who continued to sit around, chatting by the dying fire.

Pickle helped Laz to sit, and he seemed to take an age to sit down next to him. They both stared at the beauty of the starless sky that was now a deep, intense azure colour.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Pickle breathed in.

"Sure is." Laz shook with the cold, but felt it was what his body needed, as he was sure he had lost pounds of weight in water. "It's good to be out."

Pickle smiled sympathetically at the ill man. He didn't look good at all. "Why don't yer lie down?"

"I think I'll do that." Laz lay down and ran his cold, clammy hands through his grey hair. "I feel terrible."

"Yer wanna cushion, there's one in the van?"

Laz thought for a moment. It seemed strange he was being looked after by a notorious drug baron. He nodded his head with a weak smile. "And a blanket, if there's one going spare."

"Sure thing. I'll get some water too; yer probably dehydrated bein' stuck in that van."

Pickle walked back to the van eyeing up KP, who glared back and saw that Karen now had a blanket wrapped around her. He was sure that there should be at least one left, and wasn't disappointed when he got to the van. He took the blanket out and walked by the campfire once more with a cushion in the other hand. He could still feel KP's eyes burning in the back of his head.

He walked twenty yards down the steep hill and put the blanket on the floor. Laz looked like he was asleep; he couldn't see properly because of the darkness, but Pickle knew his face was snow-white. Pickle called his name with a whisper, but his face never flinched.

He gently placed the pillow over Laz's head, pulled out the Browning in his right hand, pushed the barrel into the pillow and released two shots.

The body made one solitary jerk from the first bullet. The shots were muffled, but still loud enough to be heard by everyone. He removed the cushion, that smouldered, and tossed it as far as he could down the hill. He refused to look at Laz's face as he placed the blanket over the fresh corpse, and whispered a prayer.

Pickle ambled by the camp once again, with all members around the fire staring at him. KP shouted over to Pickle, "I would have done it sooner." Pickle ignored the remark, and saw that Davina was staring at him through the Clio where she sat up and her daughter was sleeping. He walked over to a nervous-looking David Pointer who was wondering what was going on.

Pickle told him, "Get some sleep, I'll take over from here."

"What was that all about?"

Pickle thought that he owed David an explanation. They were a family that were probably not exposed to violence, and David Pointer deserved to know why a camp member had just shot his own man.

"When we took the food from the supermarket, we were attacked, we lost one of our guys. Laz was bitten, not much, but bitten all the same. I needed to be sure, really sure. As soon as the fever kicked in, I knew he was fucked. You saw the state he was in, he was probably minutes from turning into one o' them."

David thought about the safety of his wife and daughter, and nodded in agreement with Pickle that he had done the right thing.

Pickle continued, "If anyone is bitten, anyone! Then they are a threat to the camp."

"Even you?"

"David, if I somehow get bitten, I'll put a bullet in ma own 'ead within a minute, I can guarantee yer that."

"We can't just leave him there."

"No." Pickle lowered his head. "Yer right, he deserves better. I'm gonna go and take care of it. Be back in ten, maybe twenty."
Chapter Forty Four

The red Porsche screeched its way down the long and lonely road, and Gary Jenson was loving his newfound freedom so much, he had almost forgot what was happening in the world and why he had managed to escape prison so easily in the first place.

He slipped the car into a lower gear to climb the hill, and the vehicle temporarily left the road by inches like a scene from Knight Rider, as the peak of the hill acted as a ramp. He was now at Milford and had just driven by the Barley Mow pub, where he had gone sometimes for a nice surf and turf.

He came across his first experience of the infected as he glanced quickly to his right where the grassland was, and saw at least a dozen strolling around the edge of the field, and it looked to him that they had no idea where they were going. He wondered: if his lights had picked up at least twelve at the edge of the field, the darkness probably disguised the fact that there were maybe hundreds more behind them in the shadows.

He slowed down to get a better look at the last one, before his car drove past Shugborough Hall and entered the snaky roads that had woods on either side. He observed the thing with inquisitive eyes and the image of it rattled his vertebrae. He had seen enough, and began to speed up before it got too close to the vehicle. He took a peep in his rear view mirror as the last one faded away and was gobbled up by the night, and then his focus and his eyes remained back on the road.

Gary was aware that the country roads had taken many young lives over the years, so he killed his speed and put his full beam on, lighting up the whole countryside, drenching the woodlands in glorious white to enhance his vision.

Despite the lights being on, his vision still wasn't great and he was aware that his concentration levels needed to be high, which was justified, as after just thirty seconds along the treacherous road, the car had to be steered quickly to the left when one of them appeared out of the wooded area and stumbled into the middle.

Gary decided to kill his speed even more, just so that he could get to his destination without being involved in a crash. The last thing he needed was to crash his vehicle. Two scenarios entered his head if a crash ever did occur.

Scenario one, was Gary crashing his newly stolen car into a tree and being trapped there while the contaminated beings were outside of the vehicle, trying desperately to claw their way in and feast on the trapped victim.

The second scenario was if Gary had crashed the car and had managed to exit the vehicle; he would be more than likely chased by those things from all angles of the darkness where he couldn't see. It would feel like a permanent ambush and the experience would be frightening to the extreme.

He couldn't picture which one was more horrific.

He took his foot off the gas, dropped the gear into fourth and did a steady thirty along the curly roads that were a hazard for an experienced driver, even in the daylight.

His car was coming to the end of the bendy country roads and, as he passed the Wolseley Arms pub, he could see up ahead, drenched in white light from the full beam, that there was scores of them scattered along the road, all heading towards the small town of Rugeley.

He apologised to his new car, dropped a gear and did his utmost to avoid hitting the things as he swerved around them, but one was bouncing off the vehicle every other second. He left a trail of carnage behind him and as he flew by the last couple of them, he knew he had damaged the exterior of the vehicle. But that didn't matter; all that mattered was for him to be in a safe place, preferably at his girlfriend's house.

He entered the town of Rugeley and went through the quiet Slitting Mill way. He turned left at Globe Island where the street, Horsefair, was now infested with the things, and took the car up to Sandy Lane, which was almost clear compared to the town centre.

As he ventured by the outskirts of the Pear Tree Estate, he entered Draycott Park, which also had streets full of the things roaming around. He turned left and hit the gas pedal as his Porsche sped up Stile Cop Road, and once he passed the cemetery and got to the top of the hill, he could see to his left, a prison van blocking the Stile Cop beauty spot's entrance.

Was it from his prison?

Shrugging this off, he turned right and headed for Hazelslade, hoping that his girl would still be there. Now he was out, he was desperate to see her, but was also desperate for a place to stay.

His mind wandered back to when he escaped the prison, and how quiet the car park was. Maybe he should have slept in the car park and looked for his girlfriend during the daylight. Hindsight was playing with him, but the scenario of sleeping in the car, in the prison car park and being surrounded by those things as he slept, was also a very real incident that could have occurred.

He was pleased that he hadn't seen any more of the beings since he left Draycott Park, and was hoping that the small village of Hazelslade was almost untouched by the parasites. His thoughts went back to what he witnessed when he drove by the Wolseley Arms pub, where dozens upon dozens of them were heading into the town. He thought that even if Hazelslade was almost untouched, it would only be a matter of time before the hungry, contaminated creatures invaded the place.

He looked to his left as he progressed slowly down the main road and saw a figure lying on the garage. Was it one of them?

He pulled the car over in the quiet street. The figure lying on top of the garage appeared to move and Gary, who was sure the street was safe, stepped out of the car and took a step closer to investigate. He could hear murmurings coming from behind the fence that belonged to the house. It unnerved him, as it told him that some of those things were in the back garden; he turned on his heels and jogged back to his car.

"Wait," he heard a whispery voice pierce the night.

The figure stood and jumped onto the floor from the garage roof. His movement had stirred the beings from behind the fence and they were now beginning to slap it furiously, knowing that there was something or someone behind the fence worth devouring.

The figure jogged towards Gary; he introduced himself as Jack Slade.

"I've come here to see my girlfriend," Gary said coldly. "She lives at the end of the street, and I don't have time for passengers."

"It's okay," Jack spoke with assurance. "I'm looking for my ex-girlfriend—my son more than anything else. Kerry Evans? You know her?"

Gary shook his head. "Nah; never heard of her."

"You better go; it's not safe round here. The streets are reasonably quiet, but there're loads of those things in the back gardens of these houses, some are trapped."

Gary was almost about to step into the car, when he turned to Jack. "Need a bed for the night?"

Jack nodded frantically. He thought he would never ask.

Gary took one look at the bike and glared back at Jack. "You got a death wish or something?"

"It's handy, for weaving in and out of alleys and stuff."

Gary shook his head disapprovingly. "Oh well, it's your funeral. Let's go."

They both took the short journey to the end of the street, individually. Jack was on the bike with Gary in the damaged, but still driveable, Porsche. They pulled up at the house, and both walked up the drive with fear forcing them to twist their neck left and right, as the darkness had become an excellent way to cover up the evil that could potentially stalk them.

Jack gently slapped Gary on the shoulder and pointed up the road where three of the creatures appeared to be heading their way. They had either spotted them, or the noise of the vehicles had attracted their attention.

"I hope you've got a key for this place?" Jack half-joked.

"Usually under the plant pot," Gary said. "At least, that's where she used to leave it."

"Really?"

"It's just a village, no crime. It's one of those places where you can leave your door open."

Gary peered inside the living room window and saw that there was no one in, and looked like there were no signs of barricading, as the furniture was still immaculately placed. This disappointed him, as it meant that his girlfriend had left. She could be anywhere.

He looked under the plant pot that sat idly on the concrete doorstep, and grabbed the spare key and let himself and Jack inside. He locked the door behind him and walked through the house. He flicked a light switch at the bottom of the stairs and the landing light on the top of the stairs came on.

"This is the only light that goes on," he instructed to Jack. "And keep the curtains closed."

"Fair enough, don't wanna be attracting those fuckers during the night."

Jack picked up an iPad that was sitting on the fireplace and opened it up; he began pressing a few keys. "Well, the Internet's still working," he announced. "I wonder if you can still get online news?"

Gary shook his head, his body language soaked in negativity. "Check any of the papers online, see what it says about what's been happening recently. What about Facebook? If your Kerry or my Jemma's phones are working, they might have put something on."

Jack tapped the Facebook app and shook his head. "Not working."

Jack sat down, placed the iPad on his lap and, for a few minutes, glared at the online news sites. The madness that was occurring where they were, was nothing compared to what the main cities were being subjected to, as he showed Gary some of the articles that somehow had been released. Despite what was happening, there were pockets of journalists out there still trying to do their job.

They're probably releasing statements online because they're still stuck in their office.

Jack announced, "So what do we do now?"

Gary shrugged his shoulders. "Probably be best if I stay here, in case she comes back. Probably the best thing to do is stay inside. Think about it, those clumsy things will suffer, after tripping, walking off of bridges and stumbling around on dark cloudy nights. They'll eventually be limbless, toothless and with every bone in their body broken.

"Seriously, in the event of this kind of disaster, just stay inside, watch all the episodes of Lost back to back, then walk out on your lawn with your rake and tidy up the afters. That's what we should do."

"I like your style." Jack smiled. "And I wish it was as simple as that, but I need to find my son."

Gary picked the landline phone up. "Still working. Wanna give Kerry a ring on her mobile, or try her house?"

"My phone got smashed back in Glasgow. I don't know her number off the top of my head."

"Where're they from?"

"Rugeley. But they came over here to her mother's, but they could be back in Rugeley, as when I went to her mother's I was told they'd left...I don't really know anymore. I just wanna see them."

Gary was lost in thought and told Jack he'd be back in a minute. Gary left the house and went to his neighbour's. Jack wondered what the hell he was doing and peered out of the window to see Gary talking to someone through their letterbox. A minute later he was back.

Gary was wearing a wide smile on his face.

"What?" Jack said,

"Was talking to Doris, next door. Poor woman's out of her mind. She said that a large group were outside here, a day or so ago, and left with a reasonable sized convoy. Jemma was with them, and she recognised your Kerry and her mother with a little boy."

"What? Really?"

"This is a village of about four...five hundred people, most of 'em are old folk. If they're not together now, they certainly left together."

Jack added, "The old woman down the street said a load of people from here left in groups and some went to a church, while others went to a village hall, or something."

Gary smiled. "So your Kerry and my Jemma could be together?"

Jack sat down in one of the armchairs; his body language gave off negative, beaten vibes. "Maybe."

Gary spoke with confidence. "In the morning, we'll check some of the halls, but we can't venture too far, it's too dangerous. Then I need to pop to Rugeley. It's the nearest place where there's a petrol station and I need to top up before things get real messy."

Jack thought the idea was desperate, and was. He looked around the living room and shook his head. "Why are you doing this for me?"

Gary shrugged his shoulders. "I dunno. We're in the same boat now; we may as well help one another. If you find your son, then there's a good chance Jemma will be there with them."

Gary stood to his feet and went into the bottom cupboard that sat next to the TV and pulled out a bottle of whisky. "Once you've finished messing on the Internet and we've barricaded ourselves upstairs, what do you say to a wee tipple."

Jack's weekend had already been an alcohol-fuelled party and a day off for his liver would be welcomed, but he didn't want to offend his gracious host, and replied, "Sounds good to me."
Chapter Forty Five

KP felt for Laz, and thought about him as he stood guard near the wooded area of Stile Cop. Although he insisted to Pickle that someone should also stand guard by the edge of the beauty spot where there was a massive decline, Pickle refused and comforted the anxious KP by informing him that the hill was almost humanly impossible to climb, and that meant completely impossible for any one of those clumsy and unstable deadheads as well.

Comforted by Pickle's confidence, he finally agreed with his fellow ex-inmate and stood in his area without verbally challenging him. KP occasionally looked to his left to make sure there was nothing unusual clambering out of the woods, and then to his right as he watched the shocked group, David Pointer, Pickle, Jamie, Janine and Karen sitting around the dying fire. Davina was sleeping in the car with her daughter. KP could see that Janine was somehow fast asleep on Jamie's shoulder, which was probably a wise move, as she was up next on guard duty.

He swapped the pistol from one hand to the next every few seconds, almost as if he was playing catch with himself. It was his way of stopping himself from losing his grip. His clammy hands were annoying him, and every time he swapped the gun, the free hand was wiped on his trousers and vice versa. The safety catch on his Browning was off and the gun was cocked, he was taking nothing for granted.

As the fire burned humbly, the group passed between them a two-litre bottle of diet cherry cola around the campfire. Pickle had asked the group if they were thirsty, and it was the first thing he took out the van. The group never protested, as they were sick of the sights of water, despite deep down knowing that this vital liquid was the best thing for their dehydration.

Karen was the last to take a generous swig and screwed the lid back on and placed it beside her feet. Janine was sleeping on Jamie's shoulder, Jamie's eyes were half-closed, David Pointer's head was lowered, staring at the shoes on his feet, and Pickle and Karen, who sat next to one another, sat in quiet.

The pair of them had spent an hour in each other's company, and Pickle showed Karen how to load and reload the Browning pistol in case she had to fire one. He also showed her where the safety catch was and informed her that target practice was not advisable, as it may attract unwanted attention, which she agreed.

He told her that later he would teach her how to dismantle the gun, and piece it back together as, in order for it to work consistently, it regularly needed cleaning. Pickle told Karen that the SAS used to carry the Browning cocked with the safety catch on, to allow for a quicker draw and fire. He also used this method in case anything threatening took them by surprise.

The group were ready for sleep, if that at all was possible after the death of Laz. The Pointers had their car, and there was a cell each inside the prison van for the rest of them, whilst one of them stood guard during the night. The tiny cells were not designed for sleeping, they were designed for inmates to stand up in, but curled up in a ball on the floor was achievable.

Karen finally broke the silence and turned her attention to Pickle, who was sitting to her left. "Shame about Laz."

Pickle shifted awkwardly, and took a while to reply to her comment. "It is. He was a decent enough bloke. I didn't have a shovel, so it had to be a shallow grave. I had to use the heel of ma boots mainly. Still, I couldn't just leave him there, it would be disrespectful to leave him there to rot away."

"Not only that," Karen added softly. "He'd stink the place out; attract all kinds of wildlife."

Pickle turned to his right to look at the attractive twenty-three-year-old, and shook his head at her strange response. "Are yer always this cold?" he asked with a half-smile.

"I never used to be, but a few days ago I was working in a hospital, trying to pay the mortgage. Now, in the space of a couple of days, I've had to toughen up after losing my boyfriend, my family may be dead, and everything I took for granted like television, food, even my car, has changed. My way of life has changed, which means my priorities have changed."

"Everybody's in the same boat." This time it was Pickle's turn to be cold, but Karen knew there was a touch of realism in what he had said.

"Yeah, I know. I'm not feeling sorry for myself." Karen's response was defensive, and decided to change the subject before the conversation turned into a blazing row. She said, "How's your nose?"

He touched it gently with his left hand and winced. "Still sore."

"Sorry about that."

Another gulf of quietude threatened to surround them, and Karen was ready to turn in. Her backside from sitting on the hard sand was becoming sore, as if she had been punched, and her eyes were becoming heavy.

Pickle had prevented her leaving, temporarily, as he returned to their original talk. "Yer say yer priorities have changed. So what are yer priorities, now?"

Karen thought long and hard about Pickle's question and released a long and fabricated moan. She felt his eyes gazing at her during her deliberation, and it didn't feel like any normal gaze, it was something she felt uncomfortable with, the way Oliver had stared at her during their latter hours in the woods.

She thought the worst of Pickle for a minute. Here was a man who had been incarcerated for God knows how long, and had been locked way from women. He was now out in a lawless land, and anything could happen. If he raped her by gunpoint, who was going to convict him if the law had ceased to exist?

"My priorities?" Karen was finally getting around to answer Pickle's question. "My main priority is to stay alive."

"Is that it?"

She nodded without eyeing him. "That's it. So long as I'm breathing, there's always hope."

"So if we ever get surrounded by those things, and it's just me and yer carryin' guns, what would yer do?"

"Honestly?" Karen smiled. "I'd put a bullet in your leg, and make a run for it as those cocksuckers tore you to pieces. At least then it would give me a chance to escape."

Pickle giggled and slapped his right knee, he pointed at Karen. "I knew yer were going to say that." He then cleared his throat and spat onto the floor beside him.

"Oh, I'm not joking."

His tittering began to subside, and his smile very slowly disappeared from his face. He cleared his throat, and although originally affronted by Karen's comment, he simultaneously began to respect her for her honesty and her toughness.

Pickle was a tough nut, but here was a twenty-three-year-old nurse who seemed mentally tougher than him. Instead of crippling her like it had for David Pointer, this new terrifying event had made her stronger, and he admired that. She had mental strength that she probably thought she never had.

"In that case," Pickle indicated with a grin. "Maybe I shouldn't give yer this."

Pickle handed Karen his nine-millimetre Browning.

She glared at him with mischievousness. Was he joking?

He then tossed two magazines onto her lap, and including the magazine in the pistol she was now the proud owner of a pistol and thirty-nine bullets.

"What about you?"

Pickle chuckled softly and stood up his B725 shotgun that was resting by the side of his legs. "I have this baby."

"How...?"

Pickle elevated his eyebrows, waiting for Karen to finish her question. She didn't, so he completed it for her. "How did I get a hold of the guns?"

Karen nodded with a suspicious scowl. She knew he was a prisoner, but didn't think he was a hardcore criminal. He didn't look the type. Pickle was very muscular, but she felt there was a gentle side to the man. Maybe she was wrong.

"Let's just say I used to be a bad boy, and we'll leave it at that." A hush came over the two weary individuals and Pickle decided to keep the chat going. "Yer a nurse, Karen. How do yer think something like this could happen—medically, I mean?"

Karen gently shook her head. "I'm a nurse, not a scientist. But, if I'm guessing...a virulent rabies-influenza viral hybrid, could lead to masses of infected victims turning into violent creatures. I had this discussion with KP earlier. The radio I listened to reckons it could be rabies related or some kind of malfunction of a cure vaccine."

"I suppose it depends on yer beliefs." Pickle grinned. "I believe it's God's doing, but if yer a Darwinist or heavily into science, ma theory would be laughed at."

Karen spoke, "I don't know. I don't think we'll ever get to find out, although it may be related to the incident that happened in Newcastle. Jamie mentioned terrorists before, and everyone laughed at him, but why not? The world has amazing scientists who can clone people, so a mixture of the rabies and flu virus wouldn't take much to create in a laboratory."

"Yet, they can't find a cure for the cold."

"Well, that's true." Karen began to sit up, straightening her back and leaned over to Pickle. "In order to make someone become one of those Snatchers in the first place, the virus would have to destroy all of the brain except for the amygdala, which is responsible for the flight or fight instinct and the medulla oblongata, which is responsible for processing neurological signals from the brain and spinal cord, movements such as walking and grabbing. The virus would have to rip the brain down to its most basic components known as ataxic neurodegenerative satiety deficiency syndrome, or ANSD."

"That's what I was thinking," Pickle mocked gently.

Added Karen, "After creating a virus capable of destroying all parts of the brain necessary for reasoning and awareness, then they would next determine its method of transmission. The virus doesn't have to be airborne to cause a crisis. The biting is a slower process than an airborne virus, but it can still be effective if we don't get on top of the catastrophe.

"I'm only guessing, but these things seem to respond by biting because another critical part of the brain—the ventromedial hypothalamus—is broken, which normally tells you when you've eaten enough. The brain's frontal lobes, responsible for problem solving, are devoured by the virus so they can't make complex decisions. Impairment in the cerebellum means they can't walk well, either."

"But yer don't know tha' for sure." Pickle smiled. "Interesting theory, though. But I'll stick with ma God theory. It's simpler."

Karen smiled and shook her head. "Have you noticed some are quicker than others?"

Pickle nodded. "Something to do with rigor mortis, isn't it?"

"These things are supposed to be dead, right? Normally, when a body dies, chemical changes happen which stiffens the body. This starts about three to four hours after death, then reaches maximum stiffness, and gradually dissipates about two days or so afterwards. So the slightly quicker ones are probably the ones that have been dead for a few days or could be the ones that have just been infected."

Their conversation came to a halt, as they both listened as a vehicle drove by the area. It was a vehicle they couldn't see because of the darkness and the bulky van blocking the entrance.

"I love that sound," Karen grunted.

"Yep," Pickle agreed. "It tells us that there're more survivors out there."

Pickle cleared his throat and threw in another question at his intriguing guest in order to avoid the uncomfortable silence that was almost sneaking upon them and threatening the night to come to a close, which is what a tired Karen Bradley actually really wanted.

"So tell me, Karen, have yer ever wanted a family?"

Karen laughed out loud at the unexpected question, which made a sleepy Jamie and Janine jump simultaneously, as they still sat opposite on the other side of the timid fire. David never flinched. He was still in a self-hypnotic state, still trying to come to terms with the events that were unravelling, and wasn't listening to a word they were saying anyhow.

Answered Karen, "Once upon a time, maybe, not now. Who in their right mind would want to give birth in a ditch and bring up a baby in this shitty world? It'd be madness."

"Humanity needs to continue."

"And why the fuck should I be responsible for that?" Karen scolded bluntly. "I'll tell you this, there'll be no cock going anywhere near me anymore. It's too risky, and besides, most men are shit in the sack anyway."

Pickle smiled calmly. "That's a romantic way o' looking at it."

"I don't give a shit. Any man comes near me, they'll soon know about it."

Pickle narrowed his eyes suspiciously; cocked his head to one side like a baffled dog, and lifted his chin. "Is that an indirect threat towards me, by any chance?"

Noticing the tone in Pickle's voice, Karen backed down with her aggression and shrugged her shoulders. "I'm just saying; that's all."

"Let's get one thing straight, Karen." Pickle leaned over towards her as the fire by them was almost out, and the only light the spot had was the light of the full moon that hung above them. "One: directly or indirectly, never threaten me, especially when I give yer food and water that cost the life o' two men, that's just disrespectful. Two: any potential rapist in this camp who attacks either you, Davina or Janine will be personally shot in the balls by yours truly."

Karen had underestimated the man, and now saw in the man's eyes a potential psychotic individual who was definitely something more than a petty criminal. She didn't want to appear to be intimidated by this man, even though she did disrespect him and he probably deserved an apology, which she told herself he wasn't going to get.

Karen raised her eyebrows and unflinchingly quizzed, "And three?"

"Three," Pickle began and looked around to see who was listening, David was almost asleep. "Yer don't have to worry about me personally. Yer attractive, any fool can see that, but yer not ma type."

Karen grinned and was unconvinced by Pickle's speech. "I probably wasn't Oliver's type either, but he forced himself on top of me."

"Who's Oliver?"

"Some guy I met in the woods, before I met you lot. Before I got to the woods, I got carjacked and was assaulted by two men, so I ran to the woods because there was nowhere else to go, and that's when I met Oliver. He seemed nice at first; shared his food and water when I needed it. We stayed overnight, and took turns sleeping while one stood guard. Then suddenly, he changed. I don't understand why. Anyway, I gave him a beating and he shot off."

Pickle understood Karen's paranoia more than ever after her brief story, and he felt that she needed to trust the group if ever they were to survive. His sympathy grew for her and his anger that boiled when she made the indirect threat had diminished. He tried to explain the Oliver situation to Karen, without sounding like he was justifying it. "Maybe he thought: here is an attractive woman who I could never get in the real world, I've probably only got days or weeks to live, and there's no law in the land anymore. So what the hell."

"Maybe," she sniffed, and could feel herself getting emotional. "It doesn't give him the right to do that, or anyone else for that matter. So forgive me if I seem a little paranoid about men at the moment. I know it should be the last thing I should be concerned about, considering what's out there."

"That won't happen here. Like I said, any man who rapes in this camp will be seriously dealt with."

"And how do I know I can trust you?"

Pickle sighed, and this time he took no offence. Instead, his face was warm and sincere and he ran his fingers through his short brown hair. He stared at Karen with his dark eyes and said, "Because...I'm gay."
Chapter Forty Six

June 12th

It was Tuesday, and their heads were extremely sore.

Jack Slade had had the unhealthiest weekend of his life. He had spent the weekend boozing before news of the outbreak was revealed, and his nutrition and hydration hadn't been great since the panic had spread; but he was alive and was at least thankful for that. His host, Gary Jenson, had been a life-saver, as Jack wasn't at all confident that a good night's sleep would have been achieved by sleeping on top of a garage, where below him, only yards away, was a group of beings desperate to taste his warm flesh.

Making use of the electricity that was still working, they replenished their energy levels with breakfast. Two cups of tea and a cooked breakfast later, they hesitantly left the premises and both went to the red Porsche and was pleased that the street was empty. Gary suggested to Jack that maybe he should leave the bike, as it was a ridiculous way to travel considering the circumstances, he didn't look fit, and it seemed silly to use two vehicles and waste valuable fuel for the short trip to Rugeley. Gary didn't want to leave the house unattended in case Jemma contacted the house, but he wanted to go out to get one last fuel trip, and he also felt it was better to be out in numbers, which Jack agreed.

Jack had also agreed that both men going into the car was probably safer, as there was a big chance of getting snatched and pulled off if he took the bike—an experience that almost happened to him at Slitting Mill.

With his head not being in the best condition, he agreed that the bike, as well as his tender condition, could be a hindrance to their goal of getting petrol.

Jack shut the front door behind him and saw that the street was barren. He took his time getting into the Porsche as Gary waited patiently. Jack threw his head back and released a long sigh.

"Feeling rough?" Gary began to chuckle.

Jack smiled. "Just a tad."

"Here's a tip." Gary started the engine. "Don't drink two thirds of a whisky bottle the night before you have to go out and face man-eating creatures."

"It was the only way I could get some sleep. I just got carried away."

They headed out and the car had zoomed through the village; it headed towards Stile Cop and went onto the main road. Jack was in the passenger seat and looked to his right to see a white bulky prison van blocking the entrance of the beauty spot.

"I passed that place last night. Looks like some sort of camp," Gary said. "Maybe we should try in there. Maybe they might know where the girls are? I know it's a long shot."

"Okay."

The car stopped, and Gary reversed rapidly ten yards and pulled up at the side of the road, opposite where the van was. Gary and Jack stepped out of the sports car and hesitantly crossed the road, unaware what could be greeting them. They stood behind the van, looking for a way in without having to climb under it.

Their presence had been detected, however, and they were quickly questioned about their unexpected visit.

"Can I help you, my friend?" came a voice from behind the van, but they couldn't see the individual.

Gary elected himself as spokesperson, and began to speak. "We're not looking for refuge, we're looking for a girl called Kerry, a six-year-old boy called Thomas, and a girl called Jemma Marlow."

"There are eight people here, but no one by that name, I'm sorry."

"If anyone by that name does pop up, could you tell them that Jack Slade and Gary Jenson are looking for them, and we're in Gary's house on Barnaby Street."

There was a brief pause. "I thought I recognised that voice."

Gary thought for a few seconds until his brain realised the voice did seem familiar. "Pickle? But...how?"

"Same as you, friend, we were let out, in fact we've got KP, Officer Thomson and Officer Perry here as well. Sorry we can't let you in, there're too many mouths to feed. We're gonna stay here for a few days before seeking refuge elsewhere."

"Don't worry about it, we don't want in anyway. Oh, do me a favour," Gary said.

Pickle replied. "What is it?"

"Tell Jamie and the girl, thanks. They didn't need to let us out, they could have just left us there to rot."

"Will do."

"Okay," Gary spoke with an excited tone his voice, knowing that some of his old inmates had made it. "Best of luck."

"You too."

The two men knew it was a long shot looking for them at the Stile Cop beauty spot, but at least that was one place less to look now. If ever Jemma or Kerry ended up at Stile Cop somehow, then at least now, either girl would know that they were looking for them.

Unaware that the car he was in belonged to Officer Thomson, Gary drove it down the steep hill, passing the cemetery on the right. The two noticed a body lying in the side of the road and gently swerved round it in order not to damage the Porsche's wheels. The car had received a lot of dents in its bodywork from before, but luckily the engine and wheels hadn't been damaged so far.

The vehicle turned left away from Draycott Park and headed towards Slitting Mill. Jack had advised Gary that although he had experienced a few of the things in Slitting Mill, Draycott Park was more heavily populated with them. There was only two ways to get into Rugeley from where they were, and the Slitting Mill route was agreed to be the safest, as it proved.

Jack and Gary sat silently as the car cruised through the road, passing an abandoned car in a ditch, and half a dozen of the things could be seen in the woods at the perimeter of Cannock Chase, and another two roamed at the side of the road. They went by the dangerous area with no problems, and another half a mile later, they were in the town centre.

They passed a house that had a banner hanging from the bedroom window; it read: Help! Alive inside! Gary shook his head and knew that it was for the benefit of the army—or whoever else could turn up to rescue. He thought to himself that if bandits or desperados saw that, the family inside would be taken for everything they had.

The car came to an abrupt stop outside the park, which was situated opposite the bus station where the town centre began. Gary and Jack got out of the car and looked down the road to see many of them wandering aimlessly around the street. They were too far to notice the two men, but the scene was still unnerving all the same.

Gary looked up to the block of apartments that sat to the right of the park, and saw three sets of curtains twitching. Others were not so shy, as another two had pulled the curtains back and stared out to see what the two men were up to.

Gary thought, Poor bastards! Probably still living off the food that's left in their apartment.

He thought about what would happen a few weeks or months down the line once the food began to disappear. Would people still stay indoors? Would they rather starve to death than risk going out and being a meal for one of those things? Or would they take the risk? Maybe some would decide that the world was too much of a horrific place to live in now, and decided to kill themselves.

Maybe some had already made that decision.

This wasn't their main concern. Their main concern was the red pick-up truck in the forecourt of the petrol station a hundred yards away from them, as well as the four men standing around, with two of them donning shotguns as if they owned the place.

"It doesn't matter," Jack spoke, urging Gary back into the car.

"I know." Gary was calm.

"Let's go, before they spot us."

They drove away and the atmosphere was different to the one on the way there. They both engaged in conversation, despite the disappointment of the petrol station being occupied. They checked another two, but found that all pumps were drained. Gary still remained calm, despite the frustration of the lack of petrol. The car was reasonably okay, but a few jerry cans full of petrol could keep them going for weeks, if need be. "We'll try again in a few hours. Any longer than that and I think these things will be impossible to avoid."

"What if those guys are still here, sucking the place dry?"

"Nah." Gary shook his head. "I've got a feeling they're preparing themselves for a long journey."

The car turned a corner, away from the eyes of the men, and the vehicle casually did thirty along the main road.

"Shame our families weren't here," Gary said, stating the obvious.

"I know."

"At least then we could raid some shops, get a car full of food and water, and then barricade ourselves in the house for a couple of months until this virus, or whatever it is, starts to die out as well as those things."

Jack was perplexed on Gary's confidence. "What makes you think those things are gonna die out?"

Gary sniffed and placed the car in a higher gear once he was round the sharp bend. Gary shrugged. "Think about it. Why do people eat?"

Jack paused for a second and thought about the potential-trick question. "Because they're hungry. To survive."

"Exactly, probably the same reason they do. You cut off the food supply, then surely they'll become weaker and die."

"Interesting theory; not too sure they're actually eating because of hunger, though."

"I heard a broadcast on the radio," Gary began a fresh story, changing the subject. "It told us that most of the UK is pretty much contaminated, so don't expect in a few days the British army coming in and helping us out. That ain't gonna happen; even our beloved Royal Family and Prime Minister have left the country. Fuckers! If the people of Britain get through this, then God help them. The surviving people of this country will set Buckingham Palace and Downing Street on fire. There'll be riots galore."

"I'm sure it's the same everywhere, in some other countries," Jack noted, trying to justify the disappearance of the countries' leaders.

"I was just thinking," Gary scrunched his face. "Surely if these things are classed as dead, apart from the brain itself, surely in hot countries like Australia, India, Iran and some areas of America, like Texas, must be able to contain the problem better than what we can?"

Jack looked at Gary who looked back and flashed him a smile. Jack shook his head. "That's if they've got this problem, I think it's mainly a UK thing, but explain."

"Well, if they're considered already dead, surely day by day they're rotting away? And in extreme heat, those things can't survive too long before they literally fall to pieces. It'd be like watching chicken falling off a bone."

"Interesting theory," Jack agreed. "But it doesn't help the likes of us and other mild countries, does it?"

"Well, if they're dead, I'm sure they're still prone to rot, even as they shamble around the streets. I reckon as soon as you become one of them, thanks to bacteria, you automatically have an expiry date, then fall to the floor and never get back up again. Have you noticed some of those things are quite bloated?"

"Some I suppose, I've never really stood around long enough to check them out."

"Neither have I, but I think that's the bacteria. Dead bodies bloat because bacteria causes gases."

Jack added, "Sounds like you know your stuff. What else did this broadcast tell you?"

"A few things, but there was another station I managed to get a hold of. I think the reason why this contagious sickness has taken the country by surprise is because we hadn't been told about it and it's been going on for a week or so in isolated areas, but now it has multiplied. Think about it, you're out from the pub, you get bitten or scratched by one of them thinking that the attack was by an insane drunk, then go to bed and think nothing more of it. Some might have gone to bed on the Friday or Saturday night unknowing they had it, some probably complained of feeling unwell. Then suddenly, by the early hours of the morning, that person wakes up reanimated and attacks the family, and then you've got a houseful of the things. Poor bastards. I bet some of the victims were probably sleeping in their beds when they were attacked by their own dad, mum, son...whatever."

Jack knew the reality, but it was something he didn't want to think about. His thoughts went back to the abandoned car he had found and the bloodied seat. Then he accepted what Gary had just said, and a horrific film began to play in his mind of an infected individual attacking its family. There was no chance a baby could reanimate in such a situation.

When another human became bitten, they would automatically try and fight off the attacker and run away with an infected bite, unless there was more than one of them. A baby, on the other hand, could not fight off such an attack, and even if there was just one of those things, a defenceless baby would be painfully ripped apart and devoured within minutes.

His eyes filled once the 'film' had stopped playing, and he thought about Thomas. He saw Gary in the corner of his eye looking at him. He wiped his eyes and cleared his throat quietly. A silence threatened to envelope them for the remainder of the short journey, but an upset Jack decided to keep the conversation going. "Do you think we'll get through this, y'know, humans?"

"For sure." Gary nodded confidently.

"What makes you so sure?"

"Look, Jack, this not one of your dumb movies where everyone is running around the streets screaming for their lives and are out in their hundreds looting shops. We've seen it ourselves; people have barricaded themselves in. Only the desperate, like us, are out in the open. According to what I've heard, these things don't have the intelligence to climb or jump, or pick locks. Sure, because they're desperate, they might eventually be able to get up a flight of stairs after a period of time, but overall, the landscape works in our favour. If you live in the countryside, like us, then there are less of them. If you live in a city, there'd be more of them, but there would also be more of a chance of skyscrapers, high rise apartments—secured places they couldn't get to."

"Unless, people who live in these high rise apartments had been bitten and started attacking people within the building."

Gary ignored Jack's comment and continued to talk. "This virus exploded over the weekend. Imagine if it had snowballed during the week. People in offices attacked, children in schools and nurseries getting ripped to shreds. Most people would be trapped at their work, but thankfully most of them are at home, so there's a positive for you. History has shown that in most awful situations, people don't always act like the panicky idiots you see in the movies."

"And what if you're wrong?"

Gary shifted in his seat uncomfortably and cleared his throat. He had no immediate answer to Jack's negative, yet realistic question.

Gary beamed restlessly and gazed at his passenger, and said with a cheeky grin, "Then we're all fucked."
Chapter Forty Seven

The morning had been a dull affair for all members, but they were still breathing and had to be grateful for that after what they had all collectively witnessed over the last few days.

It was now late afternoon, and the female Pointers, mother and daughter, walked hand in hand down through to the wooded area. The wind was gentle, like the breath of a baby, and their noses picked up a rich odour of the suffocating greenery. David walked in front, carrying a toilet roll that he had got from the van, and KP grudgingly walked behind, his gun at the ready.

KP was not amused when Pickle announced that he was on babysitting duty for the Pointers, as it was Jamie's turn. Jamie was suffering with diarrhoea and had been absent from the beauty spot for the last thirty minutes. KP's cooking was to blame, which offended the prison cook and replied to Jamie that if he wanted to continue eating out of tins or start making his own dinner, that was fine by him.

Although hoping him a speedy recovery, KP was wondering how much toilet roll was going to be wasted while Jamie spent his time squatting behind a bush. They had agreed to go back to the brook so Davina could splash her face, also, Isobel was fretful that someone would be able to see her as she went for her number two, and wasn't best pleased that KP was in tow with the family.

She kept turning around to stare at the frightening man as they walked through the trees, and he would respond by playfully sticking his tongue out, trying his best to let the young girl know he wasn't a threat.

They all stopped as they reached the brook and KP was wishing they would shake a leg, as his bladder was desperate in need of emptying.

"Mummy," came the sweet voice of her four-year-old daughter. "I can't go if that man watches me."

"He won't watch you, silly," Davina kissed her daughter on the cheek. "He's here to protect us."

"Is that why he has that big gun?"

"That's exactly why he has that big gun."

Davina walked over to the brook and began to use the cool water to splash her face and cool her frame down. Isobel walked over to a secluded area and David shielded his daughter from potential prying eyes.

KP wasn't offended by this; if it was his own daughter he would have done exactly the same, and thought that maybe David was doing this to prevent KP from becoming embarrassed, as well as his daughter. David had hardly said two words to KP, but the prisoner wasn't bothered by his rudeness. He didn't care for the family, however, he wouldn't like to see any harm come to them either.

KP tried to wait as patiently as he could. He looked over to Davina who was washing her hair in the brook with a bar of soap. It was a completely different scenario to what she was used to. She missed her hot jet shower, her shampoo and conditioner, and hadn't washed her private parts for a while.

KP's legs began shaking impatiently and he tapped his thigh as if he was playing the drums, hoping that the family would get the hint that he was growing impatient and wanted to go as soon as possible. He tapped harder in order to speed up the process, but the family weren't budging, and his bladder was at bursting point.

He overheard Isobel say to her dad, "It's stuck."

"You're probably just constipated, Babs," her father responded. "You need to drink some more water."

"I don't like water. It doesn't taste of anything."

KP sighed so impatiently that David turned his head around and snarled. "She's only four! What's your fucking problem?"

"Daddy!" his daughter scolded, followed by Davina reprimanding him from ten yards away from the brook, and telling the irate father to watch his mouth in front of their little girl.

"Fuck this shit," KP muttered under his breath. "I haven't broken out of prison to baby-sit you fuckers."

With his cheeks flushed with rage, KP went behind one of the trees, and placed his Browning on the grass beside his shoes. He released his penis and realised it was semi hard.

He then finally began to pee, and let out a hushed sigh as the urine gushed out. His bladder had been aching, and as the flow was coming to an end, he looked around over his shoulder, lowered his head and sniffed hard. The smell coming from his penis wasn't great, and he definitely needed a shower. The last drops fell from him and he gave it a quick shake, and on doing so, he heard the petrified screams of Davina.

Oh Shit!

He frantically looked around for his gun and picked up the Browning, and ran from behind the tree to see Davina and David wrestling with one of the creatures as Isobel stood yards away, screaming.

KP ran over to Isobel. "Run, run straight through the trees." He pointed towards the woodland. "Run through the trees and tell the others."

She shook her head; fear had paralysed her petite body and KP realised he was wasting valuable seconds negotiating with a four-year-old girl.

"Sit there then!" he roared.

The beast look liked it used to be female; it was heavy and looked middle aged. KP told David, who kept on repeatedly punching the thing in the face, to get the fuck out of the way.

David pushed the thing away, as KP ran to the side of the thing and stood five yards away. He then put one slug into the side of its head, spraying the leaves with the awful, black oily liquid. The thing fell to the ground with a thump, and David and Davina looked on in horror as their daughter sat on her own, still squealing.

The daughter shrieked as the horror unfolded, and putting a gory end to the being's miserable life had only intensified the child's shrieks. It was something she had never seen before; it was something that had been shielded from her by her parents. Now the four-year-old had witnessed her first killing, and it scared her. It scared the hell out of her so much, that she had wet herself unashamedly as she continued to scream.

"I'll see to Isobel," David insisted.

He ran over to his distressed daughter and gave her a cuddle. KP took a few steps forward in Davina's direction as she frantically washed the stubborn stuff off her face. He watched, as she quickly washed her face and exposed arms, by splashing the arms and rubbing the opposite hand up and down. She winced as her right hand rubbed her forearm, and not knowing she was being watched, she looked under her forearm to see a mark where she, with instinct, had used to try and protect herself.

She had been bitten, and once she realised this, she placed her hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying. She started to look around and KP quickly switched his head the other way, trying to make out that he hadn't seen her injury. KP felt useless, so instead of standing motionless, he decided to grab the legs of the deceased body and dragged it further into the woods away from view of the hysterical four-year-old girl.

David continued to console his daughter and looked over to a clearly shaken Davina who gave her family a huge cuddle.

KP had returned back from disposing of the body, and nodded at Isobel and said to David, "Shut her up! The place'll be swarming if you don't keep her quiet."

"Why don't you take her back to the camp?" Davina insisted to David. "Also, Pickle will be on his way after all that screaming and gunfire, tell him everything's fine."

"What about you?" asked David.

"KP will take me back up. I need to finish off here."

"That piece of shit! He should have been watching us!"

Davina added, "No point going over that now. Take Isobel back to the camp."

"Mummy!" Isobel cried.

With her eyes saturated in tears, she kissed her little girl on the lips. "I love you, my darling, now go with daddy." David gave her a confused look and she gave him a reassuring smile. She said, "Just let me wash my face."

Carrying his distressed daughter, he ran the short journey through the trees and was back at the camp within a minute, where a nervous Pickle and co were ready to go in after hearing the hullabaloo.

Davina walked over to KP and greeted him with a fake, cold smile, as she wiped her wet hands on her shirt to dry them. Her eyes were drenched in sadness, and the left corner of her top lip quivered slightly with despondency.

"What is it?" he queried her.

"You saw it, didn't you?" The smile was a brave one, as he could see the fear in her rainy eyes.

He nodded his head.

She walked in front of him, heading back the same way to the camp, and said in an emotional voice, "If I keep walking, I'll be back at the camp within a minute. I don't want my daughter to see me change into one of those things. Better make it quick."

Without hesitation, KP pointed his gun at the back of her head; she was now yards away and still moving. He squeezed the trigger once, and watched the woman fall to the floor. He kept a hold of the gun and fell to his knees himself.

It had only been a few days, but the new world was getting to him. It took a minute for the hurry of footwear to come bursting through the condensed trees. KP's first shot had alarmed the group initially, but the second forced them all to enter the woods, including David, with the exception of Isobel and Janine.

KP looked up to see David, Pickle and Karen.

David looked to his left to see his dead wife and crouched down and wept hard, the word no was constantly spoken with his disbelieving voice; he went to cuddle her and found that the back of her head had been significantly disfigured.

"We thought it was a Snatcher," Karen said, explaining why most of them had turned up.

Pickle and David could see that Davina had been bitten. They both looked at a distraught KP who remained knelt on the grass. David gently placed his wife back onto the grass and ran over to KP, only to be grabbed and held back by Pickle.

David screamed, "You bastard! You didn't even give her a chance!"

"She was bitten." Pickle tried to make the grief-stricken widower see sense. "She would have become one o' them!"

"She'd be okay, if he hadn't have disappeared!" David cried out and broke down, repeating Davina's name over and over. Karen gave him the shoulder to cry on, and was feeling herself being caught up with the negative emotion of this sad episode.

Pickle walked over to an upset KP who was desperately fighting back the tears; he hadn't seen him this way before. "What happened?"

"I was bursting..."

"So yer decided to go for a piss, and leave a family helpless?"

KP never answered; there was nothing that could make him feel any worse than he already did. He wanted the ground to open up and swallow him.

Karen shook her head, and flashed a threatening glare KP's way. "What the fuck were you thinking?"

Pickle raised his hand at Karen, telling her not to give KP any more grief. "What's done is done."

David broke away from Karen, remained on his knees and wept like a child. His moans and wails seemed impossible for a man to produce, but he managed to achieve it. After a minute of heartbreak, he eventually struggled to his feet.

"I don't want my little girl seeing this," David said tearfully, and went back over to Davina. "What am I going to tell her?"

"She won't see her," Pickle said with confidence. "I'm gonna bury her myself, when it's time. It'll be shallow, 'cos I have no spade. I'll do the best I can, just like I did with Laz."

David nodded frantically, his face thanking Pickle for his kindness and remained hugging his dead wife, his right hand firmly on the back of her head where the trauma was situated.

Pickle grabbed David, and whispered in his ear, "Yer daughter needs yer."

David wailed, "I can't leave her like this."

"Yeah, yer can," Pickle responded coldly. "She doesn't need yer anymore, yer daughter does."

David looked up at Pickle, in two minds whether to hit him or not, but Pickle's eyes were comforting and he could feel David's hurt.

Pickle placed his hand on the back of Davina's head and sighed, "I'll take good care o' her."
Chapter Forty Eight

"It's time."

Jack was pleased that he was alive, but the monotony of waiting around, having no television or any other technology to appease his mind, was mentally torturing him. He knew he was better off than most people, but couldn't help feeling selfish about the situation. All he wanted to know was if Thomas was safe.

If Thomas had been taken to some secluded castle in the country, surrounded by armed guards, he would never have left Glasgow and would have stayed barricaded in his own house like everyone else, but as a father, he felt it was his duty to protect his son.

Gary, on the other hand, was used to the monotony, and the waiting around was normal for him, being an ex-inmate. He never felt it necessary to tell Jack about his former life—although he had found out once he started talking to Pickle at Stile Cop. Why would he? He had no interest in what Jack used to do for a living. It didn't matter now. Jobs didn't matter anymore, just like politics and the economy.

Peoples' goals had changed; now it was all about survival. Gary and Jack were now survivors in a new, and more dangerous world, not just because of what the virus had done to turn these creatures against man, but the fact that the dark side of man was still due to appear.

Jack sat nonchalantly in the seat, unable to get up, and thought about what the world was going to be like from now on. Humans would now isolate themselves from one another, drenched in paranoia, simply because as the weeks went by and the fuel, food and water dried up, they would turn on each other in order to survive.

Jack could already see images of people being beaten to death for their car. These types of scenarios seemed ridiculous, but Jack was sure it would eventually be a reality as lives would be lost over a gallon of water, or food, or anything else for that matter.

If a man had something that could keep someone alive for just one day, he could be killed for it. That's why the farmers had boarded their places up and put a warning outside. He was sure that they would shoot trespassers if ever someone trespassed or tried to steal a chicken—or something else that was deemed edible. Family came first, and that was all the owners of the farms were doing. They were looking after their own.

In a time of disaster, would humanity pull together? Bullshit!

It was every man for himself.

It wasn't just the infected that would be a threat to the family, but humans as well. These families who were barricaded in their own homes weren't going to stay there forever, especially once the food began to run short. That was when the worst of it would happen. People spilling out onto the streets amongst the infected, and willing to do almost anything in order to feed their families, was what was about to occur.

They needed gas, and the two men walked out into the street, and this time they both carried a knife each. Gary insisted that Jack shouldn't take the bike again because it was too dangerous; he agreed wholeheartedly.

Gary took out an empty watering can and placed it in the boot of the car and was going to fill it full of fuel once he got to a petrol station. The nearest petrol station was a mile or so away in Rugeley—the one that was being guarded a few hours earlier, and they promised themselves that this was the last time they were going to venture in the town, whatever the outcome, because of the risks.

The Porsche was three quarters full, but topping it up was probably a wise move before desperate motorists drained all the pumps. Satisfied the street was clear, he went back into the house and took a drink of water.

It was time to make their second short trip to Rugeley—and hopefully their last, and they were hoping that the streets were just as quiet as they were before. Jack could see that Gary was acting cool but his tension was for all to see.

The two men entered Slitting Mill where it was populated with the creatures, and again, the car drove around them with Jack in the passenger seat, closing his eyes until the danger had passed.

They saw up ahead that the same garage was now vacant and they both looked at one another and smiled, although there was a little paranoia that the pumps may be empty. Thankfully they weren't, and the Porsche and the watering can were filled to the brim. Jack assumed that once people began to leave their houses due to lack of resources, that was when the fuel would be drained—if electricity was still functioning—as people would have to travel to get to areas where food used to be sold. For now, the roads were still quiet, but he was sure that that would change in the next few weeks once desperation kicked in.

Jack popped into the ransacked kiosk and grabbed himself two bottles of cherry coke, three packets of cigarettes and stuffed two lighters in his pocket as well. He handed the bottle to Gary, who took it with him into the car.

Now they had topped up their vehicle with gas, the next plan was to go back home, sit tight, and hope that Jemma would contact them somehow. There was nothing more they could do, apart from check on the two village halls on the way back, as they were running out of ideas as well as time.

Gary accelerated in the direction of Slitting Mill once more. As they approached the area some two minutes later, the Porsche slowed right down and Jack could see why.

There was at least seventy beings spread out along the main road, and there may have been more. The two men's presence was noticed immediately, and their approach towards Jack and Gary sent a shiver, as some of them were quite quick, almost at jogging speed.

Jack sighed. This is definitely the last time we're going into Rugeley.

It seemed to Jack that sooner would be better to get in contact with his son rather than later, because day by day, the population of these things appeared to be multiplying, as some of the roads weren't so desolate anymore.

The car ventured a different way and went up Sandy Lane where some roamed along the path. As they rode by the Pear Tree Estate, they got to the edge of Draycott Park where the new houses were built. The scene was horrendous; Jack opened his eyes, and both he and Gary looked at one another and shook their heads.

There were hundreds of them, and like before, they had found a release of energy as the two men gazed in horror. They looked like they had come from all walks of life; there were men, women, and children amongst the moving dead, and some seemed in better shape than others as far as the skin was concerned.

Jack noticed a handful of the beings' skin was peeling off their faces and had to look away from the repugnant image. The crowd of beings marched excitedly towards the two men, and Gary looked at Jack. "We're practically surrounded. They must have come from other towns. I'm gonna ram the fuckers. It's the only way to get through."

He slipped the sports car into first and hit the gas pedal; the wheels screeched painfully along the road, producing smoke, and the car did its job by furiously striking a bulk of the crowd. Jack's heart was in his mouth, and watched the windscreen crack as well as being decorated with blood and decay. His nerves were shot to pieces, and the relief was immense once they went by the danger zone.

Once they finally managed to drive through Draycott Park and pass the 'Welcome to Rugeley' sign—as they were now technically a hundred yards in the country and out of the town, Gary pulled the car over and saw the smoke spewing out of the engine.

Jack stepped out of the passenger side and was aware that the things were gaining on them in their hundreds, and the mixture of groans from the beings was growing louder as they approached nearer. The damage the car had taken, after hitting so many bodies, was for all to see. Gary didn't need to be a qualified mechanic to tell him that the car was beyond repair.

"Not now!" Gary exclaimed, and hit the bonnet with his fist.

He grabbed the duster from the glove compartment and leaped out of the car and didn't need to pop open the bonnet, he knew what the problem was.

Jack grabbed his sleeve and said with dark derision, "A bit late to be cleaning the car now, don't you think? Let's go."

Gary shrugged him off and demanded. "Give me one of your lighters."

"What?"

"Stop messing about. Just do it. If we run, they'll just keep on chasing us and chasing us until we collapse. Maybe this'll block them off. Don't get me wrong, I'm as fit as they come, but they'll just keep following us."

"Fire won't kill them. Anyway, you'll just entice more of them."

"More of them?" Gary nodded over to where they were. They were already in their hundreds.

Jack reluctantly handed him one of the lighters, and Gary went to the boot and took out the heavy watering can full of gas and emptied it all over the road and underneath the car. He waited for them to gain a few more yards and then lit the duster.

He threw the burning material on the floor where he began pouring, and ran as fast as he could, with Jack following suit. The entire road, as well as the car, lit up like a napalm strike and the two men had misjudged the intense heat that came from the fire, and Jack especially, was mortified to be taken off his feet with such force. He thought he was going to break every bone in his body once he hit the road.

With just grazes to their hinge joints, they brushed themselves down, and took a few steps backwards as the fire increased. They decided to jog gently up Stile Cop Road.

It appeared that the knives that they were both carrying were still there, and as they approached the beginning of the main road to their left, they saw six of the figures stumble through the fire like drunken stuntmen, as if it wasn't there. It hadn't worked as well as Gary wanted, as the beings continued to move through the fire.

This loathsome scene the men were witnessing increased their nervous energy, and their jog turned into a sprint as they began to run up Stile Cop Road. As soon as Gary approached the Stile Cop cemetery, he had to stop as he felt his left hamstring twinge with pain. They had only run three hundred yards, but he felt his leg smarting. He looked up to the sky and welcomed the rain that began to lash down on his overheated skin.

"Oh, shit on a stick." Jack had managed to say those words through whatever breath he had left. He nodded towards the edge of the woods that began at the end of the cemetery.

One by one, three hideous beings stumbled clumsily from out of the woods onto the road. All creatures were male, and both men pulled out their six-inch knives automatically on seeing the heinous beasts.

Gary shook with fright, and knew that outrunning these creatures with a tweaked hamstring was going to be difficult. Jack looked over to him, with false bravado etched on his face. "Don't worry, I've done this before. It's a piece of cake. Well, actually it's not..."

"What do I do?" Gary panicked.

"Aim for the head. Just don't get any blood in your eyes."

Both men began attacking all three of the creatures and Gary was apprehensive that he was outnumbered, and two of them lumbered towards his direction. He released cries of panic as he stabbed the first one that approached him and he couldn't understand how his knife was penetrating the face, but nothing was happening.

He briefly looked over to Jack whose blade was rammed deep into the top of the head of his attacker. Gary slashed at the attackers' arms that were desperately trying to grab him. His slashing technique had removed some of the fingers of the unbothered creatures, but then Gary grabbed the knife with both hands, closed his eyes and used a sledgehammer technique to bring the knife down into the skull of his first attacker.

A splat of dark blood spat out from the wound as soon it was penetrated, but he had no time to gather his breath or pull out the knife as the embedded weapon fell with the creature. Then a cold pair of hands grabbed his face.

Despite being an ex-inmate, Gary wasn't used to this kind of confrontation and violence, and could feel his bowels loosening as they both fell and now the second creature was on top of him. The stench from its body was forcing him to retch, and whilst doing this, he was trying to fight off the surprisingly strong, cold creature that groaned in his face at the same time.

He didn't know what to do, and remembered a technique he had seen in a horror movie once, and stuck one of his thumbs into the cold left eye socket of the creature. He retched once more and screwed his face with repulsion, as he began to implement this desperate technique he stole from Bruce Campbell. He tried to force the thumb in as far as he could. He could feel the acid in the back of his throat whilst he was performing this macabre action, and dark gunk poured over his hand and out onto his T-shirt as his thumb went further in and began to damage the brain.

He pulled out his thumb and forced it back in once more, and it seemed to be taking effect as the thing writhed around, out of control. His other thumb went into the other eye socket, and now both eyes pissed out the oily, smelly liquid. The inside of the sockets were freezing, as if he had shoved his thumb in a pile of mince that had just defrosted. He moved the thumbs around from side to side furiously and was aware that what he was doing was so vigorous, that he was in danger of breaking his thumbs.

The creature eventually stopped writhing, and Gary pulled out his thumbs that was covered in black gunk and wiped it on his trousers. Jack had come over and grabbed the thing off of Gary, and dragged it off his new friend and placed it to the side of the road. He grabbed the other two bodies as Gary tried to get his breath back, and again, dragged them to the side of the road. He could see another body further up the road, that was also at the side, and knew this was the kindest thing to do rather than just leaving them, as humans would eventually need the road to use in a matter of days or weeks once they began leaving their homes.

Gary shook his head at Jack, checked himself for scratches and then snarled with little breath. "A piece of cake? I had two of the fuckers!"

Jack giggled nervously. "Well, you did try and kill one of them with your thumbs." Jack helped his colleague up and looked at his T-shirt. It looked like he had had an accident with an oil canister, and Jack then turned to the bodies that were so violently dealt with. "Good work, my friend."

"We're not finished yet."

Jack Slade frowned and moved his head to one side. "What are you talking about?"

Gary pointed.

Jack put his hands on his hips and sighed. "That's not good."

The two men tried to capture their breath, and saw the horrific scene of the horde heading their way from Draycott Park and onto the main road that they were on.

Most of the creatures were burning, some smouldering, others had managed to walk through the fireball hardly untouched and turned left onto Stile Cop Road. Both men knew that the fire wasn't going to last forever, and even if the burning ones and their brains were eventually devoured by the fire, there would be more from behind that would be less damaged as the fire died down.

Gary instructed, "We'll go the farmers field way. It will be safer, less chance of being ambushed, and be more awkward for those dozy bastards to walk across."

Gary and Jack went under the barbed wire fence and began to jog along the field. Jack looked to the small army, gathering at the bottom of the road, and could see some of the things were following them onto the field after falling through the fence, but the barbed wire fence was troublesome for most of the creatures. He thought that most of the things would probably suffer trying to follow them on such uneven ground, let alone trying to get past the barbed wire.

As soon as they managed five hundred yards across the field, Gary was still ahead of Jack, despite his injury, and Jack turned around. The field was filling up, but he could also see in the distance that many were heading up Stile Cop Road, rather than following them.

Shit. Jack thought about the camp that was set up on the beauty spot. I hope they'll be okay.

If only ten or twenty made their way up Stile Cop Road, Jack still thought that the camp might be in trouble. He looked at the dying fireball from a distance, and couldn't help thinking that the explosion could attract many of them from afar. Like flies round shit, they could turn up in their thousands.

Although it was an act of desperation, Jack felt that Gary's act could be detrimental for the people up at Stile Cop, but from a positive slant it would also clear some of the town, which would benefit the residents and give them space to leave their infested town, especially for the people who had barricaded themselves in their houses in Draycott Park.

He sped up to get to Gary, burdened with guilt.
Chapter Forty Nine

Isobel hadn't stopped screaming since the attack of her mother, and David was ordered by Pickle to get back into the Renault Clio as, although he was sympathetic to his loss, the screaming of the young girl was making the camp vulnerable for potential further attacks if they could be heard from afar.

It did worry the camp that if there was one of them, there could be more. The group were hoping that it was an isolated incident and the being that turned up was a stray, but they couldn't be sure.

Janine went over to the car and her eyes filled as she saw the two distressed souls hugging one another as if their lives depended on it. David was naturally hysterical, but his attempt of calmness for the sake of his little girl was not happening, as he wasn't just mourning for his wife, but he suffered for his daughter as well who was hysterical from seeing the being appearing and then being executed.

She didn't even know that she had just lost her mother.

David clung onto his baby girl and was convinced that this was just the beginning, and his daughter would receive many mental scars once the month of June had come to a close, if they made it that far.

This was no life for a little girl—for anyone, for that matter.

Isobel kept on asking for her mummy, and David told her again and again that she was coming soon.

Janine opened the door and wept. "David, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

"Shut the door," he screamed, and leaned forward and said in a threatening whisper. "I haven't told her yet."

She did as she was told; she carefully shut the door and wandered towards Jamie's direction and stood helplessly in the middle of the beauty spot like everyone else. KP's head was lowered with mortification. He knew he was partly to blame for the tragedy that had occurred, and wanted to just walk away from the group. It was something he was deliberating. KP was sure that if David was carrying one of Pickle's Brownings, he would have been dead right now.

Jamie and Janine were comforting one another and both glared at KP; he wanted to respond to their uncomfortable staring, but considering the circumstances, he felt that he had to take whatever was dished out to him from the group. Pickle walked over to KP, almost feeling sorry for the man, and patted him on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry," KP spoke at last, biting his bottom lip, feeling the hairs of his beard tickling his top lip. "It was a stupid thing to do."

"It's no' as if yer did this on purpose," Pickle whispered, out of earshot from the rest of the group. "Besides, these people might have been dead already if they hadn't found us. Yer sure there was only one o' those things?"

KP nodded.

"I had to kill Laz, and you've had to kill the woman. We have to do what we have to do to protect the camp. It's hard, but a necessity."

"What's left of it. We're diminishing by the hour."

Pickle looked around and noticed the camp was engulfed in shock, and their eyes were focused elsewhere. He gave KP a quick hug, and patted him on the back. "We'll get through this."

KP wasn't sure about this, but decided not to question Pickle's confidence. He walked over to the Clio and ignored Pickle's protests. He exhaled out hard and opened the car door, making Isobel scream even more as the opening of the door gave her a fright. She was now face to face with the man who executed the thing so violently in front of her eyes.

"What the hell do you want?" David demanded. "Leave us alone."

"I'm sorry," KP announced. "For what it's worth, she wanted me to do it."

"Close the fucking door!" David placed his hands over Isobel's ears. "She doesn't know."

KP normally didn't allow to be spoken to like that, hence one of the reasons why he was serving a sentence, but his sympathy for the family was so overpowering, that even the hard-faced criminal was becoming frustrated with himself as he felt the water beginning to fill the bottom of the his sockets. He shut the door and walked away.

Janine walked over to KP, her face teary and filled with angst. "What were you thinking?"

"I had no choice. She was gonna turn, eventually."

"I don't mean killing her, I mean, not paying attention. You're the one with the gun, and now a family has been torn apart."

KP responded coldly, "There're many families out there that have been torn apart, quite literally."

Janine slapped him hard across the face. He took it, but the anger in his face was for all to see. Jamie was about to walk over to drag Janine away, but Karen beat him to it.

Janine walked away from KP and had left Karen alone with him; they both stood out of earshot from the group.

"For what it's worth," Karen spoke with a hushed tone. "I know you're hurting, but what you did afterwards was correct. You can't go back now; what's happened has happened. Deal with it."

His eyebrows were raised after Karen's short talk, and looked at the twenty-three-year-old as she walked away, still wearing her light blue NHS nurse uniformed trousers, and he went over to the Clio to comfort the family.

*

Fifteen minutes had passed, and Pickle and Jamie had come out of the wooded area after digging Davina's grave. Pickle went to the back of the van and washed his grubby hands, then whistled over to KP and gestured with his hand to follow him into the woods. Jamie sat down next to Janine, feeling exhausted. Pickle was holding a sheet he had got from the back of the van, and KP followed him in. Minutes later they were both standing over Davina's body.

They carefully turned her over onto her back and placed a sheet on the floor next to the body. They then picked up Davina's body, KP had the legs, and Pickle took the arms and placed her on the sheet. They wrapped her in the sheet that they took from the van, and placed her in the shallow grave that Pickle and Jamie had dug earlier. They used their boots to put the piled soil over the body, and after another five minutes of patting the earth to make it look smooth, Pickle began making a crucifix, made of two branches that were tied together with some string that KP had found in the glove compartment of the van.

Satisfied that that was the best they could do, Pickle turned to KP and told him to go and get David. It seemed incredibly harsh to bury a man's wife who had only been dead for a matter of minutes, but Pickle didn't have anywhere to preserve the body and didn't want to leave it in the woods for hours for all kinds of creatures to have a nibble at. It was more respectful this way, and David had reluctantly agreed on this.

Laz's body had been buried near the edge of the beauty spot, but David insisted that he wanted her buried where she died and away from his daughter's eyes, which was a little dangerous, considering it was one of those things that emerged from the woods that killed her.

Once the burial had taken place, the ceremony itself was going to be attended by Pickle and David only, although Pickle tried to persuade David for Isobel to be told and to also attend the ceremony to say goodbye to her mother. His advice fell on deaf ears.

"I think it's better if yer stay away," Pickle said to KP; his voice was calm and never wanted his friend to be offended by what he had just told him.

"You think?" KP said with sarcasm. "Considering it was my fault that she got bitten, and it was me that put a bullet in her head. You may be correct."

Pickle never responded to his sarcasm and felt sorry for KP; he was going to wait until the night drew in before he would have a talk with him and give him some kind words of comfort.

Pickle stuck the handmade crucifix at the beginning of the grave and gave it a twist to ensure it went in further. There was nothing around that could decorate it; there was no rocks, pebbles ... nothing. It was as basic as it could get, and he hoped that David understood that despite the basic-looking burial, he had put a lot more effort into this than he did with Laz's burial.

Laz didn't even have a service; it was more like a 'so long buddy' and then he and KP walked away from the grave and that was it finished with.

David appeared through the trees, his eyes still raw from the emotion that forced his eyes to leak profusely.

Pickle asked, "No Isobel with yer?"

David shook his head, sadly. "She's with the girls. She doesn't know what's going on. She thinks her mummy's hurt and gone to hospital."

"She thinks? Or is that what yer told her?"

David ignored Pickle's question, and felt that considering it was one of his men that was responsible for his wife's death, he had no say in what he told his daughter.

David needed to protect Isobel as much as he could, and if that meant lying to her about her mother's death, then so be it. She was distraught enough as it was, and she screamed for her daddy when he walked away from her, leaving Janine to comfort her. Janine had to hold the little girl back when David walked away into the woods to meet Pickle for the private burial.

David could only imagine how much more trauma and confusion it would cause if he sat his daughter down and told her that she would never see her mummy again. So he opted not to tell her the truth for now.

Pickle whispered, "Sorry, it had to be done so quickly."

David nodded and accepted Pickle's apology.

"If any animals from the woods comes near and they...eat...her...oh fuck."

"It's okay." David placed his hands on Pickle's shoulder. "I know what you mean. She needs to be rid of as soon as possible."

"Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that." Pickle was astonished at David's comment, but was certain it was just the shock talking.

"It's okay, let's get this over with."

Pickle's chest caved inwards and he pushed out a sigh. "I spent years reading the Bible in the prison, so I can say a few words if yer want me to."

David confessed tearfully, "Davina and I never believed in that kinda stuff ... but that would be good."

Pickle cleared his throat and paused for a second, he didn't know where to start. For a moment he nearly blurted out the words, Dearly beloved, which would have been totally inconsiderate, although there was a miniscule chance it could have lightened the mood.

Pickle bowed his head in an attempt to start again and then raised his head and began to speak. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God."

Pickle paused and looked at the distraught David, his heart went out to him, and instead of getting stronger, Pickle was feeling that this new world was weakening him. For Christ's sake, I used to torture people for fun, and now my heart is breaking for a man I hardly know.

He thought of a short poem he had written for his father's funeral and incorporated it into the private service he was presenting.

"God took you in his loving arms. He saw you needed rest. His garden must be beautiful. For he only takes the best."

Pickle's eyes watched the broken man as the tears ran off his face like a dripping tap, and remembered a passage from his prison days.

He continued, "There is but one freedom, to put oneself right with death. After that, everything is possible. I cannot force you to believe in God. Believing in God amounts to coming to terms with death. When you have accepted death; the problem of God will be solved, and not the reverse. God bless you, Davina. You don't have to worry, as your daughter will be in safe hands. David will look after her, we will look after her."

"We're not staying here," David pointed out.

Not wanting to create animosity between the pair of them, Pickle chose to ignore David's confession for fear of creating an argument at the burial of his wife. He tried desperately hard to think of other passages that he thought would be fitting for the situation they were in, but David's comment had threw Pickle, and now he couldn't think straight.

"I don't know what else to say," Pickle commented, and shrugged his shoulders in defeat.

David admitted, "I still remember the Lord's Prayer from school."

Pickle nodded. "Then we'll finish off with that." He cleared his throat. "Our Father..."
Chapter Fifty

An hour had passed, and the car of the Clio's engine was switched on, which alerted everyone's attention. The vehicle began to slowly move and was adjacent to the prison van that was blocking the entrance. David rolled the window down and Pickle stuck his head in the window and saw a distraught Isobel leaning forward in the back of the car, clutching onto her daddy's sleeve.

"Where the hell are yer going?" Pickle questioned.

"We're leaving. It's too dangerous here. I told you I wasn't staying."

"Yer leaving now? But we have food, we have guns."

"That's right, you have guns. One of them has killed my wife."

David realised what he had just said and turned around to see the reaction on his daughter's face, but was oblivious about what the conversation was about, and was still unaware that her mum was no longer alive.

"But she was already bitten."

"And whose fault was that? Who was supposed to be watching out for her?"

Pickle's face was stony; he released a breath out, and pushed his lips out making a circular motion, like a smoker trying to make smoke rings. "Where yer gonna go?"

"Anywhere, but here. What happens if a swarm of those things come up during the night? Me and Isobel would be in danger with just this car as protection. You lot have the comfort of sleeping in a secured van."

Pickle thinned his lips and could understand David's predicament. "I can swap and make room for you two. The farting and the snoring would probably drive yer mad though."

"Move the van, or I'll roll this thing down the hill instead. Don't think I won't do it!"

There was a look of defeat etched on Pickle's face and he nodded. "Fine, I'll move it maself."

Karen and Janine walked over to David as he waited as patiently as he could for Pickle to move the van, which he had just got into. His eagerness was for all to see, as his hand shook as they rested on the steering wheel. If he could release a scream of frustration, anger and mourning, he would do, but his little girl was with him and he needed to stay calm for her, although deep down he was hurting inside and the pains in his chest occurred every time he took a deep breath in.

"Are you sure you won't change your mind?" Janine quizzed hopelessly. "At least take some food with you."

A fuming David never even acknowledged her and continued to stare straight ahead. He wanted to see the back of the camp, and felt they were better off away from these cursed people and away from the exposure of the outdoors.

"Goodbye, Isobel," Janine said with an emotional flutter in her voice. "I'll see you soon."

The four-year-old stared at Janine and managed a thin, but brave smile. Neither one of them had the time to get to know one another, but on looks alone, Karen and Janine could see that she was such a sweet thing, and if the opportunity had ever arose, if they ever had brought a daughter into the old world, they would be more than satisfied if she had turned out like little Isobel.

"Don't worry about us," David added with gritted teeth. "At least we'll be safe where we're going."

The prison van began to reverse back and David turned to his daughter and asked her to sit back into her seat, as it would be safer for her.

She agreed without a fight, and he got out of the family car quickly, strapped her in and kissed her on the forehead for being a good girl and for doing what she was told.

He wasted no time in driving through the only way in and out, and left the Stile Cop beauty spot quickly. He checked his rearview mirror and saw Janine and Karen waving sadly behind them. Isobel was looking out behind her, waving back, confused about what was going on and where she was going.

"Where's Mummy? Where are we going, daddy?" she sobbed.

"Somewhere safe, Babs," he replied with a frog in his throat, and put his window back up. "Somewhere where nobody can hurt us. Mummy's meeting us there."

As he left the area, he saw a fire in the rear view mirror, it was so far away he couldn't make out what it was, but it wasn't of any concern of his and decided to hit the accelerator.

The drive continued through the country roads, through Upper Longdon, and they entered the main road that led to the town of Lichfield. David had no clue where to go, and the last thing his daughter needed was to see more of those things that would no doubt be in the heavily populated town of Lichfield.

He veered left, down a country road he had never been to before. He didn't even know the name of the place, but it looked like one of those places that probably had a population of about a couple of hundred, had one pub and one shop. It was farmland, and the two main farms had a 'trespassers will be shot' sign on the front gate, which reminded him of the episode in Colton.

Fearing his determination to find a safe bed for the night would indeed get him shot and leave his daughter an orphan, he continued down the bendy roads, and he could see that the weather was now beginning to turn for the worse. The heavens began to open and he put the wipers on to medium speed to ensure his view wasn't restricted and that he wasn't distracted as well.

He was leaving, what looked like, the last house of the small village and saw five of the creatures stumbling around the road.

"Don't look, Babs," he ordered.

He turned around and saw that his instruction was fruitless, as she had slipped away into unconsciousness. Probably the stress of witnessing the execution, as well as the bumpy car ride had made her fall asleep. David was thankful, and floored the gas pedal, hitting two of the things, one going under the car.

David prayed that the car wasn't too damaged, especially as far as the electrics were concerned. He continued through the country road and took a gander to the right, where something caught his eye. At least nine of them were in a crowd, on their knees, in a field feasting on, what looked like, a cow. He shook his head, still unable to come to terms what had been happening over the last few days.

The car left the area and went round a sharp bend, which revealed a long road. He stopped the car suddenly, and gulped hard. There was dozens of them walking in the same direction, towards the village, towards the car. He saw that the nearest being was at least three hundred yards away, but nevertheless, it was an awesome and frightening sight to see, as the small army of the creatures lumbered towards his direction. His body was overwhelmed with so much apprehension that he had temporarily forgot how to put the car into reverse. He crunched the gears on a couple of occasions before finally getting the gear he wanted, and went back the way he had come from.

He had no idea what to do. Back to Stile Cop? Back to Rugeley?

It was only a few days into this pandemic, and he was already sick of running.

The Renault Clio passed two more isolated houses; both had garages that were wide open, as if the owners had got into their cars and fled the place in a rush. David decided to stop. He took one look back at his daughter and stepped out into the pouring rain.

He ran over to the main window of the two houses, but there was nothing inside. He banged on both front doors for a minute, his clothes getting soaked in the process. He decided to give up, realising the situation was hopeless. He ran over to the garages and decided that the first abandoned garage was the one he was going to drive into.

Again, he slipped the car into reverse, and this time managed to find the gear first time, and slowly reversed into the garage. He got out of the car and shut the garage door, and stuck the light on. He got back into the car, knowing that those things were probably five minutes or so from entering the village.

He looked over his left shoulder to see his baby girl, still dressed in her black leggings and her Barbie T-shirt, her arms wrapped around her body, giving herself comfort, with her usual sleeping face and her ruby lips pouting perfectly.

She looked angelic, and David broke down. His head fell on the top of the rim of the steering wheel and liquid from almost every orifice fell out from his face, his shoulders shrugged up and down as the crying began to become uncontrollable.

As his eyes remained closed, he could see Davina as she was when she was in her twenties. Her hair was brown, down to her back, and her figure was slightly more slender, unspoilt by childbirth, and it was just how he remembered her during their courting days. Those were the days they would just look at one another and rip each other's clothes off, those were the days he used to sometimes stroke her to sleep and be thankful for such a wonderful woman.

He loved her that much it scared him. It scared him what he would do if ever she left him for somebody else; it scared him to think that she could be taken away from him, by a road accident or some debilitating disease.

They used to discuss this subject when they were in bed together, along with other topics, and David had told Davina that selfishly he wanted to be the one to go first, as she was mentally stronger than him as he just wouldn't cope.

He was right; he wasn't coping now, and she hadn't even been gone for a couple of hours.

He remained sat in his seat and took another look at his beautiful daughter who was sound asleep.

With the garage door tightly shut, he put down the windows of the car and placed his head back on the steering wheel and sniffed hard to prevent his runny nose from starting again.

He hit the gas pedal furiously for a few seconds.

He apologised to his wife, and thrashed the gas pedal once more.

He then apologised to Isobel, before stamping on the accelerator another time.

He finally apologised to God, someone or something he claimed not to believe in, and he once more applied pressure on the gas.

His head remained sitting on the steering wheel, as the carbon monoxide snaked its way into the car, already beginning to poison their bodies. He coughed gently as the poison danced its way into the airwaves of both father and daughter. He managed to find one last ounce of energy to apply pressure on the pedal for one final time and kept his foot there.

He did so until he coughed once more; his foot slipped off the gas pedal and he and his daughter left the new cruel world, peacefully.
Chapter Fifty One

Jamie Thomson had spent his guard-time making himself useful. He was carrying a little weight despite his decent size, and knew that this new world of running and lack of food was going to make the thirty-nine-year-old, very fit and very lean.

Taking advice from Pickle and watching him train when it was his turn to guard, Jamie had performed six sets of pull-ups using the strong branch of the tree that hung above his head, followed by push ups.

Pickle swore blind to Jamie that it was the pull-ups that gave him his muscular back and informed Jamie that to increase proper size, squats or deadlifts was the answer, but at the moment they would have to make do with what they had. It was the first lot of exercises he had done for years, and knew that his muscles were going to suffer from it in the morning.

He looked over to the camp where KP was starting another small fire, and Pickle threw a metal tray over it and placed eight potatoes on top. It looked like after the barbecue, the group were beginning to ration the food and make dinnertime more basic. He couldn't grumble. He had had good food the night before, despite his minor bowel altercation afterwards, and had a fair amount of alcohol and food before that at the Wolseley Arms pub. It was inevitable the food was going to get more basic; at least they had food.

The gun that he had was only going to be used in case of an extreme emergency. Even if one of them appeared from out of nowhere, he would rather resort to clubbing its brains in, rather than wasting a single bullet. Pickle had pre-warned them to do their best to refrain from using their guns in case the noise attracted the things from afar; the two gunshots from KP in the woods, from earlier, had seemed to have passed without any kind of danger so far.

He saw a bored Janine saunter over; her fingers brushed back her now greasy blonde hair. He greeted the twenty-seven-year-old with a warm, welcoming smile.

"It's not your turn yet, is it?"

"Nah." She stretched out her arms and yawned loudly and unabashed. "Just killing time. I see you've been working out."

Jamie shrugged, and released an embarrassed grin. "Preparing myself for the outside world. We can't stay here forever. And these woods don't seem to be safe either, despite the hill."

Janine said, "Pickle said that thing was just a stray."

Jamie guffawed falsely, "And he knows that because he's checked the whole of the woods?"

Janine paused with her stretching, and lowered her arms and turned to Jamie and narrowed her eyes inquisitively. "You said we can't stay here forever. Why not?"

Jamie twitched his shoulders; he wasn't expecting Janine to question him. "Well, once that supermarket has been cleared out, where are we gonna get food from?"

Janine playfully twisted her hair like a child and shrugged. "There's another one three miles up the road, outside the village."

"Exactly, three miles up the road. So we'll be using fuel as well. It's all gotta run out one day."

The mood was sombre, and Janine never thought for a second that Jamie was feeling sorry for himself, although he looked genuinely down. Janine was certain that he was trying to look to the future with realism rather than false hope.

She tried to lighten the mood and stroked his arm. "We've got guns now," she joked. "We could take a farm, kill the family and have their livestock."

Jamie grinned, and mockingly wagged his finger at her naughty remark. "That is so wrong, on so many levels."

Janine and Jamie remained in a silent state for a long twenty seconds. Their eyes both wandered over towards the fresh fire that sat burning in the middle of the sandy region.

Janine spoke once more. "Has it ever crossed your mind that one morning Pickle and KP will just up sticks and leave us in the lurch and take the van?"

Jamie shook his head and pouted his bottom lip. "No. Why would they do that?"

"In case we start running out of food, and they decide they'd be better off being just the two of them, and then suddenly shoot off with our van."

"But then, why would he give us a gun each?"

Janine was lost in thought and produced a menacing grin, Jamie could see her little mind was doing overtime. "What if we ran off together and leave Pickle, KP and that new girl? It's practically an armoured van, and it's full of food."

Jamie placed his hand on his forehead, and couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You're a naughty girl."

"I've been naughtier," she playfully giggled and quickly raised her eyebrows.

Was she joking?

"You know at first, I never fancied you at all," she confessed.

"Really?"

"I thought you were a meathead. Now, I think you're a sexy meathead."

She turned around and walked away. He playfully smacked Janine's bum as she walked off, and she left his presence, giggling to herself as she walked back to the camp and tried her hardest to make a depressed KP smile.

*

It had taken nearly two hours for Jack Slade and Gary Jenson to reach the house, and it had been quiet, apart from seeing a group of about fifteen of the creatures from a distance at the edge of the village. They got to the top of the road, where the pub sat to the right and the primary school was on the opposite side of the road, and they could see that the danger was small.

They had slowly walked the last mile, as neither one had any energy left. What had got them through the first mile was the last bit of adrenaline that pumped through them after the attack. A mile later, the adrenaline was beginning to wane and their legs were becoming heavy and Gary could feel his hamstring pull again.

The darkness was creeping up on them, and they passed the primary school railings and marched down the road, drenched in sweat and rain. Gary looked to the skies and noticed it turning into a darker shade of blue between the dark abusive clouds; the day was coming to a close once again.

They were so confident that the danger was limited where they now were, they strolled down the long road towards the house, as if they were just two regular guys walking back from the pub without a care in the world.

They finally got back into the street and could see that there wasn't a soul around. The street was also in complete darkness, apart from the streetlights. They got to the house to find that the BMW bike had been stolen whilst they were away. Unbothered by this, they went inside and Gary checked if the house still had electricity.

For now, it did.

They locked the doors and began moving furniture against it. They placed the cupboard back at the bottom of the stairs.

Something had caught Gary's left eye. It was a tiny flashing green dot, and as his head swivelled around towards the answer machine, it flashed to say that there was one message on it.

Gary gestured to Jack to stand next to him before he pressed the button. Jack gently patted a nervous Gary on the back and told him to go ahead. He exhaled out and his index finger pushed the silver button on the machine.

Machine: "You have one message. Message received today at four-thirty-six-pm."

It was followed by a long and exaggerated beep.

It was Jemma's voice. "Hello, this is Jemma Marlow," at this point, Gary broke down and shouted 'yes.' "If you're listening to this, then you're in my house. There are twelve of us. We are all well, considering, and we still have a small amount of food left from what we took from our homes. The names of the people I am with are Jason Barton, Kevin Houston, Oliver Newton, Karen and Sean West, Yoler Parkinson, Ian Jenson, Paul Parker, Lee Hayward, myself, Jemma Marlow, Clare and Kerry Evans and Thomas Slade. If anyone is related to these people, please ring or come to us at the Longdon Community Hall, just outside of Hazelslade, near Cannock. I'm calling from the hall's landline as our cell phones have either gone flat or the signal is impossible. The number is 555 63524."

Gary looked to his side and saw Jack with his head in his hands; he was crying. Gary sat slowly and placed his arm comfortingly around his older compatriot.

"Thomas is with Jemma. They're alive," Gary whispered.

Jack nodded and lifted his head up to reveal his stained cheeks and his bloodshot eyes. He struggled to find words at first and stammered. "I c-can't b-b-believe it. If I never had met you..." Jack pulled himself together. "Where is the place?"

Gary grinned. "About a mile up the road. It's in the middle of nowhere and quite secure."

"What are we waiting for?" Jack stood quickly to his feet.

Gary raised his hand. "We're not going anywhere tonight! I need to ice this leg; I'm knackered, and we now have no transport and it'll be getting dark soon."

"I can't stand here knowing my son is up the road."

"Well, you're gonna have to. We're knackered. Let's get a decent night's sleep, and I'll steal a car in the morning and we'll make our way up. I'll give them a ring right now."

Gary shook as he picked up the phone and felt similar to the first ever time he spoke to Jemma.

Jack watched him intently as he slowly dialled the landline number that Jemma had given out on the message. As soon as he pushed the last number, he stood up straight and blew out an overwrought breath that would have been strong enough to blow out sixty candles on a sixtieth birthday cake. Jack was unsure whether to call them at all in case the phone alerted outside predators, but Jemma had given out the number, so he assumed that it must be reasonably safe where they were.

"Hello," Gary greeted. Jack could see from Gary's glassy eyes that it was Jemma that had picked up the phone.

The conversation was teary and short. Gary explained very briefly that he had escaped from prison and he also informed Jemma that he was heading their way first thing in the morning.

"One more thing," Gary said to his girlfriend, as the short conversation was coming to a close. "You have a little boy called Thomas Slade there, put him on. I have his daddy standing next to me, believe it or not."

Gary passed the phone over to Jack, and Jack held the clammy handle of the phone. "Hello."

There was a pause on the other end, and Jack waited another few seconds and opened his mouth to say hello once more, when he was cut short by a voice he so desperately wanted to hear.

"Daddy?"

"Hi, son," Jack sniffled, and was finding it desperately difficult to restrict his emotions. "How are ya?"

"Okay, I suppose. Mum's been crying a lot. She keeps on saying she has something in her eye."

"What are you doing?"

The question wasn't needed, but it was hard to engage in a conversation with a six-year-old-boy, Jack just wanted to hear his voice, he didn't care, as the last time he heard his voice he seemed scared and mentioned the 'monsters' trying to get in. This time he seemed a lot more relaxed and his voice demonstrated to Jack that his boy was in a safe place.

"Not a lot. My mum says I'm on holiday, but they won't let me outside, and there's no swimming pool."

Jack chuckled and shook his head at his innocence. That's what he loved about kids. They saw the good in most people and were completely unaware of what a shitty world they actually lived in, and this was before the infection had taken place.

"I love you, son."

Thomas had no time to respond as the voice on the other end had been replaced with Kerry's.

"What are you doing here? How did you find me?" There was genuine concern in Kerry's voice for her ex-lover, and Jack was touched by this.

"I needed to see him, Kez. I went to your house, but it was empty. I thought about checking your mother's. I met a guy called Gary, he's Jemma's boyfriend."

"As long as you're okay. Jemma told me that you and this Gary are coming up tomorrow morning?"

"That's right."

"Just be careful."

"Careful? I managed to travel from Glasgow without any hitches, didn't I?" He lied, trying not to worry the mother of his child. "We'll be up first thing, as soon as we get a car."

"I'll see you then. Stay safe."

Jack hung up and didn't have time to emotionally collapse, as they were both immediately distracted by the sudden screaming in the distance that was coming from outside. He and Gary looked at one another and ran upstairs, heading for the bedroom window that would give a better view of what was occurring.

They both peered out and saw a father and young son running out of the house, whilst being slowly chased by a group of seven creatures along the main road that was clear only minutes ago. The boy looked no older than ten, and Gary and Jack felt for the poor soul who was probably wondering, like everyone else, what was going on?

He and his father disappeared up the road as they went by the last streetlight and then were swallowed up by the darkness that had quickly arrived. I wonder where the mother is? Gary thought.

Jack moved away from the window and sat on the bed. He rubbed his tired eyes and reminisced over the last four days of his life so far. It had been a surreal weekend, even by Jack Slade's standards.

He had never drunk so much in one weekend; then suddenly the epidemic materialised, or was it a pandemic? He wasn't entirely sure.

The lack of technology left people in the dark whether this was a European or global problem. He had also been attacked numerous times by beings trying to eat him; he had killed, and had been the proud owner of a BMW motorbike. And he was now finally going to be reunited with his son.

Any other man would have had a breakdown by now, he thought.

"Looks like there's a few hanging around, now it's getting dark." Gary spoke, still staring out of the window.

"We better start barricading a little bit better downstairs."

Gary agreed with Jack's comment and spotted a silver Mazda that sat lazily on a drive, opposite the house. "I think I've just spotted our wheels for tomorrow."
Chapter Fifty Two

June 13th

The hours went by like days, as the monotony crept upon the camp in the mid-afternoon, and as the hours passed, like a leech, it sucked all the enthusiasm out of them and refused to go away.

It was now a new day, not quite dawn, and the dark blue sky stretched over the area with a fat grinning moon hanging above the camp. The wind was relentless and the noise coming through the trees was eerie.

It was Jamie's turn again on watch-duty, and he was beginning to feel his eyes shut, then his body would jump in fright and he would be awake once more. Again, it reminded him of the visits section.

When he first started the prison, he was in visits permanently and had to stand in one spot for most of the twelve-hour shift, and keep his eye on any prisoners passing drugs or any other contraband. Some of the things he witnessed in there was a real eye-opener, watching desperate people resort to desperate things, just to get drugs onto the wings.

Babies were used to pass drugs, as wives and girlfriends would put their hand in the baby's nappy and pull out a wrap of narcotics, place it in their mouth and pass the substance to the partner by kissing them, moving it from mouth to mouth and allowing the inmate to swallow the substance.

On other occasions, women wearing short skirts, would put their hands in their panties and pull out a small bag of drugs and again, place it in their mouth and pass the drug. Even grown men had done this, brothers and fathers kissing their own flesh and blood just to pass drugs.

The unfortunate and frustrating thing was that once the drug was passed and swallowed, there was nothing the prison could do about it, even if it had been seen. It had to be grabbed before the passing would take place.

Jamie looked around the creepy area, and thought where he was now was much worse than in the prison. At least back in his old job he wasn't in danger of being eaten by the prisoners.

He looked at his wristwatch and it told him that there was another hour to go before Pickle's turn. He looked to his left and now that the Pointers had gone, the camp seemed empty. The Renault Clio was no longer there, and all he could see was the silhouette of the bulky van sitting by the entrance where his four friends slept inside. He thought about Davina; he felt sad for the woman.

He peeped to his right to stare into the woods, but all he could see was blackness. It was an eerie sight to behold and he couldn't wait for the sun to arrive.

The sky was cloudless, making the area not as dusky as it could have been, but it was still a frightening place to stand alone. Jamie had never shot the pistol since the supermarket incident, and still wasn't confident he could take out one of those things on his own if he really had to.

He remembered how he shook when he fired it for the first time, and how his confidence grew as they eventually fell, but that was in a group situation. He was now on his own and knew the camp would be in better hands with someone like Pickle standing guard, who was used to shooting people, as it was part of his old job description.

He could feel his eyes going again, but this time a shot of adrenaline helped to spring him back into life. A snap of a branch appeared to the side of him that he could just about hear through the sound of the wind whistling in his ears.

God, what was that smell? He wondered.

He stared into the blackness and could see spots appearing before his eyes. His gaze continued as he began to attempt some breathing exercises in order to lower his irregular heart rate.

He was surprised how he was feeling. On the prison wings he was fearless, feared and respected by most of the inmates. That was in a controlled situation; he was now in an alien situation where relentless creatures were out there, and were programmed never to stop unless they received irreparable damage to their brain.

He was holding the weapon that could do exactly that irreparable damage, but his confidence was lacking. Another rustle was heard; this time it happened in front of him, and this had caused another surge of adrenaline to sprint through his arteries.

Whatever it was, he could hear it getting nearer and then he heard an animal-like squeal, which caused chest pains on both sides of the ex-prison officer. He clutched the left side of his chest where his heart was situated and was bent over.

Every time he breathed in, the pain intensified and he winced whenever the cramp increased. He decided to hold his breath and was on his knees now, still staring in the direction of the noise, and whatever it was, it was getting nearer. He tried to breath in gently, and this time the pain wasn't as intense, so he got off his knees and staggered to his feet once more.

Shall I warn the group?

Whatever had caused the tension that had temporarily crippled Jamie Thomson, it had finally darted out of the woods at such a speed that Jamie let out a frightened yell. His eyes quickly followed the anxious animal that had ran out of the wooded area; it looked like an adult deer, and although the pain had returned and he had gone back to his kneeling position, he managed to raise a smile. He was glad that he hadn't called for back-up, as he thought he would have looked like a coward. He was pleased to be in a group situation and wanted to play an integral part in it.

The back door of the van opened and out came Janine. "You okay?" There was concern in her voice for him, as all she could see was the silhouette of Jamie on his knees.

"It's okay, I'm fine." He raised his arm high, knowing that from that distance, she would find it hard to see him properly. "It was a deer! It gave me a bit of a scare."

A bit of a scare? You nearly shat yourself, Jamie boy!

Jamie could then hear the voice of KP coming from within the van. "For fuck's sake, shut the door. It's freezin' in here." She did as she was told.

Jamie was sure that KP's telling off was exaggerated and uncalled for.

Jamie thought that the night, despite the shower earlier, was actually quite humid, and he had spent the night himself without asking to borrow a coat or an extra piece of clothing. He had his suspicions that KP was being tortured with the guilt of what happened to Davina, which also drove the remaining Pointers away. Jamie thought that if all of that guilt was feasting away on his mind, he wouldn't be able to sleep for days.

The wind continue to blow, and whistled into Jamie's ears and teased him to the point that its teasing was getting beyond annoying, and this was the downfall to being at the highest point of the area. His nose twitched as the awful smell grew stronger and assaulted Jamie's snout; it was so bad now that it was making him feel sick.

Suddenly, he released a frightened gasp as a pair of icy hands grabbed the back of his neck, and he could feel his frame being dragged by a strong presence to the floor. Jamie tried to turn around and he could smell and hear the groaning of one of the creatures, as it was centimetres away from his face.

It was a surreal few seconds, but the surreal moment had evaporated once he felt the first bite into his shoulder. The pain brought him back to an unwanted reality. He released a composed shriek as the wound began to smart almost immediately. He, at last, managed to fight the strong ambusher off, and he ran a few yards before collapsing to the sandy floor, dropping his gun.

The pain in his shoulder was of something he had never experienced in all his days. He remained sitting on the floor, his hand hopelessly covering his wound. The thing was ten yards away from him and staggered towards him with little effort to speed up, almost as if it knew its prey was defunct anyway.

Jamie was finding it increasingly difficult to control his breathing, and his eyes widened to the shape of golf balls as he saw silhouettes of more of them slowly scrambling out of the woods. At first he thought that his tired eyes and the dark was playing tricks on him, and when he stared into the woods, he thought that the trees were slowly dancing and moving towards him.

It had now turned out that there was an army of the things, and it looked like to his eyes that the woods had come alive. He had no time to count them, but he estimated that there were at least thirty of them, and God knows how many were following behind, making their way up. Jamie could feel the scream of fear lodged in his throat, but found it impossible to release it.

Why now did they choose to come through in their hundreds? What attracted them? Jamie wondered. Was it KP's shooting from earlier? Did one hear the sound and make its way up, while dozens followed? Or was it Isobel's screaming? Was it something else that had attracted their attention to walk up Stile Cop?

The original being that had attacked him, shambled forwards towards him and it almost looked like that this creature, who in human form looked like a male in its twenties, was responsible for leading the rest into the woods and further up.

Jamie placed his hand on the floor to lift himself back up and felt the stinging pain shoot through his arm. He managed to let out a scream of fright, and this caused the remaining four individuals in the van to jump out of the back.

"Jamie!" Janine screamed. "Oh God, Jamie!"

She ran towards him, forcing Pickle to run after her. She felt two strong hands grab each of her shoulders, which pressed down and stopped her in her tracks; she then twisted herself around to face Pickle.

"Get off me," she yelled, and slapped him across the face. "I can't leave him there."

Unruffled by Janine's slap, Pickle pleaded, "If yer have to go, then take this. Don't shoot until I say!"

He handed Janine her Browning, and he raised his shotgun. KP came out running behind and could see the small army appearing in numbers out from the trees. A sound coming from behind him forced his head to turn around, as he heard the van being pounded by a hundred fists.

"They're everywhere!" KP exclaimed. "They're not just in the woods. They're at the entrance, banging on the side of the van trying to find a way in. Quick, let's all get back in the van, Jamie's fucked."

"I'm not leaving him!" Janine screamed.

"We're gonna have to leave." Karen was the last to emerge from the van, holding a handgun, and without hesitating, she ran up to Jamie's attacker and from ten yards away she squeezed the trigger once. This had been the first time she had fired the pistol and she had not an ounce of hesitation in her. Jamie's attacker fell to the floor.

"For Christ's sake!" Pickle yelled over the dozens of moans from the dead, and glared at Karen with demonic eyes. "Why don't yer set off a flare and let them all know where we are?"

"Too late for that," Karen sniped back, and nodded to the woods, to see dozens upon dozens still spilling out of the darkness and onto the sandy area.

Janine ran over to Jamie to pick him up, not caring that a swarm of them were literally yards away from her. It was a struggle, and as she managed to eventually get him up, she used her left hand to throw her own Browning to the feet of Karen and she shouted, "Cover me!"

Karen and KP released slugs from their pistols and saw heads exploding, before hitting the floor with a deathly thump. Pickle's shotgun was causing the most damage; sometimes two went down as the cartridge hit them, producing a domino effect of exploding heads occurring in a straight pattern.

Karen had used up her magazine, and instead of reloading, she put the empty gun into her trouser side pocket, and began using Janine's. Two more shots were fired from the gun, and two more heads at close range burst open, spilling black gunk onto the floor as they continued to fall, but they were all aware that there were too many of them.

Karen saw the bodies circling them, and stated the obvious. "We've gotta go! Now!" She then looked over to see that it was impossible to get to the van with the amount of bodies on the beauty spot.

Janine let out a shriek as three of them grabbed her.

She was pulled to the floor, but she held onto Jamie. She had already been bitten in her left tricep and now she felt the side of her stomach being bitten into several times, as they crowded around the two officers, circling them. The creatures were not just standing and crouching over her and Jamie, some were lying on their chests and crawling through the crowd to get a better chance of getting at the two delicious humans.

Janine looked over to Jamie and he stared into nothingness through shock and had stopped fighting them off. Cold sets of fingers dug into his mouth and ripped his face off in front of her eyes. He didn't scream once.

She felt another bite into her shoulder and her screams of pain and for help were pointless, as one of the things lying on top of her legs opened its decayed mouth and took a huge chunk through her trousers, inbetween her legs.

Karen, KP and Pickle pointed their guns from ten yards away, over in Janine and Jamie's direction. For fear of shooting them by accident, neither one squeezed their trigger. They never attempted to help Janine, as they saw her being bitten and all three knew that with one bite, she was good as dead.

Instead, the remainder of the group responded by only firing at those who gained on them. They all walked backwards, away from the two officers and were now being circled by at least twenty of the dead. They continued to carefully aim in order not to waste a single bullet and fired.

The attack of the two officers was a huge distraction as most of the things were attracted to the free lunch, and this gave the remainder of the group valuable seconds of survival. The creatures wasted no time in devouring and ripping off the bloody limbs of the pair of the officers and because the dead had circled around them, the officers now couldn't be seen, but the horrific screams from Janine were unmistakeable.

KP looked at Karen; the panic scrawled on his face was self-evident. They watched in horror as severed arms and the entrails of both of their short-lived friends, were being devoured by the cannibals, as gaps in the crowd began to appear now, as some of the things began to stand up from the massacre and faced the three survivors, knowing there was other warm flesh on offer.

Karen looked behind her and pointed towards the van, there was many of them on the beauty spot now, and this made getting to the doors of the van a pointless and suicidal exercise.

"Shit!" KP screamed; he had never been so frightened in all his life. "What the fuck are we gonna do now?" He looked behind him, down the steep hill that led to acres of bracken. "Let's just run for it!"

"We can't leave the van," Pickle yelled, "We won't last five minutes out there on foot, in the darkness."

"I'll create a diversion," Karen shouted over the moans and groans off the hundred or so things that were almost encircling them.

The three survivors were all now standing on the edge of the beauty spot, behind them was the steep hill covered in healthy bracken—their only way of escape. They could have easily outrun the things, but they didn't want to leave the van, as well as the supplies inside, behind.

Karen began re-loading the other gun. "You and KP go a few yards down the hill, then run across so you're near the van. Once you can see it's clear, get in. I'll go further back to create a diversion. That should get some of them away from the van. Once they get near me, I'm gonna run down the hill and head for the crossroads to the right while you two are getting the thing moving; most of the dopey cocksuckers will just fall anyway trying to chase me. Get the van and meet me at the crossroads at the other end of Stile Cop Road."

KP and Pickle nodded in agreement to her plan, as it wasn't as if they had time to deliberate on it. Karen sidestepped ten yards to the left, away from the two men who had now disappeared from view as they ran down the hill. Karen saw that some of them were not falling for this trick, as some went over the direction where KP and Pickle had disappeared from, so she began to shout and holler in a desperate attempt to attract their attention.

Once it began to work, she raised both of the loaded Brownings. Her inexperienced hands shook with fear as they got nearer, and with guns cocked, she began squeezing the triggers. Only one bullet was wasted, as she allowed them to get near her before giving them a bullet each to end their miserable lives.

As they gained nearer, she backed a little and moved back from the grotesque-looking things. All around her they dropped to the floor as the bullets made their violent impact. Some of them were getting so close, and her T-shirt was being soaked as if someone with a wet paintbrush was flicking her with every shot that was taken.

She kept her eyes at a squint, paranoid the blood could get in there, and she could now feel her heels on the edge of the area and she looked over where the van was. The doors to the van looked reasonably clear, making it possible for the two inmates to reappear further along the beauty spot, get in the van and escape without being attacked themselves. It was too dark to see, but Karen thought that they should be near the van by now.

She knew if she stayed a few seconds longer she was going to be snatched and would end up with the same fate as Janine and Jamie. She squeezed the trigger for one last time, and her last victim was so close that the gun was shoved in its mouth when she pulled it. She turned away from the risky shooting so the spray didn't hit her face.

That was the messiest of the lot, and as she turned around to run down the steep hill, she could feel dozens of dead hands desperately grabbing and snatching at her clothes and her hair as she turned to face the hill. The momentum of her fall allowed their grip to be futile, although she lost a handful of hairs from the grabbing. She began to pick up speed down the steep decline; she could feel her legs were not going quick enough for how quick the body wanted her to go, and she fell over to the floor and grazed her palms on the hard dirt, thankfully not losing the pistols that still remained tightly gripped by her hands.

She stood up immediately and looked up at the edge of the beauty spot from the bottom of the hill, and saw the silhouette of body after body clumsily falling over the edge and tumbling after and towards her down the steep hill.

Noticing that the ones that fell first were now staggering to their feet twenty yards away from her presence as the decline was beginning to subside, she picked up the pace once more and was coming to the end of the hill and was now running on a flat surface.

She could just about see the crossroads ahead in the darkness, and wondered where the van was. She turned around and looked up to see the beauty spot from an angle she had never seen before; it looked almost like a mountain.

Again, she wondered where the van was; it was taking its time but when she looked up, she saw the headlights come on. It was finally beginning to move from the Stile Cop area.

They had made it! They were inside! The plan had worked!

Because of the amount of bodies that it was being surrounded by after seeing the inmates climb in, the vehicle was struggling to move as it shunted back and forwards in order to get out onto the main road. Karen needed to get to the crossroads quick, as she was certain that the things that came from the woods, and the things that had made their way up the Stile Cop Road that were initially banging on the van, would more-than-likely follow the van to the crossroads, albeit slowly.

She needed to turn up early. If she turned up late, there would be too many of them, and Pickle and KP could decide that it would be too dangerous to hang around for her.

She ran hard, as the van at last was moving slowly, and made it to the crossroads. Her body was drenched in light from the moving van's headlights in the distance, which made her feel vulnerable as it highlighted her presence.

The vehicle finally began to pick up pace as it progressed on the main road towards her, while it crushed and ran over body after body. As the van got nearer, her frame became even more lit up as the headlights got closer. She could see in the murky distance, the creatures from the beauty spot area beginning to spill out of the entrance, onto the main road and hurriedly heading to the van.

This didn't unnerve Karen as, van or no van, the things were a fair distance away, and could be outrun. What did bother her was that she couldn't see what was to her right or behind her. She was standing on a crossroads, in the middle of the country where there was no streetlights, and all that surrounded her was woods, darkness, and the headlights of the prison van. The main thing that worried her was that she might be vulnerable from the right as when she fled down the hill, many of them followed her. Sure, they fell down clumsily, but they still eventually got to their feet and were probably stumbling towards her as she stood anxiously waiting, but she couldn't see the things. Not yet.

The van stopped at the crossroads, only yards from Karen who was in front, and KP stuck his head out of the window and fired a shot near the young woman. She quickly turned around as she heard a thump behind her, and because of the light from the van's headlights she saw one of them a metre away from her, lying face down with the contents of its head oozing out from where the bullet penetrated it. It was ten yards behind her. KP had spotted it and had saved her life. Great shot!

Pickle stuck his head out of the driver's side window and calmly said to Karen. "Err, anytime this week, if that's all right with yer, Missy."

He pointed behind her. She turned around to see three beings walking down the adjacent road and could now hear the shuffling of many feet coming from her right—most probably the things that pursued her as she descended down the hill.

She pulled out the two Brownings; cocked both of them, and focused on the three behind her and began to release some of the contents of the magazines. She fired eleven bullets and all three of them eventually fell, as the headshots were eventually successful.

"Come on, Lara Croft!" Pickle instructed sharply, with a tinge of sarcasm, but mainly anger. "Yer wasting bullets and time!"

"Move your fuckin' butt, or we're going!" KP urged. "There're hundreds behind us, about thirty seconds away."

She stuck the guns into her belt and ran to the already-opened passenger side of the van and went to jump in. Suddenly, from out of the darkness, she felt a pair of cold hands grab her arms, making it impossible to draw her guns, and she let out a frightened shriek.

She stared into the black lifeless eyes of the bloated female being, and saw that there were many not far behind her from the right road. She struggled to reach for her guns that were stuck in her belt, and KP decided to save her life for a second time and pointed his gun and squeezed the trigger, but his magazine was empty.

Karen managed to release one of her arms and threw her elbow forwards into the face of the beast and was told by Pickle to 'get the fuck out of the way.'

She ducked and lay on the road, while simultaneously KP hit the floor by the passenger seat, which was followed by Pickle releasing another cartridge from his Browning shotgun from the driver's seat. The head of Karen's attacker exploded, decorating some of the passenger door, that was opened, with dark blood and brain matter. KP got back up off the van's floor, his ears smarting, and Karen didn't need a second invitation. She jumped inside, closed the passenger door and wound the passenger window fully up.

"Don't ever fuckin' do that again. That was a waste o' a cartridge," Pickle pointed out, and then changed the tone in his voice immediately to a more softer manner. "Are yer okay? Yer bitten?"

Karen shook her head.

"Yer sure yer never shot a gun before?" Pickle looked at Karen with sceptical eyes.

"Of course," she sniffed.

"Yer didn't even hesitate," Pickle said. "I'll give yer credit for that, although yer nearly wasted a full magazine on three o' them."

"It's not as if I'm shooting actual people, is it?" Karen shrugged, although underneath she was a nervous wreck, and KP could see through her fake bravado. After all, she was still a nurse.

Their temporary break had allowed a lot of the beings to catch up to the van and Pickle slipped the van into first, ready to get the van moving again, and could feel the van rocking from side to side. He thrashed the gas. Jesus, there must be at least a hundred of the things around us from all angles.

It took a while, but the van eventually got moving, crushing anything that dared to go in front. The van jumbled around as ten bodies felt the weight of the van. Some of the things had limbs crushed and didn't show any signs of pain on their emotionless face. Two bodies were almost halved in two as the wheels went over their torso, their rotten guts spewing out onto the tarmac, and another two heads popped like champagne bottles, smearing the tarmac with the contents of what used to be inside their diseased craniums.

Once ahead seemed clear, the van began to pick up momentum. Pickle checked the offside mirror and saw the army of the dead, slowly but surely, disappearing as the van progressed straight ahead at the crossroads.

"Do me a favour?" KP asked Karen, who was staring out of the window as the last remaining beings of the crowd slammed their hands against the side of the van.

"What is it?"

"Pass me a bullet," KP ordered with a sad smile.

"What for?" Karen and Pickle both asked collectively.

The van was now progressing nicely along the long country road, heading towards Upper Longdon; the beings had disappeared from view.

"For me." KP pulled his sleeve back and revealed a small bite mark. It was small, but it was a bite all the same. "One of them got me up there, as we were trying to get in the van."

Pickle began to shed tears and repeated the word no constantly when he saw the wound. His reaction touched, yet, confused Karen.

Karen knew that KP was infected and never hesitated as she emptied the magazine from one of her guns and passed KP the one solitary bullet he asked for.

"Stop the van," KP demanded, loading the bullet.

"No chance," came Pickle's reply, wiping his blurry eyes with his forearm, staining his combat shirt that he had taken from the supermarket.

"Come on, don't be a hypocrite. You had to kill Laz. I shot Davina. Now it's my turn." KP put the barrel of the Browning to his left temple. "If you don't stop, I'll do it right here. I don't know how long I've got before I turn into one of them. Could be hours, could be less."

Karen put her magazine back into the pistol and turned to Pickle. "Just stop the van."

The van came to an abrupt halt, and Pickle slammed his forehead on the steering wheel and began to sob gently.

KP touched Karen's face affectionately and opened the door, slammed it shut and went around to the driver. KP opened the driver's side of the door, and stared at Pickle, who refused to look at the man. KP could feel himself getting emotional and fed off Pickle's distress. He touched Pickle's face tenderly, leaned over to him and kissed him on the cheek.

"Goodbye, Harry Branston." KP managed a thin smile. "I love you."

Pickle's head remained on the steering wheel and found it too hard to look at KP, let alone, say goodbye.

KP shut the door firmly and walked away onto the main road that was surrounded by, what seemed like, an everlasting forest. KP disappeared into the darkness and was never to be seen again.

Pickle raised his head off the steering wheel and looked in his wing mirror, and even though his lover was maybe only yards away, only darkness could be seen.

He composed himself and slowly drove away, and tried to keep his emotions intact with little success. It was clear to Karen that she was now sitting next to a broken man. He continued to drive slowly, as the tears were making his vision impaired. Karen sat silently and looked at the distressed Pickle; her feelings were becoming fragile also, as she felt for her driver.

She realised that she had forgotten to thank KP for saving her life; she looked in her side mirror in hope that he was still there, but he had gone. Pickle revved the van hard and had kept it in an unnecessary lower gear. She was about to advise him to change gear and then suddenly stopped herself, as she had an idea why he was doing it.

The loud revving continued as the van loudly growled through the snaky roads. The audible revving of the engine did make them more vulnerable as far as attracting the dead were concerned, but it was also loud enough to drown out a gunshot. KP's eventual gunshot.

Pickle turned the van at a sharp right bend, and finally slipped it into a higher gear it craved.

Karen took a look in the glove compartment and took out some hankies. She began to use them to wipe away some of the debris on the passenger side door where Pickle had shot one of them, but she was running out off hankies to remove the stubborn liquid. She wound down the window and threw the used tissues out, pulled the window back up and gawped at the distraught driver once more.

"About KP," she began. "I'm sorry. I didn't know that you two..."

Suddenly a figure could be seen up ahead. Pickle increased the pressure on the gas pedal, as he was unsure if it was a ghoul or not. As he passed the figure to his left, nearest to Karen in the passenger seat, it looked to be a young man and he began to frantically wave. Karen's eyes followed the man and could see, thanks to the headlights, in dark blue letters on his white T-shirt: 'Slightly Damaged Human.'

"He was human," she announced, as the van went by him.

Pickle remained transfixed, looking through the windscreen and shrugged his shoulders. "Yeah, well. Good luck to him."

He never stopped for the frightened individual; he had no intention of stopping, but Karen refrained from trying to persuade him. Pickle was hurting, and a confrontation about picking somebody up they didn't even know was something Karen decided to avoid. She didn't want to start a fight with a man that had just lost his lover.

She then thought about Jamie and Janine. Her throat began to swell.
Chapter Fifty Three

Jack's eyes remained staring at the ceiling, a mental exercise he had been performing for the last hour. He looked at the digital alarm clock. It was Wednesday, 5:23am.

He wondered if Gary in the other room had slept. The main reason for Jack's mild insomnia was excitement, because he was hours away from seeing his son. He roughly estimated that he was lucky to have got three hours, which even then, had three intermissions.

The first intermission was getting up at 1am for a pee, the other two interruptions that woke him were due to noises coming from outside. A faint scream from a woman was heard that either sounded that it was from a distance, or it occurred within a building. Nevertheless, it was enough to wake Jack and spring him out of bed to rush towards the bedroom window.

He was situated in the back bedroom, whereas Gary was in the front bedroom that overlooked the main road the house was on. All Jack could see was acres of back gardens, belonging to the residents of the street. It was frustrating that he couldn't see anything, and for all he knew, Gary could be fast asleep whilst there were hundreds of the dead piling onto the main road. Jack was hoping that this wasn't the case, as the more populated the area, the less chance and hope they had to leave the house to get to the Longdon Village Hall.

Jack decided enough was enough and got off the bed where he remained fully-clothed. He put his shoes on, that sat at the end of the bed where he had kicked them off, and gave off a sigh of frustration. He was hoping for two things: he was hoping that Gary was already awake, and that the street wasn't littered with those critters.

He crept towards the bedroom door and entered the landing area. He went into the bathroom and emptied his bladder. He could have been quieter but was sort of hoping that his movement would stir Gary. Jack couldn't delay any further; he wanted to see his son.

"Jack." Gary's voice came from the front bedroom. "Come in here."

Jack smiled and left the bathroom without flushing the toilet.

Without washing his hands, he entered the front bedroom to see a fully-dressed Gary Jenson with the palms of his hands flat on the windowsill, standing and gaping outside.

Jack walked over to the window and stood next to his new buddy. Shit!

Jack couldn't believe what he was seeing. "How many, do ya think?"

Gary shrugged his shoulders. "A hundred, maybe two."

Both men looked out and saw hordes of the dead rambling around the street, sometimes clumsily, walking into streetlights that were still working, and sometimes walking into one another. Jack and Gary knew from first-hand experience that this dopey look they had shouldn't be seen as a weakness, for as soon as they saw what they deemed as food, their eagerness and quickness was surprising, yet frightening at the same time.

"We're never gonna get out of here," Jack said; his voice was downbeat and drenched in negativity.

"We should be okay. I think the brighter the day is, the less they are in numbers. According to the announcement, they're not big fans of the light, so let's pray for the sun, or we might be in for a struggle later today."

"Look at the fuckers!" Jack snarled with hatred. "It's as if they know there're people here. So where do you think they go during the day?"

Gary shook his head. "Dunno, a place where there's a better chance of food. Maybe a place where there's shelter from sunshine."

"The woods?"

"Yep, maybe. And what are we surrounded by?"

Jack half-laughed and shook his head in defeat. "The woods."

"So just because we can't see many of them during the day, doesn't mean we're not surrounded. I think staying on the roads is the safest all round option. Don't get me wrong; what I heard on the radio was probably bullshit, guesswork. You know what these so-called experts are like. They don't have the words I don't know in their vocabulary. They would rather make up some shit rather than admit that they don't know, or that they were wrong.

"But what I did notice is that now two nights in a row, they seem to appear from nowhere, and when the day turns, a large percentage of them, not all of them, seem to disappear somewhere else."

Jack continued to gawp at the scene that was making the hairs on his arms stand tall. "Well, if your theories are correct, the winter is gonna be a fucking massacre. You know what Britain's like in the height of winter. Sometimes it gets dark at 4pm and can stay like that for about fourteen hours."

"We'll give it another hour or so, then I'll jump over and steal that silver Mazda over there."

Jack raised his hand and began waving. Gary wondered what he was doing; he looked across the street and saw a young girl, about eight, looking out of her bedroom window, clutching onto her teddy for comfort.

The girl waved back, and an arm grabbed her by the shoulder and gently pulled her away from the window by her father. He looked across to Gary and Jack, and gave them a polite wave, they both waved back, and the father—they assumed—closed the curtains.

"When's this all gonna end?" Jack sighed and sounded like a beaten man.

Gary snickered falsely and said, "This is just the beginning. We're only into the early hours of day...five? Six? Just look in that short space of time how many people we know have been taken from us. This is a holiday compared to what is waiting for us later on. This is only gonna get worse, and there'll be more of them, you mark my words. And as the weeks go by, and as they grow in numbers, food and water will disappear. God help us all then."

Jack knew what Gary was saying was correct; his comment wasn't appreciated, but surprising, considering Gary was the confident one a day ago, talking about humans surviving this disaster. Maybe he was changing his mind.

Jack was hoping for some kind of positivity from his new friend, some hope. Jack felt that, although tired and down beaten, he felt he should be the one to raise spirits and say something upbeat. He knew that if all hope was lost, there'd be no point in carrying on.

Jack added, "I'm sure there'll be many survivors when this blows over. Let's hope we become some of the lucky ones."

"The lucky ones." Gary tittered mockingly, not meaning to antagonise Jack, but did all the same.

"Did I say something funny?" Jack sniped with gritted teeth.

"My friend," Gary patted Jack on the back, "the lucky ones are already dead."

*

They had stopped for a few hours to rest, but sleep was impossible whilst they were still near the woods. The van purred along the roads that were now beginning to be easier to see since the sky had turned up its brightness, and the van eventually came to a halt. Pickle pulled up the parking brake and sat silently, staring along the country road. They hadn't passed a single house or farm for the last mile and he needed to stop to clear his eyes.

"What's wrong?" Karen had to ask. She knew there were many things that were wrong, but something new was irritating him.

"Many things," Pickle replied in a whisper.

"Okay, what's wrong right now?"

Pickle released a depressing sigh. "I don't even know where to go."

"Just go somewhere quiet and try and get some sleep," Karen suggested. "We have plenty of food to last us for a few days at least, and the van is still practically full of fuel."

Pickle sat in a sad state; his perky character had been sapped over the days, and Karen had noticed that the man she had met in the woods was different to the one that now sat next to her. There was only so many kicks in the stomach one man could take, and she feared that he was losing the will to live.

"Is this the way it's gonna be from now on? Struggling to survive?"

"Yep," Karen snapped coldly.

Pickle looked at Karen and wondered what the twenty-three-year-old nurse used to be like. Did she used to be funny? Go out drinking at the weekends with her friends? Was she romantic? Did she used to cry at the sad classics? Did she ever want a family? Whatever she used to be, Pickle was sure that the person sitting next to him was a lot different to the one that was working in a hospital and looking after patients a week ago.

"Do yer ever think about him?" Pickle licked his dry bottom lip, awaiting Karen's answer.

"If you're referring to my boyfriend, Gary, then, yes, of course. But he's dead, probably like most of my family and friends as well. I try not to think about it."

"It's just..." Pickle paused and didn't want to offend or start a petty argument with Karen. "You seem a bit...like a cold fish."

Karen's facial expressions told Pickle that she was agreeing with him. "I'm not a heartless bitch. I can tell you now, I did nothing but cry for the first night. It's not going to bring him back, neither is self-pity. You need to man-up and stop feeling sorry for yourself."

Pickle's face was like thunder; he was torn in three whether to shoot her, verbally abuse her, or ignore the rash comment that she had just made.

"Okay, maybe that was a little harsh." She smiled apologetically. "You lost your partner only hours ago, and I'm saying stuff like that. I'm sorry."

Pickle was amazed by the power of the apology.

Seconds earlier he wanted to harm her, and now those two words seemed to quash his temper very rapidly. He liked her again, but was still baffled, yet, encouraged by her mental toughness and determination to continue living. He thought that she was still hurting and was putting up a front. He felt that she was a little reckless, and back at the crossroads she seemed too trigger-happy, as if she was enjoying the situation, which he thought might be a concern in the future.

It had been a mad few days, and even his most bloody of weekends as a drug dealer had nothing on this. He threw his mind back to the Wolseley Arms and the night he, KP, Janine, Jamie, Laz and Grass had. It was probably the best night he had had in years; and then his mind wandered to the dark side of the last few days: Grass' horrific death, having to shoot Laz, losing Davina. Then there were the two officers, responsible for his freedom, dying, and of course, KP.

He wiped a solitary tear that threatened to fall from his left eye and thought about David and Isobel. He hoped that they had found somewhere safe to stay.

He started the van up and slipped the gear stick into first.

"You made a decision?" Karen asked the question, whilst checking the remaining magazines she had.

Pickle looked at the two guns that Karen was holding, and although they were two Brownings down, after Jamie's attack and KP walking off with the other to end his own life, he realised that he was still better off than most and made a promise that from now on, self-pity was banned from his list of emotions. Karen's fighting attitude had to be the correct one in order to survive in this world, and at the moment, she was putting him to shame.

Pickle told Karen that there was a multi-storey car park a mile up the road by the village of Hazelslade, near the town of Cannock. They were going to drive to the place, providing it was safe, stay there for a few more hours to sleep, and then think about what they were going to do next with fresh heads, rather than with the tired ones they had at the moment.

It took nearly ten minutes to get there, and the van parked up at the top of the desolate car park on the fourth floor. Pickle blew out a long, drawn out breath and put his arms behind his back to stretch.

He pushed out his chest so hard he felt he could crack his sternum. He opened the driver's side of the door and got out. Karen followed suit.

They both stretched their legs and wandered over to the edge of the floor. They both leaned with their stomachs against the wall, overlooking the villages and towns. The view was perfect and daylight was beginning to creep up to start another day, and knowing the events that were occurring below them was the only thing putting a dampener on the experience.

"We'll need to invest in some goggles," Karen joked, but her quivering face wasn't fooling Pickle. She was on the verge of tears.

At last, he thought. Some humanity.

"What for?" he questioned.

"If we kill these things at close range, there's a good chance blood can get in your eye. Oh, gonna need a respirator as well, but then again, you tend to get used to the smell after a while."

Pickle sighed and spoke, "Could do with a katana or some other type of sword. These bullets won't last forever."

The cool air that caressed their faces was glorious, and both closed their eyes as the light wind massaged their damp scalps.

Pickle still had his eyes closed. "Do yer read, Karen?"

She nodded, and opened her eyes to look at the man to the side of her. "I used to, why?"

"Sometimes that was all there was to do in prison. I remember reading a quote that said: Sometimes, even to live is an act of courage. I think I know what they mean now. In the future, we're gonna have to do some remarkable and horrific things in order to survive."

"It's gonna be scary times ahead," Karen agreed. "But if we let these things terrify us, life won't be worth living."

"Are yer a religious person, Karen?" Pickle was still enjoying the fresh air and breathed in a large gulp of it with his eyelids still firmly shut.

"Not really."

"I remember a passage in the book of Zechariah. It went something like this: Their flesh will rot while they are still standing, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. On the day, men will be stricken by the Lord with great panic. Neighbours will engage in hand combat against each other. That's what is happening now! Even if yer a non-believer, yer have to admit, that's some freaky shit."

Karen was a non-believer and changed the topic with a question. "Where are we going tomorrow?"

Pickle shrugged his shoulders, and waggled his head. "I want to go somewhere where I can be normal."

Karen said with a cheeky smirk, "Nowhere then."

Pickle smiled broadly and put his arm around her and kissed her on the head. His eyes produced more tears, tears for KP. "Let's see what tomorrow brings. Maybe one day we can all be normal again, whatever that means."

They both looked out and admired the view for another two minutes before deciding to rest for a while. It had only been days since the outbreak had been announced, and it had been days of sheer horror.

Unfortunately, the horror had just begun.
**Book Two: The Dead Don't Sleep**
Chapter One

June 16th

He ran for as long as his heavy legs and gasping lungs would allow him to. His clumsy, clownish feet slapped the hard concrete, and exhaustion forced the crippling pain across his chest to snowball; he felt as if he had been struck with a plank of wood across his upper body. He stopped running and bent over in a pathetic attempt to bring oxygen back into his lungs. He wished he was back at his flat, but those things were now trying to get in, and escaping from his place seemed to be the only option left.

He held out his arms in front of him and could see his uncontrollable shaking, as if he was an addict on his third day of being 'clean'. The shaking was down to the attack by two of the creatures earlier on that were waiting at the end of his street. He managed to swerve the two individuals, like a rugby player who had just received the ball, and managed to get away with a small bite to his left forearm as they continued to claw at him.

Their stumbling was no match for his running and they had soon disappeared from view. He exited his village and could still see the steep road ahead of him. He began to pass the football field to his right—to his left was the entrance gates to the fitness centre—and something caught his eye, but carried on running as he knew it was something that was horrific. In the background he could hear a tired cry from a dying human on a football pitch, just outside the village.

He didn't want to look behind, but he eventually did and saw the area where the cries were coming from. The poor man was in a pain that he couldn't imagine, surrounded by the dead. He was hoping that he wasn't going to experience this kind of anguish himself in the near future. He could also see a lone ghoul limping its way in another direction, completely ignoring the 'banquet' that was occurring.

He guessed at least seven of the things were on the football field, munching on the dying individual, and had to turn away when he saw the left arm being pulled away from the body. He looked at his watch and it had been fifteen minutes since he fled the village, and he hadn't gained much, considering he was supposed to be a cardio fitness fanatic. The hill had halted his progression.

He blew out his cheeks as if he was blowing out the candles of his birthday cake, and began running for a second time, away from the village where he had stayed all his life. He finally went past the fitness centre where he worked out three days a week. He was now at the top of the hill and at a crossroad; he was confused which way to go. It was either Rugeley or Heath Hayes, but each town was a couple of miles away. He could see on the road, what looked like, a car crash involving two vehicles, but there was no one to be seen, as it looked like the people involved in the crash had fled the scene.

He looked at the carnage once more and wondered if the people had casually walked away from the crash, or had fled from those things. Now, at the top of the hill, he looked down from the main road and could see the road leading into his village. Dozens of the things walked out of the place, slowly clambering towards his direction.

He desperately banged on the doors of the houses on the main road, but there was no answer, and he wondered what was going to be the next plan of action. He could have broken in, but he feared two things: being stabbed or shot by the frightened owner, or, breaking into a house that might have had a family that were infected who were just itching to escape into the new world, where everything that walked and had a pulse was a potential meal.

He decided to avoid the main road for the time being, and began to enter the small wooded area, which was about a tenth of the size of Cannock Chase.

Before all of this had happened, he had spent over a week cooped up in his flat once the news broke out, and was pleased that the week had gone relatively well without a hitch.

From day one, his village back then was like a ghost town, but now it had escalated into something more sinister. There were dozens of them, and he wasn't sure if they were from his village or they had roamed from another place in desperate need of flesh. He wished he had made more of an attempt to flag the van down that went by a few days ago. He could see it from a distance from his bedroom window on the main road, only a hundred yards away from his flat.

With food getting short, he bravely ran into the dark and decided to try and hitch a ride, but once he was on the main road he found that the van was in no mood for stopping. He tried to wave his arms as it went by in case they thought he was one of 'them', but by then it was too late, and he headed back with sluggish and disappointed feet to the comfort of his home, and that was when he saw his first ghoul up close.

It stood in his street and glared at him from a distance. He tried a hello, to see if he was mistaken and the thing was actually human, but all it did was alert whatever senses it had left and it began to slumber in his direction. He then ran back into his flat, locked the door and began to pray, something he hadn't done in years.

He now looked around, and all he could see was trees. He didn't know whether it was shock, fear or confusion, but he had no idea where to go. He began to turn his walk into a gentle jog. His jogging only lasted another minute, and once again, he had to stop. Every time he turned around, he began to see black trails. He was becoming tired, agitated, and sure that he was now hallucinating.

He bent over and placed both hands on his stomach and felt unwell. Something was happening to him; something he couldn't explain. He then stood straight, which was painful, and began to rub his tender throat. When he was five years old, he had contracted mumps. It was something that took nearly two weeks to clear up, and this felt similar. He was only five years old at the time, but could still vividly remember the discomfort that he felt.

He was now feeling the tingling sensation of pins and needles in his left arm, as if he had just woken up after sleeping on it for an hour. He delicately placed his hand on the affected area and could hardly feel a thing, as if he was touching a limb that belonged to someone else.

His head spun and he half-sat and half-collapsed onto the grassy ground. He blew out his cheeks, like a blowfish, and released tension-filled air from his orifice. He rested his forehead on his hands and couldn't believe how hot he had become. He lifted his head straight up and cursed himself as tiredness was beginning to tease his senses. Tired? With those things coming up the road, only a few hundred yards away from me? I must be mad.

He grabbed hold of a branch that was above him and attached to the nearest tree, and tried to pull himself up. Something was wrong. He felt awful, and it felt like every bone in his body ached and throbbed with pain. He managed to stand, but his legs throbbed as if he had been beaten with baseball bats. His legs felt dead, numb, and couldn't fathom why he felt so terrible. He came to the conclusion that if his 'admirers' were here, right now, he would probably find it hard to outrun the things, as he was now struggling to stand.

He sat back down, once again, and stared up at the sky. He glared at the shy sun—for maybe too long—that had reappeared from behind a cloud, and saw the sun spinning and spinning. He then looked away and saw the hexagonal red spots dance teasingly before his eyes, before eventually disappearing for good.

He felt a small pain in his stomach and without warning threw up onto the grass, most of it being blood. In any normal circumstances, he would have panicked, but this time there was no panic, just confusion. He looked at the lumpy pile of vomit and blood, and shook his head.

What was happening to him?

His eyes suddenly became so heavy that he struggled terribly to keep them open. He looked down on his T-shirt; there were now specks of blood on it from the vomiting, but he could still see the writing Slightly Damaged Human across the chest in dark blue letters as he looked down. It was the name of one of his favourite metal bands.

Still sitting, he looked at his small bite on his left forearm that had been received from an altercation with one of them, and rested his head against the trunk of the tree.

Trying to ignore the pain, he closed his eyes.
Chapter Two

He sat back in the van and began playing with the radio dial. It had been a while since he had heard anything, especially music, and knew that if he kept the volume at a low level, he wouldn't be putting himself at risk.

He eventually found something. It was an interview on an unknown radio station.

Unknown Host: "What is the cause of this outbreak, Dr Jones?"

Dr Jones: "Well, we think it's a rabies-type virus. You can get it the same way an animal can give it to you, by saliva into the bloodstream, and in some cases, even from a scratch. Then your CNS is affected. Remember we're calling this a rabies-type infection, but it is slightly different to the original rabies. This spreads a lot quicker. Rabies sufferers become hydrophobic, but there are reports of these things in lakes and all sorts. We also believe that their blood getting into a healthy human's cut or eye could also prove fatal."

Unknown Host: "Why has it spread so fast? It's not even an airborne virus, or is it?"

Dr Jones: "It has spread so fast because the general public didn't know about it. It's not airborne. If it was, there would very little survivors. The only way it could go airborne is if the virus borrowed traits from another to make it an influenza-style disease. But two radically different viruses can't do this, as they are so different. At first, there were isolated incidents of biting, but when someone is injured, what happens? They get sent to hospitals, and are looked after by families. We had an incident where a person was taken to the GP's clinic. He collapsed and then awoke within an hour in the GP's nursing room. He then began to attack the waiting patients and staff. They, in turn, eventually spilled out onto the streets themselves once they reanimated, and began attacking fellow shoppers on the main street and you can guess the rest."

Unknown Host: "So you've known for a while? But the government didn't want an 'unnecessary' national panic?"

Dr Jones: "We were aware of isolated incidents, and the Prime Minister felt that these 'isolated' problems could be quashed. It only started to get out of hand on Saturday 9th June. Even though technically it has been around for a few weeks, we're calling Saturday 9th June officially as Day One of the outbreak. There was an attack that occurred on the Glasgow train to London from Central Station, and by the time the carriage reached King's Cross, a lot of the victims had died and reanimated by the time it reached London. The whole train was infected, and don't forget the previous stops where some of them had maybe spilled out onto the platforms of Manchester, Birmingham, etc. There were also four reported incidents across the UK in hospitals as well."

Unknown Host: "Why hospitals?"

Dr Jones: "As I said before, if someone is bitten, they might have been driven to hospital by a worried relative."

Unknown Host: "Which hospitals has this occurred at?"

Dr Jones: "There should be many affected, but the main four we're aware of are, The Southern General in Glasgow, where a supposed psychotic patient walked into casualty and attacked staff. You can imagine the chain reaction of that, especially as patients are lying helplessly in their beds. Stafford Hospital reported a few junior doctors being attacked. Birmingham's Children Hospital had to be closed off at parts because of a problem with admissions. The worst case that was reported was the incident in Burnley Hospital."

Unknown Host: "Is it true that when a person is infected, it takes an hour for them to turn?"

Dr Jones: "Roughly. Although there are reports that in some cases it has taken a lot longer. We had one incident in our lab only yards away from your studio where it took half a day for reanimation with one subject."

Unknown Host: "Subject? Are you guys studying these things while this...carnage is happening?"

Dr Jones: (silence)

Unknown Host: "What about armed police or the armed forces? Couldn't they contain the problem?"

Dr Jones: "Nope. The problem was too big. Here's a classic example: On June 8th, an armed unit had stormed an office in Watford that was awash with the things. The two teams went in, and eight of the unit were taken down."

Unknown Host: "How did that happen?"

Dr Jones: "I'm guessing that there were too many of them, and it was unknown then that headshots were the only way to kill them. They probably had to find out the hard way, like most units around the UK probably did. Imagine the panic when open firing at these things and they're not going down and the crowd are just progressing forward without dropping or showing signs of pain when being hit. Then maybe a headshot occurs, and then suddenly the penny drops. Then after—"

He switched the radio off and sighed. It was an interview he had heard numerous times and didn't understand why the radio station insisted on repeating it. The only conclusion he could come to was that there was no one there and the radio station was on some kind of loop—something that would only be stopped once electricity ceased to exist.

It was Saturday; it had been a week since the outbreak had been officially announced. On that terrible Saturday evening, only seven days ago, the world—the UK at least—had changed for the worse, but that week had felt like months.

He looked at the digital clock on the dashboard of the van.

11.25am.

He hated waiting around.

Harry Branston sighed and looked out into the woods where he could see, in the distance, the back of his female friend who was making her way to the brook. "Hurry up, Karen."
Chapter Three

Her careful feet almost glided through the long grass. Her progression was slow, but a necessity in order not to raise suspicion amongst anything that could be classed as a predator in the woods. Her stroll to the brook was a ponderous affair, but time was something she had plenty of these days. She carried with her, a carrier bag with utensils she wouldn't normally find in her shower, but she was in no position to be picky.

She hadn't showered in a week and although the smell wasn't something that bothered her partner, who sat at the side of the road in the van waiting for her to finish, it bothered her a great deal. The greasy hair was making her scalp itchy as if it was plagued with lice, and made her agitated as she scratched herself constantly. Her overall odour wasn't too bad for someone who hadn't been bathed for a week, but not cleaning her privates was something that was bothering her, as it was something that she had never experienced in her adult life.

She finally reached a stream, but wasn't entirely sure how clean it was. They had previously driven by a canal, however, from neglect and the petroleum from the barges, the canal water was a coffee colour and might have carried all kinds of infections, so she opted for the stream, which seemed a lot clearer, although she wasn't expecting it to be perfect.

She plonked the carrier bag down and pulled out a crumpled, but fresh, black plain T-shirt, as well as a fresh pair of dark blue jeans.

She took a look around and took out her Browning that was inserted in the front of her trousers, and carefully placed it at the side of the stream. She then began to strip off her dirty rags that were decorated with days of perspiration and the occasional spray of blood. She had washed her face and armpits with a damp cloth two days ago, but this time she needed to clean herself up properly.

She stripped till her body was exposed; her skin was covered in scratches and contusions that were reminders of the crazy week she had had. She perspired even when naked, as the sun had returned after a few days of wet misery, and had shone on the area strongly, just like it did the weekend before, and the wind filtered through the trees and mumbled in her ear for a brief while.

The final piece of clothing she had removed were her socks. She took them off one by one, by standing on her left leg and taking off her right sock, and vice versa. Every item of clothing had been taken off and screwed into a ball. She had no intention of wearing them again, even if there was a launderette nearby. As far as she was concerned, they were pieces of clothing that were contaminated; they possessed physical and mental reminders of the last week, which consisted of pain, misery and death, and she was glad to have finally dumped them.

She stepped into the brook, making frantically sure she didn't step onto any sharp objects. She let out a moan once her toes touched the water and her brain had registered that the water was ice cold. From the bottom of her feet to her cranium, she could feel her temperature plummeting in a good way, and threw her head back in ecstasy. She squatted slowly. Her shoulders shivered once her genitalia was stroked by the miniature icy waves of the stream that gently licked her with its frozen tongue.

She had a paranoid look to see there were no small fish that were swimming, and then thought to hell with it, and squatted further, with her bottom now only centimetres from the sandy floor. She shot back up, now that she had desensitised herself from the cold water, and grabbed a sachet of shampoo, although not her usual brand, and some soap from the bag that was sitting at the edge of the bank.

She scrubbed and soaped herself up furiously as if she was on a time limit, and squatted to wash her hair with the water that before felt like something from the Arctic. She scrubbed her body and finally washed her genitalia that hadn't been washed in a week, and sat in the water for a minute before getting out to put on her new clothes.

As she never owned a towel, she stood on the edge of the stream and allowed the water to drip off her shivering body. The sun's rays that forced its way through the cracks in the trees was also helping to speed up the drying process, although at the time it didn't feel like it was helping as her frame shuddered with the cold, her body quaking uncontrollably.

She looked around the woods and found it to be abandoned of life. Not a deer, or anything else for that matter, could be seen. She took out a pocket mirror and a pair of tweezers from the bag and checked her eyebrows. They seemed reasonably okay, apart from a few stray hairs, and she began plucking. Ten seconds later, her head whizzed round to the left as a snap of a branch could be heard. She stopped doing what she was doing, and began to get dressed. She put her jeans on, wearing no panties. She put on her black T-shirt, with no bra to accompany her, and pulled out a pair of white socks. She brushed the dirt off the soles of her feet before putting them on, and then her black canvas shoes were next.

She glared back into the trees and saw, in the distance, a figure clumsily stumbling towards her as if their boots were made of jelly. She picked up her Browning handgun and put it into the back of her jeans. There was only one of them, so she didn't want to waste a bullet, or attract anything else from afar. She was under strict instructions to be controlled at all times, and the trigger-happy female adhered to this rule that had been set by her male friend.

She put her hand into the stream and pulled out a large stone that looked like the shape of a rugby ball. She held the thing tightly and allowed the being to stumble towards her. She could have outrun the thing easily, but she was aware that there was a good chance it would follow her.

It was now a matter of yards away, and the quick-thinking woman, took off her T-shirt in case there was any splatter from the wound the thing was about to receive. She stood in a position like a shot-putter, ready to strike, her breasts exposed.

As it approached nearer, now only five yards away, she could see the rotten creature. Its face was yellow and bloated; its mouth black with decay, the eyes were milky and the eye sockets looked like they had been overdone with black and blue eye shadow. It was a grisly sight, but it was a sight she was used to by now.

And so was killing these things.

As she watched it stumble towards her, she picked her right leg up, the same way Ralph did at the end of The Karate Kid movie, and extended her leg and threw her hip forward. Her foot slammed into the torso of the being and it fell backwards onto the floor, making no sound at all. She walked over, and with each foot, she stood on its moving arms. She was now standing over it, as it was now unable to move. Its head jerked forward and it growled in frustration that no matter how hard it tried to jolt forward, it couldn't get near the woman, as its face was looking up to the inside of her thighs.

It made one last snarl in an attempt to be free. She squatted down; still standing on its arms, and with both hands she brought the rock down onto its forehead. Three times was all it took before the skull eventually split open, and the beast remained still forever.

Still holding the rock, she opened her eyes and looked at the stone that was now decorated in black juice that had escaped from inside its head; she threw it into the long grass that swallowed the infected rock. She stood up straight and took her feet off the arms, and for a second, thought about dumping the body into the stream, but then realised that future survivors could turn up to the area one day and might need the stream to wash and even drink. Having one of these deadheads polluting the water would not be a good move. She checked her bare chest and noticed a few specks of black on her exposed skin, but not much.

She went back over to the stream and quickly washed the specks off of her body, and then she placed her T-shirt over her head and combed her hair back with her fingers.

Once she was ready to leave, she picked up the carrier bag and stared at the lifeless body that used to be a young man. What did it used to do for a living? Maybe in the normal world, they had both crossed paths. Maybe he used to be a good person, with a beautiful family. Maybe he was a bastard and beat on his girlfriend. Whatever he used to be, he had died a while back and she huffed at the creature that had interrupted her bathing time.

She emptied each nostril individually, by placing her forefinger against the side of the left, nostril whilst blowing out of the right, and repeated the action with the other nostril.

She took one last look at the body and sniffed, "Cocksucker."

Karen Bradley then walked away from the scene, heading for the van where her partner was waiting for her a few hundred yards away on the road.

She stopped suddenly and wondered what the hell had happened to her. She thought about her mother, her father in Glasgow who had re-married, and Kelly, her stepsister.

And Gary.

Poor Gary.

In a matter of a week she had changed, and she was certain that her changing so quickly was the reason why she was still alive today, rather than acting like some stereotypical woman one would see in the movies that would run around screaming and hiding behind the tough male.

No.

This wasn't some Hollywood movie.

This was really happening.

And Karen Bradley had found some strength from somewhere to somehow do what many other people had failed to do: survive. She had had some luck along the way. Meeting Pickle was a massive slice of luck, but for how long were they going to be together? This thing was only a week old—officially—and they had lost a few people along the way on that terrible early morning, three days ago.

She began to walk again and sniffed hard to control her emotions that were beginning to spiral out of control while her mind was on the reminiscing road, and wiped the bottom of her eyelids with her forefinger whilst she was coming to the edge of the woods. She was now only twenty yards from the prison van.

"Get yourself together, girl," she jokingly reprimanded herself, and produced a false beam once Pickle clocked her coming out off the woods. The windows of the van were down and he had one of those disappointed-father looks.

He sighed and shook his head. "Wouldn't it have been easier to just walk away from that thing?"

"Probably." She smirked, and then shrugged her shoulders. "Let's just call it...therapy."

Pickle sighed and started the engine. Karen had done a pointless and reckless thing by killing the lone Snatcher that could have been easily outran, and Pickle couldn't understand why she did it. He drove away, as soon as she got in, and Karen began to deliberate on what had just happened.

She looked at Pickle's disappointed face as he made a left turn. Maybe he's got a point.
Chapter Four

His watch told him that it was half-past eleven, but he felt like it was later. He had been in prison for just a week since the news had broke, and couldn't stop thinking about what he was missing outside.

Sure, the world was going to hell in a handcart, but being inside still prevented him from tasting the finer and the naughtier things in life, like alcohol, cakes, women, and so on.

Jason Bonser strolled out from his cell and his presence arrived on the abandoned wing. Each footstep was a reminder that he was almost alone as the steps echoed through the desolate prison. He walked with heavy boots to the opened slider that led to the other three vacant wings. He took a tense gander to his right, where the exercise yard door was still open. It had been nearly a week since the officers had left the prisoners to their own devices, but at least on their block they had the decency to release them. On the other block, the officers left in panic and let the prisoners starve to death. Most of them were probably dead now, he thought.

He went into a cell and made himself a coffee. He knew the electrics would go eventually, so whilst he still had the chance, he drank tea and coffee constantly. There was still plenty of food left on the wing, but the boredom was killing him and the lack of human contact was distressing him, although he thought that that was something that wouldn't bother him at the height of the panic when the announcement was fresh.

He was wrong.

Now that his mobile phone had died on him two days ago—it had been originally sneaked onto the wing to make drug deals—he had no contact from his colleagues and pals who were on the road heading to Scotland last time he spoke to them. They figured that the less populated the area, the better, and decided to go as far north as possible.

The trouble with the 'less populated area' theory was the potential lack of facilities and food that came with it. He thought that the options were terrible whatever they decided to choose. Do you stay in a populated area where it's more dangerous, but could possibly thrive off the food and fuel that was hopefully still available? Or, do you go to the middle of nowhere where there was less of those things, but a larger chance of dying of dehydration or starve to death?

He headed for the exercise yard door on E wing, and took a stroll outdoors. The area was desolate and there was nothing to see. So he walked back inside and decided to walk past the bubble through the already-opened slider doors, and take in some air on the exercise yard on H Wing for a change of scenery. He walked along the yard on his own, his head looking down on the floor, and kicked at the loose bits of gravel.

At first, the noise sounded like a faded car engine or the buzzing of a swarm of bees, but he couldn't have been more wrong.

He looked up and stared at the chain-linked fence that surrounded the exercise yard and gulped hard. It took a while for his brain to soak up the information his eyes were witnessing, but as soon as his flustered-filled legs were allowed to move again, he walked, as if they were made of rubber, back inside to H Wing. He never caught his reflection, but could feel that his face had been sucked of blood. He felt giddy as if he had tried a marijuana joint for the very first time, and called out to his friend, Kyle, in a broken voice.

Kyle Horan jogged from E Wing to H Wing and slowly stopped his momentum, knowing by the look of his friend's face that there was something wrong. Kyle shrugged his shoulders at his friend. "What's up?"

"Get your things, we're going."

"What?"

"Trust me, we need to go. Now! Before there's more of them."

"What are you talkin' about?" Once Kyle spoke, Jason Bonser winced slightly once he caught the man's breath, as his teeth hadn't been brushed yet. He beckoned Kyle to go with him so he could show him something. It was just to make sure he wasn't dreaming, or going mad.

They both stepped out into the fresh late morning air, and both men gazed wide-eyed at the situation that was unfolding before them. Their blood felt that it was slowly freezing; the smell of death was walking nearer to them as the ghouls approached in a slow demonic wave. It took a while for them to speak, but when they did, it was Kyle. "How many, do you think?"

Jason Bonser shook his head. "Dunno. One ... maybe two ... hundred."

They looked on as the swarm of bodies filtered onto the football pitch, heading for the fence that separated them from the exercise yard. The huge slider door had been left opened, and Kyle cursed the very same officers that had released them from their cells a week earlier.

At the time, Janine Perry and Jamie Thomson thought they were doing the cons a favour, and overall, they were, but the few that were left behind had been left vulnerable due to the huge opened slider door that was used for deliveries, but now it was an entrance for the dead to wander.

"We're in the middle of nowhere," Jason spoke, his words soaked in bemusement. "The nearest village is a mile away. So how the fuck did they get here? What made them come here? I never thought that this would happen."

Kyle's first response was to shake his head. He made a solid gulp.

Bonser added, "Even if they can't get through the exercise yard's fence, what are we to do? Stay in here and eventually starve to death? Let's face it, we fucked up by thinking we'd be better off in here."

Kyle was adamant. "We didn't fuck up; the officers fucked up for letting the slider door open."

"But they assumed all the prisoners were going to leave, so why would they feel the need to shut the door behind them as they left themselves? And the slider door can only be operated from the gatehouse anyway." It seemed ridiculous for a con to stick up for an officer, but Jason Bonser was correct in what he was saying. "Face it. We were being too clever for our own good."

Kyle glared at the grisly sight. There was no chance the fence was going to hold once they reached it, he thought. "So what are we gonna do?"

Jason scanned the area in front of them, and it appeared that the crowd of the dead was going to be an arduous task to ram through. But they both had the muscle and were confident that they could knock these things down like skittles, providing they kept on moving and never stopped, and if they did, it would give the hideous fiends a chance to encircle and attack. "What do you think?"

Kyle shook his head as if it was a trick question. "We make a run for it."

"We better go before they get to the fence. But if there's more of them outside the grounds, we're finished."

"And if we stay in here, we're finished. How long do you think that fence is going to hold out?"

Their eyes swallowed up the horrific information for their brains to digest, and after a minute of short shallow breaths from both individuals, Jason Bonser turned to his friend and said, "Okay. Ready when you are."
Chapter Five

The group decided to enjoy a rare fire outside the back of the village hall—although technically it wasn't actually situated in a village—and they opened wrapped-up, pre-made sandwiches and threw on potatoes in order to bake them for their meal. A slab of margarine or some cheese would have complimented the potatoes perfectly, but they had none and were still living on the food that they had taken from their homes a week ago, and hadn't looted that much because there was no need to. The only outside food they received was when Paul Parker would come back from his walk that he started to do a few days ago.

They used cutlery and once finished, would wash the utensils and plates as normal, as the hall had a sink, and although no washing up liquid was available, they still had running water, albeit cold.

Kerry Evans sat down and twitched nervously; she sat on a stump that was near the crackling fire and sat her son, Thomas, on her knee whilst they waited patiently for the men to return from their trip. She combed back her dark bobbed hair behind her ears and kissed the back of her son's confused head. Yesterday, they had all taken a trip to the nearby stream and had bathed. It had been the first time they had had a proper clean, and although uncomfortable at the time, it was nice not to be surrounded by bad body odour.

As the young Jason Barton and the middle-aged Kevin Houston placed more potatoes on the metal rack that sat on the fire, Kerry and Thomas snuggled together. A handful of deck chairs that were in the hall had been brought outside by some of the group, and two males by the names of Oliver Newton and Sean West stood guard outside to warn others of any potential threats from outsiders. Both individuals stood holding sharpened spears, about three feet in length. Apart from dozens upon dozens of sharpened homemade spears that had been mainly made by Paul Parker, the group were not armed.

Inside the hall, Karen West—Sean's wife—was making another huge pot of soup with pretty much anything she could get her hands on—leftover ham, onions, bits of chicken from the legs and wings, amongst other things.

When the group had first arrived at the hall, they had trunks full of food that used to dwell in their refrigerators, but the hall's small fridge didn't have the capacity to hold what they had, so all the food that needed a fridge was consumed first before it went stale.

They were still surprised that electricity was still running, but for how long?

The cupboards were stacked full of everything from baked beans, tuna chunks, ravioli, to pineapple chunks and even dog food, and that was due to the stockpile from last week. Paul Parker's sole excursions of looting empty houses had also helped a great deal. He was the only one brave enough to leave the village hall, and preferred it that way anyway. He only wanted to be responsible for himself, no one else.

The hall was situated on the side of a main road that went through the woods about two miles from Stile Cop and four miles from Rugeley town centre. It felt like the middle of nowhere, but they all knew the place would be vulnerable if a horde of the things would ever appear. The reason why they hadn't come across them since their arrival both baffled and pleased them. They didn't know whether it was the distraction of the surrounding populated villages that were keeping them away, that were only one or two miles away from where they were. Whilst the people dwelled in their village hall, they envisaged the surrounding villages being overrun with those creatures.

Sean West was a scout leader and used the hall for two days a week, which meant he had the keys, and organised the convoy and tried to persuade some residents of Hazelslade that they'd be safer out of the way.

They had all left in cars during the breakout and had parked them, five in all, at a beauty spot car park that sat opposite the village hall, away from view of passing motorists—not that there were many. They had only witnessed three passing cars at different intervals, and a convoy of about six vehicles that went past a day ago. Thankfully, the convoy drove past the hall and continued to go wherever they were going.

The group were thirty miles away from the nearest city, and knew that cities would more than likely have residents in their cars, leaving in their droves and cluttering the motorways, but to go where? At least where they were, the population was small and the roads were desolate.

Their cars had hardly been used since their arrival. Some of the vehicles were short of fuel; they didn't want to split the group up, and they didn't know, and didn't want to know, how bad the situation was in the nearby villages.

A silver Mazda pulled up opposite the village hall, and turned into the car park that was heavily hidden by the overhanging condensed trees. The two men got out, walked down the dirt path that led in and out of the area, and arrived at the side of the main road, opposite the hall. They trotted across the road, and instead of going through the main door, they greeted Oliver Newton and Sean West with a nod to one another and went round the back, as they knew that was where the rest of them were having lunch.

Jack Slade and Gary Jenson stopped by the fire and sat next to their partners, or in Jack's case, his ex-partner. Because the threat of any of those things had been zero since they had arrived, they were a little more relaxed than when they first turned up at the hall. They weren't becoming complacent, as they knew the threat was always there, just relaxed. They had already agreed that any sign of them would mean a run to the car park across the road and a mass exodus from the area.

There were fourteen in the group in all, but there was eleven round the back, Paul Parker was missing and there were two standing guard out the front. They were sitting round the campfire tucking into their soup, and whatever else they could get their hands on.

"So what was it like out there?" Jemma Marlow asked the question, unsure that she was ready for the truth. Gary and Jack looked at one another, and the rest of the group knew the answer was going to be grim from their facial expressions.

"Not good," Gary sniffed.

"In what way, do you mean?" Kerry quizzed Jack, although it was Gary that was speaking.

The group were aware that young Thomas Slade at six years old, and Yoler Parkinson at eight years old, might need to be protected from the truth, but Jack spoke all the same. How on earth could he protect his son from something that was surrounding them? Thomas wasn't stupid; he knew the world from last week had changed, and his 'holiday', which is what Kerry had called it, was nothing more than a group of people huddled together in fear of their lives.

Jack said, "We travelled to the outskirts of all four villages."

"And?" Kerry sighed.

Jack released a sigh, wrapped in unsatisfactory news. "And...they're everywhere. There're dozens in each village, which technically means we're surrounded."

"There're loads of them," Gary interjected. "Not too sure the cars are strong enough to get through the crowds, we need a fucking handglider—sorry." Gary apologised straight away, forgetting in his frustration that there were children present. "Or we could ditch the cars and go through the woods, but that has its own dangers. They seem to be in the populated areas, but once they realise there's no food, they'll leave."

Jack said, "So they could either move further out, or further in, towards us."

"So what's the plan?" A nervous-looking Ian Jenson who was Yoler's father, and no relation to Gary Jenson, chewed on a nail on his middle finger of his left hand, and awaited an answer from someone, anyone.

Jack shrugged his shoulders. "If anyone sees anything, we leave the area. That's all we can do."

"And what happens if these things come out on a night, and end up surrounding us?"

"We've already been through this," Gary intervened. "Our options are limited. If they surround us, then I suggest we try and make a run for it. Because if there's just a few, there'll be more to come."

"But I can't understand why they would come here anyway, especially during the night," Kerry spoke up. "We're in the middle of nowhere. There's no light or noise that would attract them here. Even if they pass where we are, if we're not making a noise, there's no reason why they should try and get in. They might just walk past the hall."

"Unless they can smell us," Gary said.

The group fell silent, and Gary's unwanted, yet, realistic comment had hushed the camp, albeit temporarily.

"Is that what the radio station said when you were in prison?" Jemma quizzed, eventually interrupting the quietude, with everyone now waiting for what Gary's next sentence was going to be.

"They didn't know for sure. But I assume they must be able to smell you to a certain degree."

"What gives you that impression?" Ian Jenson threw another query at the twenty-six-year-old.

"I dunno." Gary shrugged his shoulders. "Just a guess."

"You said they were determined buggers."

Gary nodded and added, "When me and Jack were at Stile Cop ... when we ran from them, they kept on following us. Some of them even walked through flames to get to us and followed us up the Stile Cop Road. They just never gave up; they're like robots."

"So, back to the smell theory. If there's hundreds of them," Ian Jenson began to try and lighten the mood, and stood to his feet and comically raised his arms out, with Thomas and young Yoler giggling, "and I get in the middle of them and pretend to be one of them by moaning, rolling my eyes and walking like a drunk, I wouldn't get away with it?"

Gary smiled. Aware that there were children about, he leaned forwards and whispered in Ian's ear. "You'd be ripped to pieces within seconds."

Ian's hilarity soon stopped when Gary made his announcement, and he sat down.

Because the group had left their houses as soon as the news of the pandemic hit the TVs, most of them, apart from driving past the odd one, had no experience of being face to face with them. So whenever the subject of the beings came up, which was regular, the group always turned to Jack and Gary for information. Not only had they experienced being near them, they had also killed some as well.

Kerry asked, trying to change the dark mood covering the camp, "Is Paul back yet?"

Gary shook his head. "That guy's a strange one. Why does he always insist on going out on his own? I told him that I'd tag along. Another person with a bag, means more food."

"He just prefers it that way." Jemma stuck up for the thirty-one-year-old, who wasn't there to defend himself. "I don't think he likes to be responsible for anyone else, just himself."

"Paul lived in the next village. I think looting houses for food is just an excuse. We still have a reasonable amount left." Kerry spoke up, and a sombre hush fell onto the group. "I think when he's out there, he's really looking for his family."
Chapter Six

The food was running a little short, and both Karen Bradley and Harry Branston needed to sleep properly, preferably in a bed where there was no noise. The van went through the bendy lanes and had only passed two vehicles—a HGV and a pick-up truck full of men.

Once they finally arrived at the outskirts of Heath Hayes, they decided to pull up at the very first house on the main road, as the road further on looked to lead nowhere. They had no preferential destination; all they wanted was a safe haven, and they knew that the multi-storey car park was driving them insane. It seemed a good idea at the time, a desperate idea, but three days was enough without warmth, something comfortable to sit on, and their mental health also required a different change of scenery. Even the ex-inmate, Harry Branston, who was used to incarceration, had shown signs of boredom and frustration.

The street was almost car less, as if most of the residents had left in a mass panic. Maybe those things had already been and gone here, Pickle thought. There certainly seemed to be no evidence of killings; there were no mutilated bodies to be seen, and as far as the eye could see, there were no bloodstains. It looked like a normal street, apart from the eerie lifelessness and lack of vehicles it possessed.

The van was parked at the side of the road, and they both got out of the van laboriously as if it was a normal day. They stretched their aching bodies, bending their vertebras into shapes of bananas, and basked in the glorious sunshine that shone down above them. They casually walked to the first house, passing the Range Rover on the drive, and peered through the window.

If there was someone home, then they weren't downstairs, and they hadn't barricaded the house either. Despite the vehicle on the drive, Karen was certain that the house was vacant, but they needed to be really sure. They needed a place near the main road for easy access of escape, if need be, but at the same time they didn't want to impose on a family.

Karen and Pickle decided to go round the back. They carefully walked without drawing their guns, as they didn't want to frighten whoever could be inside. Once they got round to the uninhabited back garden, Karen noticed that the bathroom's top window was slightly ajar. They both looked at one another.

Karen then peered into the back window and said, "Looks like there's nobody in."

"So why leave the vehicle?" Pickle was referring to the Range Rover on the driveway.

Karen had no answer for him and shrugged her shoulders.

"Yer right." Pickle was now staring into the back window, peering into the empty living room. "It's completely empty. What do yer reckon? Yer think yer can get through that little window?"

Karen gave him a half-serious and a half-jokey look. She placed her hand on her hip and bent her knee, as if she was about to do a rendition of 'I'm a little teapot'.

"You trying to say I'm fat?" She raised her eyebrows as high as she could get them, trying to look offended, but she wasn't fooling anyone.

Pickle half-chuckled, but never answered the question. He wasn't really in the mood for banter. He wanted a bed for the night and the feel of hot water—if there was any electricity available—on his skin and fresh clothes on his back.

He had been wearing the camouflage gear for almost a week, and his own smell was now beginning to repulse him. Although Karen had cleansed herself in a nearby stream, he felt that getting cleaned and then putting on the same worn clothes was a waste of time. Karen had managed to come across an unworn T-shirt and a dark pair of jeans that was situated in the back of the van. He didn't know who they belonged to, but they came to the conclusion that it was probably spare clothes Janine had taken when they went into the supermarket, the same supermarket where Conor Snodgrass met his fate. Nevertheless, Karen offered Pickle the clothes, but he shook his head stating that they wouldn't fit his muscular frame anyway.

Karen was now carrying two Brownings and handed them both to Pickle to hold; he placed them in the back of his trousers as he was already carrying his shotgun. He looked around to see that the back gardens were quiet; the residential area seemed noiseless as well, apart from a few car alarms crying out in the distance. Karen slithered uncomfortably through the frosted-glass window, which they assumed was a bathroom window, and only had her legs to pull through. Once she was in, and landed heavily on a solid floor, she adjusted herself and left the bathroom to get to the back door and meet Pickle. She opened the door that had the key still dangling from the lock.

"Don't mind if I do," Pickle chortled, and inspected the inside of the house. Karen locked the door behind him and the first thing she did was put the kettle on, and placed a teabag in each mug. "At least the electric's still on." After spending a few days at the top of a multi-storey car park, they had often peered over the concrete wall to look out to the West Midland area. Only a handful of solitary lights could be seen in the distance, which suggested to the pair of them at the time that people were either keeping the lights off to avoid unnecessary attention, or, in some areas, if not the whole area, the electrics had gone down.

"Don't yer think we should search the house first?" Pickle asked. "If the Range Rover's still here, they could be hiding upstairs."

"You go ahead, I'm parched."

Pickle shook his head, but didn't react to Karen's unbothered approach. They were both drenched with sluggishness, and had a few long days of doing nothing but kicking their heels on top of the multi-storey car park. The boredom at the time was worse than being in prison, and strangely enough, Pickle found the monotony harder to handle than Karen, who would sometimes sit on the floor with her legs crossed for hours and stare into nothingness and lose herself.

He took out Karen's two Brownings—that were technically his, but she had adopted them—and placed them on the table as she waited for the kettle to boil.

Pickle carried his shotgun, with both hands, in preparation for anything untoward that could occur from upstairs. He walked through the living room and went up the stairs rapidly. He was convinced the house was empty, but a niggling voice in the back of his mind still forced him to err the side of caution. As he reached the landing, he used every last ounce of concentration to scan the area. He looked to the left and right, as if he was about to cross a main road.

He opened the bathroom door. Nothing.

He opened the main bedroom. Nothing.

The other two bedrooms looked to have been occupied by two young girls as the first bedroom had posters of Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck, suggesting that the girls were under the age of five or six. The other bedroom had a bed that wasn't made; it was a complete mess, and a huge poster of Robert Pattinson glared at Pickle. He jokingly snarled back at the poster and wondered what happened to the family.

Satisfied that the house was vacant, he shut every bedroom door, stood his shotgun against the door of the main bedroom and began immediately running himself a bath. He trotted back downstairs and was handed a hot cup of tea by Karen.

"Ah," he exaggerated, as he supped on the piping hot beverage. "Heaven."

He took another slurp of the hot beverage and looked around the kitchen.

"Everything okay upstairs?" Karen quizzed.

"Seems to be, but the car outside is still bothering me."

"Maybe they ran out on foot."

"Maybe. But why leave a vehicle like that? It's solid. It would have been perfect."

"Maybe there were too many of the Snatchers lurking around the vehicle."

"But there's no sign of panic. I mean the doors were locked when we arrived. Surely a door would be left ajar if yer gonna flee a scene in panic? There're no marks on the windows from the things trying to get in; the panes are spotless."

Karen's eyes narrowed in confusion, and put her cup down onto the side next to the metal kettle. "Tell me something."

"What?"

"Did you check the attic?"

Pickle's eyes enlarged and his eyebrows travelled further towards the top of his scalp. As his mouth slowly opened, the bottom part of his mandible lowered like a drawbridge. He shook his head.

"We'll check later." Karen then nodded above her, where the sound of running water was coming from. "Bath?"

Pickle nodded with embarrassment. "I'll fill it with cold water once I'm done. I know it's selfish, but it could be my last ever one, albeit cold."

Karen grinned cheekily. "You do stink a bit."

"Cheeky bitch."
Chapter Seven

"Where're you going?" Jason Bonser snapped at his colleague.

As Jason ran back onto the wing from the exercise yard, Kyle Horan shouted back. "Toilet!"

Jason nodded when he received his answer. Although the clock was ticking, it was probably a wise idea, as he could feel his own bowels loosening at the awesome site of the dead walking in their hundreds towards the fence.

As a precious and long two minutes passed, Kyle Horan emerged out back onto the exercise yard, and stared out at the frightening sight. They stood wordlessly as the horde of creatures lumbered closer. They knew as the minutes passed and the closer they would get, the more the numbers would increase. It was obvious that they were pouring through the slider door, the gateway to their potential freedom.

Without a word, they looked to one another and jumped onto the fence in unison. Frantically climbing and pulling their big frames over the wobbly fence, they were aware of the excitement of their admirers as they landed on the other side, as the things seemed to have speeded up in pace. Despite the numbers, they were spread out and both men knew that, providing they weren't grabbed, they would stand a good chance of making it.

Both men ran at the threatening group and weaved their way through the beings, and made damn sure they weren't grabbed. It seemed such a long journey, yet they could see that they weren't far from the slider door.

Another fifty yards and they were there!

Jason panicked for a second when his trainer slipped an inch on the wet grass and was grabbed by two of them; he shrugged them off easily though, and looked to the side of him noticing that Kyle was lagging. There seemed to be more numbers around Kyle, and the majority of them seemed more interested in his presence. Jason Bonser continued to run and wasn't surprised to hear a cry of pain from behind him, and even though he knew it was Kyle, he couldn't for a second turn to see where he was. In this situation, just one second of not concentrating could determine whether Jason Bonser escaped or not.

A succession of desperate hands reached for Bonser while he weaved in and out, as he sprinted his heart out. He found that, for a second, his feet were off the ground. He had slipped over onto his back and hit the ground with a thump, and quickly got to his feet to see that they had swarmed round him in their dozens, like flies round shit. He let out a small shriek of fright, stood back up and ran at the crowd that were preventing his progression. He never expected to get by them and growled as his body barged his way through. Cold hands grabbed him and scratched his clothes and grabbed at his neck, but he felt he could move again and saw that he had now went by the biggest danger and only had a dozen or so to bypass before he was free. But where was Kyle?

He managed to get to the huge outside slider door and his ears were assaulted by the horrific screams of Kyle Horan. Jason's name was called out, but he never responded and went out into the car park where he could see them coming in their dozens, through the main entrance of the grounds. He looked to the right of him, and saw a Renault Clio sitting alone in the car park. Jason ran towards the car and smashed the passenger side with his elbow. He jumped in and sat in the driver's side. Luckily, because it was daylight, he could see what he was doing. It took him a minute to hotwire the car—it wasn't his primary skill—and noticed that his disturbance had created a few of them to head his way.

He thrashed the motor and sped out of the car park. Body after body banged and bounced off the front of the vehicle; one of them rolled across the front and splintered the glass of the windscreen. Some arms tried to reach in through the passenger side that was now exposed, but the speed of the thing prevented any bodies from getting inside it.

As the Clio whined its way through the bendy, country roads, Jason Bonser felt he could breathe again. The beings seemed to have come from over the hill to the left of the prison where the village of Garsden was situated. Once the coast seemed clear, he pulled the car up into the side of the road and tried to gather his thoughts. He looked around the sun-basked hills and threw his head back. His mind briefly went back to Kyle.

Fuck him. Rather him than me.

He smacked his dry lips together, and began checking the vehicle. He started looking inside the car, from the glove compartment to behind his seat. Apart from the manual, a Stone Roses CD, and a box of tampax, there was nothing in the motor that could wet his lips or fill his stomach. There was a phone, but it was completely flat.

He got out and checked the front. The bonnet had taken significant amounts of dents to its bodywork, so much so that Jason struggled to pop the bonnet open. He walked to the boot of the car and opened it. There was nothing, apart from a waterproof jacket. He lifted underneath and came across the spare tyre as well as a tyre iron. He took the tyre iron, slammed the boot shut and returned back to his seat. He shut the door, drove away, and as the engine purred he looked at the fuel gauge and shook his head.

Only a quarter tank left!

He drove away in hope that he would come across a garage or a shop that had food and water. A garage would be better, he thought. Fuel was a necessity, providing the electrics were still working, as the car was going to be struggling soon.

His drive lasted another two minutes before he experienced his second sighting of the creatures. This time he wasn't alarmed; there was only three of them stumbling in the road. It was nothing compared to the experience of escaping the prison, and since that incident, as well as losing his friend, the sighting of three of them, especially now he was in a car, didn't do much to elevate his heart rate.
Chapter Eight

He stroked his dark skin, and his almost-black eyes glared into the woods as three of the creatures shambled around with their backs to him. They were unaware he was present, and he was unaware where they were going. He was confident that he could kill them, but felt that it was unnecessary and a waste of time and energy. He had a heavy bag, and had been in three abandoned houses and couldn't possibly put another object into his rucksack. He went past the three souls by crouching down and walked at a snail's pace through the long blades of grass. Once he was out of view, thanks to the condensed trees, he stood upright again, and stretched his aching back.

He knew that his journey would have been a lot less time consuming if he had taken the car, but he told the group that he preferred to go out on foot, preferably alone, and that they needed to save on petrol as much as they could.

Paul Parker was like most survivors; he had lost people he loved. But in his case, he wasn't sure that he had lost his family through death or they were simply just missing. He wondered how long it would be before he found them. Feeling sorry for himself was something he hardly did, because the distractions were everywhere—apart from night-time—as every second he was looking over his shoulder.

Then there was the guilt.

On another one of his sole expeditions, the day before, he had witnessed from afar a family being carjacked by two men. It was a horrible thing to witness, but at least the family were unharmed, yet, distressed that they were now abandoned with nowhere to go. Paul walked away. He mentally wished the family all the best, but it wasn't really his problem.

He then thought further back to that awful Sunday.

They came into his house on the morning, as he lay in bed. He could hear his wife, Jocelyn, and two-year-old daughter, Hannah, screaming for their lives. He shot out of bed as soon as he heard the wails from his two precious girls. He quickly got dressed with the clothes from the previous day that were strewn across the floor, and by the time he got downstairs, his house had seven of the things in his living room. His girls were nowhere to be seen and he assumed that they had escaped.

He had no idea what was going on and why these things were in his place and his family were not. The bizarreness of the whole episode was incredible, as Paul hadn't managed to sit down and listen to the unbelievable news on what was happening in the country. At least then that would have explained what was happening.

As soon as his presence entered his living room, he was attacked and still to this day, couldn't understand how he had managed to get away without being bitten. He ran in his bare feet and knocked on the door of his friend, Sean West, who informed Paul what the radio was telling him.

Not believing what he was told and wanting to go out there to look for his family, he reluctantly agreed to go somewhere safe once he was reasoned with, and they were the first people to get to the Longdon Village Hall. Sean West, and his wife, Karen, contacted friends through their mobile phone and told them their plans. Karen West knew Kerry Evans and eventually persuaded her to leave Rugeley with Thomas to get to the village hall before the outbreak escalated. Kerry asked if she could bring her mother, and when she got to Hazelslade and picked up her mother, they ventured to the Longdon hall.

The stress of the situation took its toll, as Kerry's mother took a turn for the worse and eventually had a heart attack. She was dead by Wednesday morning and a shallow grave was made in the woods. Paul Parker, who took the role of unofficial leader—although no one seemed to object, decided that there was enough mouths to feed and no one else should join the group. This rule was bent, however, once Gary and Jack phoned the hall after Jemma had left a message at her house, which was something she did before Paul had made his announcement.

As the group had been incarcerated for days, Paul agreed to let them join, as their experience with the creatures and knowledge of places that were safe to go could be priceless and be beneficial for the group, plus, they provided extra muscle and wheels.

With Jack being the father of Thomas, and Gary being the boyfriend of Jemma, it'd be fair to say that if Paul Parker had protested their presence instead, he would have been ignored anyway.

Kerry was distraught after losing her mother, Clare Evans, and Jack and Gary had arrived just hours after her private burial in the woods. Kerry and Thomas needed a shoulder to cry on, and Jack's presence had been perfect timing for the woman that had lost her mother, and the little boy who had seen his grandma drop to the ground in a heap.

Paul Parker hadn't cried at all since the disappearance of his family, and the reason for that was that he was certain they were still alive. Where? He didn't know. But he knew they were alive; he could feel they were alive.

He used his walks to go out to get food, but it was also done so he could look out for his family. He knew it was like finding a needle in a haystack, but he couldn't just sit on his arse and wait for them to turn up. For all he knew they could be miles away, in the next village or even just a few streets away.

His wife and daughter were missing, his brother had been killed three years ago in a car accident, and his mother and father were elderly, and if they hadn't died by those things already, they would have died by now from dehydration or starvation.

His parents relied on Paul once a fortnight to bring in the shopping, as the two of them were practically bed-bound. His wife wanted him to put them in an elderly home, but the two of them wouldn't have it. His wife thought it was selfish at the time, considering her husband had a job, a family, and was also running around doing errands for his elderly parents, as well as cleaning their house once a week.

Paul Parker had now eventually got onto the main road and welcomed the hard tarmac, as walking through the long grass was tiring and was sapping his valuable energy. He took a pointless peep behind him to make sure it was safe. He knew it was safe, as it was a huge, wide-open road and he could see to the left and right of him if there was anything untoward coming at him from the trees. The woods weren't as condensed at the side of the road.

He huffed, as the weight of the bag on his back was beginning to slow him down and weaken his wobbly legs. His body walked around one last bend and he smiled, as he knew he was only a mile away from the village hall and couldn't wait for a big bowl of soup.

He pulled his head back and allowed his face to take in some of the sun's rays. He continued to walk with a spring in his step, now that he could see the hall from a distance.

He then sighed.

It was a melancholy sigh, a sigh that was released once a short film was projected in his mind. The short film was a realistic film, but was depressing, nevertheless.

Paul was certain that if ever those things turned up in their dozens, let alone hundreds, he feared for the camp. Most of the people in there were not fighters, two of them were just children. It would be a massacre, he thought.

If they attacked from the front, it'd be near impossible to escape and run across the road to where the cars were parked, meaning their only escape route—provided they weren't surrounded—would be through the back where they had their meals and into the woods, into the unknown, and most probably, into an area where their inevitable death would be.

Sure, right now, although the camp were still on edge, as they had no idea what the hell was going on and with no signals from the their mobile phones, no TV, etc., there was still a satisfied feeling amongst them that at least they were still alive and still had food to consume.

But for how long? Paul thought.
Chapter Nine

They had both decided to take a look in the attic, as they weren't sure what they were going to find, if they were going to find anything. There was a chance that there could be nothing there, but Karen knew that if Pickle wanted the sleep his body craved, they were never going to rest, not until every square inch of the house was investigated. Even though Pickle had already been upstairs and checked the bedrooms, he and Karen slowly and hesitantly walked to the landing and double-checked the rooms once again.

After checking, they closed all the doors tightly shut. They both looked up to the attic that was situated on the landing. There was a hook on the trap door of the attic. It was unhooked, which suggested to the two squatters that someone or something was up there. Pickle took his shotgun and gave the door a quick, sharp nudge, which allowed the door to open and swing out like a pendulum. It revealed a dark, square hole in the roof.

"Let's see if anything comes out o' there first," he suggested. They waited a few uncomfortable seconds and then he shouted up to the attic. "Hello!"

"Hello!" This time Karen called out. "Is there anyone up there? We mean you no harm. Come out."

They both waited patiently and stared into the black hole, waiting for something to happen, but it never came. They both gaped at each other, unsure about the next move, although the next move seemed obvious: One of them was going to have to go up and check it out.

Pickle had a look of defeat and his facial expression made Karen aware that he should be first to go up to see if the area was safe. She had no qualms about going up herself, but she didn't want to impose on Pickle's masculinity.

Karen clasped her hands together, with her palms facing up, in order to give Pickle a bunk-up. He carefully stood his shotgun against the wall, near the bathroom, and placed his right boot into Karen's hands, and lifted himself up, grabbed the outside of the hatch and pulled himself up quite easily. He had a muscular heavy frame to lift, but Pickle's favourite exercise at the prison's gym were pull-ups, so this action was a simple thing to execute, although he was a little out of practice and had no time to do a warm up. Karen thought that her hands were going to snap in half once Pickle's weight could be felt, but it only lasted a mere second before he pulled himself up.

Once he was up, he cursed aloud that he had no torch with him, as all he could see all around him in the attic was blackness. He ran his fingers through his short, brown, greasy hair and tried his best to scan the dusky area with his naked eyes. It was night vision goggles he needed.

"Wait," Karen instructed, and saw two light switches by the bathroom door. She tried the first one, which lit up the bathroom. She then tried the second, which lit up the attic. She looked up and saw the black square fill full of yellow light and stood at the bottom, waiting for Pickle to tell her that it was clear and then they could continue to relax, eat, drink, and eventually try and get a decent sleep once the evening arrived.

"Cheers," Pickle shouted down. "Just gonna have a wee look around."

He looked and wasn't prepared for what he was about to see next.

Despite the attic being a normal unkempt attic, with boxes of books, along with other useless accessories in the corner, there was a scene that forced his throat to swell, making it near impossible for him to produce a necessary gulp.

He continued to glare.

Two girls, no older than ten, were lying motionless on their backs as if they were just sleeping, but Pickle knew they were dead. They lay next to one another and were separated by two yards from the bodies of their parents. The woman, who looked like she used to be very attractive, lay on her side with a dark circular bloodstain that had soaked through her white blouse at the side of her chest. The man's state was even worse. He was huddled and curled up like a hedgehog; his arms were saturated with blood, and Pickle worked out within a second what had happened when he saw the heavily stained knife lying by the man's side.

In his cell, a few months ago, he watched a nature programme on corn snakes. One particular corn snake had entered a lair belonging to a mouse, and instead of allowing its babies to be lunch for the snake, the mouse turned against its babies and ate them for itself. It was a strange situation and Pickle always remembered it.

It appeared that the dad had done the same.

Instead of subjecting his family to a new and more grisly world, he and his wife seemed to have come to a horrific and sad agreement that maybe they were better off away from the new world. There was no sign of blood on the girls, so all he could think of was that they had taken pills or had been smothered. There were no sign of pill bottles, but there was a cushion that could have been used to smother the girls, lying by the side of them. God knows what the surviving girl was thinking when her father, or mother, was smothering her sister, knowing that she was next. Had her parents gone mad?

The used knife by the father's side was the reason why the wife had a large round blood stain on her white blouse. After killing the girls, the distraught parents probably, at the time, knew that there was no going back now. Pickle assumed that he must have stabbed his own wife through the heart and the distraught father then slashed his own wrists, waiting for the life to drain out of him and eventually be with his family that were waiting for him on the other side.

Pickle knew these scenes were probably in every other street, but seeing it was still a horrible experience. He then remembered the other bedroom that had the Robert Pattinson poster. He thought to himself that it must have belonged to a teenage daughter that had either gone out for the night, or had left temporarily to go to university. Whatever the reason, she wasn't there. He peered over the hatch and glared at Karen. "We should sleep okay tonight."

"No one up there?"

"A family. But they're dead."

Karen never asked him the details, and just lowered her head with sadness. Pickle had seen enough, and sat at the edge of the hatch, with his legs swinging freely and jumped back onto the landing.

"Let's put the hatch back," he spoke. "We'll leave the poor wee souls in peace, for now."

Pickle winced and began to rub his temples; he tried to shake off whatever was causing him discomfort, but it was to no avail.

"Anything wrong?" Karen placed her hand comfortingly on his shoulder. She tried to make eye contact, but his eyes were closed and his hands tried to rub away the pain.

"Apart from the end o' the world?" he chuckled falsely. "It's nothing. Just a niggling migraine. Dehydration, maybe."

Karen lowered her head, looked up to the hatch of the attic and stared at her male companion. "Do you think it's global?"

Pickle shook his head. "I only know what you know. But if it's not, where's the help?" Pickle sighed. "Right, I'm gonna have that bath. It'll probably be my last before I have to start using that brook."

"It wasn't that bad." Karen smiled.

Pickle guffawed, "Apart from caving in the face of a Snatcher inbetween it."

She shrugged. "Just a normal day these days."

"I suppose yer right."
Chapter Ten

He slipped the Clio into third as he hit another bend, and the wheels screamed their way round the tight curve. As the car reached a dangerous fifty, Jason Bonser decided to fiddle with the radio to see if there was anything to listen to, whether it was information or even a music station.

His thoughts went to his sister. The last time he had called her was a few days ago from inside the prison with his smuggled mobile phone. From what he had heard, it sounded like they were getting in, but he knew that it didn't necessarily mean she was done for. Her house may be infested with the things, but she could be locked in her bedroom or in the attic.

His overall goal was to see his sister.

He had been a despicable character in and out of prison, and his sister was the only person he generally cared for, as it was her that helped raise Jason while their parents spent most of their time getting drunk, before their eventual and predictable premature deaths had occurred while Jason and his sister were still in their teens.

He tried his best to keep his eyes on the road and was, so far, doing it with success. He couldn't get anything on the station and looked up and felt his heart jump into his mouth as one solitary walker appeared from nowhere and was slammed by the Clio, its body splitting in half with ease. Drenched in panic, and with his windscreen being decorated with dark fluid from the walking corpse, he released a gasp. Jason then steered briskly to the left, albeit too late, and the car swung round ninety degrees, hit the side of the fence and toppled a few times, like a rolled dice, until it came to an early stop.

He was out cold for ten minutes.

His eyes opened slowly and the constant banging and slapping on the vehicle aroused his suspicions. Although it took a few seconds for his brain to register what was happening, when he did realise he shot up and quickly felt for the door handle. The car had rolled back onto its wheels after the crash, and Jason was mildly concussed. Now he was trapped in a real nightmare scenario. The motor was finished for sure, and was sat crumpled in what looked like a farmers field.

Outside there was three of them, all at the driver's side, only inches away from Jason, and all were ashen with their bloated, gross faces, snarling at the potential protein meal that sat inside. They growled and slammed the window with their fists. Sometimes when they snarled, dark blood would exit out of their mouths and splat onto the driver's side window. Jason frantically searched for the tyre iron, and once he found it on the floor next to the passenger seat, he wasted no time in exiting the vehicle before more of them turned up and ended up covering both sides of the door.

He shuffled over to the passenger seat, the gear stick caressing his buttocks whilst doing this, and tried to open the passenger door. The creatures suddenly realised that their meal was trying to escape, and stumbled around the car to get to the other side. Noticing this, a panic-stricken Jason pulled the door handle and then kicked it open. The door swung open, and the inmate jumped out with the tyre iron in his right hand, and began to run. They pathetically tried to follow him as he ran. He checked himself and couldn't believe he had managed to escape the crash unscathed, considering he wasn't wearing a safety belt either.

He estimated that he had travelled eight miles, as he had made it to Milford, before crashing into the fence. Now he was on foot, carrying the tyre iron, and all that surrounded him was main roads and woodland. He was two miles from Heath Hayes, and his original destination was to get to his sister's in Norton Canes, if she was still alive. Thankfully, the street he was in and was heading out of, seemed barren. It wasn't a surprise, as the population of Milford was pretty low in normal circumstances anyway.

He started his journey on foot at a pedestrian pace and decided that once he got to the last house of the street, he was going to break in, replenish his energy levels by taking food, and his body thoroughly needed hydrating as well.

He had seen the twitches of curtains as he walked past most of the houses in the street, but with the end house it looked, and he had a feeling, that it had been left abandoned as there was no car on the drive. The last thing he wanted to do was break into an already populated house and be stabbed by the scared residents, or worse.

His pace quickened as he got to the last house of the quiet, empty street and stood still, admiring its structure. He looked up at the windows and could see they all had their blinds and curtains drawn. He looked to his right, to the end of the street, then to his left where the beginning of Cannock Chase was, and crossed the road and headed for the front door. He decided to do the polite thing at first and knock on the door just to be absolutely certain. The last thing he needed was to break into a house and get attacked for his troubles.

He waited patiently, and knocked a little louder and a little longer the second time. Again, there was no answer, so he began to tap the glass of the front door with the tyre iron to shatter one of the small panes of glass. Once this was achieved, he put his left arm in and reached for the handle and opened the door with ease.

He was greeted with an empty ground floor, but could hear the faint sound of a woman crying. Disappointed that the house wasn't vacant, he shut the door gently and put the snib on to lock it. He then crept upstairs and continuously whispered the word hello. As he got to the top of the stairs, a bedroom door opened. Inbetween the crack of the door was a half nose and one bright, round blue eye. The door suddenly got wider and both persons exhaled in relief.

"Who are you?" she gasped.

"I'm sorry, I thought the house was empty," Jason tried to explain. "I didn't realise someone was in. Didn't you hear me knocking?"

She nodded her head, and seemed to take an age to answer his question. "I thought it might be them, trying to get in."

Jason took a step closer, but the woman held her hand up in an attempt to stop him from progressing any further. She put her right forefinger to her lips, urging him to keep quiet and ushered him downstairs into the dark ground floor, where every window had been covered up. They both walked downstairs, with Jason leading the way. He sat on her couch and she checked if he had locked the door properly and asked if he needed a drink. He nodded and asked for a coffee, and water. She returned from the kitchen with a pint of water, which Jason had drank in a matter of seconds, and asked for another.

Two silent minutes had passed, and the woman eventually arrived with two hot cups of coffee.

He peeped at the woman and although she was in desperate need of a makeover and a shower, he came to the conclusion that with a little effort, she would look reasonably attractive. "So what's your name?" Jason asked.

She sat herself down. "Jenny." She also gazed at the man, and came to the conclusion that he looked like a brute, a man that probably had steroid sandwiches.

"So where is everybody?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "My husband went to work last week. He works on a construction site, but he never came back. I've been in here ever since it happened. Starting to run out of food now, though. There's a local shop down the road, but I'm guessing that it's already been burgled and stripped."

Jason took a sip from the coffee. "Wow, that's good coffee."

"Thanks. Not much of that left, either."

"You have a phone?"

"Not one that works," she said sadly.

There was a silence that greeted the two strangers and Jason bit his bottom lip. "I'm sorry about your husband."

She sat up and looked affronted with what Jason had said to her. She shook her head. "He's not dead."

Jason raised his eyebrows as if to say, really?

Her face looked sad and she lowered her head. Maybe he isn't coming back. Maybe he is dead.
Chapter Eleven

"So what book do you want me to read to you?"

Jack Slade took his son away from the group, and went into one of the rooms that would eventually be shared by another six people. The plan was to read to his son, get some shuteye himself before he and Gary were up for the night watch. The hall had a large room where most people slept on the floor, whilst others slept in the offices.

"I don't have any books." Young Thomas sniffed, and kicked the thin air with his right foot, as if he was in a bad mood about something.

"What's up, squirt?" asked Jack.

Thomas stopped walking and turned to face his dad, and sighed, with his young shoulders slumped. "I don't like it here," he said with sadness. "I miss my friends. I miss grandma. Why can't I go back to school?"

Jack owed it to his son to protect him, but was unsure that lying to him was the best idea, as it made his confusion even greater. "Have you been told about what's been happening?"

"About ... the monsters?"

Jack understood that he should have talked to Kerry about the subject, but simultaneously felt that telling his son that he was on holiday and then also stating that he wasn't allowed to go out on his own and play too loudly, just made him even more confused.

Jack sat his son down on the floor on top of a sleeping bag. His place was in the corner of the hall, and Jack wanted to get him down before other people decided to turn in. Because it was a hall, the echo of even just footsteps was enough to bring someone out of a coma. It wasn't ideal, but at least his son was alive, all thanks to Kerry. Jack helped his son strip down to his pants, and he slipped his little body into the sleeping bag and stared at his daddy.

Jack quizzed, "What do you know about these ... monsters?"

"Just that they're dangerous ... and mummy's frightened of them."

"You do realise why we have to stay here, don't you?"

Thomas nodded. "Yes. Or they'll find us and eat us," he said with a straight face.

Jack twisted his face. "Who told you that?" Jack was annoyed that his son had this information, although what he said was technically true.

"Yoler," he said with no hesitation.

"Well, it looks like I'm gonna have to have a word with Yoler's daddy. She can't go round saying things like that."

Jack was referring to Yoler Parkinson. She was only eight years old, a cute kid with black curly hair. Her father was Ian Jenson, and her mother had been attacked while the family tried to escape from the house. The eight-year-old witnessed her mother through the back window being mauled by a gang of the dead as her distraught father drove away, a story she had told young Thomas on a few occasions.

Yoler wasn't upset about the situation. She missed her mummy. She had been told that she was dead, but Yoler wasn't aware that being dead was such a bad thing. When her daddy told her tearfully that her mummy was now in heaven, she nodded her head and then turned around and asked, "What's for dinner?"

Jack remembered when Ian told him that story about his wife and Yoler. Jack knew he had lost family members, like cousins, uncles and aunts, although he couldn't be completely sure, for all they knew, he was also dead. Jack thought that Ian Jenson telling his daughter that her mummy had died must have been incredibly tough for him.

Jack couldn't believe how tough Ian had been in the last few days that he knew him, as he thought that if that was his beloved that had been killed, he wouldn't be able to cope. Ian informed him that when you have children, you have to cope; you don't have a choice in the matter.

Even Kerry seemed to be cold, considering that she had lost her mother only a few days ago. The subject had only materialised once when Kerry and Jack were reunited for the first time. He asked where she was, and she told him coldly that she was dead, and that she had been buried in the woods. She didn't cry, although her face was filled with sadness, but her mother had lived till the age of sixty-seven and had died of natural causes, which these days was a comfort, considering the way people were dying now.

To a certain degree, he envied her mother. She had managed to live a full life—although sixty-seven wasn't deemed that old in the civilized world they used to live in—and had died a relatively painless death. And although it was the beginning of the new world that had put stress on her mother's heart and had helped her to an early grave, at least her frail old mother didn't have to witness any kinds of barbarism that could involve her family members or even herself.

Thomas lay on his side, and Jack lay next to him and tried to remember some of the stories that he used to read him on a night when Thomas was a baby. There was a rigid rule set on a night by Kerry: He was allowed two stories and two songs.

Jack stroked his boy's head and begun telling a made-up story about Postman Pat who got stuck in the mud in his bright red van. This short story was followed by a story he used to be told by his parents, called Peepo. Once he finished Peepo, he noticed that his boy had fallen asleep, but he decided to sing him the two songs anyway.

After he sang Bananas in Pyjamas and The Rainbow Song—he still didn't understand the lyric 'listen with your eyes' even now, but he sang them anyway—he continued stroking his son's head. After he had finished the last song, he fell asleep as well.
Chapter Twelve

After thinking of nothing but the poor family who lay above them, both individuals knew that it was going to be a restless night until they removed the bodies the next day. Pickle had waited for this night for days, and now he had found a house that finally provided a bed with reasonably safe surroundings, his moment was going to be ruined by knowing that a dead family lay above him. He thought at first that it wouldn't bother him, but it did.

They thought about trying the next house, but they both seemed content to stay where they were, despite the corpses that lay above them. It was nearly ten in the evening, and both individuals planned on sleeping together, in the same bed, as a security measure. Although each one was grateful for the company, neither one of them would admit it.

Pickle lay on his back, fully clothed, and glared at the ceiling. Karen had her back to him, trying to force herself to sleep, but she was wide-awake. Every time she closed her eyes, flashbacks of the previous week ambushed her. She thought about going home to Gary and finding him in such a state, seeing Sharon Henderson eaten to death, being carjacked, meeting Oliver Bellshaw, before he turned out to be some kind of sexual deviant, and then finally meeting up with Pickle in the woods, although she originally thought he was a Snatcher and nearly broke his nose.

Pickle released a sharp breath out.

"What's wrong?" Karen had to ask.

Pickle sighed, "I was thinking about Laz."

"Why?"

"Well," Pickle cleared his throat, "the radio reckons it takes about an hour to change, yet, it took Laz hours before he slipped into a coma, or whatever it was, about six or seven hours to be exact. He was bitten in the supermarket and was ill for most o' the day."

Karen added, "The truth is they have no idea. Half an hour, twelve hours—who cares? As soon as you're bitten or scratched deep enough, you're screwed."

"It was just something that was beginning to bother me. Makes yer wonder if countries overseas end up nuking this country if it isn't a global thing."

"Isn't that a bit extreme?" Karen began to laugh, but she was sure he was being serious.

"Also, these things can't drown. There could be hundreds o' the things floatin' in the English Channel or the North Sea. The last thing the French would want is for those things getting washed up on their beaches and then for them to find their feet and start walking again."

"Now you're being ridiculous."

"Just saying." Pickle continued, "The winter's gonna be a nightmare. Unless it works in our favour and the cold kills these things off."

"I've thought about it. We're gonna be freezing our tits off. The snow will be a problem, not just the temperature."

Continued Pickle, "Not only that, with the snow we won't know when it's coming, how many inches we'll get, and how long it'll last."

"Sounds like my ex-boyfriend," Karen cackled, and Pickle joined in as they continued to lay in the darkness, with sleep being almost impossible to achieve.

"Honestly, Bradley," his snickering was beginning to diminish. "Yer have a mind like a sewer."

Karen could sense that there was something else that was bothering Pickle, and there was another reason why he was still awake. She spoke once more. "You really okay?"

Pickle cleared his throat, and seemed to take an age to answer. "Not really."

Karen thought for a second if she should ask the next question. The subject hadn't been tackled for days, so she went ahead. "You thinking about KP?"

"Maybe," he snapped. "Yer thinking about Gary?"

Karen smiled, and wasn't sure if Pickle's question was a retaliation for bringing the subject of KP up. She lied, "I wasn't. But I am now, now that you've mentioned him."

"Sorry," he whispered.

His apology seemed false, but Karen forgave him. She had only known the man for nearly a week, and already knew that the pair of them were like brother and sister with a love/hate relationship. She thought back to the run-in they had when they were back at Stile Cop. Pickle thought that Karen had made an uncomplimentary comment about the body of Laz stinking the place out, and Pickle took exception to it. They had a couple of other run-ins during the week, but nothing that would give Karen sleepless nights.

Since the news officially broke last Sunday morning, Karen had to take up a new role in order to survive, and it was a role she had grown into with ease. Pickle was already a tough cookie being from the background that he came from, but found Karen equally as tough as him.

Karen had every respect for Pickle, despite his past antics, and said to herself that she would rather have someone like him by her side, than someone who was weak and would literally fill their shorts as soon as one of the Snatchers was spotted. In order for her to survive in this new, terrifying world, she needed someone to watch her back.

As Karen lay awake on her side, with her back against Pickle's back, she reminisced about a conversation they had a few evenings ago. The two of them had spent yet another monotonous evening on the top of the multi-storey car park, and Pickle and Karen were exchanging stories about their past. Pickle decided to confess something that he seemed deeply ashamed of.

According to a story Pickle told her, nearly ten years ago, he and a colleague had to visit a drug supplier at a dock who owed them thousands in drugs. They had paid for the delivery and one of Pickle's men put the merchandise in the back of the van and drove away. Once the merchandise arrived back at Pickle's place and was checked, they realised that half of the product—heroin—was missing. The van driver was beaten for not checking what he had picked up. Then Pickle himself, and a colleague, decided to drive back to the port themselves to meet up with the Dutch supplier. He was bungled into the van, and Pickle and his colleague tied the Dutchman up and drove him to an abandoned warehouse.

Pickle had informed the supplier that since he had fucked them, he was going to return the favour. The Dutchman was tied up and raped in the back of the van, then his legs were stabbed and he was driven back to the port and thrown out.

They soon switched suppliers.

That was the first and last time Pickle had punished someone by rape, and when the story was told to Karen, she didn't seem too shocked.

Still on the bed, the two were trying to sleep whilst wrestling with the horror pictures of the last week that was invading their psyche, which was keeping them awake. "So what do we do tomorrow?" Karen threw the question at Pickle, as if he was in charge of the pair of them. She knew he wasn't asleep, so decided to dilute the silence that devoured the room.

"Dunno," Pickle sighed. "See if we can survive another day, I suppose."

"Same old same old then," Karen began to chuckle.

Although Karen's remark was greeted with a blanket of quiet, she could almost hear Pickle's mind working. He was about to say something, she knew it; she could hear his intake of breath. "I'm sick o' hiding ... I'm sick o' fighting." Pickle said with a deflated tone.

"It's called survival."

"Yeah? Well I'm tired o' it. But I promised I wouldn't feel sorry for maself anymore, so I'll just need to get on with it."

"Trouble with you," Karen gently mocked, "is that you've had it easy in that prison. With your free accommodation, free gym, free medicine, free—"

"It weren't that easy."

Karen could sense that his mood was slightly up due to her mocking tone and decided to continue. "Out in the real world, it was always about survival: Paying bills, wondering if the cuts were gonna affect your job."

"Yer still had to survive in prison as well."

Karen half-laughed. "Bullshit! I bet you were top dog in there. I bet you had bitches on tap, queues of men lining up to give you a blow job."

Pickle began to chortle and half-nudged Karen in the side with his elbow from her ribbing.

He said, "Yer can be a right bitch sometimes, yer know that?"

"At least you're laughing again."

"Right, I'm going to sleep now. Don't disturb me unless one o' those deadheads gets in."

"Didn't you barricade the doors?"

"Yip, we should be okay anyway. This street is pretty quiet."

A few minutes of quiet hovered over the pair and they were almost in the land of nod, but their senses were given an adrenaline shot once they heard a slamming noise.

Karen got out of the bed and went to the window. She could see two men who had broken into the Range Rover, sitting in the front of the family's vehicle, and a nervous looking woman holding a two-year-old infant, waiting for the car to start. It looked like to Karen that they were trying to hotwire the thing. Karen allowed it to happen; so long as the prison van was okay, she wasn't caring. The people looked desperate and she thought that the car might as well be put to some good use. She looked out onto the front garden where the van was backed up, in case they needed to escape via a bedroom window, and sighed. She knew they'd be screwed if that ever was stolen.

She returned to bed as the vehicle started. Pickle went to get out of bed, but Karen held him back. "It's okay. A desperate family are taking the Range Rover on the drive. Let them have it."

Pickle never verbally agreed or disagreed, he just grunted, and then went back to lying down. Pickle turned round on his side, his back now facing hers. "Once we get our energy back, we'll move out the family sometime tomorrow before they begin to smell."

"Defo."

"Good night, Bradley."

"Good night, Harry."
Chapter Thirteen

June 17th

Jason Bonser's host had been worth her weight in gold.

He had decided to stay the night and his host never objected to his stay, although she had a feeling she had no say in the matter despite it being her house. With the calamity that was occurring outside, she thought it would be in her best interests if she decided against standing up to the big man, especially now the land was in a lawless situation.

He went into the kitchen as she remained on the sofa, and helped himself to some bread, butter, cheese and the last slice of ham from the fridge.

He switched the kettle on and made himself another coffee. He was planning on getting an early night in the spare room she had mentioned, but had decided to pig out before doing so. After quickly consuming his cheese and ham sandwich, he slurped on his milky coffee and remained standing in the kitchen; he thought about how the world was now.

As far as he was concerned, the world was a better place for him. Sure, he had no wheels, food would eventually run out, and the threat of death was round every corner, but at least he was free. He had no routine to stick to anymore; he could do anything he wanted. Anything!

He finished his coffee and decided to use the woman's toilet before having a wash in the sink upstairs. He had noticed in the dark street that there wasn't a single vehicle left. Whether people had decided to flee or the cars were stolen, he didn't know, and realised that his journey on foot was going to be a long one, which was one of the reasons why he stuffed his face. The nearest village was Hazelslade and had decided that that's where he would stay, providing it was safe. Then he would hopefully get himself a car and get to his sister's house to see what had been happening and to see if she was still alive.

He went upstairs feeling flustered and his heart was galloping. He needed to calm down quickly if ever he was going to sleep that night. After a wash, he helped himself to a pair of grey jogging bottoms, a pair of trainers and a black T-shirt that belonged to Jenny's husband, and was glad to finally be rid of the prison attire.

He then fell asleep.

His sleep only lasted seven hours as once he awoke at six am, he realised he had been in such a deep sleep, he was never going to drift back off. Also, an audible noise coming from somewhere was not helping. Dazed and confused, he got up and jogged down the stairs to see if the coast was clear. The living room was still in darkness, and he had a peep in the kitchen. Nothing.

He scratched his head in bewilderment and then realised the noise was coming from upstairs. He walked back into the living room and took a look at Jenny, his female host, lying motionless on the sofa.

He walked past the woman he had raped, beaten and strangled to death the previous evening, and began to trudge back upstairs. As he gained towards the landing, his heart began to sink. Before he opened the door he knew what kind of sight was going to greet him. He opened it to reveal a hungry and raucous baby of around six to eight months standing up in his cot, crying. His hair was a chocolate colour, matching his beautiful brown eyes.

Now it was morning, he was aching to get out and feed.

The sight of Jason Bonser, instead of the usual presence of his mother, did nothing to calm his crying, in fact, it made him more hysterical, if that was at all possible. Jason shook his head. It all made sense now. He remembered Jenny shushing him when he first arrived; she must have just got the baby down to sleep. If he knew the real situation, he would have left Jenny alone, but it was too late now.

Jason felt a twinge of guilt, but he couldn't let this mess up his plans. He looked at the traumatised baby, and its brown eyes demanded to know what was going on and where was his mummy. Torn in two on what to do, Jason scratched his head and tried to conjure up an idea to make sure both parties were happy, but it was proving difficult. Maybe if the neighbours hear the kid crying for long enough, they'll come round to investigate, break the door down even.

The future didn't look too bright for the little baby and Jason Bonser certainly didn't want to play daddy while he made his trip to his sister's. What if he had to camp for the night in the woods, and the brat was squawking its head off because there was no formula for him? It'd be like ringing the dinner bell for the dead walkers. He wouldn't last five minutes out there with a baby in tow. He needed to be on his own. Of course, if Kyle had made it, things would be a lot safer, as at least then the pair of them could take turns in sleeping while one stood guard, because the dead don't sleep.

Jason was sure that there might be incidents involving these ghouls whilst he travelled on foot, but was hoping that that situation was going to be rare. It was early in the morning and he was sure he could walk to his sister's by the time nightfall came around again.

He sighed with genuine guilt eating away at him. "Sorry, kid, you're on your own."

Jason shut the door and trotted downstairs towards the front entrance. With the hysterical screams of the baby still filtering in his ears, despite the shutting of the door, Jason took a glass of water before finally leaving the house. It was early, it was daybreak, and it was time to stop hiding from the world. He took his tyre iron and shut the front door behind him, finally shutting out the noise coming from the hungry infant.

He left the premises and took a quick glance to either side of him.

He ran to the house next door and began to hammer at the front door with his fist so he could tell them that there had been an 'accident' with Jenny and they needed to take care of the baby. Nobody answered; in fact, Jason was sure that banging the door only enhanced the residents' consternation, if they were in.

"Fuck it!" He decided it was time to leave.

The street was abandoned and he smiled to himself as he headed towards Cannock Chase with hurried steps. Despite the hesitation of leaving the prison, he was now glad that he had done so—even though he was forced into the decision—and was enjoying the freedom so far. It was good to be out in the countryside; for the last few years, the only outside experience he had was in E Wing's exercise yard. He took a deep breath in, and embraced the freedom, as he was aware that he didn't know how long this freedom was going to last, or if he was going to be alive the next week.

As his steps led him further and further away from the street, and deeper along the main, bendy roads that had condensed woodland on either side, he thought of the baby. If he knew Jenny had a baby, he would never have 'enjoyed' his thrill with her the night before. But what's done is done, he thought.

He wasn't going back now.
Chapter Fourteen

The decision was made; although a few protests by Sean West and Lee Hayward were vocally thrown at Gary, Jack and Paul Parker, they had already come to the conclusion that if the village hall was going to be their home for a while, food supplies and medical supplies had to be stocked up, as although they weren't running short, they shouldn't be complacent.

With fourteen people in the group, the food supply was going to go down rapidly, and raiding empty houses wasn't going to keep them alive in the long run. Bread was no more, and Jack had informed the group that if they did somehow manage to get hold of some bread, it might be out of date and stale. Paul had told the group that two miles from where they were, was a supermarket on the outskirts of Rugeley.

Paul Parker asked Sean West and Lee Hayward if they were happy to hunt for food and live from hand to mouth, or munch on mushrooms and berries and drink stream water for the next few months. They responded with a shake of their heads, and Paul responded by saying that they should stop with their protests then. Paul told the group that they should be back soon with carloads of food, unless the supermarket had already been emptied or if it was swarming with the hungry fiends.

Gary, Jack and Paul took a car, not necessarily their own, and drove in a controlled convoy as Gary and Jack followed Paul who was driving Lee Hayward's Cherokee Jeep, although technically it wasn't really Lee's jeep.

One of the days, they had exchanged stories about their survival and what they went through when the outbreak was made official on the Saturday evening/Sunday morning of that second weekend of June.

The usual horror stories had been exchanged, with horrific tales of families being infected, attacked, and unable to escape. Sean West and Karen West admitted that they ignored the screams of their neighbour, who was a single mother of two daughters, under the age of ten. When they jumped into their car to escape the event, they reversed the car out of their drive, onto the road, and left the street while their neighbour banged on her bedroom window in desperation for help.

Lee Hayward's confession was a tale that had probably happened a thousand times over the country. He and his nephew had spent the night drinking and watching the pay-per-view boxing match on cable TV, and passed out. They woke up the Sunday morning to find that the world as they once knew, had changed somewhat. This was confirmed as they put the TV on. At first they thought it was some kind of joke, and their soused state refused to believe the information that they were getting fed with. Then their phones went mental; they made calls; they received texts and surfed the net, including all three of their personal web pages. It was no joke.

Once they managed to get their bearings and had managed to get over the shock, they peered out into the street and saw three of the things that the TV talked about, stumbling around. They jumped into Lee's car and frantically drove out of Green Lane and decided to head for the countryside. They thought about Colton or Abbots Bromley, but Lee turned right at the Globe Island and headed up to Sandy Lane.

Once they passed the Pear Tree Estate and got nearer to Draycott Park, they saw a selection of cars parked on peoples' drives. With the street barren, they pulled their own Skoda up and agreed to try the vehicles that were in better condition than their own vehicle. Lee was informed by his nephew that another vehicle was heading towards them. Lee picked up a rock and as they hid behind a bush, he threw the rock at the windscreen of the jeep. The jeep then veered off the road and crashed tamely into a brick wall.

Before the driver could escape, Lee pulled out a knife and pulled the driver out of her vehicle. She scratched his face and he retaliated by punching the young woman in the stomach. She was left alone, as Lee and his nephew drove off with the jeep.

Two days later, Lee's nephew was killed by one of the creatures when they stopped off for petrol. His nephew was in the garage trying to find the switch to start the pumps, when he was grabbed from behind by two of them. A day later, Lee came across the village hall. With the exception of Gary and Jack, he was the last to join the group. It was a story that he was ashamed of, the group could tell by the tone in his voice when he spoke of it, and in return, a few disappointed eyes flashed his way also. But at least he was honest.

*

The three cars eventually pulled up at the supermarket. There were a few in the car park, but they assumed that they must have belonged to staff or consumers, who might have fled on foot or were still cooped up inside. Their cars were parked near the entrance, and all three men were carrying the wooden homemade spears that Paul had made.

They were three-foot in length, with a round circumference and sharpened at the end. Paul had joked previously that they would come in handy whenever the time they needed to hunt for animals that existed in the woods. Jack thought that they were only weeks away from that scenario anyway, unless someone could take control of the country; but with no information filtering through, nobody knew what was going on. No one knew if it was a global epidemic, or was simply a UK catastrophe.

They walked across the car park and noticed at least a dozen bodies, and assumed they were the infected, as a lot of them had no head as if a grenade had been placed in their mouth, or they had been shot in the head by a shotgun.

"So what do we do now?" Gary asked nobody in particular.

"Grab a trolley each," Jack answered. "Just use your head and fill the damn thing up, empty it into the car and go back again."

"What if some of those things are in there?"

"Then we kill 'em." Paul intervened. "Unless there are loads of them, of course. Then we run."

They grabbed a trolley each, rested their individual spears on top of the trolley, and casually walked into the establishment as if it was a normal shopping day.

They scanned the area and put their shirts over their noses as the smell hit them. It was an area Paul knew well. He, Jocelyn and Hannah used to spend their Saturday afternoons at the place. His wife would be by the side of him with her shopping list held out in front of her, and his daughter would sit in the trolley with the baby seat provided, and he would push the trolley.

A small swelling emerged in his throat as he thought about his wife and daughter.

He had to flee! He had to!

They weren't there when the beings engulfed his house. At first he thought that they might have ran out into the street or through the back door into the back garden, but there was no sign of them. Standing there and screaming out their names would only have got him bitten.

Although he didn't have a clue what was going on, he could tell by the creatures that something was amiss, and his only concern was for his family. He couldn't believe the strength of them as they surged forwards when he made the appearance from his bedroom into the living room. And once they tried to bite him, his strength multiplied and somehow he had managed to fend them off before fleeing.

Paul could see that the smell was coming from some of the rotting food in certain aisles. He called out to the men that they should concentrate on tinned food. The aisles were only a quarter full, as if many people had been here before them. Jack had almost filled his trolley and reached a staircase that led to the clothes department. He looked around and decided to walk up the stairs to see if there was anything of interest. As he reached the top of the stairs, Paul bellowed from the ground floor. "Food! We can get clothes another day!"

Jack nodded in agreement and accepted his reprimand, and he turned to go back down the stairs. He looked to his left to see a cluster of bodies slumped together on the first floor as if they had been involved in some kind of massacre; beside them, lay dozens upon dozens of empty handgun shells. He couldn't fathom how this incident had come about. They must have been infected, otherwise, why would someone shoot a group of human beings? For the food? He couldn't tell by the faces if they were initially infected before they were shot, but he assumed that they were, as every one of them received headshots, which was starting to become common knowledge that this was the only way to put these things down.

He trotted back down the stairs, feeling the nausea develop in the middle of his chest once the images had digested in his brain. He couldn't make up his mind what was worse: the stench coming from the food on the ground floor, or the smell from the bodies on the first floor. He took his trolley and met up with his other two colleagues. "Are we ready to go then?" Paul quizzed.

"You guys are not going anywhere?" a voice from behind one of the aisles bellowed out.

Paul, Jack and Gary turned to their left and were greeted with a man pointing an old-style farmer's shotgun at their frames.

Gary raised his hands slowly, and protested weakly. "Come on, there's enough food here for all of us."

"I don't give a shit," another voice spoke out, and emerged from the aisle behind them. There were now two men present, standing side-by-side one another, and Paul Parker, Gary Jenson and Jack Slade now had two shotguns aiming at them.
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 forwards 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.
Chapter Seventeen

Hector Jones had finished the tying up of the last man, and went over to his colleague and took out a Marlboro. He lit it, sucked the poison deep into his lungs, and blew out the smoke delicately. They were in the canteen area of the supermarket, which was a place that was cordoned off and was used for hungry shoppers during the breakfast, lunch and dinner periods.

Both Hector Jones and his accomplice, Kasper Andrews, were from the small town of Colton, and after a few days of being cooped up in their homes, they had decided to take refuge in a place they considered practical. They were both single men and had spent a considerable amount of time in Staffordshire prisons, so the family they used to have wasn't there anymore for the forty-somethings. They lived together and spent their days, before the new world emerged, robbing shops and drinking the profits. They had had a run-in with members of the notorious Murphy family a few days ago, and managed to live to tell the tale.

When they first emerged at the supermarket on the Wednesday, they had a clear up operation to do. At least a dozen of the creatures were shambling across the car park, and this forced them to unload cartridges into their faces until the last four were crushed with the butt of their guns. Another two had made their way inside and were in the aisles. They were also hit by Hector and Kasper, dragged out of the area, and left near the trolley park to ooze out the rest of the dark liquid from their rotting craniums.

Jack Slade, Gary Jenson and Paul Parker had adhered to every instruction from these men, but had no idea what fate waited for them. Their hands and ankles were tied together with rope, and it felt so incredibly tight that Jack was thinking that his wrists were cut. Jack was convinced that they were going to get a warning for trespassing on the guys' newly crowned establishment, which was fine by Jack. He just wanted to get the hell out, after all, there must be other supermarkets out there, he thought.

Paul and Jack were placed in the corner of the dining area for whatever reason, whereas Gary had been placed on the cold floor in the middle of the room, with the tables and chairs moved to the side to make a clear area. Whatever punishment was going to be dished out, Gary was going to get it first. Some kind of beating, Gary thought. And he wasn't looking forward to it.

Forty-two-year-old Kasper Andrews returned to the dining area, wearing his Burberry cap and holding his shotgun. He had been away to get something. The others weren't sure what, but once he pulled the KY jelly out of his pocket and placed it on the table, Paul and Jack's eyes widened with consternation; then their eyes looked at a tied-up Gary who was unaware what they could see. Then, they finally looked at each other and couldn't even mumble information to one another as their mouths were gagged.

They knew exactly what was going to happen to them now, but what about afterwards? Would they be released once these idiots had had their sick pleasure out of them, once they had satisfied their perverted, rapist needs?

Gary looked over to his two pals and could see the fear scribbled onto their faces. He tried to turn around to see why they looked so worried and what the two men were up to, which was hard with his wrists tied to the ankles and lying on the floor on his side, but he somehow managed it and released a muffled scream that refused to be released at its full volume.

Both Kasper and Hector placed their guns against the door that read, Kitchen Staff Only, and walked over to the frightened Gary Jenson.

His dark eyes looked up to the two menacing individuals who looked like they lived in a caravan and lived on a diet of cheap booze and cigarettes, going by their appearance of their clothes and heavily stained teeth. They looked like typical Chavs. If they were from Scotland, they would have been labelled as Neds, and if they were American, they would have been classed as Trailer Trash or Rednecks by certain individuals.

Strangely, for Gary, the actual episode that was about to greet him wasn't his worst fear; the main thing that concerned him was if these men were carrying diseases. After all, they looked like the kind of men that would fuck goats if they were desperate enough. Kasper Andrews began to menacingly unbuckle his belt; his eyes never left Gary's presence.

Hector walked by Gary and went to the corner of the room, over to the remaining tied up victims, and pulled out a long hunters knife and placed the cold steel against Jack's throat. Jack Slade shuddered with fright, but was too terrified to make a sudden movement in case a slice to his throat was created.

"There's two of us," Hector spoke up. "But three of them. You think you can handle two? Or should I just cut this fucker's throat now?"

Kasper grinned a grin that Lucifer would have been proud of, and replied, with his dirty jeans opened at the waist, "You bet I can handle two. It's been a few months since I've seen any action, and these puppies are gonna wish they never stepped in this place."

Hector shrugged his shoulders and placed the blade back into his inside pocket. "Okay, if you're sure."

Forty-two-year old Kasper took off his Burberry cap that was saturated in sweat, and placed it carefully on a plastic orange seat at one of the tables. He pointed at one of the chairs, looked at the red-cap-wearing forty-six-year-old Hector Jones, and motioned with his head to place the chair in the middle of the room as if they had done this before.

"I can't do it if I'm being watched!" Kasper bellowed over to Paul Parker and Jack Slade, who gazed hypnotically at the two men, wondering if this was just one sick joke.

Surely in this world now, the main aim was to survive, not to rape! But these men seemed to have got their priorities all wrong, and the lack of brain cells that they probably had, compared to the average human, didn't help matters.

Not wanting to feel the cold steel against their throats, Paul and Jack tried their best not to look and antagonise the men. They shuffled round so their heads were facing the wall.

Paul's wrists burned as he tried to free himself from the rope. It burned his skin every time he moved, but could feel the rope loosening. He looked over to Jack who stared into space, and seemed to have given up. It was almost as if he was ready to accept the physical abuse, then go back to the village hall, if they were allowed back.

Paul Parker, however, had other ideas.
Chapter Eighteen

Karen at last pulled the van up by the local chemist and could see the green cross outside the shop. She was on the outskirts of a residential area and could see down the straight road, that had woodland on either side, that there were at least twenty of the things, situated hundreds of yards away, but looked not to be a threat. She felt no panic on seeing the dead, and then entered the already opened chemist, and thought that it must have been broken into a few times over the last few days.

In a strange kind of way, it was almost as if she was desensitised by these creatures now. When she first saw a group of them, when she was at Milford in her jeep, she shuddered with fright before running them down. Now, even though it had only been a week, it was as if that it was accepted now that this was normal. This was the way life was going to be from now on.

She gently pushed open the chemist door and was careful not to upset the hanging glass from it. A couple of loose shards of glass fell as she opened the door to its fullest and she looked around, making sure the area was clear of danger. Once her eyes established that the area was clear, she relaxed and tried to look for things that would assist Pickle in his time of illness.

Man-flu, she jokingly thought.

She stepped over the reasonably, and surprisingly, clean area where the shelves were still up and the remaining products seem to be still in their correct positions, and went into the back room where chemists would normally go once the customer had handed in their prescription at the counter.

Karen was a big believer that flu and fevers were usually best to be ridden out; it was something that didn't have a cure. Plenty of fluids and plenty of rest is what Pickle needed. Nevertheless, she pulled out a carrier bag and popped in anything that could be of use for the future. She picked up some antiviral medications such as relenza and tamiflu, as well as an assortment of painkillers and medicines. A first aid kit was the last thing to be put in the fragile bag that was beginning to stretch because of the weight inside it, and she then made a conscious decision to leave.

She placed the bag on the passenger seat of the van, and went round the other side to start the engine. The beings from afar seemed a little closer last time she looked and she decided to go down that particular road to inspect how the small village, of name she didn't know, was coping. The van's engine roared as she slipped it into first and moved off without checking her blind spot.

As the van increased its momentum, with a mixture of the declining hill and Karen adding a little more gas, she could clearly see that this particular tiny village was awash with the creatures. Every street, every main road, and every private area—like the cemetery, a children's play park and a set of tennis courts—was populated with these things. There were a few on the main road, and if they weren't so spread out, she would have had to have hit the gas pedal to get herself through the masses of walking bodies, but it seemed reasonably easy, as she swerved by most of them. Only two bounced off the solid van.

As she got to the top of the main road, now exiting the small village, she decided to turn right and go the long way round, back to the house where Pickle was. She was now driving along a main road, surrounded by woodland, and she noticed that the further she progressed along the long, lonely main road away from the village, the less of them there seemed to be. She estimated that there must have been fifty of those things, and some appeared to be leaving the village.

But why were they leaving? Was there nothing left to eat?

She didn't have the answers, but felt a chill knowing that these things were slowly leaving. She was now only half a mile away from the village she had just left, and she thought to herself that the sooner Pickle gets over this illness, the better, because in a matter of days they may have to move once again.

The van continued to growl along the desolate road and she looked at the gauge seeing that the van was half-empty. She decided on no more ventures and headed towards Heath Hayes to the first house of the village.

How long would it be before those things got to Heath Hayes?

Pickle was in no fit state to be moved, but Karen had made the assumption that if there was a sighting of just a few of them, she would seriously consider thinking about moving out once again.

She wasn't sure Pickle would agree. Illness or no illness, Pickle had made it plainly obvious on a few occasions that he was sick of running, and announced that even if their new street was swarming with the things, they were still safe as long as they never got inside the house, and if they kept quiet and made no unnecessary noises, there was no reason why the creatures wouldn't eventually just shamble past the house and go on to the next village. A theory that he was still unsure of.

It appeared to Karen, that once a village was devoid of life, they seemed to leave like some of them did eventually in Rugeley when they headed towards Stile Cop on that fateful night.

Pickle's theory was that if he and Karen continued to run, they would eventually run out of petrol. He would rather be in a scenario of being surrounded by them in a barricaded house, rather than being on foot and running from swarms of them in the woods or the populated villages and towns of Staffordshire.

Karen remembered what Pickle had told her about parking up the van. He told her to back the van up onto the front garden of the establishment for a quicker escape, if need be. Before she had chance to do that, and before she had chance to enter the street that was the entrance to Heath Hayes and was now a hundred yards up ahead at the next turn off to the right, she could see a figure up ahead.

She panicked a little, as she thought that maybe this was already the start of the possible invasion, but the more she gained on the being, the more it seemed like it was of human kind. The man in front turned as if he had begun to hear the groan of the van's engine and began to wave both his arms, the way a stranded individual on a desert island would when seeing a boat pass by.

To his credit, he never jumped in the middle of the road as he waved his arms. He remained at the side whilst trying to flag the van down, giving Karen the option to drive past if that was the option she preferred. Impressed by the fact that the man kept to the side of the road, she decided to pick him up. She reduced the speed of the van and eventually made the vehicle come to a stop.

She wound the window down, to be stared at by a flustered and tired-looking man. He was bald, had a few days growth on his face, and was dressed in casual clothes. He beamed at the twenty-three-year-old former nurse; it was a welcoming and relieved smile, and she responded by doing the same.

"Where you headed?" she asked.

He replied, "I was just gonna try one of the houses for refuge." He pointed over to the village. The man glared at the van with confusion and then stared at Karen. He threw his hands in the air. "I'll go anywhere, away from those things. Where did you get this van?"

"Never mind. I got a place for now, a quiet street. I think most of the people have left, as there're hardly any cars there. Wanna jump in?"

"Really?" The man seemed amazed at the offer and never hesitated to open the passenger door. He made himself comfortable and looked at Karen Bradley with a thankful stare.

"I'm Karen."

He held out his hand. "George. George Jones." He looked around the inside of the vehicle, still baffled how a young woman was driving a prison van.
Chapter Nineteen

It took both of them to pick Gary up off of the floor and lean him over the table. The right side of his face was pressed against the cold table, with his wrists tied tightly. The leaning over the table was stretching and hurting his back, as well as his wrists. If his mouth wasn't taped over, he could have told them that he wasn't made of elastic.

He did try, but loud muffles to Kasper and Hector sounded like cries of protest, and he was constantly punched on the back by an irate Kasper who told him on three occasions to shut the fuck up.

Paul and Jack remained huddled in the corner of the canteen. Jack was facing away, but Paul couldn't help himself, despite the scolding he got from Kasper earlier about not being able to perform in front of an audience.

Paul Parker was leaning against the wall and sneaked a look at the men, who had now taken down Gary's trousers. Paul still writhed and twisted his joints to be free from the rope, despite feeling like his wrists were on fire, and even more motivation and adrenaline surged through him as he witnessed Kasper dropping his own trousers and squeezing the jelly onto his hands. Paul had to look away when Kasper dropped his briefs and knew that he had entered Gary, from the awful, distressed, muffled cries from his friend.

Paul peeped for a second and could see that both Kasper and Hector were engrossed in the event. Paul thought it was strange that Kasper announced previously that he didn't want an audience, but was quite willing for Hector to witness the savage maltreatment. Maybe they had done this before.

As Paul desperately tried to untangle himself, he could hear over the muffled cries of Gary Jenson, Jack, humming loudly to himself. It seemed to be a dismal attempt to drown out Gary's cries for help. As Gary moaned in fear and pain with each hard pounding he took, Paul winced and couldn't imagine how painful and degrading the action must have been, and knew if he didn't hurry up, he would soon get to know for himself how it would feel.

At last the rope came free, and Paul nervously looked over to the two men and placed the rope over his wrists to make it look like he was still tied, as he was sure that he didn't have time to tackle his ankles as it looked like Hector was coming over.

The red-cap-wearing forty-six-year-old vagrant, walked past the table where Gary was being abused and asked Kasper if he was nearly finished. Kasper nodded his head and Hector took out his blade and drew it across Gary's throat as Kasper was finishing himself off with frantic and rapid thrusts.

Paul's eyes widened as he saw Gary slump on the table, with his neck oozing out the dark red liquid. He took a look at Jack who was still facing the wall and had no idea what was happening. As far as Jack was concerned, Gary's torment was over and he himself was seconds away from being picked up and placed over the same table. He stared at the wall he was facing, and continued to sing like a mental patient and rocked back and forth. Jack couldn't see that Gary was dead; he couldn't see that his carotid artery had emptied itself across the table, and he couldn't see that Hector was now walking over, grabbing his crotch, ready for his turn.

Hector walked over with his shotgun, and turned it around with it standing, the barrel facing the ceiling, and using it as support as he knelt down next to a frightened Jack. He took out his knife and pressed it against Jack's throat, who in return, shuddered with fright, which was just the reaction Hector wanted to enhance his power.

"Right, little puppy," he snarled quietly. "You're up next."

Paul's eyes never left Hector's face and could see in the corner of his eye, a very satisfied Kasper doing his trousers up and fumbling for his belt.

It's now or never.

Paul suddenly grabbed the knife off of Hector and the vagrant cried out in surprise, dropping his shotgun and falling to the floor. Paul had stabbed him once in the leg and his ears were pierced by Hector's awful screaming. With the knife still embedded into the leg, Paul quickly went over to pick up the shotgun that Hector had dropped once he had stabbed him.

During this time, a panic-stricken Kasper Andrews ran, and as soon as Paul released a cartridge into the ceiling, the running Kasper ducked, as he didn't know if the gun was aimed at him. He continued to run away from the canteen with no weapon, leaving his own gun leaning against the staff room door.

Jack slowly came out of his self-hypnosis and at last spoke. The whole incident, from Hector being stabbed to Kasper running away, was over within five seconds.

"What's going on?" Jack looked like he had just woken up from a dream, a nightmare even.

Paul pointed over to Gary's body that was half-slumped over the table. "That's what's going on."

Jack shifted round using his behind and cried out when he saw his friend drenched in his own blood. If he could place his hands in shock over his mouth, he would have done. As Hector writhed around in panic and desperately tried to get to his feet, Paul, still sitting on the floor as his ankles were still tied together, leaned over him and coldly pulled out the blade, forcing the man to release a shriek. He used the bloodied knife to cut the rope tied to his ankles, stood to his feet, and picked the shotgun up. He used the butt by bringing it down onto the middle of Hector's back who fell flat to the floor with a defeated groan. He put the shotgun back onto the floor, and turned to Jack and began cutting him free.

Jack slowly stood to his feet; his eyes never leaving Gary's fresh corpse, and Paul picked up Hector's shotgun and walked over to the other one leaning against the wall. He put Hector's weapon under his arm as he snapped open Kasper's and shook his head in anger. He then looked outside, out the canteen window that looked out onto the car park, to see that Kasper had gained two hundred yards on them and was still going at lightning pace. There was no chance they could catch up with him now.

"What is it?" Jack asked in a daze.

"It's not even loaded! That Hector was the only one that had a loaded gun. If we had known..." Paul paused and refused to beat himself up. As far as he was concerned, he had two guns pointing at him. How was he to know only one of those guns were a threat? "They killed some of those creatures in the car park. Kasper must have run out of cartridges."

"What's the point of walking round with an empty shotgun?" Jack quizzed, still numb from the shock.

"To use on people like us," Paul snapped. "No wonder they were hiding in here, they hardly had any ammunition left."

Jack walked over to Gary's lifeless body and went to touch him on the shoulder; both men jumped once the body slipped off the table and hit the floor with a dull thump.

"What's the group going to say?" Paul snapped. "We're supposed to be hiding from these things, and it's our own kind that are killing us."

Jack knelt down and touched Gary's right cheek—the only part of his face that wasn't covered in blood—and remembered how he took him in and gave him a place to stay. It was only days ago, and now he was dead. It was meeting up with Gary that led him to Thomas, and he would never forget that.

Jack looked for a momentum off Gary that he could give to Jemma, like a ring or a necklace, but there was nothing he could take.

Tears were released by Jack for a man he had only known for a week; but it was a man that was responsible for the finding of his son. "What are we gonna do about Gary's body?"

"We'll come back for him," Paul said. "I think we should get back to the group as soon as possible. We've been away for ages. They're probably wondering where the hell we are."

Jack looked at a slumped Hector who moaned and wriggled on the floor; the injury to his back was preventing him from getting to his feet as well as the stab wound to his leg. "What are we gonna do with him? Do you think you've crippled him?"

Paul never answered Jack's first question with words, and as for the second, he didn't care whether he had crippled him or not. Instead, Paul Parker walked over with the shotgun; he checked the gun to confirm that there was one cartridge left. He snapped it back shut, and took a sad look at Gary's body. Nobody deserved that kind of treatment. He then scowled back at the groaning Hector.

"We'll leave him here," Paul answered eventually. "The Lurkers can have him."

He then emptied the last cartridge into the back of Hector's legs, and dropped the gun onto the floor with a strident clatter. The pellets scalded the flesh of the forty-six-year-old, and more. It felt like the back of his legs had been slashed with a hundred razor blades as the burning was forcing him to lose consciousness and to also fill his shorts.

Jack and Paul both walked out, dazed and scared, their ears were ringing from the aftermath of the blast and the screaming coming from the canteen. Once they were outside, they were greeted with a deathly silence, apart from the ringing. Wordlessly, they got into their cars, leaving the silver Mazda that Gary had arrived in, and left to get back to the village hall.

They had some explaining to do.
Chapter Twenty

The van reversed back onto the front garden, and Karen pulled up the parking brake once it came to a stop. Both Karen and her new friend, George Jones, looked around the main road to see that all the houses, gardens, and the huge street itself, was still barren.

"Wow," George sniffed. "There's nobody here."

"Not for now."

Karen opened the door and jumped out of the vehicle with the bag of supplies; George followed suit. They both met each other round the back of the van and George glared up at the sun that furiously beamed down.

George sighed, "It won't be like this forever. They'll come eventually, I'm sure of it."

"I know." Karen didn't appreciate George's negative, yet, realistic comment. She pulled up her T-shirt to reveal a Browning pistol that was slotted in the side of her jeans. "But I'll be ready for them."

George gasped and gave off a wry smile; he was in good company. "So let's meet this friend of yours."

"Later. He's ill."

Karen took the bag of supplies and passed them to George. She then took out her keys and looked behind her before she opened the front door; a slight twitch of a curtain could be seen over the road, four doors down.

Maybe they weren't completely alone, she thought. Although the lack of cars in the driveways suggested that most of the residents in that part of the area, at least, were absent, she was sure that they must be a handful of people who decided to hide and barricade themselves in.

They both entered the house, with George carrying the carrier bag of medicines, and went into the living room. Both sat on the couch with a groan, as if they had just come back from work, as they would after a normal day, during a normal week ... living in a normal world. Those days were gone.

George asked, "Electricity still working?"

Karen nodded her head. "For now."

"Tea?"

Karen nodded again, and sorted through the bag and pulled out a box of pills. She waved them at George and said, "I gonna go up and give him these. You two can meet once he's back on his feet again."

"Is he badly ill?"

"Just a fever, nothing life-threatening."

"Need water for this guy?" George hovered at the entrance of the kitchen waiting for an answer, as he was about to go in and put the kettle on to make tea.

"Nah; should be a bottle on the bedroom side-table. Be back in a mo; make yourself ... well, you know."

Karen galloped upstairs and walked into the bedroom to see an ashen-coloured Pickle lying in his bed. He didn't look well at all. The fever, or whatever it was, was at its peak, and Karen quickly pulled out a strip of tablets, took two out and looked over to the bottle of water. She sighed, as he had hardly touched any. Maybe he had been sleeping all this time.

She nudged him slightly, and his eyes widened immediately. "What?"

Karen smiled affectionately. "Got some stuff for you to take."

Pickle attempted to sit up, but it was a struggle. As soon as his head went further than six inches off the pillow, his head felt heavy and it pounded hard like a bad hangover. His head immediately lowered back down and he placed his shaking hand on his roasting head. "What's wrong with me?"

"It's just a fever; I had the same thing a couple of months ago. I was in bed for two days before I could get up."

Karen could see the concern scrawled on his face, gave him a sympathetic smirk, and tried to put his mind at ease. "It has nothing to do with what's happening out there."

"Are yer sure?"

"Yes, I'm a nurse, remember?"

"I know, but what do yer nurses know? All yer do is make beds and wipe old men's arses all day."

"How dare you, you cheeky pig," she half-laughed and half-gasped when Pickle made his tongue-in-cheek remark. "Don't forget, I'm carrying a gun."

Pickle smiled and responded by waggling his right hand under the sheet, as if to say, so am I. She smirked back, forgetting she had gave him the other Browning before she left.

She helped to lift his head up and gave him the two pills to swallow, followed by a gulp of water that nearly choked him.

"What are those pills, anyway?" he quizzed.

"They'll help you grow some balls," she laughed.

"No, seriously." Pickle's eyes grew heavier by the second.

"Cyanide," she replied with a smile. "Now you get better; we have a guest downstairs."

Pickle had drifted off, and never asked who the guest was.

Karen took a sympathetic look at Pickle, and knew that with the world in the shit, no proper sanitation, lack of clean water, and no decent healthy diet because of lack of food, humans' health was going to diminish as the months and years progressed. With the medication supplies struggling as well, old time diseases such as diphtheria, smallpox, cholera and polio could eventually make a comeback.

She walked to the bathroom to get a flannel that was sitting on the sink. She ran the cold water and placed the purple flannel underneath it. She squeezed it and rung out most of the cold water that had been soaked up and headed back to the bedroom. She stood over Pickle and carefully placed the cold, soaked material on his forehead in a desperate effort to cool his elevating body temperature. She took one last sympathetic look at the dishevelled man. He was the shadow of the man that she first met in the woods, and hoped he'd be on his feet within the next day or so.

She left the bedroom and closed the door quietly behind her. She walked across the landing and headed for the top of the stairs and halted in her tracks; she brought her nose up and sniffed like a rat. She then looked up to the hatch leading to the attic. She sighed, knowing that the family were going to have to get moved and buried before they eventually stunk the house out.

She trudged down the stairs and decided to have a relaxing cup of tea and get to know her new male friend, before lulling him into a false sense of security that everything was rosy in the house, and then announcing that there was a dead family, including two young girls, in the attic, and she needed help removing them. She decided to have the tea first, before delivering her potentially surprising announcement.

She entered the living room, and was greeted with a smiling George Jones who stood holding two steaming hot cups of tea. She beamed back and thought for a second, despite his rugged looks, he was reasonably attractive. She then became sad and overcome with guilt. Her fiancé, Gary, had only been dead over a week. But she wasn't flirting; she just noticed that he was an attractive man, that's all. Was that so wrong?

Karen had only just realised it was Sunday, as it was hard to keep track of the days since the breakout had occurred.

It was only a week ago, but it seemed so long since she left her street in her Cherokee Jeep, wondering what the hell was going on. It was only a week ago since she was carjacked and was running for her life. It was only a week ago since she escaped from those things by climbing into Stile Cop's cemetery and then running into the woods.

She then thought about the word Snatchers, and where she first heard it, which led her to think about Oliver Bellshaw. A shiver ran down her spine when she thought about him. What a creep he was.
Chapter Twenty One

The cars moved nonchalantly through the industrial estate and they could both see to their left, where the small town of Handsacre was situated, at least fifty of the things walking away from the village and heading forwards, their way. They weren't too far away and Paul deliberated that it might prove that the journey back, to eventually retrieve Gary's body, might be a tad difficult, if not impossible, if the things were still around.

But as far as the ghouls were concerned, what was going to be their next destination? Their next village or town?

Paul was in front and Jack was twenty yards behind in his vehicle, but Jack had glared at the things to his left for a couple of seconds too long and ended up driving off the road. His body shook in a panic and his car rolled harmlessly into a ditch—something he had done before only a week ago.

Paul pulled up Lee Hayward's Cherokee Jeep by the side of the road, and jumped out, shaking his head. He was clearly angry at Jack's lack of concentration, but pitied him when he saw the forty-year-old with his head against the steering wheel, crying.

Paul stopped in his tracks, standing between the Jeep and Jack's vehicle. He wasn't sure if Jack was crying because of what had just happened to Gary, a guy he seemed to be reasonably close to despite only knowing each other for a week, or whether it was the situation as a whole that was affecting him.

Paul lowered his head with sympathy, smacked his lips together, and strolled towards the car that was clearly in there for good. The car was almost on its side, with the two wheels on the right side off the ground by at least a metre. They needed a tow truck. With the car ditched, it also meant that another load of food had been unnecessarily abandoned. With the things only hundreds of yards away, it appeared that coming back for the food and back for Gary's body was also going to be nothing short of a suicide mission.

Knowing that time wasn't on their side, Paul opened the car door and offered Jack his hand. It was a struggle to pull the man out of the leaning car, but they managed it in the end. Paul affectionately placed his arm around the distraught Jack Slade, and they both slowly walked to the Cherokee Jeep.

Without uttering a word to one another, Paul and Jack sat in the front of the jeep. Paul rubbed his hands together and was never really any good with this kind of thing. Comforting another emotional male was something he had very little experience of, and wasn't sure he wanted to start now.

"You okay?" Paul asked. It was all he could think of to say. Of course he wasn't okay! A friend of his had just been raped and killed like a pig in a slaughterhouse, and he was very nearly raped himself, and was now living in a world he was unfamiliar with.

"You know what?" Jack sniffed and wiped his eyes with his forearm. "If you hadn't have got yourself free...what happened to Gary, would have happened to me."

Paul nodded his head in agreement. He already knew this. It was the reason why he so desperately tried to free himself, and why both of his wrists looked like they had been burnt with a hot rod. The pain was terrible, but he was trying to ignore it.

Jack continued, "And all I could do was sit there in shock. It just shocked me the way a human could treat another human..." he paused. "You see these things, these Lurkers, as you call them, I've killed some. I'm not a coward, or at least I didn't think I was. But I just sat there and..."

"Stop beating yourself up about Gary," Paul interjected. "It's not your fault, or mine."

"I remember Gary mentioning what could happen, once the surviving human race became desperate. Killing each other for food, gas. It's starting already, isn't it?"

"That wasn't for survival!" Paul exclaimed. "That was for sick pleasure, that's all. They were taking advantage of a lawless world. Those fuckers have probably spent their lives in and out of jail, but now there's no deterrent."

"What's happening? Where is everybody? Are we getting help from overseas?"

"Nobody knows anything anymore," Paul sighed, and started the engine once he saw the first couple of creatures appear in his rear view mirror. The beings that had distracted Jack, that had caused him to crash, were now gaining ground and heading slowly towards the jeep.

Paul looked in the rear view mirror once again, and wasn't in so much of a rush to get going, as they were still a hundred yards away. What did worry him, however, was where those things were going, and how long would the village hall be safe for, because these things never seemed to stay in the same area once human life had evaporated.

"What about your family? You given up hope?" Jack was beginning to compose himself.

Paul shrugged half-heartedly. "I woke up to find a living room full of these fuckers, and Jocelyn and my two-year-old daughter were no longer there. I don't know where they are, or whether they're alive."

"You haven't given up hope, though?"

Paul shook his head. "I'm convinced they're still out there somewhere. You found Thomas, didn't you?"

Jack smiled warmly, and his tears seemed to be subsiding.

"We can talk about it once we get back to the hall." Paul slipped the jeep into first and pulled away.

"What are we gonna tell Jemma...you know, about Gary?"

Paul shrugged his shoulders; the jeep took a sharp right bend at thirty. Despite Paul showing Jack sympathy, Jack had a feeling that Paul was still a little pissed off that they had to leave a car full of food behind. Feeding over a dozen people was no easy task.

Paul finally answered Jack Slade's query about what to tell Jemma once they arrived back at the village hall. "The truth."
Chapter Twenty Two

It was traumatic for Karen, having to deal with the family in the attic, but it had to be done, as they needed a dignified burial, and rotting away up there was no good for them or the new residents that were planning on living there for a while.

Once she gently broke the news to her new guest that a removal of a family needed to take place, George didn't seem too flustered or shocked about what he was asked to do. Karen was surprised by his reaction, but then again, she didn't know his story and how he had managed to reach the outskirts of the village.

Maybe he had gone through hell—like everybody else, and nothing shocked him anymore. The new world had quickly desensitised Karen from the Snatchers—from violence itself, and she assumed that George Jones was made of the same stuff, or had been moulded into the same kind of character she had turned into. It was now the kind of world that it either makes you or breaks you.

George Jones insisted on digging the grave in the back garden, but informed Karen that if he saw just one of those things, he was going back inside as he was unarmed. Karen got the impression that he was hinting for her weapon, but nobody was having that. It was a gift from Pickle, and she decided to withhold information about there being a shotgun and another Browning—which Pickle had—in the main bedroom. She didn't know why she did this. Maybe a precautionary measure, as she didn't know the man and only knew his name.

Karen decided after the burial to hide the shotgun that sat under Pickle's bed in the bedroom cupboard for now, as she didn't know George properly, yet. She did trust him and liked him, but she had decided to be over-cautious with this one after getting burnt with Oliver Bellshaw a week ago.

They spoke very little whilst they dug, and Karen had come to the conclusion that George wasn't the talkative type. George and Karen both agreed that one large grave would suit both of them and the deceased family. They came to the conclusion that one big grave wouldn't be as time consuming and exhausting than digging four individual graves, and it would also be fitting if all four were buried together. They pretty much died together as a family, and now they were being laid to rest together as a family.

The exhausting part had been achieved, by moving the mum and the dad first. George had struggled, especially with the deceased male, but using both he and Karen's strength, they had managed to carry out the bodies, despite the awkwardness of the rigor mortis.

Their final trip to the attic was the removal of the two girls.

They moved them out, one by one. Karen refused to look at their faces, and once she was outside she gently and carefully placed them on top of each parent who were lying next to each other. George had done a good job of making the solitary grave wide enough for the parents to be placed side-by-side, as dumping each body on top of one another seemed a little callous and disrespectful.

Once each girl was placed on one of their parents of the shallow grave that was three feet in depth, George looked at Karen as if he didn't know what to do next, but Karen wordlessly grabbed the shovel they had raided from the family's shed, and began moving the dug-up soil onto the dead family.

Karen could feel her emotions getting carried away and could feel the lump in her throat and the water filling in her eye sockets. She took a quick peep at George, who didn't seem to be moved by the incident, and felt that his behaviour was a little odd, as well as cold. She was intrigued to find out more about him, and told herself that was exactly what she was going to do once she had seen to Pickle and settled down for the night.

It was an arduous task, especially as they were both exhausted from removing the bodies. George, seeing that Karen was physically struggling, took the shovel off of her and decided to finish the job off. George had become more puffy and stopped a few times to wipe his brow and have a rest, which was understandable as he dug the grave himself.

Karen looked up at the darkened sky and estimated that there were a few hours of daylight left. As George patted the soil with the back of the shovel, Karen looked around the garden and over to the other gardens. It literally looked like the whole village had fled.

She was aware, from what she saw from over the road earlier, that a handful of people might be present, but she didn't understand how they never came out of their premises. The streets were empty, and there was no sign of any of those things lurking about ... not yet. Was there something else the remaining people were afraid of?

Karen Bradley wanted to go over the road and see if there were any survivors, but her head was telling her that if she did this, she would have extra mouths to feed as well as the responsibility of looking after impossible and hysterical minors. She felt terrible that there could be people in their houses, too frightened to go out, but she wanted to survive, and being close to too many people, only to watch them eventually die, would soften her hard exterior and make her weaker.

If she wanted to survive, she couldn't afford to be weak.

Once they were both satisfied that the grave had been patted and looked reasonably smooth, apart from the odd footprint from George and Karen, they both took their sweat-stained backs into the house and opted for a shower. She thought she might as well shower whenever she could, as eventually the national grid was going to die, and she'd be back to bathing in cold streams. This could be her last.

Karen went first, as George patiently stood in the kitchen, draining the remainder of the blackcurrant juice he got from the fridge. He quickly wiped his face with his forearm, stopping the solitary trickle from running off his face and landing onto his black T-shirt. He looked around and smiled to himself; he had done well. He was aware that most people hadn't survived even the first week, and wondered what would come next.

He liked Karen; how could he not after giving him a ride? He hadn't met the other member of the household, but wasn't really that bothered so long as he was still breathing, that's all that mattered. He looked around the house and was sure that this time next month he would be somewhere else, as the chances of staying in the house and not coming to contact with any of the creatures looked pretty remote.

According to the radio report he had heard a few days ago, it seemed that the British public, apart from pockets of London, were left fending for themselves. He wondered about trying to get to the Capital, but thought that by now every man and his dog would be trying to get there. It seemed one of the few places in the UK that had quarantined areas for the time being, but most other experts were telling people from the city to leave, so he didn't know what to think.

He released a muffled belch and sighed to himself, "This'll do for now."
Chapter Twenty Three

The jeep whizzed by the last bend; whilst on the bend, both men knew the village hall was only a matter of seconds away. As the view of the hall materialised, Paul could see that there was nobody on guard; he immediately knew there was something wrong, as there was something in the back of his mind, niggling him. Even before he pulled the jeep up, he could feel Jack staring at him, wondering what was happening.

Paul dropped a gear and eased off the gas; the vehicle eventually came to a halt, right next to the entrance of the hall. The door was wide open. Jack and Paul looked at one another, and Jack jumped out and ran into the hall without talking with Paul. Jack had a son he was concerned about and couldn't care less if there was a hundred of those things in there; he would try and fight them off if he had to, as Thomas' safety was his only concern.

Paul struggled to get out of the jeep, and once he managed to open the driver's side of the door, Jack had returned from the hall and stood outside by the entrance in tears.

"What is it?" Paul quizzed, expecting to find a load of bodies and witnessing the aftermath of a brutal and bloody massacre.

"There's no one here; it's empty."

"What?"

Paul and Jack both ran into the entrance of the hall and saw the main hall had its usual untidy and scattered clothes and sleeping bags, but there were no people present.

"Let's try the back of the hall," Paul suggested.

Both men walked through the main hall, down a corridor and headed for the back door that led into the woods, where they would sometimes make a small fire and have their dinner. They both gazed at one another as they saw the door already slightly opened, but there was no sound of humans behind it; the omens weren't good.

Both men stopped walking once they reached the opened door, and hesitated on opening it further. Paul swallowed and took a step forward, held out his hand and gently pushed the door fully ajar. The old wooden door cried open, because of the old rusty hinges that were attached to it, and both men peered outside, looking into the trees.

They couldn't see any members of their group, and it appeared that they had fled, and the reason for their fleeing was self-evident to both men. Both Jack and Paul could see, in the distance, eight beings stumbling around the woodlands. Their backs were against the men as if they were heading towards where the group might have fled. The only comfort both of the men had was that there was no sign of a body or any blood on the floor, informing them that the group had ran, but thankfully hadn't received any injuries or were killed in the process.

The two men were surprisingly calm as their numbed brains tried to soak up the information.

Jack sighed, "We're gonna have to find them. It's gonna be dark soon."

Paul nodded in agreement. "We'll go now, but as soon as it gets dark, we'll come back to the village hall. We'll just walk in a straight line and look to either side of us in the trees. If we wander too far, we'll get lost in the woods and never make it back to the hall."

Jack never agreed to Paul's plan with a verbal response, but made a gesture with one nod of the head that Paul didn't see.

Paul pulled out two of his homemade spears that were leaning against the wall of the building, and handed one to Jack. Without uttering a word, both men walked on, bypassed the smouldering campfire where they would normally sit and get warm, drink, have chats and eat while the place was under guard, and walked slowly through the long, dry bracken. The plantation stroked their knees as they made their quiet, long strides, and were aware that there were eight of the things not so far away from them. It halted their progression, but spear or no spear, Paul felt that if they turned around and decided to attack, the sheer numbers would overwhelm them.

Paul and Jack were spaced out ten feet away from each other, but their progression was ponderous and frustrating to Jack Slade, and on two occasions Paul had to wave at him furiously, telling Jack that he was going too fast and was getting too close to the things. Paul could understand Jack's dilemma, as he had a son to think about, but there didn't seem to be any point in putting themselves in danger as well. Paul looked to the darkening sky and released a loud sigh of frustration, and then he stopped walking once he came to a decision.

"This is hopeless," Paul spoke up. "It'll be dark soon. Let's try in the morning."

"You do what you want," Jack snapped. "I need to find my boy. I've already lost him once."

Paul turned round and began walking back towards the village hall, his head lowered, and his overall body language admitting defeat, for the night at least.

"What are you doing?" Jack scolded in a strident whisper. "Paul!"

Paul Parker at last spoke as he continued to walk. "It's gonna be dark soon. You go if you want, but you won't be coming back. I need to stay alive for my family."

Paul could hear the hurried feet hurtling towards him and felt Jack's hand grab his shoulder and attempted to turn him around. Paul helped matters by swivelling around to face him and allowed Jack to have his rant.

Jack snarled, "What do you think you're doing? My son's out there."

"We're better off waiting till the next light." Paul looked at the distraught father. "He's out there with his mother, either hiding in a place they've found, or somewhere in the woods."

"More reason we should go."

"If we go out there now, it'll be suicide."

Jack looked frightened, but simultaneously determined. "I can't just stay here, knowing that he's out there."

"Fine, but I'm not going with you. Not tonight."

"Fine."

Jack trudged off and headed the way they were originally going. All Paul could do was stand and watch the man walk off into the unknown, maybe to his eventual death.

Paul shook his head, muttered an expletive under his breath about the determined individual, but he did understand why he was doing it. If it were his Hannah, he would probably have done the same. At least Jack had a rough idea where his son could be, Paul, on the other hand, had no clue where his wife, Jocelyn, and his two-year-old daughter, Hannah, were. All he could do was hope for the best and keep his fingers crossed.

He sighed, and took a gawp at Jack one last time, who only had one of Paul's homemade spears for protection, and turned around to walk back into the hall. He had a car load of food to empty and store away, and after securing the hall, all he had to look forward to was a night of being locked in the place, alone, hoping that there would be no disturbances, as well as an old Shaun Hutson book for comfort.

It was going to be a long night.

Once Paul got back into the village hall, he emptied the car and locked the place up. He knew that all it took was for Jack, or for any other member, to rattle the door and he could open the door within seconds. He didn't feel guilty about locking the door and leaving Jack to his own devices. That was his choice. He was more worried about the rest of the group.

He opened the book and began reading the paperback that he had read three times before. It was either that or sing to himself, but the words from the book weren't being taken in. His worry for the people he had known for days, especially for the children, Thomas and Yoler, were too distracting. He lay back and placed the book on the floor and waited for the door to be knocked. He didn't know how long it would take, but as soon as darkness grew, he was certain that common sense would prevail with Jack Slade.

He'll come back, Paul thought. Unless something gets him first.

Let's hope not.
Chapter Twenty Four

Both Karen Bradley and George Jones took a seat on the leather couch with the curtains drawn. They were almost sitting in silence and both noticed that the contrast from outside was dimming by the minute, making the living room darker.

"Should we put a light on?" George queried.

Karen shook her head. "There're a couple of candles in that drawer you can use."

George stood to his feet and went into the kitchen, only to come out a few seconds later. After searching through a drawer for a lighter, he lit both candles, and went over towards the television.

"Don't bother," Karen snapped. "It ain't working."

She looked at George; he had a big frame and looked like he worked out like Pickle used to. She noticed tattoos on his arms. It looked like gang tattoos, but there was one on his forearm that stood out from the rest of the ink designs. It was a black and blue nautical star on his right forearm, but she didn't ask him about its relevance. "Why don't you sit down," she suggested. "You can tell me about yourself."

George shrugged his shoulders. "There ain't much to tell, really."

He slowly sat next to Karen and gently drummed his knees with the palm of his hands; he seemed anxious. He could feel Karen's stare urging him to open up a little to her, and as if he knew why she was staring at him, he cleared his throat and said, "In short," he began. "I used to be a labourer, mainly working in Uttoxeter. I worked for various companies, basically moved around from job-to-job. I'm not married, I never have been. Like most people, I woke up one morning and found the world a different place. I thought the woods was a safe place to go, but I don't think anywhere is."

"It's probably safer than any city right now, but you're right, nowhere is safe."

George lowered his head and placed it into his cupped hands. He rubbed the hands up and down his worn out face, and once he released his hands and rested them on his thighs, Karen could see that he needed a good night's sleep. She decided to suggest it, as he was clearly not in a conversational mood, at least, he wasn't prepared to reveal his life and his experiences over the last week. She put it down to tiredness.

Jones said, "You never said where you managed to get that van from."

Karen smiled. "No, I didn't."

"You don't give too much away."

"Look who's talking."

They both sat in silence, supping on their hot beverages. George got back to his feet, which annoyed Karen. He was like a jack in the box.

With the cup in his hand, he walked towards the curtains and peered out into the murky street.

"Anything?" Karen called out.

He shook his head without turning to face her, and continued to gawp out for a solid minute. With his grey joggies and his black T-shirt, Karen thought that the pair of them looked like assassins as she looked at the dark clothing. She was also wearing a black T-shirt and dark blue jeans. Her shoes had been replaced with trainers she had found upstairs, as this wasn't the kind of world to be walking around in shoes with thin soles.

Sitting in the silence, she sat back and rested her head against the couch. Her head swirled with images of how her short life had so far panned out. She had been through a lot at the mere age of twenty-three, but she felt a lot older.

Despite the craziness of the last week, to her, each day dragged its heels. Last weekend seemed like an age ago and couldn't believe that only a week ago she was working in the hospital where people were being brought in with bites, and where she was nearly attacked herself. She thought about her workmates who she had left behind to go home.

Were they still alive? Probably not.

Without facing Karen, George remained transfixed on the darkened road of the street. The streetlights were refusing to come on. "I wonder when all this chaos is gonna finish?"

"What are we gonna do when it does?" Karen asked a question of her own.

George turned around and moved away from the window. "If it's global, I see eventually a modern version of the medieval era, kind of like the Middle Ages, but with guns and science. Not necessarily castles and moats and such, but walled colonies, the return of functional mechanical arts like blacksmiths, farriers, horses instead of cars, stuff like that."

"You think?" By the tone of Karen's voice, it was apparent she disagreed with George's statement.

"These creatures might be here for a little while, but eventually they'll die out, probably before we've managed to suppress the uprising, and we'll be back to a more or less pre-industrial society and have to rebuild practically everything to regain some semblance of our way of life today."

"I think you underestimate humans," Karen said with confidence. "I see a slight step back, but we have the ability to get back on track fairly quickly with the right survivors. I expect most of the major structures to still be intact, so getting power and water up shouldn't be nearly as bad as starting from scratch."

"I wish I had your confidence."

"I do agree that they'll all die off eventually. These things don't necessarily have to eat to survive, since they're just reanimated corpses. The whole eating-people is just an extension of the base instincts that are left in their brains. Since they're just dead bodies, eventually they'll all decay into nothing. We're better off staying indoors for as long as possible. Trust me."

"And what happens if this is just a UK problem? What happens then? Do the powers that be, in their paranoia, decide that it'd be better to nuke this problematic island?"

"It could be a global thing." Karen shrugged her shoulders, unsure whether it was or not. Nobody knew. "Some sources reckon it started in this country, but with the channel tunnel and aviation, I can't see it being contained in just one country, not if they've been covering it up for weeks."

"Maybe the winter will kill these things off."

"Maybe. It might kill us off first, though."

The short conversation came to an end when Jones released a strident yawn. Karen knew how he felt. It appeared that the grave digging earlier and the removal of the bodies had worn the pair of them out, although Karen did little compared to George Jones.

Karen pulled out her Browning that was digging into her side and placed it on the table. She could see George's eyes glaring at the weapon, but she refrained from being paranoid about his behaviour. It was probably the first time he had seen a real live gun before, she thought, if he had spent most of his working life as a labourer. A week ago she hadn't even held one before herself.

Even though it had been a while since it was fired, she excused herself and went into one of the spare bedrooms and decided to spend the evening taking the gun apart and cleaning it, as she didn't know the next time she was going to use it, and the next time she would have time to clean it thoroughly. She was desperate to go somewhere and practice, as her shooting was awful. If the creatures were more than ten or fifteen yards away, she struggled, as proved at the crossroads at that awful episode when it was dawn at Stile Cop, when they were all attacked.

Granted, Pickle had always said to only use the gun if they get too close and they can't be outran, but it still frustrated her that she couldn't shoot properly, despite the fact, by trade, she was a nurse and only had the weapon in her grasp for a few days. She felt confident that the Stile Cop incident was something that might never occur again, being surrounded like that by the things that were in their hundreds, but it would have added to her confidence if she could shoot straight. Pickle was reluctant for her to practice for two reasons: One: the noise. And two: it would be a waste of bullets. The guns were only to be used in a time of desperation.

Karen hoped that desperation would never rear its ugly head again, but she couldn't be entirely sure.

She was convinced that her 'journey' was still in its infancy.
Chapter Twenty Five

Only twenty minutes after walking away from the village hall, Jack Slade was already thinking that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. There were eight beings shambling in front of him. He remained at least fifty yards away from the last one, but felt he could have made good ground if he ran around them and continued with his progression by technically being in front. But there was a danger of bumping into more of them up ahead, and with the other eight behind, he would be more or less surrounded.

He looked up at the violet sky and sighed hard with impatience. Paul was right. This was suicide, and darkness was only an hour away.

What was he thinking?

He ached to see his son, but was sure that if they hadn't found refuge in sheltered accommodation, they would still be safe, hiding somewhere. He trusted Kerry, and had come to the conclusion that he would be better off trying to get back to the village hall where Paul was, getting a good night's sleep, and search for his son where there was less danger, more light, and with refreshed heads. Kerry had managed to keep Thomas safe when the outbreak started, so it wasn't that he didn't trust her. What bothered Jack was that he had already lost Thomas once when he travelled down to Rugeley, and never thought he could lose him again.

He was ready to turn back.

With crestfallen feet, Jack stopped in his tracks; he was tired and browbeaten that he had found his son and had lost him in the same week. He cursed his bad luck, as for days there had been no sign of any of the creatures since his short stay at the village hall. And then suddenly, the moment he leaves them for the first time, the group and his son had fled with fear from, what appeared to be, the presence of the creatures, possibly the same eight that were ahead of him.

He continued to gaze forwards, and then a wave of guilt crept upon him and he shook his head. Jack thought about Gary, and the way he died ... the way he was murdered. For a few minutes, Gary had never entered Jack's head and he had only been dead for an hour or so. It was the same with everything else. Jack had probably lost cousins, uncles, aunties, and he had hardly gave them a second thought, simply because there was too much going on and the focal point for him was Thomas. No one else was on his list of priorities, not even Kerry. It was just Thomas, and he had now lost him again. He had made a conscious decision that once he found him for a second time, he was never going to leave his side, ever.

Snapping out of his self-hypnosis, Jack's rainy, tired eyes had blurred his vision. He gawped ahead and could see the silhouettes of only two of the beings as the rest had been swallowed up by the sneaky darkness as they limped away in the distance. He cursed himself as he looked around, and exhaled with relief that there was nothing behind him. It wasn't the best idea to be standing in a darkened wood in the kind of world that he was living in now. It had been a strange week and Jack had even got used to being in the presence of these things. Of course, they frightened the hell out of him, especially when they were in numbers, and he had witnessed—like everybody else—some horrific things, but Gary's demise had been the worst, and that had been the act of human savagery. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if the outbreak hadn't occurred. But it was human savagery all the same.

Although Jack was distraught of Thomas' disappearance, his attitude was surprisingly positive, as he was certain that Kerry and Thomas, at least, were safe and hidden somewhere. He couldn't explain it, but he was sure that they were okay. It must have been the same feeling Paul had.

Paul Parker was missing his family, but he was surprisingly positive about the whole thing and he had a strong feeling they were somewhere safe, although he didn't know where.

He grudgingly walked back to the village hall; he was only half a mile away and he couldn't see it in the distance with the darkness and the trees that covered its area, but knew if he walked in a straight line he would be at the hall in a few minutes.

His feet dragged through the bracken and he tried to find a dirt path, but there wasn't one there. As he progressed through the woodland, he could feel the first slow, and long trickle of water running down the arch of his spine, tickling him from his shoulder blades to the top of his backside where a small gathering of hairs soaked up the pesky running bead of sweat. He used his left hand to scratch the irritating itch where the sweat had stopped, and removed the irritation by scratching at the area with his first two fingers that unusually had longer nails that he was used to. He would normally cut his nails once every fortnight, and wasn't the kind of person to nibble at them; he preferred to nibble at the skin of his finger, at the side of the nail.

As the darkness grew and his eyesight became more affected, his paranoia began to flower. His breathing was rapid, but was soon back to normal once his eyes clocked the village hall. He could only see the outline, and that was enough for him to turn his walk into a gallop. Jack was aware that in this new world, an injury or a bad illness would be putting his life at risk. Confident that there were no beings, animal traps, or any other devices that could do him any harm, his galloping feet began to pick up speed, until he finally got to the hall.

It only had one window to the side, and there was no sign of a dim light or anything else. He assumed that maybe Paul was asleep, or at least trying to get to sleep.

Trying to get his breath back, Jack placed the palms of his hands on his knees and bent over. His thoughts went to Gary once again. Jack was glad he wasn't alone and was pleased that he at least had Paul with him.

Jack wasn't sure if he would have the guts to unload a cartridge into another human. Paul, on the other hand, made no hesitation when he unloaded the cartridge into the legs of the thug from the supermarket. Jack had no problem killing the beings, as he had been doing it since he woke up on that fateful Sunday morning in Glasgow City Centre a week ago. He didn't really see them as living things, but he just couldn't imagine having to kill a living person. He hoped that that day would never come.

He felt nothing, from a sympathy perspective, when he killed a few of those things when he had the cleaver that was given to him by his short-lived friend, Robbie Owen. And when he and Gary were armed with knives and had to fight their way out of an ambush on Stile Cop Road while the Porsche lay burning in the distance, he felt even more detached.

He smiled warmly. It seemed such a long time ago now.

He raised his head and knocked the hall's back door, gently. "It's me," he whispered.

Seconds later, Paul Parker opened the door and welcomed Jack back.
Chapter Twenty Six

June 18th

It was 7:21am. Monday.

Karen had had four hours sleep, but felt fine. She was alert; she felt refreshed, but was sure that later on in the day, the tiredness would eventually appear from somewhere and take her by surprise like an assassin, putting her in a world of sleep.

She had been sitting in the living room with the curtains drawn for the last twenty minutes. She was on her second coffee; her breath was putrid, but couldn't be bothered to go upstairs and use one of the four toothbrushes left by the family who used to dwell here. It wasn't that she felt guilty for using them; she just hadn't mustered the energy to go upstairs.

Once she finished her coffee, she forced her body to get off the couch and stand. She could hear gentle thuds coming from above and assumed that Pickle had tried to get out of bed. Scared in case he had a fall, the energy her body needed was suddenly shooting through her veins, and she jogged her way upstairs to see Pickle standing on the landing, waiting outside the bathroom.

Pickle squinted at Karen, and nodded towards the bathroom door. "So if yer here, who's in there?"

"Ah." Karen revealed an embarrassed smile, remembering that the two men hadn't been introduced. "That'll be George. I picked him up yesterday."

Pickle took a step back and tried to come to terms with what she had just told him. He looked terrible. Pale. Eyes sunken. His lips were dry.

Pickle glared at her. "A lover?"

"God no." Karen burst into hysterics, and then suddenly covered her mouth, as there was a danger George could have overheard her remark from within the bathroom.

Pickle rested his hand on Karen's shoulder, and looked unstable on his legs. He swayed gently as if he had just left the pub after an eight-hour session, and said, "Give me a shout when it's free. I'm in no immediate rush."

Karen took a hold of him under his armpit, and helped him walk back to his bedroom, as if she was a carer and he was an old man. They slowly made baby steps towards the bedroom that seemed to have taken forever.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

Pickle sighed, "Getting there. Might even try a wee bit o' lunch later."

"Good."

"Should be back on ma feet tomorrow mornin'."

"That's the thing with these viruses; you can take all the drugs in the world, but you're better off riding it out and letting your body beat it."

"Well, I certainly feel better. Must have been all the praying I've been doing."

As they made their first step back into the bedroom, behind them they could hear a toilet flush. They both turned around to see George Jones dressed in just a pair of jogging bottoms. He stood still and gazed at Pickle. Pickle could see the man was in a decent condition, although clearly carrying a few pounds, and recognised the tattoos on his body, especially the black and blue nautical star.

George could see that if one hundred percent fit and healthy, Pickle could be a powerhouse of a man. But at that moment, he looked weak, ashen and hunched over, but he could see the man was muscular in stature. George didn't say a word to Pickle; he just raised his hand at the ill man. Pickle returned the friendly gesture by tilting his chin upwards ever so slightly, and then turned back around, relying on Karen's help to get him back to the bed. His head ached and the room swayed for a few seconds as if he was on a ferry in turbulent waters. It reminded him of when he went to France to pick up a drugs shipment in one of his first big deals as an entrepreneur of the drugs world. He reminisced only for a few seconds, before dropping back onto the bed.

Karen looked at him with sympathetic eyes. "Do you want me to take that T-shirt off? It looks like it could do with a wash."

Pickle never answered her, and released an exaggerated moan once his head hit the pillow. "Where did yer meet 'im?"

"He was hitching. You don't mind, do you?"

"We're not a charity, but I wouldn't want to see people abandoned. Maybe he wants to get into yer pants."

Karen playfully punched Pickle on the shoulder and shook her head. "I think one arsehole is enough, don't you?"

"A bit harsh."

"Seriously; what do you think of him?"

Pickle half-shrugged. "I'd bang the arse off him, I suppose."

Karen chuckled and playfully hit Pickle on the chest. "No, I meant, does he seem okay?"

"Dunno. Only time will tell. His tattoos look familiar, though."

"Really? Did KP have ones like that?"

"Nah, he only had one." Pickle released a thin smile and his eyes looked away and briefly reminisced. "It was the same star, but a different colour. KP had a purple and black one on his shoulder."

"Did it bring back memories?"

Pickle glared, but Karen could see there was sadness in his face. "O' course; he's only been dead a few days."

Karen smiled warmly at Pickle. Because of his illness she had slept in the girls' room for her second night in the house, with George in the other room with the poster of Robert Pattinson behind him. She could have sworn that she had heard Pickle crying during the night, and had mentioned KP on a couple of occasions in his sleep, but that was understandable. As Pickle said: KP had only been dead for a few days, and in the real world his funeral wouldn't even have taken place yet. He was still in mourning.

She leaned over and kissed him on his clammy forehead. She made a jokingly yuk sound, as her lips tasted the salt off his forehead, and tried to make her partner laugh, who was in desperate need of a wash once he was fit again.

He responded with half a smile and that famous wink of his, which she hadn't seen for a while. He closed his eyes, and shooed her away jokingly, by waving his hand like an Emperor would treat his servant. She exited the room, left him alone and spent a few minutes in the living room talking to George Jones, as this had been the most mundane and uneventful day she had ever had since the outbreak had occurred.

Mustn't grumble, she thought.

At least she was still alive.
Chapter Twenty Seven

The morning had come around quickly. Jack and Paul almost opened their eyes at the same time to find the unfortunate reality that greeted them, especially Jack. Apart from the two sleepy men, the hall was empty, and the only reminder that there used to be people dwelling there, was the strewn blankets, sheets and sleeping bags that lay on the floor. It seemed inappropriate to tidy them up in case the group, or at least some of the group, came back. This had been their home for the last week and tidying up the sleeping arrangements would be an indication that both Paul and Jack had given up hope that anyone would return. The dark hall echoed with Jack's raucous yawn, while Paul silently stood to his feet and headed for the bathroom, holding a worn toothbrush.

Jack gawped around the hall and felt a twinge of sadness; he hoped Kerry and Thomas were okay. He thought about Gary for a few seconds, and thanked him under his breath for reuniting him with his son, albeit temporarily for the time being. If it weren't for Gary, Jack would still be roaming around the villages, like a headless chicken, looking for his son.

Paul's hard footsteps echoed and the noise bounced off the wooden walls, as he returned back from the toilet area. "Go to the kitchen and arm yourself with anything you can find," he announced. "If this takes all day, then so be it."

"What about those spears you made?"

"We can take them, but they're only designed to kill maybe one of them. We need steel, not something that'll snap once we put one of them down."

"What about breakfast?" Jack called out.

"Use the last of the eggs," Paul called back as he began arming himself with a hatchet that was placed in the front of his large pocket, as well as the homemade spear he was holding in his left hand. "Then we go."

As twenty minutes had passed, they ate breakfast and washed it down with the remains of the flat cola. Then the two men stepped out into the fresh wind. They went out the back way, away from the main road, facing the mass of woodland. A gentle breeze stroked their faces as they made their steps into the woods, and although a little troubled by the drizzle that filtered through the trees, they were confident that they wouldn't be soaked to the bone. It had been the second time that the area had seen the rain since the outbreak, and it was a welcome change in the weather as far as the thirsty plantation was concerned.

Still plagued by the taste of eggs in the back of his throat, Jack carefully stepped through the bracken as if he was barefooted and it was scattered with hidden broken glass—he was paranoid of adders, the only poisonous snake available in the UK. He took a peep to the side of him where Paul Parker's face showed no emotion whatsoever. Now, his face was scowling with concentration as he faced forwards, occasionally shifting his head from left to right. Despite the welcomed drizzle from the heavens, the woods were almost acting like a cover and it felt more like being in a greenhouse rather than being in the outdoors. Jack scratched the back of his neck and felt his hairy neck being irritated by the trickles of sweat running out of his hair. It needed a shave.

It had been a day since he had had a proper shave, and didn't want to use a good razor on the back of his neck. Two days ago, the group were down to the last half a dozen razors, and it wasn't just the men that wanted to use the one-blade razors that were available. It humoured Paul a little that the females were also adamant on using the razors. With the outbreak, he thought that the last thing they should be worried about was hair under their arms, as well as other places. The world was going to hell in a handcart, yet the girls still wanted to look reasonably acceptable. It was argued amongst Kerry Evans, Jemma Marlow and Karen West, that the men should be the ones to refrain from using a razor, as a beard was socially acceptable, rather than a woman that looked like she had a testosterone injection. Considering what was happening in the world, the argument was deemed ridiculous and frivolous, and was eventually laughed off by all parties.

Jack looked to his right at Paul, and was relieved that even the cool Paul Parker was perspiring as he could see a single bead of sweat on his dark skin. The bead broke away from the side of his head and gently ran down the side of his black face.

Paul himself was feeling the heat. His fresh, brown V-neck shirt was getting damp already as well as his short, black hair, and his grey joggies were making his legs feel as if they were on fire. He was twenty yards away at the side of Jack and felt for the forty-year-old. He knew what he was going through, but preferred to keep his own emotions in check.

If there was any chance he could find Jocelyn and his two-year-old daughter, Hannah, he needed to be calm and not make irrational decisions in order to keep himself alive. The truth was that he had no idea where they could be, but was convinced they wouldn't leave the area of Staffordshire. Nevertheless, it would still be like looking for a needle in a very large haystack, but Jack Slade's story gave Paul a glimmer of hope. Paul Parker needed to stay alive, whatever the costs, so he could see his family again. Once it was safe, the plan was to go back to his own home and wait for them there. It was the only thing he could think of.

He was aware that there was a chance that Jocelyn may think that he was already dead, simply because when they left the house it was full of those things whilst Paul was still in bed upstairs. Paul didn't blame Jocelyn for running. He was aware that she ran for the sake and safety of their daughter. He was glad she ran. He couldn't imagine a world without his little girl. He didn't want to imagine a world without his little girl.

"Oh God," Jack spoke out.

Paul stopped in his tracks and turned to his colleague who had his head in his hands.

Paul walked over to Jack, and the closer he came, the more he could smell that recognisable smell of death. The annoyed flies buzzed away as he stepped closer and stood next to Jack. They were both ten yards away from the bloodied corpse of Jemma Marlow. The bracken and grass around the body was dyed with her blood; her legs and arms were half-eaten and her torso was almost non-existent. A bloodied breast could be seen attached to a part of her chest that hadn't been devoured. The breast lay next to her severed head, and although it looked like her brains had been scooped out by using the opened neck as a means of getting to them, it was still obvious who it was. Her eyes were missing, but her nose and mouth were intact.

Jack released a muffled belch in an attempt to stop his body from rejecting the breakfast he had earlier; the taste of eggs as well as the sight of Jemma's body wasn't helping.

"Let's keep moving," Paul said coldly.

"What? We can't just leave her here."

Paul was putting a brave face on, Jack could see that, but he remained cold in his speech. "You want to give her first aid?"

Jack shook his head at the crass comment. "Don't be ridiculous."

Paul added, "One question: Can you help her?"

"Of course not."

"Then let's move."
Chapter Twenty Eight

Karen looked out of the living room window from behind the curtain. The sky possessed a few cotton balls of grey clouds that hung threateningly over the small village, and she sighed at the depressing sight. The month of June had just experienced its second shower of rain. She released the curtains and sat back down; the lack of exercise was making her irritable.

The company wasn't much better either.

She was glad that she had managed to potentially save a life, despite Pickle hinting previously that they shouldn't bring anyone back, but as a conversationalist, George Jones wasn't the best. It was as if the art of conversation wasn't his strong point. She cruelly assumed that his job as a labourer consisted of years of talking about women in a derogatory way, with the rest of his male colleagues talking about football, and arguing with one another, using a profanity with every sentence. She couldn't be sure, but a job where there was no contact with the public must have had some effect on his talking skills, unlike her old job, where she was always in chatter mode with someone. She worked and talked with sick people, as well as relatives of the sick, other colleagues, as well as police and fire crew that would come into the A and E department.

George was okay, Karen thought, but he wasn't Pickle. And as soon as Harry Branston recovered from his virus, the better, she thought.

She peeped to the side and saw that George was in the single chair, nursing his sixth cup of coffee of the morning. He also looked bored rigid, and even though she had a cheek to even think of it, she contemplated on whether to go upstairs to lie on the bed and possibly go for a nap.

She had come to a quick decision and rose to her feet, and informed her surprised guest of her intentions. She walked lazily upstairs and once she got into the bedroom, she lay on the bed and closed her eyes. The head sank delightfully into the soft, cold pillow and she released a contented moan. She began to daydream about Gary, which was interrupted as her eyes shot open of the realisation that she had left her Browning on the side-table in the living room downstairs. She then closed her eyes again, and tried to appease her weary, paranoid mind that George didn't seem the type to gun down a woman and a sick man just for the extra food that was left in the cupboard.

What was the worst he could do? Pick it up? The gun wasn't cocked and the safety catch was on, and he probably didn't even know what that was. She slipped away into unconsciousness. Her peace lasted thirty-seven minutes.

*

"What the fuck?"

She shot out of bed and collided with the side-table. She lost her balance and bounced off the wall as she hastily stood on her wobbly legs. She never gave her body time to wake up, and this was self-evident from the drowsiness that had caused her to lose her bearings.

She had heard shots. But she didn't know where they were coming from. She left the bedroom and went into Pickle's room, which faced the main road of their street. Pickle could be seen wearily hunched over the windowsill, glaring out of the window.

"Nice one, Karen," he chuckled falsely, without turning round to face her. "This street's gonna be awash with those fuckers, if he gets his way. How on earth did he get yer gun?"

Karen stepped forwards and stood by Pickle's side. She looked out of the window to see George holding the Browning she had left on the side table. She looked past him to see one solitary Snatcher lying dead in the middle of the road. George looked pretty pleased with himself, and Bradley could see the twitches of three sets of curtains across the road, probably from families wondering what the hell was happening and hoping and praying that this maniac would disappear shortly. So far, the street had been relatively quiet, but the sounds of gunshots could easily put that to a stop.

She left the bedroom, hurriedly, and galloped downstairs and went through the already-opened front door. She ran out into the desolate street and was greeted by a smiling George Jones. Without thinking there was a danger that the gun could go off, she snatched the gun out of his hand and screamed, "What the fuck are you doin'?"

George was taken aback by Karen's outburst, and struggled to explain his action.

Karen continued, "We're trying to keep a low profile here, not just from them," she pointed at the dead creature, "but from outsiders as well!"

George shrugged and explained. "I peered out the window and saw it walking along the road."

"So instead of letting it harmlessly walk past out of the village, you decided to put two rounds into it?"

George went to open his mouth, but refrained from answering her question immediately. He rolled his eyes in thought and said, "And what's wrong with that?"

"Where there's one, there could be others."

Karen waited for a response from the confused George, and could see for the first time in his face, a wave of rage building up. He grinded his teeth together, took a deep breath in and shaped his lips in an O shape as if he was about to blow out smoke rings. He then released carbon dioxide from his mouth and Bradley wondered if this was an anger management technique.

Shit! Is he going to hit me?

Despite being the carrier of the Browning pistol, she took a step backwards and was pretty sure that there was a good chance that George was going to lash out, but Karen didn't want him to think that she was intimidated by this, so she continued with her rant. "And how did you learn to shoot, anyway?"

George never answered her; he continued to glare at her, and Karen wondered if he had rage issues. Whether he didn't like being spoken to in that tone, despite him being in the wrong, or the fact that it was a young woman who was verbally abusing him, his face suggested he was not happy. George's silence was more threatening than if he launched his own verbal attack. He chose to continue to exhale out slowly and then gulped hard as if he was trying to move the anger back into his gut.

She could see his flushed face beginning to return to its original colour and this eased her own heartbeat, and although still at a moderate gallop, it had reduced its pounding.

George spoke, "I'm gonna grab myself a drink." That was all he could muster. That one sentence.

"Wait a minute." Karen pointed at the body lying in the middle of the road. "You just gonna leave that there?"

George turned and stared at the body. The creature looked like it used to be a female teenager. Its face was bloated and had black marks as if it were rotting. It was dressed in a bloody stained blouse, that probably was a freshly ironed yellow item when the woman first put it on, and she donned a black knee length skirt with her legs covered in ripped tights that hid her porcelain legs that looked painfully swollen and bruised. Although the back of its head was producing a fair amount of blood from its ravaged cranium, the entrance wounds in the forehead were just a couple of clean dark holes.

George remained glaring at the body, and Karen was now beginning to think that this silence was being done on purpose. He finally turned back to Karen and gave her the answer by nodding his head.

Yes! He was going to leave the body there. And his face suggested: What are you going to do about it?

He walked away and went back into the house, without turning around. Karen muttered an expletive under her breath and decided to leave the body where it was. She shook her head in frustration and tucked her brown hair behind her ears that was now getting damp from the persistent rain that fell from the skies.

She looked up to the sky angrily as if the weather was God's fault, and followed George in. As she approached the house, with the backed-up van sitting on the front garden to the side of her, she looked up to see Pickle still peering out of his window. She could feel that there was something more sinister to this George, and the sooner she had a fit Pickle to use as back-up, the better.

She didn't want to point her gun at him and kick George out of the house just yet, as his shooting may have been just a dumb spur of the moment thing. It was his attitude afterwards that bothered her.

She was beginning to regret her act of charity. She wasn't scarred by this however; she knew that the next time she had to take the van out and get more supplies and there was a family with children hitching, her conscience wouldn't allow her to just drive past if there was no danger. She felt that she had toughened up over the last week since the pandemic, and according to Pickle she was a tough cookie, but the old Karen was still in there somewhere. She still had a heart. She still had empathy.

She locked the front door, placed the keys into her pocket and decided to go upstairs for an hour. At the moment, she didn't want to look at George or be anywhere near his presence, and she had an inkling that the feeling was mutual.
Chapter Twenty Nine

Many hours had passed, and with missing lunch and dinner, they were still relying on their breakfast for fuel for their bodies. Three of the moving dead appeared in view up ahead and Paul Parker and Jack Slade knew that trying again in the morning was not an option, so they had a five-minute breather, allowing the beasts to disappear from view, and began their search once again.

Because they were achieving no results, they were getting close to turning around and heading back to the village hall, but Jack insisted on giving it another twenty minutes. The image of Jemma Marlow was still imprinted on both men's minds and plagued their concentration as they continued to trudge their way through the damp plantation.

In a weird way, Jack was relieved that he never had to break the news to Jemma about the horrid torture and death Gary had to endure, and it appeared that she had suffered a fate even worse. He was unsure whether she had been conscious while being ripped apart by the ravenous things; it was this that made him feel ill, and selfishly hoped that Kerry and Thomas were okay. If they were okay, he hoped to God that his son hadn't witnessed Jemma's demise, or even heard it.

He wondered where the rest of them were, and hoped that they were all together as a group rather than just Kerry and Thomas on their own ... or even ... just Thomas on his own. He didn't want to think about that situation. He knew thinking in a negative light would do nothing for his own psyche and decided to concentrate on where he was walking, as for the last ten minutes he had strolled through the woodland and hadn't remembered a thing about it. It wasn't a good frame of mind to be in, especially considering the predators that were out there, he thought.

Jack turned to Paul and gave him the thumbs up, asking in body language if he was okay. Jack responded with one sharp solitary nod. Paul took one look at his new friend who was nine years his senior and thought to himself that already he looked weary. They both had had a decent enough sleep one could get in such a dire situation. Paul managed six hours broken sleep, but knew the adrenaline would keep them going until they were completely exhausted and there was nothing left in their tank.

Paul made a psst sound at Jack, and waved his right arm to the side frantically for a few seconds, urging him to stay low. Like a couple of Marines in a Nam film, they both lowered themselves into the grassy floor, and both men were semi-hidden by a tree stump each. Still twenty yards away from each other with their own tree as cover, they peered out from the side to see two of the creatures in the far distance, stumbling around. On a flat road these things didn't seem too sturdy, but on uneven ground they looked even more awkward, like a couple of old drunks not knowing where to go and what day it was.

Confident that their movement wouldn't arouse suspicion from the beings that were hundreds of yards away, they slowly stood up and continued with their search. Ever since they left the village hall, they hadn't moved in any direction and had no intention to, because Paul knew that there was a cabin further up which he used to go to when he was a kid.

It didn't belong to anyone as such, until squatters began to use it for years. As far as he knew, the cabin that was made by fishermen years ago for a place to dwell, was still there, in fact, the woods had a few of them and they were in good condition as well. They weren't furnished, but as far as Paul could remember, they were basic, had a door and latch inside for a lock, no fire or kitchen place, but a table and chairs someone had made.

He used to go up there as a child with his friends, by breaking the lock and using the place as a base. The fishermen got so fed up with the break-ins, they stopped going eventually and the cabin was abandoned until months later, squatters claimed it as theirs. This was a similar story that plagued a few of the cabins in the woodland area.

Paul and Jack looked around them and noticed that there didn't seem to be any other form of life in the area; it was almost as if the animals knew that evil was lurking and they had abandoned the place that they used to call home. There was no hoot of an owl, no twitter from a bird, no rustle in the bushes from a disturbed deer, and no sign of the chatter and chirp of the grey squirrel that was deliberately introduced to Britain from North America in the nineteenth century.

They both stopped once again and Paul said quickly, "Do you see what I see?"

"A cabin." Jack nodded and walked briskly towards the cabin in the distance. His walk was slowly turning into a gallop and Paul was about to tell Jack to slow down, but didn't have the heart to do so, as the man was obviously tainted with excitement that his son might be in that cabin. Then Paul thought about the things that he called, Lurkers. What if one, or more than one, was inside for whatever reason? He then increased his pace to catch up with an excited Jack Slade, in case he stumbled into some kind of accidental ambush.

"Don't go in yet," were the only words Paul could muster through his heavy breathing as they got nearer to the cabin; they were now only eighty yards away.

Jack slowed right down and switched to walking pace as if he heard what Paul had told him, and as he got nearer the place, he became more hesitant. His pace slowed, until it eventually came to a stop.

"Wait for me," Paul said in a sharp whisper.

Both men arrived five yards away from the closed door that led inside to the rundown-looking cabin, and both gawped at one another. Paul placed his hand on the door and slowly pushed it open; both men were surprised that it wasn't locked. Paul peered in and saw in the darkness that there was no life inside, although four unlit candles sat on the floor. Jack remained outside, now too scared to go in, scared of what he might find, or what he might not find. He opened his eyes and looked at Paul's face. Jack queried, "There's no one there?"

Paul replied with a shake of his head.

On the outside, Jack tried to remain calm, but could feel his chest bubbling with a cocktail of emotions that was only going to lead him to break down in tears.

"It's just the first one." Paul tried to appease him. "There're many to check before we're finished. Then after that, we can go back, get the cars and check the villages, if it's safe."

Jack agreed and thinned his lips in order to keep his emotions in check; his lips were thinned so much it looked like there was a large stitch sitting under his nose. There was no point in crying at the first hurdle, as he was sure that there were many more to come. He blew out his cheeks in an attempt to lower his temperature in his face that had blossomed into a pink colour, and gave off a false, yet, brave smile.

"Next one then," Slade snapped, and ran his fingers through his dark, sweaty hair. The grey at the side of his hair had increased over the week. "We'll try the next one."

"Dad?"

Both Paul and Jack spun round to their left and saw three frightened figures, crouching twenty yards away from them, behind a tree.

Jack narrowed his eyes, and wondered if his cruel mind was playing a trick on him. "Thomas?"

The three figures stood to their feet; there was only two that he cared about, and one he really cared about.

His son ran towards him and Jack could feel the relief smoulder out of his shoulders. He held out his arms and scooped him up. Both father and son hugged one another—probably a bit too tightly—and wept hard for minutes. Jack opened his bleary eyes to see a smiling Kerry walking towards him, and Kerry joined in and now all three were embracing.

While Jack was having his moment with his second family reunion in a week, Paul Parker choked back the tears as he thought about his own family. He was pleased for Jack, but couldn't help feeling a smidgeon of envy. He stepped towards the third member of the hiding party; it was Lee Hayward. Lee Hayward shook his hand.

"Good to see you again, Lee," Paul greeted.

"You too," Lee said with a quaver in his voice; it was self-evident he was frightened to death. He tried to speak, but at first, the apprehensive words stumbled out of his shuddering mouth clumsily, making his first full sentence sound like nothing but a weird noise. He tried again, and this time his words were understood. "We've been staying in the cabin. We went out for air and saw you guys in the distance; we thought you were them, so we hid."

Paul smiled as he watched Jack continue to embrace Kerry and Thomas, and turned his attention back to Lee. He looked around and shrugged his shoulders in confusion. "Where's the rest?"

The sadness on Lee's face suggested that Paul wasn't going to like his answer. "Dunno, some are dead, but most fled. Those things just walked into the hall; don't know what happened to Oliver and Kevin. They were supposed to be keeping guard. They probably saw them and ran off."

"No, they wouldn't do that," Paul said adamantly. "Where did everyone go?"

Again, Lee shook his head. "Dunno. We didn't have time to lock up; they just stumbled through the main door. We just left once the first few were attacked."

"Who was attacked?"

"Little Yoler was the first to get it once we got outside. Thankfully, Kerry and Thomas were the first to run. They never saw a thing."

"Oh God." Paul put his hand over his mouth. He never understood why humans did this, but he automatically did once he was told about little eight-year-old Yoler.

"Naturally, Ian went to protect his daughter and was overpowered by three of the things. The rest of us ran through the back entrance."

Paul shook his head. "Jack and I never saw any traces or evidence of anything. But we did see Jemma."

"Ian picked Yoler up as soon as she was bitten and ran with her into the woods. Jemma was caught and pulled to the ground. As soon as she was bitten, we knew she was screwed." Lee wiped his eyes with his tremulous hands. "It was horrible; she was screaming. She called out for Gary."

Paul announced, "Gary's dead."

"What? How?"

"Tell you later. What about the others?"

"They headed that way." Lee pointed to their left. "That's where the main road is; it leads into Rugeley."

"But that place is supposed to be swarming with the things."

Lee shrugged his shoulders in defeat. "Everywhere is, isn't it? We haven't eaten in a day. We're all hungry."

Lee tried to fight back the tears, and Paul did the decent thing and gave him a shoulder to cry on, as the family five yards away from him continued with their emotional embrace.

Paul looked around at the cabin and turned to Lee. "What do you reckon our next move should be? Back to the hall?"

Lee shook his head and pointed behind Paul, who speedily turned his neck in the direction he and Jack had come from. There were at least ten of them in the distance, walking towards the humans.

Paul's face screwed with anger. He grinded his teeth and blew out his cheeks to reduce his blood pressure. "Where the fuck did they come from?" he snapped. "There was nothing behind me and Jack two minutes ago."

"They're everywhere." There was now anger in Lee's voice as well, and the frustration made him spit as he started his sentence. "They're like ghosts. One minute, nothing; the next, they're behind you."

Paul rubbed his face in exasperation, knowing that the food from the supermarket was back at the hall. He placed his hand on Lee's shoulder and called over to Jack who was now finally breaking away from his embrace with Thomas and Kerry. Paul looked up to the dreary heavens and knew if they ran, they would eventually be swallowed up by the darkness, making their journey even more perilous. The best they could hope for was to stay in the cabin for the night, hope that the things would pass the shack without being too interested in the wooden contraption—they were still unsure whether human flesh could be smelt by the ghouls—and wait for the next light.

Paul clapped his hands together. "Time to go inside."

Nobody protested.
Chapter Thirty

It was two days since he felt ill with the unknown virus, but Harry Branston was starting to feel better. He was sure that the illness was pretty much over. The only thing that was keeping him from getting out of his bed and galloping down the stairs was the fact that he felt so weak. His body was re-hydrated, as Karen saw to that, but it needed to replenish its energy levels with a hearty meal, or whatever was left in the van or the downstairs cupboard. It had been a weird couple of days, as he had never felt so ill before and all he had done was sleep, mainly.

Somebody once said to him: you know when you've really got a bad virus when you can't get out of bed even if it is raining fifty pound notes outside. He knew what they meant by that now. He had never felt so bad, and because of the predicament the UK was in, he feared the worst, and maybe thought this virus had somehow become airborne and he might have contracted it. Those fears had now disappeared and he couldn't wait to be up on his feet and back to his normal self.

When the illness took a hold of him, he slept more during the day, and whenever he was awake he stared at the ceiling. It was painted brilliant white, and a circular stipple-design that he used to have in his old house before his arrest, regularly hypnotized him back to sleep when he was ill. His mind wandered, as it often did whenever he was awake.

He thought about the incident after Stile Cop and KP's leaving. He nearly crumbled that night and it was Karen's strength and advice that made him pull through. She was some woman, he thought. A twenty-three-year-old nurse a week ago—now, one of the strongest people he knew. She was carrying a Browning pistol and not afraid to use it on anybody, or anything, as if she had owned it for years, rather than a week. He loved her like a sister, and hadn't told her yet, but he had a feeling that she already knew.

He released a chesty cough, and it became so violent his back was arched as he lay on the bed; he could then hear the concerned footsteps of Karen trotting up the stairs. The door opened once his coughing stopped, and as predicted, Karen walked in with a look of concern on her face.

She asked, "You okay?"

He scolded, "Just a cough. Calm down, woman."

"Sorry," she sniffed. "It sounded bad from downstairs."

Pickle smiled, touched by her concern. He gazed at her face and it was apparent that her hair needed another wash—not that he had any intention of stating this to her. He might not have been an expert in women, but he knew that such a comment would not be appreciated. "So how's Roy Rogers downstairs?"

Karen sighed, and the look on her face suggested that their guest was becoming a problem. Her face never cracked at Pickle's attempt at humour and she looked like she was in a hopeless quandary. Her charitable action was looking like to be a massive error of judgement.

"He's gotta go." She lowered her head. "I messed up."

"Nah, yer didn't," Pickle spoke soothingly. "He's a loose cannon. At first yer were doing the charitable thing."

"I'm gonna ask him to leave the village in the morning." She looked at her watch; it was nearly seven.

"And do yer think he'll go?"

Karen shrugged her shoulders, and revealed the pistol tucked into her jeans. "This might persuade him. I don't want it to come to that, though. I'm not a thug. I'd rather just ask him politely."

Pickle asked, "Do yer trust him?"

She shook her head and replied, "He seems quite interested in the gun, and I never leave the keys around."

"So that's a no then. Good." Pickle wagged his finger at his young female colleague, and explained, "All it takes is for him to pick up the keys, and he's off with an armoured vehicle, with a decent supply o' fuel and food in the back. Keep the keys on yer at all times."

"He's definitely going tomorrow, even if I have to shoot the fucker," she joked.

Pickle laughed and loved that side to Karen; she was a real-life Calamity Jane. He slurred, "We'll tell 'im to leave tomorrow morning. We'll do it together. I'll be fine by the morning once ma body has digested yer fine cuisine. What are we 'aving tonight?"

Karen half-screwed her face, as if she was waiting for a negative response, despite the fact that she hadn't told him the details of his meal yet. "Beans on toast."

"Sounds wonderful."

This time Karen's face did crack with Pickle's sarcastic humour, and she flicked him the V sign and left the bedroom. "It'll be ready in twenty," she yelled as she progressed downstairs. "Don't mock. Once the electricity goes it could be cold beans next week. I'm using the last of the bread."

"I can't wait," Pickle yelled back, his voice still coated in sarcasm. "Don't forget to bring the bucket up."

"I'll try not to spit in them," Karen joked back. She was halfway down the stairs.

"Yer know what they say about the best way to a man's heart!"

Karen was now at the bottom of the stairs and shouted back, "Through the ribcage."

Pickle laughed and a wide smile emerged on his face. Karen was a lifesaver in more ways than one, and Pickle grinned at her cheekiness.

He really did love her.
Chapter Thirty One

Paul Parker remained standing by the cabin's door. There was no light in the place, and despite it being early evening the group were forced to remain in the darkness while waiting for the morning to arrive.

The door was bolted shut from the inside. It was going to be a mundane, long, yet, frightening night for all involved, but safety was the priority. There were no windows in the cabin and it seemed to be built professionally, as there appeared to be little cracks within the walls of the wooden building.

Sure that it wouldn't create such a problem, Paul told Jack that he could put one candle on and place it in the corner of the room, as young Thomas was beginning to grow scared the more the day dimmed outside. Jack thanked Paul for his understanding, and lit the red stumpy candle that lit up the cabin reasonably well, but not too well.

They would have to flee first thing in the morning, as they had no water, food or toilet facilities. Paul suggested going back to the village hall if it was safe enough, and the rest agreed, as they had no idea where else to go, as at least back at the hall—over the main road—sat their vehicles if ever they needed them to escape. Also, if the area ended up becoming awash with the non-human entities for a second time, there was the option of locking themselves in the hall if the vehicle theory wasn't attractive.

Jack sat at the back, in the left corner of the unfurnished hut with Thomas in his arms, almost sleeping. Kerry sat next to them, rubbing the child's head, lovingly. Paul was standing next to the bolted door; he didn't know why, but he did. Lee Hayward sat in the middle of the floor with his knees brought up to his chest and his forehead resting on his kneecaps. The fifty-six-year-old looked worn out and his belly hung over his trousers as he remained in the curled position. The flame from the candle was highlighting that he hardly had a single hair on his head. As he gently began to snore, the rest of the group, who were in no mood for conversation, looked to be going the same way.

Paul eventually sat down on the hard floor, and was amazed that the drizzle from before hadn't crept through the roof and soaked them. He looked around the small cabin that appeared to be roughly twelve feet by twelve, in a perfect square shape, and came to the conclusion that sleep was his friend if he wanted to function properly the next day.

He forced himself to get some shuteye, although he didn't know if a full night's sleep was going to be realistically achievable. He closed his eyes whilst Kerry began to sing so delicately, that her voice became a broken whisper as she sang the lyrics to the Scottish nursery rhyme, Ali Bali, to her son.

Thirty-three minutes had passed and the group were all wide-eyed with alarm, apart from young Thomas, who remained sleeping against his father's chest. In the little light that the red candle provided, all four adult members—Jack, Paul, Lee and Kerry—stared at one another and realised that they had all been spooked by the same noise.

Jack didn't wake Thomas. He didn't want to wake his son if it was something trivial like a stray deer, as the youngster needed his sleep. Paul desperately tried to find a crack in the wall to see what was out there, but it was so well built and so dark, his effort was fruitless.

"Anything?" Lee whispered his query.

Paul shook his head. "I can't really see."

Although the door was bolted, the thirty-one-year-old moved positions and sat with his back against the door, and turned his head to place his left ear against it.

"D'ya think it's animals?" Jack remained sitting in the corner; he hadn't budged yet, in fear of waking up his son.

Paul turned to Jack; his widened eyes and the concern etched on his face answered Jack's question, but Paul decided to answer in words anyhow. "It's definitely not animals." He turned his head back round to listen out for anything else. The shuffling became more audible and almost multiplied in sound. Lee Hayward shook with trepidation and wondered how strong the cabin really was, but hoped that this night it wouldn't be tested.

The shuffling appeared to be reaching the sides of the hut and all adult members of the group produced tiny smiles as it appeared that whatever was outside, was now walking around the cabin and venturing further into the woods, away from their presence. At the right side of the cabin, a huge bang appeared, which made Kerry yelp gently, and the others, apart from Paul, jumped with fright. Paul guessed that one of the individuals probably had fallen over into the side of the hut.

It was silent again and as ten minutes passed, Paul held up three of his fingers to the group, which confused them. Jack responded with a lazy shrug, as he didn't know what Paul meant. Paul held up his fingers again and pointed to the door.

Jack frowned. Crazy bastard's gonna go out there.

Another three minutes had passed, Paul knew, because he timed it, and his hand reached for the bolt of the door.

The cabin was suddenly filled with strident, concerned whispers.

"What are you doing?" Lee looked aghast.

"Just gonna make sure it's safe. I need a shit anyway."

"Just shit in the corner of the hut," Jack hissed.

Paul took one look at Kerry. "No chance. Besides, it seems to be clear. Trust me, I'll be one minute."

Lee stood up and stretched, poking his large belly out. "I'm not keeping that door open if you go out."

"Fine. Once I'm finished, I'll knock it when I'm ready to come in."

Paul slowly slid the bolt to the side, and took the spear with him as he peered out of the door. He then left the cabin with Lee closing it immediately after he disappeared into the dusky area.

Paul looked around and couldn't see much in the area. He never ventured far, and walked only twenty yards in front of the cabin, slipped his trousers down and squatted. It wasn't the greatest of timings, but he was desperate, and the area seemed to be clear. Wiping his backside afterwards would have to be dealt with at a later date, but it wasn't concerning him at that moment, as Paul swivelled his head left and right constantly, searching for any signs of unwanted beings.

He was nearly finished and was fearful of insects going up his anus, but he knew that that shouldn't be his top worry.

He pulled his briefs up and fixed his trousers, and saw immediately a silhouette of one of them stumbling in front of him. It appeared lost, as the others were hundreds of yards ahead of it. It was male—or used to be—and moaned almost in delight as its eyes caught a glimpse of Parker. Paul was aware that any kind of noisy confrontation might alert the rest of the things that had progressed further ahead, and might also cause derision from his group with their I told you so looks.

I can handle this one, he thought.

He searched around in the darkness for his homemade spear and grabbed it tightly once he finally remembered where he had left it. He held the weapon with both hands, with his legs slightly bent. He awaited the attack from the creature that was no less than ten yards away from him. It lunged forward, which took him by surprise. He drove the stick into its face resulting in only superficial damage, as the spear wasn't strong enough to penetrate the head, and the eyes were completely missed. The weapon snapped, causing a deep laceration on its head, but not enough to kill it, only enough to send it crashing to the floor.

He could hardly see the thing as he stepped back once it fell. The creature's arms flapped as it released a single shriek, and it tried to get up off of its belly. Paul threw his broken weapon into the darkness behind him, and put his body weight onto the ghoul's back whilst it was trying to get back up. Paul used his knees to keep it down.

He didn't know what the hell he was doing; it was something he had seen in a B movie once. He grabbed the hair of the being with both hands, and he pulled the head back as hard as he could, as if he was performing a rowing motion. He could then hear the awful sound of splitting, which was followed by a gushing noise as the head came almost free, forcing Paul to fall backward on top of the corpse. The head hadn't severed completely, but it had been damaged enough to rip it away from its neck, emptying the black bloody contents all over the grass.

He stood up carefully and looked down to see the almost severed head still in working order, still gnashing away, still wanting to bite at him. He felt for his broken spear in the darkness and carefully drove the thing into its eye socket until it stopped moving. Paul then began wiping his shoes on the grass. He couldn't see for sure, but he was hoping that his shoes were not standing in any of the liquid that had spilled out of its massive wound.

He headed for the cabin, his heart smacking him from inside and his brow in need of a gentle mop. He took one last look in the dusky area; it was impossible to see anything, but he was sure the coast was now clear. He then gently knocked on the door of the cabin and announced, "It's me."

Although he was clearly shaking with the adrenaline coursing through his body, he decided to keep this little story to himself, as he didn't want to share the tale with the rest of them. He didn't want to frighten the group, because if he did, then the next morning he would be involved with a group of people walking through the woods, suffering from sleep deprivation and paranoia.

And he didn't want that. They needed to be sharp to stay alive. They needed to sleep.
Chapter Thirty Two

June 19th

It was 10am, Tuesday, and the breakfast went down well, but Pickle felt that at any minute, if he didn't get back to bed, the contents in his stomach would not dwell there for long. The nauseous feeling was reoccurring and he began to ponderously walk towards the bathroom, still fully clothed from the night before. He tried the door and released an expletive once he found it was locked. The door suddenly opened and there stood a man, dressed in only his briefs. He had numerous tattoos and looked in reasonable shape, aside from a few extra pounds around his middle.

"You must be the Harry that Karen has mentioned." He held out his hand. "You look better than the last time I saw you. You never spoke to me; I assumed I was intruding or something."

"I was just feeling a little under the weather."

"And now?"

"I feel okay now." Pickle eventually shook Jones' hand; he was still feeling weak. "Yer must be Billy the Kid."

He released a nasal chortle. "Oh, that. Yeah, sorry about that. A rush of blood to the head." George Jones then cocked his head to the side and his eyes tried to re-focus on Pickle's frame. "Say, haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

Pickle ignored him, as he was in no mood for small talk. He couldn't wait any longer and drained his bladder, as the bathroom door remained open. He could still feel George standing on the landing. What did he want?

"Pickle!" Karen exclaimed, running up the stairs. "You ready to face the world again?" Pickle flushed the toilet and now all three were standing at the top of the stairs.

He shook his head. "Another few hours; just need this nauseous feeling to pass."

George squinted his eyes. "Pickle? I know that name."

"Just a nickname," Karen said coldly. She was obviously still angry after he had borrowed her gun and had fired it unnecessarily, but she was also angry with herself for leaving it.

She grabbed Pickle's arm and tried to escort him back to his bedroom. Pickle turned around to see George walking back into the next bedroom. He noticed a huge tribal tattoo on his back, something he couldn't make out, and the initials J and B on each shoulder blade. Pickle had seen it before somewhere. He belched and kept his mouth closed for fear of releasing the toxic vapours in Karen's direction.

Karen shut the door behind her and confessed to Pickle in a whisper, "I don't like him."

"Well, that's plainly obvious."

"D'ya think you'll be fit in a few hours?"

"Defo," Pickle replied with assurance. "Once this nausea has passed, I'll be swinging from the chandeliers o' this fine establishment." He looked at Karen and could see a rare fear in her eyes. "Somethin' wrong?"

"Nah," she replied unconvincingly. "Just can't wait to get shot of him."

"Well, once I'm up in a few hours, we'll ask him to leave together. He's hardly gonna say no, is he?" He nodded to Karen's pistol sticking out of her dark blue jeans, and then nodded under the bed where his beloved shotgun slept. Karen was supposed to have hidden it in the cupboard, but had never got round to it.

"S'pose not," she mumbled.

"What's up?" Pickle began to tease. "Yer missin' me?"

"A little." Karen smiled, and headed for the bedroom door.

Pickle sighed with a smirk and knew that his resting days were over; he needed maybe another hour of sleep and then he would finally make an appearance. He felt that Karen needed him and missed him.

His eyes felt heavy, and he could hear Karen mooching about downstairs, and George Jones in the next room making the odd clatter. No matter the faint sounds that surrounded him, Pickle found that tiredness was arriving once again. With his body still craving more sleep, it was obvious that he still wasn't a hundred percent.

*

His dreaming was full of horror and stress, which wasn't surprising considering the week that he had to experience, and in his dream, Pickle was running on a road, leading into the town of Rugeley. Beside him was Karen, and as he took a gander behind him, he could see the Snatchers in their hundreds, swarming towards the two individuals.

At the front of the crowd were Davina Pointer, Janine Perry, Jamie Thomson and KP. It looked like they had turned. They were leading the rest and their faces were ashen. Their eyes had a milky film over them, and the hundreds groaned in excitement as they continued to pursue the struggling Karen and Pickle.

They were gaining on the ex-prisoner and ex-nurse, and Pickle felt like his boots were running in sticky mud, and he could see that Karen was also struggling. He took another look around and could see that the dead were getting nearer and nearer. He could tell by Karen's face that the overall outcome didn't look good, and he began to feel a pain in his chest. His pace slowed and his thighs were throbbing.

He saw that Karen had now pulled out her Browning and Pickle called over to her, in what little breath he had, and told her that it was a waste of time and that there was possibly a thousand behind them. They were going to be ripped apart; he could feel it. Then it suddenly dawned on him that maybe Karen had pulled out the gun to end her own life. What was the best way to die? Being ripped to pieces and disembowelled before your very eyes, or, a quick bullet to the head? It was a no-brainer, wasn't it?

Pickle's face turned to horror once he saw Karen point the gun down to the side of her, at him. She had no intention of killing herself. She then released a slug that ravaged his left thigh; he cried out and fell to the floor. Pickle was in pain, clutching his wound, and couldn't believe what she had done. Then he remembered what she had told him at Stile Cop when they were having a conversation.

Pickle: "So if we ever get surrounded by those things, and it's just me and you carrying guns, what would yer do?"

Karen: "Honestly? I'd put a bullet in your leg, and make a run for it as those cocksuckers tore you to pieces. At least then it would give me a chance to escape."

Pickle: "I knew yer were going to say that."

Karen: "Oh, I'm not joking."

Before the hundreds had managed to tear him to shreds, in his dream, Pickle had woken up and was brought back to reality, an unwelcome reality, but less frightening than his dreams. He had been disturbed by a noise.

The creak of the bedroom door forced Pickle's heavy eyes to prise open. He looked with blurry vision at a figure that entered the room. A small surge of adrenaline shot through his body, as for a moment he thought that a creature had managed to get into the house. His heartbeat decreased slightly when he saw George Jones walk in, looking behind him. George then turned his back and slowly shut the door, whilst Pickle closed his eyes to a squint so he could just see what was happening.

Once George Jones shut the bedroom door, he turned around, clutching a pillow in his right hand, wearing a thin beam on his face. He crept forwards and went to the right hand side of the bed. George stepped gently, not noticing that Pickle's eyes were very narrowly open. George grabbed the pillow with both hands and was holding it horizontally, the way someone would to smother somebody to death.

A shot rang out and within five seconds, Karen had ran from the living room to the bedroom and burst into the room, scanning the area, wondering what the hell was happening. She had dozed for no longer than a minute on the couch when the shot filled the house, and she had never ran up a set of stairs so quick.

Still lying down, Pickle pulled the duvet back to reveal that he was holding the Browning that Karen had gave him earlier. It was obvious that it had been fired as George was on the floor, crying out in pain, clutching his right bloodied thigh with both hands.

"What the fuck?" was all that Karen could muster.

Pickle explained himself. "Mr Jones was seconds away from smothering me to death, isn't that right?"

She shook her head and placed the palms of her hands on each temple. "I knew you were a wrong 'un."

"He's lying!" George screamed, helplessly trying to stop the blood pouring out from his thigh. "The man's crazy."

Pickle swung his legs and stood to his feet. To Karen he looked that he was almost one hundred percent fit. Pickle pointed the Browning. It was three yards away from George's head. "Tell Karen yer real name."

Clutching his thigh with both hands, he looked at Bradley and waggled his head and shrugged his shoulders in unison, as if he didn't know what Pickle was talking about.

Pickle allowed there to be silence for a few seconds to allow the man to confess his real name, but it never came. It was obvious that the groaning, wounded man had no intention of telling Karen the truth, injured or not, and remained tight-lipped. Pickle laughed and added, "Well, allow me to tell her then."

"What's going on?" Karen brushed her brown greasy hair behind her ears, awaiting an answer from either man.

"This man," Pickle spat, "is called Jason Bonser! He was in my prison."

Bonser's eyes widened. "Pickle! I knew I'd heard that name from somewhere!"

"Why didn't you say so before!" she yelled.

"It just came to me. When I saw the tattoo on his back, earlier, it made me think. The nautical star on his forearm looked familiar, but it was the tat on his back and the initials JB that set the alarm bells ringing. We were on different wings. A few months ago, I was in the prison's gym doing some cleaning and he was there with a few o' his cronies, including the delightful Kyle Horan, who stabbed a few inmates."

"So you shot him because he stabbed some of your friends?"

"Nope. I shot him because he wants us dead. He wants this house, the van and everything in it."

"How do you know all that?"

"He changed his name, didn't he? Jason Bonser has been in and out of the tabloids since his incarceration. Maybe he was scared you'd recognise him and his name. You're hardly going to give a drug criminal a ride, are yer?"

"But I'm with you," Karen said with confusion.

"But I befriended yer—saved yer; this fucker here makes me look like a choirboy. I heard stories about him in prison. Also, he shot that Snatcher outside unnecessarily making him a liability, an addict to violence, and it also proves that he's someone who has handled a gun before, and he just came into this room clutching that pillow." Pickle pointed to the floor where the pillow sat next to Jason Bonser's wounded right thigh.

Karen was finding this hard to take in. She turned to Bonser. "I don't understand. Why didn't you just kill us both when you took my gun and went outside to kill that Snatcher?"

Karen stepped closer towards Bonser and knelt beside him. The penny had dropped. She knew exactly why he never killed them both. "So what was the plan then ... Jason? You kill Pickle quietly, so I don't get disturbed while I'm downstairs, stopping me from making a run for it? You take me by gunpoint, keep me alive and rape me, then after that, kill me once you're bored? Then you live happily ever after in this house with a van full of food."

Bonser snarled, "I actually appreciated it that you gave me a ride. I had no intention of harming you until you spoke to me like a cunt in the middle of the street!"

Karen added, "So once I pissed you off, you then decided to get rid of us? Psycho!"

He never answered her. Instead, he just sneered and spat in her face. "It was you that picked me up. Fuckin' whore. I fucking knew there was something not right when I saw that it was a prison van." He then turned to Pickle. "Did you get this from our jail?"

Karen interjected, "Never you mind."

"I wasn't asking you, slag!"

She stood up, pushed him over onto his back and brought her right heel down onto the side of his face. Jason released a scream that immediately embarrassed him. The impact was painful, but the scream was an angry scream, the result of being assaulted by a young woman—something he would never hear the last of, if ever it had happened in the old world and his associates had heard of it.

Strangely, the pain to his face was almost as bad as the bullet to his thigh, but it was the bullet to the thigh that could end his life if he didn't get the bleeding under control.

Pickle raised his hand, informing Karen to stop. Noticing the injuries to his leg and his face, Pickle spoke. "Let's not ruin the carpet."

"You fuckin' bitch!" Bonser screamed, now with his left hand clutching his thigh and his right inspecting the damage to his face.

"What are we gonna do with him?" Bradley tried to speak over the continuous tirade of taunts that were being thrown at her from the injured man on the floor.

Pickle sighed, "We bandage him up, drive him in the middle o' nowhere, and leave him there."

"That's it?"

Pickle guffawed, "Well, what else you want me to do? Suck his cock?"

Karen jokingly raised her eyebrows at her friend.

Pickle shook his head with a smile. "Bradley, yer a disgrace." Pickle's face then lost its smile and he now wore a more serious expression: "Drop him off a few miles from Longdon. It's about two miles away. Even if he makes it, he'll be too exhausted and wounded to try anything; the village has about four or five streets in it—that's it! Don't go right in. If those things see the van it might draw them out. With all due respects to the population o' the village, I don't want those things leaving and heading towards us."

"And if he comes back?"

"With that leg?" Pickle cackled. Karen's face was lacking any type of humour, so Pickle cleared his throat and took on a more serious tone. "Then he gets shot."

There was concern on Karen's face.

Pickle added, "Don't worry, I don't think we'll be seeing him again in a hurry, isn't that right?"

Bonser shook his head continuously. "You won't see me again."

"Let's hope not," Karen snorted.
Chapter Thirty Three

It had been days since she had seen her husband, days since the incident happened, and days since she had had a reasonable night's sleep. She had been in the house for a while now and welcomed the fact that it was vacant.

When the initial outbreak occurred, she grabbed her daughter and fled the place. She knew her husband could handle himself and was hoping to wait out into the street for him to make an appearance. What she didn't know was that the street was also plagued with these vagrants who tried to claw, grab, and even take a bite out of her and her daughter. Thinking that these frightening souls were somehow crazy or infected with something, she ran as hard as she could with her screaming daughter in tow, because she came to the conclusion that she was putting both of their lives in danger by waiting around for her husband.

Her husband never did make an appearance and she had no other choice but to run, especially when she saw a neighbour being brought to the ground and attacked by a group of the things. She had a daughter to think of. The street was scattered with seven or eight of them, excluding the ones that had got into the house, and it felt like that there had been a breakout at the local asylum.

Earlier, she had heard a thudding noise at her front door, and went to see who or what it was. She opened the door and two of the things spilled into the hallway. In hindsight, she should have pushed them back out, locked the door and ran upstairs and wakened her husband, but how was she to know, on that surreal Sunday morning, her house was to be invaded by these things? It was a miracle her and her daughter weren't bitten. Her motherly instincts also included the protection of her child, and she fought tooth and nail by pushing, kicking, punching and even head-butting, on two occasions, these creatures, before she grabbed her daughter off the floor and made a run for it out through the front door.

They grabbed her and tried to claw at her as she barged her way past into the wide open.

At first she thought it was burglars. She had heard a story in the local paper about an elderly couple last Saturday afternoon being robbed at knifepoint, and once they were tied up and had informed the two teenage burglars that their cash savings were hidden under the mattress and that there was jewellery in the bedroom cabinet, they went to those places. Instead of untying the defenceless elderly couple after finding what they were looking for, they simply left them there tied up, as they left the premises and drove away in their clapped out vehicle.

The old couple were found the next morning, but the gentleman had had a heart attack during the night whilst still tied up, and had been dead for hours.

As soon as she left the street, she found that the side streets were clear and began banging on the front doors of the houses, whilst holding her daughter, but the residents were either asleep or they just wouldn't let her and her daughter in. At the time she had no clue what was happening, and was aghast that no one would open their door to her, apart from one couple who were in the middle of leaving anyway.

She ran over to the family who were frantically throwing bags into their jeep and saw the family, that had a five-year-old boy with them, in a rush to get out of the street. She begged them to help her and told them that she had been attacked. She remembered the husband saying to her: "They're here? Already? Oh, shit!" But she didn't know what he was talking about.

He ignored her begging and the jeep screeched backwards and left the street quickly, leaving their front door open. A man from two doors down opened his bedroom window and urged the woman to get inside the house and lock all doors. Noticing that her face suggested that she didn't understand why, he then finally told her to find a channel where the news was, and listen to it.

That entire hullabaloo seemed months ago, but since then, she had had a reasonably quiet existence.

She lived off the basic food that was left in the cupboards and the fridge, and was thankful that the electricity and the running water still worked, although she was convinced that it wouldn't last for long. She made sure she ate things that needed refrigerated like cheese and meats, and left the tins until the fridge was left bare. Every two days she would also fill the bath. Before draining it, she would check that the water supply was still working, then fill it again with fresh water. She knew it was a waste of water, but she had a daughter to think of and wanted it to be as fresh as possible.

It had now been over a week since she had left her husband, and still didn't know if he was alive or had suffered a terrible death. She assumed that if he was alive, he would be thinking the same, as both mother and daughter would have disappeared by the time he had woken up.

The curtains had been drawn since that fateful Sunday and knew it was a matter of time before either they were rescued, or her and daughter would have to face the realisation that starvation was a possibility.

Jocelyn switched the kettle on and went for the fridge; she picked out a carton of milk and held it to her nose. It smelt funny the day before; it smelt terrible now, and there was no way she was going to give her daughter something that could make her ill. She would have to make do with drinking water, warm water boiled from the kettle, or some of the blackcurrant diluting juice that was sitting in the cupboard.

Jocelyn jumped with fright as she heard a thump on the kitchen window. It wasn't anything new and that she wasn't used to, but it always unnerved her all the same. How long would it be before one of them would unintentionally break the window? Again, like the day before and the day before that, it sounded like one of them had stumbled into the window accidentally.

She lifted the blinds by millimetres to see that there were three of them in the back garden. She looked at her little girl, who was oblivious to what was happening outside, and she quietly played with two ornaments from the fireplace. Jocelyn knew that the moment they found that there was something or someone inside, the windows might as well be made from paper. She had already planned her survival. It was basic, but it was all that she had and it involved her running upstairs with Hannah, blocking the top of the stairs with the huge cupboard she had managed to empty and 'walk' across the landing, which would then be followed by locking themselves in the main bedroom, followed by prayers.

What else could she do? Without her husband, Paul, Jocelyn Parker felt useless.
Chapter Thirty Four

"Daddy?"

"What is it, champ?"

"Do you think the monsters will be back?"

It was morning, and the group were still in the cabin. Jack Slade glared at his son and had no clue how to answer him. He looked at Kerry, who was as dumbfounded as he was, and his hesitant eyes went back onto his son who was still waiting for an answer.

What was a father supposed to do?

He wanted to protect his son—he was only six years old for Christ's sake, but at the same time, he didn't want to lie to him either. Jack took the easy option and sighed, "I dunno, son. I hope not." Of course they'll be back! The place is littered with them!

The group were exhausted and predictably had very little sleep during the night.

Kerry sat closer to her confused son and placed her arm around her little man. "You don't have to worry about things like that, okay?"

The boy nodded unconvincingly with a scowl. He brushed his fringe from his eyes. Jack noticed that Thomas needed a haircut, as at the moment his hairstyle was reminiscent of the way The Beatles had their hair on the front cover of the Rubber Soul album.

Kerry brushed back her dark, bobbed hair and continued to reassure her boy. "So long as daddy is here, and Paul ... and of course, me, nothing will happen to you. Is that clear?"

The six-year-old's eyes looked to the ceiling of the cabin and he began to chew the inside of his right cheek, lost in deliberation. "Um, okay."

"Don't you worry about things like that," Kerry continued, and leaned over and kissed the top of her son's head.

"Besides," Lee spoke up, feeling a little left out. "Uncle Lee will sort those vagrants out." Then Hayward stood up and started comically performing some shadow boxing like an old granddad would, and threw a few half-hearted jabs. A few seconds later Lee had ran out of puff to the amusement of the child, and had to sit back down.

Thomas whined, "Mummy, I'm thirsty."

Paul scratched his head. "We're gonna have to go soon."

Kerry asked, "Back to the hall?"

Paul shrugged. He wasn't sure.

"When?" Jack quizzed.

"Ready when you are."

Kerry stood to her feet, with Thomas doing the same. He held onto his mother's waist. Lee Hayward and Jack also stood next to Kerry's side, and Paul stood next to the exit of the cabin with his right hand on the bolt of the door.

Even though nothing had been said, Paul seemed to be the unofficial leader of the group. "I'll check before we go out."

All three adults nodded back at him, and he made no hesitation in opening the door and leaving the cabin. The morning was strange, and although it was hard to tell what the weather was really like until they were out of the woods, it appeared through the trees to be a dry, yet, murky day. Paul scanned the woodland and was confident that nothing else untoward was dwelling in the area. He looked over to the almost headless corpse in the distance that he had dealt with the night before, and was confident that if he remained standing where he was, the group, and more importantly, Thomas, wouldn't see it.

"It's clear," Paul lied.

First to come out was Jack, followed by Lee, Kerry and Thomas.

Kerry stepped out and breathed in the clear air and scanned the area herself. Knowing that Jemma Marlow's corpse was up ahead, Jack instructed Thomas to stay behind his mother, as all five of them slowly walked through the wooded area. Paul was about ten yards further up ahead, which suited Jack and Lee. Lee was anxious and Jack wanted to stay beside his son.

Paul turned around and looked at the group. "I think we should give the hall a miss and go the opposite way."

"What? No chance," Lee remonstrated. "Isn't that the direction those things went last night while we're all hiding in that hut?"

"Yeah, but that was hours and hours ago."

Jack told Lee, Kerry, and her son to stay where they were, and walked the ten yards up to where Paul's presence was. Feeling the eyes of Kerry and Lee boring holes into the back of his head, Jack whispered, "What's really the matter? Why can't we go back to the hall? Even if we're surrounded by those things, we can lock ourselves in. And we've got all that food from the supermarket. It's strong enough to hold, isn't it?"

"Sorry, Jack." Paul lowered his head and nodded behind him, which was the way back to the village hall. "I didn't want to upset your son ... or Kerry."

Jack's eyes weren't as strong as the man that was almost ten years his junior and took another walk ten yards past Paul's presence. He pushed his neck out and tried to focus with his eyes. His eyes then looked side-to-side, like an old Action Man doll. He could see thirty ... forty ... maybe even fifty of the things in the distance; some were spread out in line as if it was a pre-planned attack, which it obviously wasn't, like something out of a Zulu film. They were gaining rapidly and the village hall was definitely out of the equation, and going back to the hut, curled up like frightened prey was an option he didn't want to pursue now it was daylight and they could now see where they were going.

With no time to lose, Jack called out to the rest, "Okay, let's go."

He burst into a light jog in a different direction, and a dumbfounded Kerry and Lee raised their arms and shoulders, their body language translating into: What's going on?

Understanding their body language, Jack said, "Trust me, let's run." He gave Kerry a wink and nodded at his son, informing his ex that he would explain later and that he didn't want to frighten the boy.

Both Lee and Kerry, who had a hold of Thomas' hand, ran behind Jack, with Paul casually jogging behind.

"Do y'know where the main road is?" Paul asked Jack from behind, with heavy breath.

Jack shook his head. "Usually you'd listen out for traffic—cars going by and stuff. That's usually an indication where the road is, but there ain't gonna be much of that now, is there?"

Jack looked over his shoulder and saw that the creatures had disappeared from his view. It didn't mean that they weren't there anymore; they just weren't being picked up by his eyes for the time being.

Jack Slade occasionally looked down, still paranoid that he could be attacked by an adder. He bellowed to the group to try and follow his exact path if they could, but it was more for Thomas' benefit, as Jack didn't know what was around in the woods. He knew some illegal shootings took place, and was concerned that there could be certain traps lingering on the ground, discarded hooks, or other accessories from sloppy fishermen who would use the pond nearby.

"Jack!" Kerry screamed. As soon as she screamed out his name, she placed her hand over her mouth to prevent anything else coming out, but the damage had already been done.

He looked and saw three of them wandering clumsily to their left, about fifty yards away. The group all veered right, following Jack's lead, and the forty-year-old was beginning to panic. There was dozens behind them, and three more to their left, and he felt that if they came across anymore up ahead, they would be more or less surrounded. Surrounded with no weapons! The spear that Jack had, had been left in the wooden hut, but would have been hopeless in this situation anyway.

Jack stopped in his tracks, and the rest followed suit. He turned to the group who never questioned his action and announced, "I can hear a vehicle up ahead. Follow me."
Chapter Thirty Five

It was a struggle throwing Jason Bonser in the back of the van, even with the help of a weakened Harry Branston. The injured man still wriggled and writhed like a snake on fire, but it had finally been achieved to the disgust of their former guest, and Karen was under instruction to get rid of him. Karen had dressed his wound, not as an act of kindness, but so that he didn't bleed all over the floor of the van.

Bonser was threatened by Pickle that if he came back, he would be shot on sight. But it wasn't being kicked out of his temporary lodgings that unnerved and frightened the ex-prisoner, it was the fact that he was going to be dumped in the middle of nowhere, injured, and with no weapon of any sorts for protection. The action of Karen and Pickle, to Bonser, was deplorable, and he felt that being dumped alone would be like ringing the dinner bell for any wandering cannibals.

She had driven a mile out of the village and felt that this was enough, as although a couple of Snatchers had been seen as she drove past, she felt that further up could be a different story, and didn't want to take the risk of having to ram her way through and be surrounded herself just to drop this piece of shit off.

She had thought about putting a bullet in Bonser and then telling Pickle she had dumped him. But she couldn't lie and be disrespectful to a man that she owed her life to, plus, she had never killed a human being before.

She looked up ahead, along the bendy road and in her side mirrors. With the convex glass telling her it was also clear behind, she pulled up the van a little too harshly, and heard a thump in the back, as if her sudden stopping had thrown Bonser around. She jumped out of the van and opened the back doors with caution, her Browning pointing menacingly at Bonser who was lying on the narrow floor of the van with the opened cells on either side of him.

"Ready when you are," Bradley growled.

"Please, at least drop me somewhere where there's other people," Bonser begged, but it was one of those begging sentences that attracted no pity.

"I think the last thing you need to do is mix with other people. Even if you get to Longdon, they'll probably be no one there 'cos the place is that small. You've got ten seconds," Karen aimed the gun at his thigh, "or another slug's gonna go into your other leg."

"Alright, alright." Bonser held up his hand in defeat. "For fuck's sake!"

He dragged himself out of the van and pulled himself up onto his feet, as he stood at the end of the vehicle. He started looking at the three steps he needed to hop down to get onto the road. "At least give me a hand." Bonser held out his right hand, and Karen reacted by grabbing his sleeve and pulling him out of the van, causing the man to hit the road with a thump. He screamed out in pain as his thigh scraped the tarmac. Karen calmly began to shut the back door and sighed when she saw a little blood smeared in the aisle where the injured Bonser had dragged himself to the exit. It wasn't much, but it was enough to annoy her.

He looked up at Karen with pleading eyes, who in turn, looked at him coldly with executioner eyes. He knew that he was getting no sympathy from this one, so decided to save his breath as far as the begging and pleading were concerned. She had willingly picked him up and offered him food and shelter, yet, he had returned the gesture by thinking about killing them both so he could have it all for himself. Even Jason Bonser had to admit that most of this was his own fault. He had created this mess.

She nodded to his bandaged, wounded thigh. "I did a good job there. I suggest you learn to run with a limp. Remember," she said. "If you somehow come back, you'll be shot on sight. Got it?"

He nodded in agreement, reluctantly.

Karen added, "You're lucky Pickle gave you this chance. He's not like you. In the past he only harmed people for financial gain—business. He wouldn't shoot someone in cold blood, not if it was avoidable."

Bonser snorted, "I'm touched. He's all heart."

Ignoring his you bitch taunts, she got into the front of the van, did a three point turn—almost hitting Bonser when she was reversing—and drove away.

Bonser, with heavy, anxious breaths, looked to the side of him where the woodland was, and watched the van slowly disappearing around the bend. At that moment, there was nothing to be concerned about, but he knew that if any of them were to appear, the pain in his leg would have to be put to the back of his mind, if that was at all possible, as survival was the only priority he had now.

He thought about going back, despite the 'shot on sight' promise by Pickle, and maybe try and break into a vacant house in the same street or further down.

Why didn't they just let him do that? Why did they have to be so cruel and place him in the middle of nowhere like a sitting duck? Answer: because Pickle knew he was a piece of trash, and wherever Jason Bonser went, carnage would follow, and getting rid of him was the best option for all decent human beings.

Jason shook his head at the predicament he was in. Why didn't they just put a bullet in my head? Then he thought about the woman he had raped and strangled a couple of days ago, and the infant he had abandoned. If they had suddenly come across this information, he would have had his head blown off for sure.

Why abandon me? He quickly and mentally answered his own question. To give you some sort of chance. They're probably not as cold as you.

Bonser began limping along the main road that was unrecognisable to him, hoping that the next village wasn't far away. He thought about his sister. He was still miles away from where she lived, and the prison van would have been perfect to pick her up and bring her back to the house that was in a reasonably safe area for the time being. However, it wasn't to be.

*

Karen had taken her time round the bendy lanes. The van never went higher than second and was doing a casual fifteen as Karen's mind wandered. Her daydreaming of Gary had forced the young woman with the tough exterior, to blur her vision with saltwater that ran into the bottom of her eyes.

It seemed so long ago, and she knew that if he had managed to somehow get out of the house, he would be out there, walking, feeding—but not as the Gary she used to know. He would be out there as one of them.

She thought back and knew that if he hadn't had gone for his traditional night out with the boys, he would have been tucked up in bed, completely oblivious to what was happening in the world. She would have come back from work; they both would have watched the TV together, hugged, cried, then barricaded themselves into their house and would still be there now. But because of his night out, he had turned during the night and she was forced to leave the house and was now driving around in a prison van, armed with a handgun, and was friends with a man who was a notorious drug dealer. To say the week had been surreal would have been an understatement.

Trying to shake off her daydreaming—quite literally—by waggling her head, she rubbed her eyes with the short sleeve of her black T-shirt and released a sharp, sudden yelp, as a figure appeared in the middle of the road, frantically waving his arms. She slammed the brake hard with her right foot, and stalled the van after forgetting to dip the clutch with her left, before the vehicle came to a complete stop.

"Jesus Christ!" she exclaimed.

She could see the man was at the end of his tether, and saw him waving out a group of people who were standing at the side of the woodland.

No chance I'm giving you lot a ride, Karen thought.

The last time she felt charitable, it nearly cost her and her good friend's life. But before she managed to start up the engine and drive around the solitary male, standing in the road, she saw a distraught woman coming out of the woods with an equally distraught young boy, clinging onto his mother's shirt for comfort. Then two other males appeared.

Oh shit!

Karen had toughened up over the last week or so, but she wasn't heartless. She dropped her head into her hands and released a heavy exhale of breath. She sat up straight and looked back up at the group through the windscreen. She opened the driver's side door, took the van keys, and stepped out into the light wind that cooled the arch of her back that had been gathering perspiration.

"Please," Jack Slade pleaded. "You gotta help us."

She looked over to Kerry, who stood with her son in front of her. She was in tears and continued to mouth the word please over and over again.

Karen continued to stare at the group and gently banged her head off the palm of her hand, knowing that her conscience wouldn't allow her to drive past a group of desperate people, especially when there was a child involved.

"Right," Karen spoke, her words smothered with defeat. "I'm staying at a place about a mile from here; you can stay there for the night." She sighed and shook her head; she had been put in an unfortunate position. She snapped, "All the men in the back. The woman and the kid can sit in the front with me."

Paul Parker spoke up. "How come we have to go in the back?"

Flabbergasted at his ungrateful question, Karen pulled out her pistol from the front of her jeans, held it in the air with her right hand and waved it. "Because I've got this, so do as you're told. There's no room in the front for all of you anyway. And besides, I don't even know who the fuck you are. The last man I picked up nearly killed me and my friend."

Paul Parker's face was reminiscent of a schoolchild that had just been reprimanded by the head teacher in front of the whole assembly hall. He gulped. "Sorry. It looks a bit scary being in the back of that, with those things out there." He sighed, "The back it is then." His face was apologetic and Karen immediately forgave him.

She put the pistol back into her jeans and opened the back doors. "Try and ignore the blood on the floor," she spoke.

"Isn't this a prison van?" Jack queried.

"Don't even ask," Karen said, as she wasn't in the mood and didn't have the time to go into detail why she was driving around in a prison van. "Let's go." She then shook her head. "Pickle's gonna kill me. I drop one off, and then pick up another five."

Jack scrunched his face. A prison van? Pickle? "Were you the group at Stile Cop the other week?"

"Yeah." Karen wondered how he knew and went on the defensive. Her eyes shrank and she took a threatening step closer to Jack. "How d'ya know about that?"

"My friend, Gary..." Jack felt his throat getting hard with emotion; briefly he had forgot about Gary and his violent demise. He started his sentence again. "Gary spoke to some guy called Pickle briefly when we stopped at Stile Cop Road. Is that where you're taking us?"

"No. Stile Cop is a no-go area now."

"What happened?"

Karen lowered her head, and a five second film of the Stile Cop scene had played in her head. She could see Jamie and Janine being devoured, Pickle and KP running along the side of the hill to get to the van, while she stayed put for as long as she could, putting a bullet into the diseased brain of whomever came closest. She could see herself being grabbed while she tried to get into the van and Pickle unloading a shotgun cartridge at her attacker...and KP being bitten and leaving the van to end his life with dignity, rather than turning into one of them.

Karen finally answered Jack. "Some of our friends got attacked, and we fled the place—look, I don't mean to sound rude, but ... get the fuck in the van."

Jack smiled at Karen and went inside. She seemed okay, he thought. She was aggressive, but that was fine. Everyone seemed to be irritable in some way or another. It was perfectly understandable.

"If you wanna seat, just sit in the cells," she advised the men.

Paul Parker was the next to go in. Karen looked behind her and saw Kerry lifting Thomas into the front, and before she got in herself, Karen shouted over, "Make sure the kid doesn't touch anything!"

Kerry responded with a grateful smile. A sweaty Lee Hayward walked by Karen and was about to step into the back of the van without uttering a single word of thanks, but looked at her and gave her a grateful smile.

Karen grabbed the overweight man by his shoulder and ordered him to stand outside the van, which perplexed him, as well as Jack and Paul who were now in the back.

Karen popped her head into the back of the van and announced to the two confused men, "I'll be two minutes." She then shut the back doors and locked them in. She then turned to face the fifty-six-year-old confused male.

"What's going on?" Lee nervously asked with a fake smile that quavered with fear and confusion.

"Look at my face," Karen ordered, ignoring the protests being made by Paul and Jack from inside the back of the van.

"What?"

"Look at my face," she repeated.

Lee shuddered with apprehension and was almost crying. "I don't understand what you mean." His voice was pleading and almost begging.

Unsatisfied with his response, Karen pulled out the handgun from the front of her jeans. "Get on your knees," Karen ordered quietly. She looked behind, making sure that Kerry and her son were in the front and out of earshot.

Lee created a false, wide smile, scrunched his face with confusion, and leaned his head forwards as if he was hard of hearing. "What?" Thinking she was joking, he went to walk past her, but she pushed him back.

"I said," Karen swung the pistol round and placed the barrel in the middle of Lee's forehead, "get on your fuckin' knees!"

Ignoring the continuing protests and the slamming of hands coming from inside the van, Karen remained totally focused on the target in front of her.

"Please." Lee began to lower into a squat, and finally did what he was asked to do, and got onto his knees. "Wh-wh-what's wrong?"

Karen stood silently; the sight of the pistol was turning Lee into a broken man. An elongated cluster of seconds passed and Karen finally spoke. She asked the question, "Where's the other one?"

"Other what?" Lee could see she was serious, and the venom in her face suggested that whatever her problem was, it must have been a case of mistaken identity.

"The younger boy that was with you, where is he?"

Lee's face was filled with surprise. "My nephew? He was killed. Wait. How...?"

Karen grabbed Lee hard by the ear; he released a cry of pain. She yanked his head back and stuck the Browning into his mouth. By this time, fifty-six-year-old Lee Hayward had wet himself. Fucking crazy bitch! She's actually going to shoot me!

She cocked the gun slowly, and her forefinger caressed the trigger, forcing Lee not only to release more fetid urine, but to enlarge his shocked eyes as wide as they could go and send his body into a spasm of panic.

"Did you enjoy the use of the jeep?" Karen quizzed without her teeth parting.

Lee waggled his head a little, as her riddles were confusing him.

Karen sighed; she could see he genuinely didn't know what she was on about, so she decided to enlighten him. "Let me remind you. On that Sunday morning, you and your ... nephew cracked my windscreen at Draycott Park. You then dragged me out of my own vehicle, my Cherokee Jeep, and your ... nephew, booted me in the stomach. Then you both left me there to die. Ring any bells now?" She took the gun out of his mouth, allowing him to speak.

"Oh, Jesus Christ, was that you? I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry! We were desperate. I thought eventually you'd be—"

"Shopping? Picking flowers?"

Lee shook his head, not picking up on Karen's dark sarcasm. "Er ... no."

"Dead?"

He lowered his head, and bit his bottom lip shamefully.

"Get up," she ordered. "Lucky for you I'm not on my period. Now get the fuck in, fat boy, before I tear you a new one."

Lee slowly stood up and Karen opened the door, allowing the broken, and shamefaced middle-aged man inside. He was greeted by Paul and Jack; they asked him what was going on and if he was okay. The questions then angrily turned to Karen.

"He'll explain," she said. She slammed the doors shut, drowning out their voices.

Karen climbed back into the front of the van and started the engine. She playfully winked at Thomas, who smiled back, and moved away. She entered Heath Hayes a different way; this time she went by a few smaller streets. She saw one curtain twitch as she drove by and then heard Kerry tearfully say, "Oh, those poor people."

As Karen drove on, she could see more and more of the creatures lurking about, a lot of them trying to get into one particular house. She was hoping that her own house was going to be okay. If any of those things saw these people running into the front door, it might cause unnecessary attention that her and Pickle didn't want.

Karen wondered what Kerry was talking about with her those poor people comment and looked in her direction. She saw a woman holding her young daughter in the bedroom window; the mother was frantically waving, then begun banging the window with the palm of her right hand. Karen looked away, and could see Kerry glaring at her.

Karen said, "Look, my friend ain't gonna be too pleased with me turning up with you lot, never mind any more. What do you want me to do? Put the rest of the village in the back of the van? There's too many of those things there anyway, and I just don't have the bullets. It ain't gonna happen. I picked you guys up because it was clear. It's not clear there, and I'm not putting my life on the line for people I don't know. I'm sorry."

Karen looked at the digital clock in the dashboard, still feeling the cold glare coming from Kerry Evans. It was 11:07am.
Chapter Thirty Six

Jocelyn Parker and her daughter, Hannah, had had a late breakfast, and Jocelyn could see her daughter was already in a foul mood, simply because she was bored.

God, she's started early.

Jocelyn suggested to her daughter that they should play with the ornaments again, but the child was in no mood and announced that she had a 'stinky' in her nappy. For the last week, Jocelyn had been emptying the nappy into the toilet upstairs, and was wasting valuable water by putting it under the sink to rinse off the excess excreta. The nappy had been abandoned and her untrained daughter was going to have to wear pants, and casually do her business and hopefully her mother could catch her in time.

Jocelyn washed Hannah's clothes with cold water in the kitchen sink every other day, but she was lucky enough to have clothes for herself in the wardrobe upstairs. The clothes weren't to her liking, but she was in no position to complain.

"Mummy, I need a drink," Hannah announced. She was dressed in the same yellow T-shirt she had on a week ago, with a picture of an ice-lolly on the front. Jocelyn had put the black leggings on her daughter with no underwear.

"Just stay there and don't touch anything," the flustered mother commanded.

She ran upstairs and dumped the nappy in the sink. I'll clean that later.

She stayed where she was for a second and a sad smile emerged under her nose. She thought about Paul. Where was he? She was only streets away from her own house, so she understood that he couldn't have got far, unless he had got it into his head that for some reason Jocelyn had decided to travel elsewhere. She was sure that Paul would stay around the area and knew that once this was all over, they would find each other again. She smiled at the irony that at this moment in time, they could literally be only streets away from each other, but at the moment, it felt to Jocelyn that they were worlds away.

She finally left the bathroom and before she had time to gallop back down the stairs, she heard her daughter scream out.

Oh no! Jesus, I've only been away for five seconds. What has she done now?

Jocelyn almost twisted her right ankle as she bolted down the stairs quicker than she had gone down any stairs before, and could see her daughter standing next to the front window, in shock. Her fingers had pulled the curtains back and her face was inches away from the pane, but fear wouldn't allow her to move away from the window.

"Oh, dear Lord. I told you not to go anywhere near the window!" Jocelyn screamed, and she then did the same. The curiosity was strong, and she peered out and saw a few of the things coming onto the front garden and approaching the window, now they knew that there was something inside that could be of use to them.

She grabbed her hysterical daughter and jogged upstairs. The excessive weight she was carrying was making the task a little harder, but she managed it anyhow. She ran into the main bedroom—the bedroom that looked out onto the street—and shut the bedroom door. Hannah was still hysterical, and although it felt cruel, she shushed her daughter and had her hand over her mouth. After all, her screaming was not helping with this particular situation, and although the windows were shut, Hannah's screaming was still audible enough to be heard. It was almost like setting off a flare for the creatures.

Then Jocelyn suddenly heard the glass in the front door smashing. They're getting in! Oh, Jesus, they're getting in!

Jocelyn sat her crying daughter onto the carpet, stood up and grabbed the side-table and dragged the heavy thing with all her strength; she placed it against the bedroom door. She looked round to see if there were any other objects, but apart from the heavy-looking oak cupboard, there didn't appear to be anything else. She walked over to her sniffling little girl, and held her tight. She peered out of the window and could now see a mob of them, lazily slamming their hands against the front door and the living room window. The sounds were causing Hannah to shriek, forcing Jocelyn to put her hand over her daughter's mouth for a second time.

"It's okay, baby, it's okay." Jocelyn kissed her baby girl on the forehead, as the slamming increased its volume.

Jocelyn sat in the corner of the room with her knees up, and had Hannah by her side. She looked up to the ceiling all, teary eyed, and began to pray. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth—" Jocelyn let out a shriek as she heard the living room window downstairs fall through with a heavy and audible crash. "Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead—" She produced a short scream herself, as she heard the heavy, clumsy footsteps at the bottom of the stairs.

They're in the house!

She could hear the deathly sound of groaning from whatever was trying to make its way upstairs, and she covered her daughter's ears. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the Kingdom, the power and the glory are yours. Now—" The first smack hit the bedroom door, and both girls released terrified sobs. This was the end for Jocelyn and Hannah, she was convinced of it.

Jesus, I thought they were unable to climb stairs!

Despite the commotion occurring inside the house and the fact that the windows were closed, Jocelyn could hear the groan of an engine and decided to get to her feet, holding her daughter tightly. This was her and her daughter's last chance. She glared out of the window and saw a large white van that had small square tinted windows at the side. She waved at the van and knowing it was passing, she began slamming her right hand—her left holding her daughter—desperately against the panes of the bedroom window.

She caught the eye of a woman sitting in the passenger seat, but they weren't stopping. They had no intention of stopping, and who could blame them? It was too dangerous.

She sat back down with her distressed daughter and they hugged each other tightly, as the pounding of the bedroom door began. It continued, as more of them reached the top of the stairs clumsily, and Jocelyn was sure that it was just a matter of time before her and her daughter were about to experience an unimaginable death.

Oh, Paul. Where are you?
Chapter Thirty Seven

His leg was beginning to throb badly, and the pain intensified as if it had been dipped in sulphuric acid. He dragged his right leg, and did his best to progress to the next town that was at least another mile away. His main fear wasn't just the infected that roamed the areas, it was also the fact that if he didn't get medical help soon, he was certain that he was going to pick up an infection or maybe bleed to death if the bandage didn't hold.

It was a decent bandage, but he was still bleeding.

Where was he going to get hospital treatment in this new world? This was when he thought that what Pickle had done to him was exceptionally cruel and vindictive.

Not only was he now injured, but also there was a bullet in his thigh that would probably remain there for the rest of his days. He was pretty sure that hospitals were now vacant, with the exception of the cities that were quarantined, if that indeed was happening, and if the bullet did get removed, it would have to be a do-it-yourself attempt.

He winced through every step, and the pain had been present for so long now, he seemed to have accepted it and never complained to himself as he progressed slowly towards the unknown. His mind went back to a few weeks ago, and even though he couldn't believe he was thinking it, he wished he was back in prison.

He thought about his associate and cellmate, Kyle Horan, and wondered if his demise was as painful as it sounded. He did feel for him, but he was glad it was Kyle and not himself that had been taken down when they jumped the fence.

He was sure that there was a village further up ahead, but felt that he was going the wrong way if he wanted to be safe.

He didn't really have a choice as far as being dropped was concerned, and wasn't about to risk walking back the other way to get shot. He knew of Pickle, and knew that in the drugs world at least, the man never shied away from violence. And although Jason didn't want to be ripped to shreds by these things, he didn't want a bullet in his head either, so he continued to limp forward, hoping that the next village was like Heath Hayes and not too populated with the ghouls.

He was concerned about the village he was heading for, as it was near Rugeley. He was hoping that the chances of this village being overrun by these things was low because the place was so small. He wasn't sure, as he didn't know the place as well as his two ex-housemates. He lived in hope that he would bump into another human, so that he could be cared for and looked after, and this time he promised to behave himself.

Knowing his luck, he thought, he'd end up bumping into the Murphy family. Then he would be fucked.

He limped for minutes in the sunless sky, and noticed that the light had dimmed due to the sudden grey army of clouds that fused together. He continued to painfully drag his leg along the main road and stopped suddenly; he straightened his aching back and tried to ease his erratic breathing.

As ten minutes passed, Bonser had finally got to the tiny village of Longdon, a place with just a handful of streets, but it looked like a tiny ghost town. He sighed and rested his backside on the grass just before the village. His throat was dry and he could have murdered a drink of water.

With his thigh throbbing more than ever, he winced as he dragged himself back to his feet. Bonser limped past the village's 'welcome' sign and hobbled his way along the main road. He had come to his first street. It was a cul-de-sac, and saw two of the things stumbling around as if they were lost. He quickly limped away from them before he could be seen and quickly veered right into the next street, hoping to be taken in eventually by a barricaded resident. He stood still, wide-eyed, and released a gulp and almost sobbed to himself. "Oh, Jesus Christ."

There were twenty to thirty of them in the middle of the street. He dragged his feet away from the macabre scene, and that one drag of the foot seemed to alert the senses of two of them that stumbled in his direction. With a little extra energy now that there was warm flesh available, they stumbled after him. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

He exited the street and looked to his right to see if it was worth his time checking the other streets and trying to seek refuge in someone's house. But what if there were more of them? He looked behind him to see that the whole horde was now following him. "Fuck it!" he snapped.

He winced with the pain, as he tried to quicken his pace, and left the village and went back onto the main country road that would eventually lead back into the village of Heath Hayes.

He managed a hundred yards and then made a turn to the right and entered the woods. He remembered what Karen had said about the woods leading to other towns such as Rugeley. Maybe he could confuse them; throw them off the scent, unless they actually saw him go into the woodland area.

He was only in the woods for a few seconds and could see a solitary being through the trees. It had its back to him, banging into the occasional stump and looked to be heading further in, away from where Jason Bonser was standing.

Where there was one, there was usually more. "Shit."

He was convinced he could handle one with his bare hands, but that could sap valuable energy levels, and he needed all his energy, especially now he had to drag his injured, heavy leg around for God knows how long.

He stumbled out of the woods, and went into the woods on the other side of the main road. The result in there was much worse. He sighed with exasperation as he looked ahead. "Six of the fuckers."

With Bonser's staggering causing the snapping of twigs and the rustling of bracken, the attention of the six things turned towards Bonser and they quickened their pace through the woods, heading for him.

He got back onto the road and saw that the horde from the tiny village of Longdon were now on the main road and were heading out of the village, and heading his way. He didn't have a choice. It was back to Heath Hayes or be ripped to pieces.

He decided that if he had the strength, he would bypass Heath Hayes and continue to the next village to avoid the wrath of Harry Branston, but he felt exhausted already. How on earth was he going to manage that? He turned his head to see that they were still behind, about two hundred yards away, but they had somehow multiplied as now more of them were heading his way.

From a distance, both potential victim and potential attackers were similar in the way they moved, as legs were dragged in order to increase momentum. Bonser could feel his heartbeat banging from inside his chest at an alarming speed and the cold perspiration trickling down every part of his body. He came to the conclusion that he'd be lucky to make it to Heath Hayes, let alone the next village, as he felt exhausted. His heart continued to smack him from the inside of his chest and he could hear the groans from behind, increasing in volume.

He took another peep behind and his eyes confirmed that they were gaining on him. His panic sent more adrenaline through his frightened frame, but his energy levels were still dwindling. He took another paranoid gawp and saw about a hundred yards away, more of them, stumbling out of the edge of the woods from the left and right and stepping out onto the main road.

He let out a shriek of terror as his momentum slowed and their persistence continued. The realisation of receiving the same fate that Kyle had endured could become a reality. His breath was struggling, his lungs burned, and his legs felt weighty. He continued for a further five minutes, exhaustion almost crippling him, let alone the bullet wound to his thigh.

He took one last look behind him, and released a yell of despair as the leading ghoul was only forty yards away, and behind him, there were now at least fifty of them.

Bonser said aloud, with defeat coated in his words, "If Pickle puts a bullet through my head, then so be it."

The alternative way of dying was unthinkable and unimaginable.
Chapter Thirty Eight

Pickle had had a hearty lunch, which consisted of two rounds of bread and four slices of ham and cheese. When he first managed to drag himself out of his bed, he was hoping for toast and eggs. He noticed that the fridge light wasn't on; he also couldn't get the gas cooker to ignite and couldn't find any matches anywhere.

Finally, at last, they had lost power.

Whether it was a national thing, he didn't know, but he knew it was coming and was surprised it had taken so long.

After his breakfast—that was washed down with a glass of diluted orange juice—he got dressed and put on his black T-shirt and grey jogging bottoms. With Karen out of the house, he took the liberty of having breakfast in the nude. He had changed his underwear—briefs and socks—upstairs, before going downstairs, and had went through the deceased male's cupboard for the underwear.

He looked at the Timex clock on the wall of the kitchen and wondered if Karen was okay. An hour ago, he still felt jaded and had felt a new lease of energy once he had eaten. Throwing Bonser into the back of the van had depleted any energy he had left and he needed another lie down, although it was brief as his concern for Karen grew. He knew she could handle herself. What could go wrong? She was fit and sported a handgun, whereas, Bonser was injured and in a severe amount of pain.

He wanted to go with her, but he was too exhausted and Karen had also gave him a don't you trust me? look when he mentioned it; so Pickle left her to handle it herself once they threw Jason in the back.

Maybe I should have just killed him. Pickle then smiled and shook his head.

It would have been easier to finish Bonser in the house, but leaving an injured man in the middle of nowhere was a fate that a man like Bonser deserved. Pickle knew of some of the things Bonser had got up to in prison, especially beating and raping the young, fresh remands that would come onto the wing. He deserved nothing more than an agonising death. A bullet to the head was too quick for an animal like Jason Bonser, or any of the Murphy family from Little Haywood, and it was out of character for someone like Pickle to kill someone in cold blood anyway, despite Bonser's despicable criminal background.

He ran his thick fingers through his short, dark hair, and before his paranoid mind wandered and conjured up images of Karen being overpowered by Bonser, the groan of the van could be faintly heard in the distance. He raised a smile, and then suddenly realised that there was a miniscule chance that Karen could have been taken by surprise and that it could be Jason on his way back, ready to shoot him and have the house and van to himself whilst Karen had been left for dead.

As a precaution, he ran upstairs and almost fell into the wall on the way up, as he was still feeling jaded. He walked briskly into the front bedroom and peered out of the window. The van pulled up, and he knew it was Karen as the vehicle did a sloppy three-point turn and backed the vehicle onto the front garden, just the way they had planned. She took her time.

His faint smile had evaporated off his face when he saw a young woman and a boy getting out of the passenger side of the van. Karen left the vehicle from the driver's side, and Pickle's disappointment grew when he saw the twenty-three-year-old reaching for the back doors of the van.

Pickle shook his head and placed his right hand on his cheek. Don't tell me there's more.

Three males clambered out of the van, and scrunched their sensitive eyes as they were exposed to the daylight. Karen looked up at the frowning face of Pickle. He was still standing by the window and Karen shrugged her shoulders apologetically up at her friend. Pickle felt powerless to do anything. He couldn't turn them away now, not with a young boy in tow. Two of the men from the back looked like they could probably handle themselves in a dire situation, which might be useful for the future, Pickle thought. He wasn't sure of the older gentleman.

The main thing that did worry the forty-three-year-old ex-inmate was that they had now five extra mouths to feed. With his limited experiences of group situations, Pickle was hoping that if a situation occurred the same as Stile Cop, the results would have a different outcome. They had lost three people that night, including KP, and he didn't want to be responsible for anyone but himself, especially a young boy. He had always looked after himself, as most around him didn't need looking after, and that was still the case with Karen by his side. But the sight of the young terrified woman with her equally terrified little man, made Pickle nauseous and hoped that one of the men from the back of the van was the father of the child, so he could be responsible for the youngster's safety and not Pickle.

He didn't blame Karen. What could she have done? Driven past them and let them wander the rural villages of Staffordshire? He knew Karen's conscience wouldn't allow that to happen, and he was no different.

He remained standing as the bodies entered the reception area below him. The house was suddenly filled with soft voices, just as it might have been ten days ago when the family of the house had been alive.

He heard the door slam shut and Karen's voice telling the guests to make themselves comfortable. Pickle rested his elbows on the windowsill and stared out into the desolate street. He was getting a headache again. Maybe dehydration, he thought. There was still plenty of water in the van, but decided to use the tap.

He made his way downstairs, and promised to exchange pleasantries with his new guests and make them all a drink. He was never the best at being the host in the real world, so this was something else he wasn't looking forward to.

He sighed selfishly, now that there were more people in the house, and ponderously made his way downstairs.

Time to mingle.
Chapter Thirty Nine

With the clamour coming from the bedroom door, the repeat of The Lord's Prayer was becoming increasingly impossible. The noise and her own panic was making her forget the words, and when she did remember some of them, the strident hammering of the bedroom door made it hard for her to hear her own voice.

Jocelyn cried and held onto her daughter tightly. The two-year-old was still screaming, and Jocelyn had stopped covering her mouth. The truth was, she felt like screaming herself, and the only thing that prevented her from doing so was that she didn't want to add further stress to her young daughter's body, if that at all was possible.

Jocelyn thought about the van that had driven past and knew that that was their last hope of survival. She knew that thousands upon thousands of families had already gone through the experience that her and her daughter were about to endure, but it didn't help her tremulous body.

She constantly rubbed and kissed her daughter's head in a pathetic way of soothing her panic-stricken frame. It seemed bizarre to Jocelyn how young children could pick up on consternation. Obviously, Hannah didn't know what was really occurring in the real world, but her senses still informed her that something terrible was about to happen to them both.

She had cried and screamed for so long now, that it had been a while since she heard her daughter speak. Despite being two years old, her range of vocabulary was very good for someone so young. When she at last released a sentence, Jocelyn wished she never did, as that one sentence almost broke her heart.

Out of nowhere, while her tears fell like blood from a wound, Hannah screamed, "I want my daddy!"

Jocelyn's eyes stung with more tears than her eyes could handle, and held her daughter even more tightly. "So do I, baby. So do I. Oh Paul, where are you? We need you."

The crack of wood made Jocelyn jump, and then she heard the cupboard smashing its way downstairs. The cupboard that she moved to the landing to block the attackers had only worked for a matter of minutes. The only thing that was stopping those things from getting to their prey was a cheap wooden door that had no lock and nothing behind it apart from a side-table, which was the only thing Jocelyn could physically move in the room.

She glared at the door that was slowly beginning to break before her very eyes. She stood up, still clutching onto her hysterical daughter, and took a peep outside. She looked down and out of the window and could see dozens below. Even if she somehow escaped from the bedroom window without spraining an ankle, it was apparent that the outcome would still be the same...death.

She closed her eyes and tried singing a lullaby to soothe the young girl that was still asking for her daddy. Jocelyn's mind was blank. She started to sing Wee Willie Winkie, but forgot the third line and stopped abruptly. She then tried to sing the Rainbow Song, but the clamour grew so strident, it was impossible to hear herself think. Her daughter's screaming suggested to her that no nursery rhyme was going to help them now. She continued to hold her daughter tightly, and began to reminisce about her time with her husband.

Jocelyn Parker—then Hales—met Paul Parker while they were in their early twenties. Both had come out of a relationship, and the last thing they needed was another one so soon. Paul was supposed to be a one-night stand when she met him in a club. But after lying in bed together through the early hours of the morning, they both then realised that they were extremely compatible. It seemed stupid to not see one another again just because they had both come out of a relationship within a month.

They decided to take things slowly, despite jumping into bed together on the first night, and were married within two years of meeting one another. As they both approached their thirties and had exhausted themselves with lavish holidays and many nights of partying with friends, they decided that they would like to try for a family. Some of Jocelyn's friends had struggled to get pregnant; some had lazy ovaries. One of her friends was going through the IUI treatment, and her closest friend was going through the second stage of IVF.

The Parkers never took anything for granted after seeing what their friends had gone through, so they decided to start a family as they reached their late twenties, in case they needed treatment themselves. Not getting pregnant seemed a lot more common than they thought, but they turned out to be blessed.

Jocelyn's brief reminiscing had come to an abrupt halt once the bedroom door finally gave in, and one-by-one the rotting, walking corpses spilled into the room through the shattered and splintered door, like a horde of pumped up and excited shoppers waiting for a new store to open.

The first one to come in looked purple, and was terribly bloated. It was unrecognisable and was followed in by many more. No matter how hard Jocelyn clung onto Hannah, her hysterical daughter was eventually taken off her by dozens of hands and was torn apart within seconds. Her screaming was horrendous, but short.

A hysterical Jocelyn put up a decent fight, even as she was being bitten. But once the room was heaving with at least ten of them, she decided to give up and dropped to the ground and glared into nothingness as they ripped her flesh away.

The last thing that she saw was the remains of her unrecognisable two-year-old daughter, who was in three bloody pieces, being devoured by the relentless and ravenous creatures that had swarmed the room.

Jocelyn's eventual death came once hands grabbed her neck, and tore her throat out.
Chapter Forty

According to the digital watch on Lee Hayward's wrist, it was 15:19pm. Many minutes had passed since they arrived. He asked Pickle if it was okay to use the back bedroom to have a nap, and Pickle reluctantly agreed. They had only just got rid of Jason Bonser, so he was a little paranoid about every character that Karen had brought back, with the exception of Kerry and young Thomas.

Kerry and Thomas went upstairs into the children's bedroom, and was told by Karen that the house was already empty when they arrived—a story concocted so that the youngster and mother wouldn't feel uncomfortable.

Paul and Jack stood in the kitchen, and was drinking water that was fetched from the van. Pickle kindly told the visitors that any water consumed should come from the tap and not the van, as they should take advantage of the running water before it was no more.

Karen sat down in the armchair and looked over to Pickle who was sitting on the end of the couch. Her eyes were apologetic.

"You look better," she said in a whisper, out of earshot from the two males in the kitchen.

He replied, "I feel better."

"When did the power go out?"

Pickle's lips were raised toward his nose and gave a lazy shake of his head. He didn't know.

"Look, about—"

"It doesn't matter," he interrupted, and produced a genuine smile. "What else could yer do? Drive by them?"

Karen changed the subject and said, "They're near here. We saw some of them on the other side of the village, trying to get into a house as we drove past. When I picked those people up, they were running from them in the woods. They're fucking everywhere."

"The main road looked clear to me when I looked." Pickle stood up and walked over to the living room and glared out of the window to see if the situation had changed, as it had been only minutes since he scanned the street.

Added Karen, "It is for now, but I don't think it'll be too long before they start heading this way."

He moved away from the window and returned to his original sitting position. He released a defeated sigh. Karen had heard that sigh before. It was soon after KP had left the van and wandered off to shoot himself. Pickle had promised to be more positive in such a dire world, but it was easier said than done. "Well, let's hope they're just passing through and going on to the next populated area. I'm sick o' running."

"Me too," Karen spoke in agreement, but felt like the fight in Pickle had evaporated again. Maybe he was still weak from his virus.

Paul Parker had entered the living room and gave his hosts a thin smile as a way of a silent salutation. He slowly placed his backside on the couch at the opposite end to where Pickle was sitting. He felt that he had walked in on a private conversation and would have felt stupid getting to his feet and walking back out again, so he awkwardly slurped on his water and kept his eyes on the carpet.

"So what's your story?" Paul asked Pickle.

Pickle smiled. "Like yours; it's too long to tell. We could be here all night."

"At least we're alive, though."

"For now," Pickle responded, his tone drenched in negativity.

Paul asked, "Do you have family?"

Pickle sighed and glared at Paul. "Look 'ere, ma friend, don't take this personally—"

"I get it," Paul interjected. "You don't want to get to know someone in case they get killed, right?"

"We've lost some people in the last week."

"Haven't we all?" Paul exclaimed.

Pickle grinned at Parker, and was pleased that amongst the group, there was another man who had balls. He wasn't entirely sure about the man they called Jack Slade, and Lee Hayward looked like he was ready to have a heart attack. In some ways, Hayward reminded Pickle of Laz.

Karen watched in silence, as Jack walked out of the kitchen and headed upstairs to see his son.

*

There was a gentle knock on the door of the smallest bedroom in the house. Without waiting for an instruction, Jack slowly opened the door and went in to see his son and Kerry sitting on the bed. His son was drawing a picture on a scrap of paper with a dark green crayon that he had found on a dressing table. The table looked like it belonged to a girl.

Jack sat next to Kerry on the bed, and was staring at Thomas in a state of self-hypnosis. Jack silently sat up and placed his hand comfortingly on Kerry's left thigh. She never responded and continued to glare. Jack could see her eyes were glassy, and water from her eyes was ready to fall onto her lap. He didn't feel it was necessary to speak to Kerry, so he remained quiet. He knew what she was thinking and what kind of questions were probably swirling in her mind, like brown, fallen leaves on a windy October day: What's going to happen to us? To Thomas? When will this madness end? Will it ever end? Will we get through it?

Jack looked around, what appeared to be, a girl's bedroom, and looked over Kerry's shoulder to assess his son's artwork. Thomas then sat up straight and wordlessly handed the scrap of paper to his mum. Before looking at the picture, she smiled at her son and kissed his head. He felt clammy. God, I hope he's not coming down with a fever. Our diets have hardly been tiptop since the outbreak.

Kerry thought about her own diet. It had recently consisted of no fruit, mainly bread, and hardly any water, which was probably one of the reasons why she was getting pounding headaches. She was used to exercise and consuming two litres of water per day, but she was lucky if she had had two litres in the last seven days. Briefly, Kerry thought about the rest of the group from the village hall. She knew some were dead, but she hoped the remaining ones were okay. Then she thought of her mother. She was convinced that the stress of the outbreak had killed her, and was kind of glad that she wasn't around anymore to be going through what they were going through now.

She then gaped at the picture at what her son had drawn. It took a while for Kerry to work out what the picture was, although Jack had actually worked it out before her. But when she did, it made her heart fill full of sadness. It was a picture of four people in the sky, and underneath them Thomas had drawn six figures with stretched-out arms.

Kerry assumed that the six people were the ghouls that were plaguing them, and the four people in the sky was herself, her mum, Jack and Thomas, in heaven. She passed the picture to Jack.

Although the young boy had witnessed someone being killed in his street when the outbreak was in its infancy, since then, he had been shielded from it by his mother, but no matter how much she tried to hide the horror from Thomas, it seemed frivolous, as the boy wasn't stupid. He knew what was going on. He might not have known how it had happened and the amount of people that had been slaughtered, but he knew the world, as he knew it, had changed for the worse.

At last, Thomas spoke. "I miss Grandma."

"So do I," his mum spoke softly, whilst the tears rained down.

"I'm tired."

Kerry stroked his hair lovingly and asked, "Do you want a lie down?"

Thomas nodded, and nervously looked up at his mum. "Can I be on my own?"

"Sure you can," Jack said, before Kerry had time to protest. He knew what she was like. She would insist on sleeping next to him, but if Thomas wanted to be alone—despite only being six—then his mother should adhere to his wish.

It was a strange request from a little boy who had been introduced to such a nightmarish new world, but both parents reluctantly agreed to leave him.

"Come on," Jack said to Kerry, before she attempted to change her son's mind. "Let's go downstairs and get a drink of water."
Chapter Forty One

His breathing was similar to that of an old asthmatic man who had suddenly woken up in a bed of feathers. His heart felt that it was ready to burst, as it had been years since his body had been put under so much pressure as far as an aerobic workout was concerned. His head throbbed and pounded viciously, and the feeling in his injured leg had gone, but he continued to drag the heavy thigh that was slowing him down.

His shirt was soaked with perspiration; his adrenaline was beginning to wane despite his fear being ever-present. Was his body giving up? Come on. Another hundred yards and I'm there. Surely someone will let me in.

Bonser could now see some of the roofs of the houses in the main street of Heath Hayes. He was getting nearer. He originally adhered to Pickle's threat, but the situation was different now. If only Pickle hadn't have shot him, he would have had a fighting chance and wouldn't have come back to the village. But Bonser had returned, and he had about a hundred admirers following him, the closest being only twenty yards away.

Jason was certain he was finished, and half-laughed at the scene that was unfolding. It was like a scene from Rocky, where Sylvester Stallone was running through the streets to be chased by hundreds of kids, only this was a slowed-down, horror version.

He wondered if this was his punishment for being such a bastard in life. If it was, he was in for a painful demise. He never saw himself as a God-believing individual, and even if he suddenly had an apparition of Jesus Christ himself, he knew that even the Son of God couldn't forgive such a man who had not only behaved terribly before and during his incarceration, but had behaved badly as the new world began to unfold.

He had felt nothing for the woman he raped and strangled when he turned up at Milford after his escape; and although he had twangs of guilt for leaving her baby to starve to death, he still did it.

He also thought briefly about Pickle and Karen.

In hindsight, he should have taken care of the two as soon as he arrived, but removing Karen and Pickle was never his original intention. He liked Karen as a person and was grateful for the lift. He thought that the temporary stay in the house would be good for him, but as soon as she reprimanded him for shooting one of the creatures, he was enraged and knew he had already broken her trust. He was certain that she was close to asking him to leave, but the house and the van would have been perfect to enhance his survival. That was when he decided to act. He had planned to rape Karen and kill her after he had taken care of Pickle, but he had underestimated the bed-ridden individual in the bedroom.

He now came to one of the first houses of the main street, to the right of the road, and could see two ghouls that were already there, but they were unaware of his presence and had their backs to him, moving away from the street. The house appeared to have a car on the drive and he pounded the doors to be let in, convinced there was someone in there, hiding. He knew that most residents had fled the area; it could be seen from the lack of vehicles in the street.

After more seconds of pounding, he crossed the road towards another house where there sat a blue Sedan. The house was opposite where Pickle and Karen were staying; at this stage now, he would have quite gladly have taken a bullet off the ex-inmate.

He could see them in their dozens, spilling onto the main road and knew this house was his last chance. He frantically hammered the door and screamed for him to be allowed in. He then tried to run at the door to break in, but the pain in his leg had highlighted that Jason Bonser's running days were over.

He dragged himself into the middle of the street, desperately trying to get back to the house where he had stayed the night, hoping for a reprieve. Even, if by some miracle, he was given a reprieve, it was too late anyway. They encircled the panicky Jason Bonser, including the two that were initially walking away, and he sighed in defeat. Whatever happened to Kyle Horan back at the prison, he was about to endure the very same fate, the same horror, and the same pain.

An exhausted Jason Bonser stopped to catch his breath and looked up to the house that gave him shelter for the night. He could see in the front bedroom window, a small boy who glared at him with wide, frightened eyes. The boy waved at Jason, who turned around to see the street infested with the things. It wasn't his fault. He had nowhere else to go. He was like an evil pied piper, who had brought the vermin back with him.

Bonser turned and stared at the house and yelled at no one in particular, "This is your fault! What was I supposed to do? Just lie down and die? You should have killed me when you had the chance!"

He held out his arms, exhausted, waiting for the first bite. He was pulled to the ground by the crowd of the contaminated. The pain was indescribable as he could feel parts of his body coming away from him, but he refused to scream, even when their rotting fingers went into his eyes.

He remained silent and bit his bottom lip so hard with the pain, his top teeth had taken it off before they slowly pulled his head away from his neck.
Chapter Forty Two

Thomas Slade's mouth was so dry, it felt like his tongue had shrivelled to a third of its size, and once his sappy eyes slowly prised themselves open, he began to frantically lick his lips. His confusing eyes scanned round the small bedroom, and took him a matter of seconds to realise that he was in a stranger's house and that his young life had changed for the worse.

How long had he been sleeping? He didn't have the answer to that particular question, but welcomed being in the room and being in a safe house where his parents were, as well as numerous others. This had been the safest he had felt in over a week. His mother tried her best to shield him from the reality that was unfolding, but he knew that something wasn't quite right. His mother constantly broke down in tears; he wasn't at school, and hadn't seen his friends in ages. Every time he asked after his friends, his mum would change the subject and cry once again. He was certain that something had happened to them. But what?

It had only been days ago since his Grandma had 'fallen asleep' and had to be buried in the woods. His mummy said she was in heaven, and although he missed her, he was pleased that she was now with God.

Young Thomas Slade sat upright and swung his legs to his left, to prepare himself to get on his feet. He stood and stretched his body, bending his spine in the shape of a banana, and was unmoved that he had woken up to find his mother not by his side. The room was dark, and Thomas stood on a side-table and carefully pulled the red curtains back to allow the daylight to spill in and to reveal that the main street of Heath Hayes had a couple of Lurkers—as Paul Parker would call them, when they were back at Longdon Village Hall.

Thomas felt unmoved by their presence, as they clumsily shambled around the street, doing no harm to anyone but themselves. It appeared that they were moving away from the house. He giggled slightly as one stumbled and smacked its head off a streetlight. He knew the story would be different if he was out in the street himself, and was aware that these things would get a sudden burst of energy—like most predators—whenever they saw food, as he had now seen it for himself. The first time was when a neighbour was attacked, when they were staying at their own house on Crabtree Way. The other time was when they ran from them in the woods only a few hours ago.

His eyes became bored of the free slapstick entertainment that was being provided by the dead beings, and he stared across the road and saw in a bedroom window, from the house opposite, a young girl. She was no older than seven years old and Thomas smiled that—apart from Yoler—he had seen someone else of similar age for the first time in over a week. He slowly raised his hand in a kind gesture to say hello. Although she was a fair distance, Thomas could see fright on the girl's face, and was pleased to see that she returned the gesture by raising her own hand.

The little man didn't know what to come up with next, so he pointed at the girl and then gave her the thumbs up. He wanted it to be interpreted as: "Are you okay?" The young girl had interpreted his hand gesture correctly, but gave him an answer that made him unhappy. She shook her head and pointed behind her. Thomas guessed that she was pointing at her bedroom door. Was someone trying to get in? Her own parents, perhaps?

Thomas was told not to make a noise whilst in the house, but he was toying with the idea whether to open the window and bellow to the young girl about what he wanted to say next. What were his parents going to do to him if he did this? Ground him? He decided from a safety point of view that this action wouldn't benefit anyone that dwelled in the house, and decided not to take his idea any further.

His eyes were distracted back to the street, and saw the two Lurkers moving away from view down the road, as if they were bored with the lack of activity. As his eyes glared at the figures that were moving away from the area, his eyes almost magnetically looked to the right, and saw a bloodied figure limping his way down the road. He looked human.

Twenty yards behind him was a small crowd of the creatures entering the main road, following him.

Thomas' heart increased its pump, and his shocked eyes widened as he looked on helplessly to see the man pounding the door of the house that was opposite him, the same house where the girl was. Thomas looked up at the girl and saw that she had disappeared, and wondered what had happened to her. He looked at the man once again, who was now standing in the middle of the road and was shouting something he couldn't really work out.

Thomas could then hear the gallop of feet up the stairs, heading towards the bedroom. The door swung open, and his mother stood and commanded, "We're going." Thomas waved at the man who was being surrounded by the ghoulish creatures, and was grabbed by his mother as the man from outside had ceased his shouting.
Chapter Forty Three

"We're gonna have to leave," Pickle announced to the group.

Pickle remained glaring out the front window, peering from the crack of the curtains. He saw the bloody leftovers of Jason Bonser, and there wasn't much left, apart from blood and entrails. In hindsight, he wished he had now killed him, but at the same time, he was a little angry with Karen and wondered how far she had actually driven him out.

As if she could read his mind, Karen walked behind Pickle and placed her hand on his shoulder, and said, "I'm sorry. I thought two miles for an injured man was far enough. I thought the threat of us shooting him, if he returned, would have kept him away. He must have had literally nowhere to go. Meaning—"

"Meaning, there could be fuckin' hundreds o' the things, everywhere!" Pickle interrupted with disdain. "And this place was the only place he could go. Load and grab what little ammo we have left, I think we're gonna need it."

"Pickle? What's happening?" Lee Hayward was the first of the new group to speak, as the rest stayed a few yards away, standing in a daze. Was this nightmare ever going to end?

"Why don't we just stay in here, it's safer, isn't it?" Paul Parker's question forced Pickle's audience to glare at the man in charge for an answer.

"No, it's not safe," Pickle snapped. "If we take a gamble and hide, and they all walk by the house into another village, then great. But if it backfires and they surround the house, we're fucked. I'm not taking the chance." Pickle pointed out the window and showed Parker that some were already approaching some houses on the opposite side of the road, trying to get in. "Sooner or later, these things will get in. I'm assuming there'll be hundreds more. Once they charge the house, we'll be trapped. There are a few out there now as it is. If we leave it too late, we won't be able to get to the vans' doors."

"So what do you suggest?" Jack asked the question, whilst Kerry and Thomas gripped onto his sleeve.

Pickle looked out of the window and said, "At the moment, it's clear enough for us to run out to the front door and get into the van. If we wait any longer we'll be screwed." He looked down on the floor, and remembered the time he, KP, Janine and Jamie parked up at Little Haywood to get the guns, before stopping off at the Wolseley Arms pub for the night.

Pickle looked through the front window again, and could see dozens appearing at the top of the street, about fifty yards away. He knew they were wasting time with their hesitation, so he took the leadership role straight away. He turned to the group and yelled, "Let's go."

They all hesitantly piled out of the front door; Pickle threw Jack the keys and told him to take Kerry and Thomas into the front of the van. They did just that and then Pickle took another gander and saw the things speeding up; they were getting nearer. "Right, the rest in the back. Quickly!"

Pickle tried the door that led to the back of the van and the small cells, but the door wouldn't budge.

Karen slapped her forehead. "Shit! I locked it."

Knowing that Jack, who was now in the driver's seat, had the keys to the van and the fact that the things were yards away from the group, Pickle cried, "Right! Back in the house. We'll never make it in on time."

They rushed back in, and Pickle ushered everybody else to the bottom of the stairs and told them to make their way to the top of the landing. He then tried to shut the front door, but dozens of rotting fingers of the dead grasped the door, preventing it from shutting properly. Pickle kept his body weight against it and knew that he couldn't hold it forever.

Whilst Pickle was holding the door, some of the ghouls turned to the van and then headed towards it. Kerry, who was in the front with Jack and Thomas, held her son's head in her chest and made sure the door was locked as their evil faces peered inside; their rotting hands slapped the glass, and their deathly moans could be heard from inside the van. Jack looked into his side mirror and could see that some were breaking their way in through the front door of the house. The frosted glass panes of the front door began to smash as the door slowly gave way.

One of the panes in the glass of the front door had smashed and an arm tried to grab and snatch at Pickle. He palmed one in the face whilst holding the door with his other, and managed to push the thing backwards. He tried to shut the front door again, by hopefully severing the fingers that were grasping it, but it had at least five of the things behind, trying to prise it open, and one of them had their full arm inside, desperately trying to claw at something or someone.

"I can't hold it much longer." Pickle announced to Karen, Paul and Lee who were standing halfway up the stairs. "Get upstairs. Main bedroom."

Pickle was strong, but not strong enough to keep them at bay. With the palms of his hands against the door, he looked behind him. Satisfied the group had gone upstairs, he released the door, picked up his shotgun and bolted upstairs whilst the things behind him clambered and crawled after him.

Paul Parker appeared from the room and stood at the top of the landing next to the shotgun-wielding ex-inmate. Pickle was impressed with Paul's bravery as he jumped in front of him and ran halfway down the stairs and begun kicking the first of them in the face, forcing the clumsy creatures to topple down the stairs a little as they crawled up.

Paul ran back upstairs to the top where Pickle was. "They can't climb, can they?"

Pickle shook his head. "The atrophy should stop them, but as yer can see, they can crawl their way up. Determined little fuckers!"

Paul kicked a few more, as they clumsily—although full of determination—crawled their way up, until Pickle commanded him to get back, as he was paranoid that Paul was in danger of having his leg grabbed and experiencing the feeling of being bitten.

Pickle then yelled to Karen who was opening the bedroom window, "Has he gone?"

Karen looked out of the main bedroom window to see the van was still there, surrounded. "No, he's still there."

Good boy, Jack. "Get onto the van, we don't have much time!"

Now that the creatures were spilling into the house, it made the task of jumping onto the van a little less dangerous, not much, but just a little, as the modest crowd around the van was thinning out a little and heading into the house. What the group couldn't see was the other hundred or so approaching nearer the main road and turning left where Bonser had unintentionally led them.

Pickle stood at the top of the landing, as Karen was in the bedroom trying to guide Lee and Paul out safely onto the van.

Some of the creatures were somehow managing the stairs. Most of them crawled their way up and Pickle allowed the first one to crawl to the last step, its face touching the barrel. The shotgun discharged and caused two heads to explode, including one of them behind. The landing wall's cream paintwork had been decorated with something a lot more macabre within seconds. Pickle released another cartridge and two of the beings that were side-by-side one another and four steps away from the top, experienced their heads exploding in unison, decorating the other crawling creatures behind with their brain debris.

Their motionless bodies caused a minor blockage on the stairs, which was causing the rest of them behind to struggle to get to Pickle. He reloaded and released another shot. Again, taking the head off what used to be a teenage girl, her face was non-existent from the nose up as she stopped moving on her all fours.

He looked into the opened bedroom. Karen was the only one left to escape. She looked over to him, but his facial expression urged her to hurry up. Once she jumped, he turned his weapon around and used the butt of the gun to cause damage to another two making their way up. He decided to release one more cartridge and did so from a distance. One of the things actually managed to stand in the middle of the stairs after crawling its way up initially. Pickle shot that particular one and it fell.

The stairs were now blocked at the bottom with corpses, whilst dozens desperately tried to scramble over their dead pals. Now that everybody had left, Pickle decided that it was time to go.

These things just didn't know when to give up.
Chapter Forty Four

Pickle ran into the bedroom and shut the door. He wanted as many as possible in the house before making his escape. The more there were in the house, the less there would be outside, or so he hoped. What he couldn't see was the other bodies spilling into the street and his time wasting was actually becoming more of a hindrance to the group's safety.

He dragged the side-table and placed it against the door as a temporary barricade. He looked out of the bedroom, relieved that everyone had managed to make the short jump onto the roof without a clumsy stumble, and he put the shotgun over his shoulder with the strap.

The bedroom door split almost in two, and Pickle, even now, was still surprised of their strength and determination once there seemed to be food on offer. Ignoring Paul and Karen's pleas to get a move on, Pickle turned and glared at his shotgun and placed his hand in his pocket. There was only nine loose cartridges left, but it was enough to cause some damage, if need be. He took another look at the broken bedroom door and could see the rotten and cold hands desperately reaching out. He counted seven arms that were trying to reach inside, and knew there was dozens more behind them that had crawled over the bodies of their deceased kind.

He could see the wood splitting, the more bodies pressed up against the weak door. He took one more look at the shotgun. Just one pull of the trigger, and I'll be out of this nightmare for good. He then glanced back outside at Karen, Paul and Lee, who were standing on top of the van's roof, frantically screaming at him and waving him down. He was undecided what to do, and the cacophony of noises coming from beings, both alive and dead, were not helping. I'll give it another week.

He climbed onto the windowsill and remained in a crouching position. His mind was slightly distracted from the hordes of ghouls surrounding the van, clawing at the paintwork. Pickle could hear the frightened screams coming from Kerry and young Thomas from inside the driver's area. He finally pushed off and landed flat footed, yet, softer than he had anticipated. Karen went to cuddle him, but he unintentionally stepped past her and banged on the roof of the cab five times, just above where Jack Slade was waiting.

"I hope he remembers to drive slowly," Paul said nervously.

Pickle said, "Don't yer worry; as soon as we get out o' this infested place, we'll stop the van and get people inside and get refreshments. I'm just glad Jack decided to stay put."

Karen, Paul, Pickle and Lee remained crouched on top of the van and could finally hear the engine of the van starting, but not loud enough to drown out the moans and groans of the crowd of the dead that were aching for a feed.

"This could be a wee bit bumpy," Pickle informed the group.

Jack crunched the gear into first, and at last, the van was beginning to move. It moved at a snail's pace, and the van wobbled and shook as its heavy body went over the stubborn creatures that refused to move from the front of the vehicle.

The van suddenly speeded up and veered sharply to the right, heading for the top of the main road that was almost swamped with the hungry creatures that refused to shift out of the way. Some paid the price for their unwillingness to move.

The unnecessary and unintentional sharp turn, forced everyone on top of the van to fall off their feet and land on their sides. Pickle yelled out as he could feel himself slipping off. Karen grabbed his clothing and urged Paul to help her pull Pickle up, as his legs were dangling over the edge, although still out of harm's way.

Pickle's slight fall had excited the ravenous predators below and they clawed at thin air, inches away from his feet. The strap slid off his shoulder and the Browning shotgun fell away and struck one of the ghouls, before falling to the floor. Unworried about the loss of the weapon, Karen and Paul pulled Pickle's heavy body back onto the van, whilst Lee helplessly watched in horror with his head in his hands.

"Where's the other handgun?" Karen yelled.

Pickle shrugged. "Still in the bedroom. Fuck it!"

The van finally crawled its way to the top of the road, leaving a trail of destruction behind. Lee Hayward watched hypnotically from the back of the van, as bodies behind it were flat on the floor. Some got back up, whilst others who had had legs crushed, tried to crawl across the road.

Lee shook his head. They just won't give up, he thought.

He saw two bodies that had heads crushed and was surprised that mowing down the creatures had only produced a few dead, from what he could see. There was at least sixty to seventy behind the van, near the house where he had briefly stayed, and could see more in front. The van paused at the T-junction at the top of Heath Hayes' main road. It turned left, away from the long stretch of road where Jason Bonser had been dumped two miles down. They were now out of the village and on the main lane, surrounded by woodland. Now that the road was almost clear, the van began to pick up speed.

"Look!" Paul pointed, and to the right they could see down the main road where Bonser had come from. There was an army of them. At least a hundred of them dragged their bodies towards the van.

Karen gasped and shook her head. Where are they coming from? Are they new, or have they come from all over, like Rugeley? Are some of them the same things from Stile Cop?

She pulled out her Browning out of her waist, and checked the magazine. Out of all the panic, she had left the two full remaining magazines in the drawer of the bedroom. She cursed herself, and peeped to see only seven bullets were left. It was the only weapon the group had left. She snapped the magazine back in and tucked it back into her dark blue jeans, and pulled her black T-shirt over it.

The van crawled away and Pickle could hear that the vehicle was in some distress. Either Jack needed to shift to a higher gear, or there was something seriously wrong. He carefully peered over the side and saw the reason why the van was struggling. Pickle stepped tentatively towards the roof of the cab and banged on the roof for Jack to stop the vehicle. He interpreted Pickle's less-than-subtle morse code, correctly, and the van came to a stop.

"Whatever it is, you better hurry up." Karen looked behind her, where the crowd of creatures were about three hundred yards away.

Jack wound the window down of the cab, and stuck his head out. Pickle looked over and clocked Jack's face and said, "Take a look at the front, right wheel."

Jack did what he was told and said, "Ah, shit!"

"What is it?" Paul queried.

"Take a look for yerself," Pickle spoke.

Paul peered over and saw two half-bodies wedged between the tyre and the van's fender.

Pickle looked over to Karen and then glared at the crowd, who were slowly progressing.

He said, "We've got a minute to get them out."
Chapter Forty Five

The young man had been up in the trees for the last two hours. It was only a matter of minutes before he came across his first Lurker in a while—as a man he knew used to call them. He had managed to get some sleep during the night and had to endure drinking the water from the brook, but at least he was still alive, hungry, but still alive.

He desperately wanted to get back to where he was staying, but initially there was too many of them when he was attacked. He ran for a duration of five minutes and then he eventually realised he was completely lost. Once he finally got back to his old digs, with the help of following the main road, he could see over the road and that the village hall was being attacked by the things, and the humans that once lived there were dispersing out from the back.

Now it was a new day, and he had spent the two hours walking through the wooded area, making sure he never went too far away from the main road. Then after, the rest of his day was spent sitting and daydreaming about his past life. He felt a shudder in his vertebrae once he thought about his nineteen-year-old sister who was at Manchester University, studying law. Was she still alive?

For the first two days he was in contact with her, but his iPhone eventually died on him.

His reminiscing came to an eventual end once he heard the rustle in the trees that sparked his frame into life. He could now see one of them walking away from him, about fifty yards away. At first, he thought it could have been a human, but he refrained from calling out in case he gave himself an unnecessary danger. He continued to stare at the presence that was walking away, and after a few seconds had passed, he realised that the figure wasn't human in the way it was walking, or trying to walk. Its shoulders were drooping and was reminiscent of a depressed teenager, as its head was lowered and its feet dragged its way through the greenery.

He had got to his feet and carefully stepped his way through the woodland, and felt that his dark green T-shirt was a perfect way to camouflage him. His black joggies and black trainers complemented the rest of his attire, and as soon as he clocked two more of the things to his left from afar, his body was engulfed in terror and he somehow managed to climb the nearest tree to him, as if he had done it a thousand times before. He blamed the sudden rush of nervous adrenaline for his almost super human powers. He was thankful that the two didn't notice him when he was on the ground. The last thing he needed was to be stuck up a tree with two of the ghouls hanging around at the bottom, making it hard for him to escape and possibly attracting more of them.

His eyes glared at the creatures until they eventually disappeared and was swallowed up by the greenery of the area. Once that danger had passed, he was able to enjoy having a heartbeat that was going at a normal rate. He climbed down and he looked through the trees to his left, where the main road was, and could see, with what little vision he had, a village that seemed to be plagued with the things. His run increased with pace, but was still aware that danger lurked further ahead.

He felt the scratch on his face that he received by a branch when trying to climb the tree earlier, and pulled from his pocket, the small mirror that was given to him. He checked his face and was content that the scratch was small. Once satisfied that his boyish looks hadn't been damaged, the fifteen-year-old, Oliver Newton, continued his careful walk, until he heard a snap behind him. He felt the arms grab him from behind. He tried to scream out, but a warm hand covered his mouth before he had the chance. A warm hand, he thought.

"Stop!" Oliver tried to scream out under the stifling large hand that covered his mouth. "I'm not one of them!"

As if the man could understand what was being said, he threw the boy onto the floor and stood over him, holding a thick branch above his head with both hands.

Oliver Newton looked up with petrified eyes and could see a man in his forties, largely built, wearing a Burberry cap that was in desperate need of a wash. Oliver held his hands out and still cowered slightly, his body language telling the man above him that he didn't want to be struck.

"Who are ya?" the man at last spoke, and slowly put the branch down that could have easily have crushed Oliver's skull with one strike.

"I'm a survivor, just like you." Oliver continued to cower, despite the threat being removed. "I'm just lost, that's all."

"Okay, pal." The man held out his hand and Oliver took it, and was pulled up to his feet by the strong-looking individual. The man adjusted his cap and apologised to the young man. Oliver responded with a warm smile.

"So where're you going?" Oliver politely asked.

"Dunno." The man shook his head and his eyes never met Oliver's as they scanned around the woodland constantly. He didn't seem too overly excited to be in contact with another human being, and Oliver was sure that eventually the two of them would go their separate ways.

He asked, "You have any water on you, kid?"

Oliver shook his head and opened his arms and turned around, as if he was being frisked, to let the man know that he wasn't carrying anything. It wasn't supposed to be a sarcastic answer to the man's question, and he never took it that way. Oliver finally answered the man's quizzing with a verbal answer. "I've had to drink some of that water from the brook further up."

"I wouldn't do that again from now on," the man said. "I pissed in that about an hour ago."

Oliver could feel his guts twisting of the thought of drinking the man's piss, but he assumed that there could be worse in there, like a rotting corpse or general droppings from animals, but desperate times called for desperate measures. The drink at the brook had given him an extra few days of survival—or so he thought—and was aware that the human body could survive seven to eight weeks without food, so long as it was hydrated—a theory he didn't want to put to the test. But as far as water was concerned, a week, maybe two at the most, was the time a person could go without being hydrated, depending on how much and how fast the individual passed urine, sweated and cried.

Oliver had read about the Northern Ireland hunger strikes where ten men had died; they all lasted longer than a month, with one of them dying after not eating on the seventy-third day. A year ago, on the news, it was reported that a ninety-seven-year old woman had gone without food and water for weeks after being stuck under the rubble of a building after an earthquake in Iran. So it was possible.

The hunger pains didn't bother Oliver, as he was certain he would come across something that was edible eventually. If he was desperate enough, he would even try and munch on the mushrooms and berries that the woods had to offer, but for the time being, he was preventing himself from doing so, as he was unsure what was poisonous and could be harmful to his body, and what wasn't.

"You going this way?" The man pointed ahead of him.

Oliver nodded. "I'm taking my time, though. There are a few of those things up ahead." Oliver nodded to the left of him where the main road was situated. "That's why I haven't gone deep in the woods. I'm staying reasonably close to the main road in case I need to make a run for it. Be easier for me to outrun them on tarmac, than in this place."

"Why don't you just walk on the road anyway? Is it because you'll be exposed?"

Oliver nodded. "Just because we can't see them, doesn't mean they're not everywhere."

The man smiled at the youngster's brainwork and patted him on the shoulder. His smile slowly evaporated off his face when he could hear something in the distance. Oliver's eyes also widened, confirming that the man wasn't hearing things, and if he was, then they were both going mad. "What's that noise?"

Oliver turned his head to the side, as if that was going to make any kind of difference to enhance his hearing. "Sounds like a vehicle of some sort."

"Come on," the man in the Burberry cap commanded. "Let's try and flag it down."

They heard the vehicle go past them, and then heard it come to a stop up ahead. Yet, they still heard a rumbling noise; it sounded like a crowd of people that were groaning, which to them, could only mean one thing. Oliver looked behind him and slapped the man on the chest to get his attention. They both glared in horror when they saw dozens of the dead walking towards them through the trees. They were hundreds of yards away but their presence wasn't welcome. "There's probably more of them on the road." Oliver gulped hard.

Oliver ran up beside the man and they both jogged their way to the edge of the woods towards the main road, which was only fifty yards away.

In what little breath he had, the young boy announced to the man, "By the way, my name's Oliver."

The man adjusted his Burberry cap, as he felt the sweat pouring out of him already, despite only running for a matter of seconds. He smiled. "I'm Kasper. Kasper Andrews."
Chapter Forty Six

Jack Slade kept the vehicle running. He jumped out of the cab to see for himself what was preventing their progression. Paul Parker climbed off the roof, and Lee, Karen and Pickle followed suit. Aware that the hungry mob were dozily making their way towards them, the group glared at the mangled things that were stuck inbetween the tyre and fender.

Pickle and Karen had removed one of them and tossed it to the side of the road. It had no legs, and all that was left of its body was from the chest and upwards, and an arm was also missing, but its mouth was still eager to tear into some flesh. Pickle brought his boot down onto its skull to stop its severed head from gnashing away.

Pickle took a gander at the one that was left. Its head and arms were intact, however, the rest of the body looked to have been ripped in two from just below the ribs.

Despite being wedged, its arms still tried to grab at any member of the group that got near it, and its teeth gnashed away, desperate to devour something. This proved to the group that nothing was going to stop these things with the exception of trauma to the brain.

"How the fuck did they make the van struggle and not just get crushed with the rest?" Paul Parker shook his head.

"Probably one too many," Pickle answered, looking at the mess and debris all over the wheels.

Paul Parker wasted no time in trying to remove it, by kicking it in its head with the sole of his shoe. This did nothing, except antagonise the half-creature.

Pickle stopped him. "We don't wanna be forcing it back in, we need to be prising it out."

"Grab the arms," Lee suggested, and took a hold of a cold hand that tried to claw at him. Its black fingernails tried to scratch his arm whilst trying to get a hold of it, but he tried to ignore it. Paul grabbed the other arm by the wrists so that he wouldn't get scratched himself, and they pulled as hard as they could.

With words of encouragement from the rest of the group, they pulled with every bit of strength they had left, and could see the head slowly prising its way out from inbetween the fender and tyre. The head was almost out, before the arms came away from the body, forcing Paul and Lee to fall to the floor, still clutching onto the free arms. In unison, both men threw the arms to the side in disgust as if they were on fire.

"Don't forget, they're rotting!" Pickle exclaimed. "That's why the arms came off so easily."

Pickle could see the head, that was still attached to what was left of the chest, and told Jack to get back in the cab. Pickle took his leg and placed his boot behind the head, and gently tapped it to force it out. One last gentle kick forced the head to hit and roll onto the road. Its eyes and mouth were still moving. It baffled the group; this thing had only its head left, yet was still willing to take a chunk out of someone, but had no stomach for the meat to drop into.

So what was the purpose of them eating in the first place? Was it rage?

Pickle urged the rest of the group to get back into the van.

"Thank God for that," Pickle sighed.

"Where we going?" Jack called out.

"Dunno yet. As soon as yer find somewhere quiet, pull up. In fact, I'm coming in with yer."

"But I wanna be with Thomas and Kerry."

"Fine," Pickle responded. "Yer can keep on driving."

Pickle had finally unlocked the back of the van with the keys and tried to usher the group into the back, as he could see that the mob wasn't very far away now. He asked Karen to go into the back of the van and she smiled without making a protest. Lee Hayward refused to make eye-contact with the former nurse, and hated to admit it, but he was scared of her.

Pickle pulled on Paul, who was stamping on the live head that was now on the side of the road. Once it caved in, it released its contents over the tarmac, some of it sticking to the sole of Paul's shoe. He wiped his feet on the grass at the side of the road and then jumped into the back. Paul was the last that Pickle had managed to bungle into the back of the van. He shut the door and ran to the passenger's side. He took one last look behind him and shook his head at the crowd of creatures stumbling towards the van. They were now fifty yards away. Where did they all come from?

"Squeeze up," Pickle ordered as he got into the cab, but in a gentle way. Both Kerry and a tearful Thomas shifted up and Kerry ended up placing Thomas on her lap.

Jack comforted his son by gently rubbing his head, then pulled away, but was told that they'd be stopping again real soon once they were a fair distance from the mob behind.

"Why are we gonna stop?" Jack rubbed his eyes.

"So we can have some rest. Plus, we don't know where to go. We have refreshments in the back that we could all do with, and there're a couple o' jerry cans o' petrol in the back that we could do with emptying into the tank. May as well put it in the van soon, as we may not have another chance to fill it up. As soon as that mob come round that bend, we're off again."

"The last thing we need," Kerry said, "is to run out of petrol, while we're in the middle of a crowd of those things."

"Exactly." Pickle nodded.

Jack shifted the van into fourth and went round at a sharp bend.

Once they were two hundred yards away from the bend, and noticing it was clear up ahead, Pickle said, "This'll do."

The van came to a stop, and Pickle wasted no time in jumping out of the vehicle and opened the back. Paul and Karen spilled out onto the road and never asked why they had stopped so soon. Lee remained in the back, slurping on a bottle of water.

"Help yerself to food and water," Pickle announced. "I'm gonna put the rest o' the fuel in the van. As soon as we see those things come round that bend, we're going again, then we'll pull up somewhere real quiet and decide our next move."

"And what happens if we're attacked by them from the side of us, from the woods, where we can't see?" Lee pointed at both the woodland on both sides of the road.

"We'll hear them first," Pickle chuckled. "Trust me, stealth isn't their strong point."

Lee ruffled around and began eating dry bread, and was quickly verbally slammed by Jack Slade. "Don't forget there're others as well." Jack jumped in the back and took out water for his son and Kerry. Karen announced that she would hydrate once everyone was done. There were two bottles of water left from the stash that was taken from the supermarket over a week ago, and Karen knew this was going to be their last refreshment break for a while, unless they found something very soon.

Paul walked up to the back of the van and stood beside her. He then whispered, "Did you hear that?"

Karen instantly pulled out her Browning that was tucked in the front of her jeans, and replied, "Hear what?"

There was a little noise from the chattering coming from Kerry, Thomas and Jack, and Karen decided to shush the group. They obediently stopped talking and knew there could be something wrong. Even Pickle stopped pouring petrol into the van and tilted his chin up at Karen to ask her what was up. She shrugged her shoulders and then they all heard it. It was a faint rustle coming from the condensed trees to the left of them.

"Time to go," Pickle said. But before the group had chance to get back to their original positions in the van, the excited voice of Thomas broke their momentum.

"Oliver!" Thomas screamed out from the cab, and jumped out of the already opened passenger door of the van.

Oliver Newton ran out of the woodland, onto the road, and welcomed the sight of young Thomas. They had both grown reasonably close when they were living in the village hall, and Kerry was equally pleased to see him. They hugged and kissed one another. Paul and Jack also joined in with the welcome, and Paul ruffled the hair of the cheeky fifteen-year-old.

"Great," Pickle muttered to Karen. "Another mouth to feed."

Oliver looked round. "Where's Gary?"

Jack lowered his head. Oliver read Jack's sad body language, telling the youngster that he wasn't going to see Gary again.

"What happened, kid?" Paul began to quiz the fifteen-year-old.

"I went to do the toilet in the woods and got attacked by those things, so I ran away. Once I thought I had outrun them, I went back to the hall and saw the things attacking the group while the three of you were out. I could see most of our lot escaping," he looked at Kerry and Thomas, "including these two. There was too many of them, so I decided to just take my chances in the woods. I've never been so scared in all my life. I thought you were all done for."

"Well it's good to see you, Oliver," Paul added.

"Absolutely," Kerry said, and gave him a hug, kissing him on his cheek.

Out from the wooded area came another figure; it was Kasper Andrews. He held out his hand to the group and squinted at the sun, hanging in the atmosphere above him.

Pickle said sharply, "Fuck. Is there anymore, or is that it?"

"It's just the two of us," Oliver answered the sarcastic query, and pointed behind him. "This is Kasper, we met only a few minutes ago."

Jack and Paul glared at the presence of Kasper and then both looked at one another. Both men's blood ran cold and Jack could feel apprehension suffocating him. His eyes glared at the man and he wanted to be sure, he wanted to be really sure before erupting.

It was definitely him.

All that was missing was a shotgun.

He took another look at Paul, and Paul nodded back as if to say, that's definitely him! They couldn't both be wrong.

"Get him away from here!" Jack screamed, to the confusion of Karen and Pickle.

Kasper took a hard look at Jack, and his facial expressions suggested that there was some kind of history between this man and Jack. And once Paul began to remonstrate, it appeared that one of the new recruits was something of a hate figure. Paul backed Jack up, but had to run over to him to stop him from grabbing Kasper and grabbed both of his arms. Oliver looked baffled at the scene that was occurring before his eyes and went over to Kerry and Thomas, out of the way of the minor skirmish.

"What the hell's going on?" Pickle demanded.

"This ... man..." Jack spat, and then paused, turned and gestured to Oliver to get Thomas back into the cab, out of earshot of what he was about to say. With Kerry in tow, Oliver did this, and shut the door and ran back round to the scene so he could hear what was going on. "This man and his ... friend raped and killed Gary back at the supermarket a few days ago. The same day the village hall was invaded."

Oliver held his hand over his mouth and Kerry did the same in the cab, as she could still hear what was going on."

Kasper giggled falsely, adjusted his sweaty Burberry cap, and looked at Pickle, guessing that he was in charge. Keeping his eyes on Pickle, Kasper pointed at Jack and released a false, wide smile. "What is he on? Is he dehydrated or something?"

Kasper was standing at the edge of the road and was ten yards away from the rest of the group. He took a step forwards, and Pickle pointed at him and narrowed his eyes. "Stay where yer are."

Paul was still holding onto Jack and turned to Pickle and Karen. Said Paul, "Gary was in our group when we were all staying in a village hall. We went to the supermarket down Power Station Road." Pickle then scrunched his face and realised it was the same one he had gone to over a week ago, where Conor Snodgrass met his fate. Paul continued, "He and his friend tied me and Jack up, then he," Paul pointed at Kasper, "raped Gary and slit his throat."

Karen whispered in Pickle's ear and informed him that the Gary Paul was referring to, was the same man he had had a brief conversation with a few days ago when they were stationed at Stile Cop.

Pickle turned to Karen. "He used to be on my wing. Good bloke, car thief."

Paul let Jack go once he realised he had stopped struggling.

Jack said, "If we hadn't escaped we'd be dead too, because of this piece of shit! But we're not, thanks to Paul."

Pickle allowed the information to settle in his mind before making a decision. He took a sharp intake of breath, ignoring Kasper's pleas of innocence, and then exhaled slowly. "Right, everyone in the back o' the van."

Jack agreed to this, but still wondered what was going to happen to Kasper. Paul also never questioned Pickle, as he was sure that Kasper wasn't going to be allowed to ride with them.

Everyone began to get into the back, one-by-one, aware that the crowd of cannibals must have been gaining on them, and were only seconds away from appearing from around the bend of the main road.

Kasper looked at Pickle and shrugged his shoulders. "So, what about me?" He was ignored. So he asked the question again, as Karen shut the back doors of the prison van.

Pickle, standing next to Karen at the back of the van, gestured with his forefinger for Kasper to stand next to him. He adjusted his Burberry cap and slowly walked over towards Karen and Pickle. His walk was full of arrogance, almost Tony Manero like.

"So, what's gonna happen?" Kasper held out his arms, awaiting a positive answer.

Pickle sighed, lowered his head, and cleared his throat and spat onto the floor. "It's dangerous enough out there, without having to deal with people like you as well."

Kasper shook his head and revealed a wide beam, and pointed at the back of the van. "He's lying. They're both lying. They must have me mixed up with someone else."

Pickle looked over to Karen, and then turned back to Kasper. "From now on, yer on foot."

"What? You gonna fuckin' leave me here like a dog?" The anger in Kasper's voice suggested that he was definitely someone they shouldn't underestimate, like Jason Bonser. He snarled and stepped towards Pickle with both fists clenched.

"Back away!" With no hesitation, Karen was five yards away and raised the gun at Kasper's head, which caused him to look at her and break out into hilarity. He held onto his chest with both hands and begun to laugh uncontrollably. Karen waited for his hilarity to diminish and narrowed her eyes at the obnoxious individual.

He was surprised that any of the group had a weapon at all, and here was some young slag pointing a hand-cannon at him. The infection itself had caused the world to become a bubble of surrealism, but a young lady, young enough to be his daughter, aiming a Browning in his face was too much for him to contain, causing his laughing to increase. Okay, so they're gonna force me to go back into the woods. Fine. I'll go. Fucking idiots. Don't need their help anyway.

Kasper waved away at Karen, mockingly. He eventually stood up straight and was managing to contain himself. He opened his mouth to speak. "Look, sugar—"

The audible sound made Paul, Lee and Jack jump—not Oliver—as they sat in the back of the van. The body of Kasper Andrews fell backwards as the bullet penetrated the brain, causing some matter to escape from the back. The body hit the tarmac with a deathly thump and Kasper Andrews lay motionless. His legs were apart; his arms were by his side as if he was just having a regular lie down. The only thing that made this image terrifying, was the pool of blood that was quickly gathering from the back of his head and pooling around the cranium.

The gun remained in its position, shaking a little, to Karen's embarrassment. Killing those things was fine, but a human was a different ball game altogether, even if he was the scum of the earth. This had been the first time she had killed a human being. She then lowered the gun to enhance her peripheral vision, and before a shocked Pickle could ask what the hell was she thinking, they could see the first group of Snatchers hobbling around the bend.

"Cocksuckers at twelve o'clock," Karen announced.

It seemed that the army of the dead were never going to let up, and what unnerved the two of them was that they didn't know what was up ahead. It could be clear, or there could be more of them. They could be driving into a potential trap—not that these things had the intelligence to design or plan such a thing, but it still dwelled in the back of their minds that this was a realistic situation that could occur.

Was the van strong enough to run into dozens of the things? The answer was yes.

Was it strong and powerful enough to ram through a crowd of hundreds of them? The answer was, I don't know—probably not—or, no way. It was a negative answer nevertheless.

"Time to Foxtrot-Oscar." Pickle sniffed, and went into the front of the van, and Karen quickly followed. Karen shut the door and gave Thomas a friendly smile before doing so. "We'll be okay."

There were now five of them squashed in the front, with three in the back, and Pickle urged Jack to move along so he could drive. Jack nodded without remonstrating and sat next to Kerry who had Thomas on her lap, and put his arm around her.

Pickle drove away.
Chapter Forty Seven

The van sped off and the wing mirrors that were being stared at by Karen, Kerry and Pickle, suggested that they were already clear from the threat. Karen was sitting nearest the passenger window and glared with pity at Kerry and her young son that sat on her lap and clung onto her for support. She knew that this kind of thing had, and was, happening out there, and even admitted that a lot of young infants had been victims of cannibalism, especially at the height of the outbreak, but it still touched her to see this one frightened boy, whose only concern over a week ago was what time his favourite programmes were on and what was for dinner. That had all changed now.

Karen thought about the reason why she hadn't seen many infected children compared to adults. She put it down to one thing, and that was because children were so small and weak that when they were probably attacked, they were probably eaten so much that there wasn't much left of them to reanimate. In truth, she didn't know the real reason and was beginning to think dark thoughts as her positivity was beginning to dilute.

She sniffed hard and tried to blank her mind so that the tears that had gathered in her eyes wouldn't fall. She cleared her throat in an attempt to remove the muscular reaction that was lodged in there, and widened her eyes to stop the eager tear ducts from overproducing. She then thought about Kasper. She couldn't have killed Bonser, but never hesitated with Kasper. He was a vagrant; a piece of shit...a killer, so fuck him!

"You okay?" Pickle asked her.

She nodded.

"About what just happened."

"I don't wanna talk about it," she sniffed.

Another five minutes of silence had passed, until Kerry Evans shattered it with a question. "What's that?" Kerry asked.

Up ahead, they could see that they were coming to the end of the countryside and were near the next town. They both stared at the jack-knifed articulated lorry up ahead that also had a smashed car behind it, but there didn't seem to be any people about or any casualties strewn across the road in a bloody mess.

Pickle turned the van off the main road, into a country lane, and went down the steep hill. As the road straightened up, they could see a pile-up of at least seven cars blocking the road. There was shattered glass everywhere, and it was clear that Pickle needed to get the van onto the grass to go around the minor carnage, which he did, and as he got back onto the road, the steering felt heavy and was forcing it to go to the left. He stopped accelerating and did the correct thing and allowed the van to roll to a stop.

"What's wrong?" Karen quizzed.

Pickle replied, "I think we've got a flat."

"No spare tyre?"

Pickle shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose there should be, but there ain't. I don't remember seeing one in the back."

Kerry began to gently sob and shook with fear; she held on to Thomas tightly and began to whisper a prayer that Pickle recognised.

To the left side of Pickle there was a massive playing field, where some houses sat a few hundred yards away. Up ahead looked to be another town, and to the far right, before the town's "welcome" sign, right on the outskirts, was a fitness centre surrounded by an eight-foot metal black fence with acres of fields behind. Every vertical bar of the fence had a twelve-inch gap between each space so they could see inside the car park, but it was clearly designed to stop intruders from squeezing into the place.

"I used to go there, before I had Thomas," Kerry remarked. "A few years ago now, it was."

Karen looked at Pickle. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Don't think we have much o' a choice. We've got a flat; these things could be everywhere and we're yards away from the next town. Towns and cities have populated areas. Populated areas these days, usually means more o' those things."

Karen jumped out the van and emptied her nostrils on the floor, then turned to Pickle. "We can come back for the supplies in the van once we've established it's completely safe."

"Well, it's not. Oh, and by the way," Pickle said calmly. "I suggest yer hurry up."

He pointed up ahead. The van was five hundred yards away from the entrance of the fitness centre, and there were six creatures that could be seen in the distance. They were reasonably far away, but they didn't know how far. It was going to be a race to see who could get to the sports centre's entrance gates first. Although the eight-foot black fence that surrounded the area was a little closer to them than the entrance itself, it looked too difficult and awkward to climb and would only add time to their escape. It was only going to be an option if they couldn't make the entrance gates in time.

Karen noticed that the entrance was a pair of gates, six-foot in height, that had been bolted shut and could be climbed pretty quickly, she confidently thought. The only thing that irked her was that if power was working in this area and the gates were electrified, it would make the steel fence that surrounded the centre their only option. She swung the back doors open and yelled to the men in the back, "Out! We've got a flat, and they're coming."

Paul, Lee, and Oliver jumped out and could already see Pickle jogging in front of the van, with Kerry and Thomas waiting for Jack so they could be together as a family. The group ran together, and Pickle slowed his pace in order for the rest to catch up. "We're heading for the entrance gates." He pointed, and then shrugged his shoulders. "There's no where else we can go."

The group could see that the gates led to a large car park that had a few cars situated there. Whether they belonged to customers or employees, they weren't sure, but the most important thing was that there didn't seem to be any of those beings in the car park. So even if the fitness centre was securely shut and they struggled to get inside, which was highly likely, they'd still be safe just being on the grounds. But they needed shelter. They needed to drink. And they needed to eat.

Pickle glared ahead of him and saw that the six he had seen previously, heading their way, had now turned into thirteen. The distance between the group and the fitness centre, and the ghouls and the fitness centre, was about the same distance. The advantage they had on the dead, was that they were quicker, but the advantage the dead had on the group, was that the road that led to the centre was on a slight incline and the fitness levels amongst the group were mixed.

Lee Hayward was the one that already begun to aerobically struggle. His breath had disappeared, his bowels had emptied inside his underwear, and his lungs felt as if they had been set alight. As he fell behind, he was receiving little sympathy from the rest of the group as their progression towards the gates was almost completed.

Oliver finally noticed that the exhausted group was missing a member and decided to reduce his pace, and he dropped back to help out a clearly unfit Lee Hayward.
Chapter Forty Eight

Pickle was the first to get to the gate and hesitantly touched it to make sure it wasn't electrified with a low voltage, otherwise, it was going to be a very uncomfortable climb. Maybe it was normally electrified, but now the grid had crashed, he thought. He looked to his right and could see that the things were gaining on them and were only twenty yards away. Oliver and Lee were lagging behind, as Lee was clearly exhausted and young Oliver was doing his best to hurry him up, as he ran by his side with his arm across his shoulder.

Frantic screams of "Come on" and "Hurry up" could be heard from the group and Pickle had to make a decision; he made it by instructing that everyone should climb the wire fence of the entrance gates as soon as they could.

Both Paul and Karen jumped on the fence to climb and found the fence was a little flimsy. Pickle noticed that the fence was similar to the one that surrounded the exercise yard in the prison, and was more awkward to climb the more weight that was applied to it. The only saving grace was that it was a lot shorter in height. Both Karen and Paul struggled; Karen fell off and landed on her back, but Paul managed to throw himself over and landed in the car park. He was the first to get in.

"Come on!" he screamed. "It's gonna have to be one at a time; it can't take the weight. Get the kid over first."

To Thomas' dismay, both Pickle and Jack lifted him over and urged him to grab the top of the fence, where Paul urged him to fall, and promised he would catch him. He cried out for his mum, but the group told the six-year-old that they were right behind him. Kerry was told to go next. The things were only a matter of yards away, so she began to climb the gate.

Panic began to fill Lee Hayward and the exhausted man selfishly jumped on the fence and desperately tried to clamber his way over. Being the heaviest of the group, he made the fence wobble uncontrollably, forcing Kerry to lose her grip and she jumped back off. Knowing the things were only a breath away, Oliver joined Lee on trying to climb the wobbly fence, as the panic began to mutate as the seconds ticked by.

Pickle was exasperated and said to the group with a defeated shake of his head. "We've gotta go."

"I can't leave my boy!" Kerry screamed, whilst at the same time, through the fence, Thomas called out for his mum and became hysterical while Paul held him back.

"We can run round the perimeter of the fence, and try and get in that way!" Karen yelled.

"I can't climb that." Kerry pointed at the eight-foot metal fence that had been painted black, but chose to run with the group, as she was three seconds away from being grabbed. From inside the grounds, Paul and Thomas' eyes followed Kerry, Jack, Karen and Pickle's frames as they ran around the perimeter of the fence.

Then Paul's focus returned back to the entrance gates as Lee and Oliver's legs were being grabbed at. Oliver had almost managed to throw himself over, but Lee was clearly struggling. The pair of them were dragged to their death as the crowd of the man-eaters from behind the gates began to rip the two unfortunate pair to pieces.

Thomas began to scream when he saw Oliver being pulled to the floor. Paul placed his hand over Thomas' eyes and the young boy placed the palms of his hands over his ears to diminish the awful, high-pitched screaming coming from the two males as their bodies were being devoured before their very own eyes. Both Lee and Oliver had lived long enough to see their own disembowelment before limbs were pulled away from them by the hungry mob.

Pickle and the rest were to the left of the fitness centre now, adjacent to the farmers field, and Paul could see, from a distance, two stray Snatchers stumbling towards the group outside the perimeter of the fence. He opened his mouth to warn the group, who were now a hundred yards away from him and Thomas, but they had already spotted them.

The group stopped in their tracks and attempted to climb the awkward eight-foot metal contraption that stood in their way. It was either death or safety. Paul ran over with Thomas to give the group a hand, and Karen was the first to be lifted over by Jack and Paul, who clearly struggled. Karen landed on the other side of the fence with a heavy thump, and grazed her hands as she landed in the fitness centre's almost vacant car park.

Karen passed her gun to Pickle through the twelve-inch gap in the metal fence, in case the two Snatchers—as she called them—caught up with them whilst trying to climb the fence. Kerry was the next to go over and caught her thigh on the spike; she released a cry of pain. Although the spike was quite blunt, from a fall it would have been easy to be impaled on one of the things. Kerry managed to get to her feet inbetween each spike and got to a crouching position—Pickle thought she was going to fall backwards on top of him—before jumping onto the car park's tarmac. Her feet stung with the slap-landing, but she was in better shape than Lee and Oliver, so had no complaints, and quickly went over to hug her son.

Pickle could see that the two beings were only twenty yards away, and told Jack to get behind him as he aimed the gun at the one in front who looked like he used to be someone important as he was dressed in a suit, unless he was originally going to court. Pickle waited a few seconds for the thing to get closer, aware that the mob from the gates' entrance were starting to make their way to their area, around the perimeter of the fence. Jack looked to see the first lot of the creatures slumbering around the corner of the fence; they weren't far away.

Pickle finally squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. He stupidly looked down the barrel of the Browning to see what was wrong and glared at Jack and shrugged his shoulders. The two creatures were almost within touching distance and the suited one surprised Pickle by quickly lunging at him.

Pickle dropped the gun and grabbed the thing around its cold neck. Jack didn't wait and lunged at the other one, a very large female, and side-kicked it in the stomach. To his surprise, it fell backwards and turned to his left to see a no nonsense Pickle smacking the suited one against the metal of the fence. Jack knew it was only a matter of time before the trauma to the head would kill it—or re-kill it.

Jack frantically looked around for a rock, or something, as he didn't have Pickle's strength. He took a swift look behind to see the crowd of the dead gathering pace, and he ran and kicked the thing as hard as he could in the head as it tried to get up. The ghoul stood back up as if it had received no damage to the head whatsoever, and Jack tried again.

Whilst Pickle was still smacking his victim off the steel railings, Jack lunged for the beast and they wrestled to the floor. Kerry and Thomas, on the other side of the fence, screamed for Jack to hurry up as they could see the mob walking outside and along the perimeter of the fence, getting closer to Jack Slade and Harry Branston.

Karen, Paul, Kerry and Thomas stood ten yards away from behind the railings in the car park, helplessly watching their two colleagues battling with the things, whilst yards behind them their 'fan club' was growing. Thomas broke away from Kerry's loose clinch and ran over to his dad, pressed his face against the railings and urged him to hurry up.

"Thomas!" Kerry yelled hysterically. "Get back here!"

The obese ghoul, slightly distracted, looked up at Thomas and snarled at him spraying a couple of drops of blood at the fence, some specks hitting Thomas in his face during the process.

Karen and Paul dragged Thomas away, who was complaining that he couldn't see properly and that the blood had gone into his eye and his mouth. Karen pulled out an old bit of tissue and gently spat on it and told the young boy to open his eyes so she could get rid of the one spot that landed in his right eye. She encouraged him to spit out onto the floor, and pulled out a tiny bottle of water from her front pocket and urged him to drink. Karen had still plenty of supplies from the raided chemist a few days ago, but unfortunately, everything, including water and food, was in the back of the van. They didn't exactly have a lot of time to take everything with them.

Jack was still struggling and the thing that was on top of him, opened its mouth and desperately tried to bite him, causing young Thomas to scream, thinking that his dad had only seconds left before his eventual demise. More blood poured out of its mouth and Jack turned away so the putrid liquid missed his face. Suddenly, Pickle grabbed the thing and threw it off of Jack. Pickle picked the gun up as Jack scurried to his feet, and tried to squeeze the trigger once more. This time it worked; it discharged and caused the thing to fall to the floor. The damage to its skull was nothing compared to the suited one that had had its cranium smashed in from the gun-wielding, no nonsense ex-inmate.

"Probably jammed 'cos it's dirty." Pickle shook his head and looked at Karen through the fence. "I told yer to keep this weapon clean. I bet yer ain't cleaned it since Stile Cop."

"I cleaned it the other day," she protested meekly.

Jack tapped him on the shoulder and pointed towards the beings that were gaining on them to their left. "I think we can discuss this later, don't you think?"

Pickle agreed, put the safety catch on the pistol, tossed the gun back at Karen through the railings, and crouched down and clasped his hands together. There was no time to argue, so Jack placed his right leg on the two linked hands and flung himself up with the help of the strong ex-inmate.

Jack swung himself over easily.

Pickle grabbed the bar at the top and performed his favourite exercise, the pull up, only this time he threw his right leg over and was wedged on top of the railings with his feet dangling. The creatures were now underneath him, trying to grab at him. Some of the clever ones—if that at all was possible—tried to reach through the gaps in the fence once Pickle managed the awkward fall and landed on the other side, which winded him temporarily.

Paul Parker walked forwards, and helped Harry Branston to his feet, and said, "Let's try and find a way in this place."

Pickle cackled, "Yer took the words right out o' ma mouth."
Chapter Forty Nine

Inside the fitness centre, the first thing that greeted a client was the reception area. Once through the doors of the reception, there was a huge floor full of treadmills and other cardio machines. The bottom gym area was in the middle of the establishment, and surrounded by treadmills was the open swimming pool, where a sauna and spa sat at the end of the pool. A lot of newcomers had reservations about the design, as a lot of unfit swimmers, especially the obese and the elderly who attended pool lessons, didn't like the idea of being glared at by gym goers who were on their treadmills and elliptical trainers. But they were assured that the cardio fanatics were either more interested in the TV screen in front of their eyes, or the music that was being injected into their ears from their iPhones, or the sounds coming from the speakers that were situated around the area.

As soon as a client walked into the gym area, to the left, there was a couple of offices for the managers, and further on was a modest-looking canteen. Turning right would lead to numerous rooms, such as the changing rooms/shower rooms, the first aid, a staff room for breaks and two others for training purposes such as first aid training, and fitness updates. There were also two sets of stairs on the gym area, one on either side of the pool. This led to a second floor where there was a weights area for hardcore weightlifters such as benches and free weights, rather than the cardio and weight machines that were situated on the ground floor. At the end of the weights room was a door, which led to a dance studio, which was used for fitness classes.

Jade Greatrix had woken up and took a look at the huge clock on the wall of the staff room—not that time mattered these days to the twenty-five-year-old, and stretched hard and felt her chest crack. She checked her breath, and walked over to the vending machine she had smashed days ago. She helped herself to a diet coke and wandered around the vacant office on the ground floor.

She took a peep in the many mirrors that the place had to offer and checked her appearance. Her hair was a little floppier than it usually was, as she normally had it in a messy side-parting to her right, using hair products. Her short brown hair still looked reasonably clean, which was thanks to a bottle of shampoo—not her usual product—that had been left by a client in the female changing rooms. It had been two days since the electricity went down and Jade relied on the huge glass skylights above for light, which lit the huge area adequately on a good sunny day.

It was after six, and she could see above her, through one of the many skylights, that darkness was only hours away. She was thankful that it was June. She felt that if it was winter, it would have been dark by four o'clock, and she would have been spending her evening snuggled in the office, scared for her life, despite being confident the place was reasonably secure.

Her diet had consisted of crisps, chocolate and juice in the last couple of days, but was thankful that she had any food to eat at all.

When the news officially broke out on the screens that were being beamed throughout the establishment and through the numerous TVs that were available, customers made no hesitation in leaving at eight o'clock on the Sunday morning, with some leaving their gym bags behind and leaving in their sports attire. Numerous sports hydration bottles were left on treadmills and by machines, which Jade had decided to consume before attacking the vending machines and water coolers.

It was a weird situation once the news had broke out. She had only started her shift at six, and two hours later, the place was empty. Two of the staff members decided to leave, but the deputy manager, Ian Wilkes, was convinced that the news was either wrong, or it was some kind of ridiculous hoax, and told everyone that if they left, they would be fired. Everyone else stayed behind, but the more the news filtered through and the more FOX and CNN were screening the footage of people being attacked, the members of staff asked Ian Wilkes that at least for peace of mind, now that there was no customers, could he at least secure the place, including locking the entrance gates.

She remembered him laughing, trying to hide his anger, but did so anyway, otherwise there would be a mutiny on his hands. Once the 'hoax' was over, Ian was certain that the customers would come back within a few hours.

The gates were locked by two senior gym instructors called Chris James and Steve Round, whilst the rest were phoning home. Ian Wilkes waited at the reception area for their return so he could secure the building. The receptionist herself, Adrienne Marlington, was one of the staff that had decided to leave for home. Once the senior gym instructors returned, they told Wilkes that a lone outsider who appeared to me in a drunken state had attacked Steve Round.

Ian Wilkes and Chris James helped to lift Steve to the first aid area on the ground floor. Ian instructed Jade to lock up now, and she did so by locking the main doors, checking the fire exits and making sure all windows were closed.

Despite Ian Wilkes finding the news of the outbreak hilarious, she was a little disturbed by the news and believed it. Why would they make up such a story? What were they to gain?

She had looked around and could see the rest of the staff—ten of them, excluding the three in the first aid room—including gym instructors and two freelance personal trainers, conversing in a circle around the gym area. Some were texting; some were calling to see what really was going on. Jade did the same and couldn't get through to her mum and dad at first. She could only get through to her brother's voicemail, but finally managed to get through to her best friend, who spent three minutes hysterically explaining to Jade Greatrix what was happening outside her house.

That was the last time she had used her phone.

At the time, a fight broke out in the circle between two of the gym instructors. Jade, a gym instructor herself, went over to see what was amiss, and it appeared that some had changed their minds and wanted to get back home to their families, whilst a loyal handful were sticking with Ian Wilkes and told the panicky instructors that the gates were closed anyway, and if they wanted to leave, they would have to leave by foot and climb the entrance gates and pick their car up at a later date. Two of the most irate individuals were taken to the floor and escorted to the canteen area to calm down.

Then an hour later, all hell broke loose.

Ian Wilkes and Chris James went to the first aid room to see how Steve Round was getting on. Round attacked Wilkes and James in the first aid room. James was eaten before Wilkes' scared eyes and in panic, he left and closed the door. He ran out into the gym area, holding his bitten arm, and told the group exactly what had happened, and that the news was correct in what it was broadcasting.

They all bolted for the main doors to escape but Wilkes had a set of keys and tried to calm the irate group down, and pointed outside where eleven of the creatures could be seen on CCTV, and were shambling around the gates and the perimeter of the fence.

Once Wilkes had convinced the group that they could be out there in their hundreds and that the army should clear things up in a matter of hours or days, they decided to lock themselves in the dance studio on the first floor, until help came along in case they broke into the centre—they didn't know at the time that these things were unable to climb.

Jade was so incensed by Chris James being abandoned, she ran to the first aid room to see how he was.

Wilkes told Jade he was dead and threatened her that if she didn't hurry back, she was on her own. She ignored his threat and went to see how Chris and Steve were. When she arrived at the first aid room, she peered through the rectangle glass and felt sick to see an infected Steve Round devouring Chris; his stomach was ripped apart and the room was a bloodied mess.

*

Jade Greatrix had stopped thinking about what had happened over a week ago and brought herself to an unwanted reality. She looked at the vending machine she had smashed and saw that she had finally emptied the thing. There was another three around the establishment, and she always thought it was weird that a fitness place sold products that were counterproductive to one's health.

The canteen had a fair bit of food left as the last delivery was on the Saturday morning, almost a day before the outbreak was officially announced. The place had the usual bread, rolls, tubs of margarine, salad—which Jade had binned, as the lettuce had gone brown—eggs, bacon. It seemed a lot, but in a normal working week most of the food would be devoured by clients and staff alike.

She lived on toast for the first few days, before she decided to use the ovens, as she was unsure how long the gas and electricity would continue. Once the ovens died, there was still some food left in the canteen, but that was when she decided to raid the vending machine that were no longer producing cold drinks because of the power failure. She was convinced she had put on some serious weight over the last week or so, but she couldn't find the energy from anywhere to participate in any kind of exercise.

Jade snapped out of her self-hypnosis that she had drifted into again, and she could have sworn she could hear voices. Then she heard it again.

She heard banging coming from the reception area. She sat up from her daze and although she was startled, she was sure that that kind of banging could only come from humans. She knew she couldn't hide, because whoever was banging on the doors could see that she was in there, through the glass. If she tried to hide, the desperate people would probably smash their way in, leaving them all vulnerable.

She took out her keys and headed for the door. She could see three men, two women and a child. How could she turn her back on them? With there being no power, the doors were no longer secured electronically, but they were still locked by lock and key. Jade searched for the key on the chain and began to open the lock to the door.
Chapter Fifty

The people spilled into the reception area once it was opened. Jade could see that the big, tough-looking man had sprays of blood on his shirt and she was convinced that this group had seen action. She had been locked up for over a week, and had no clue what was going on out there. As far as she knew it could have been over, but she was too terrified even to go outside into the secured car park.

The big muscular man introduced himself as Harry, but most people called him Pickle. Then he continued to introduce the rest of the group. Paul, Jack, Kerry, Karen, Thomas—she was never going to remember all those names at first.

Pickle was straight with Jade, and the first thing that came out of his mouth was the words: "It's hell out there."

"How bad?" Jade had to ask. For the first few days, she had only seen the repeated news reports.

"Worse than you could ever imagine," Kerry answered. "We need to clean up, where're the showers?"

"The electricity is down," Jade pointed to the dusky gym area, "as you can see."

"Oh, I just thought you turned the lights off not to attract attention."

Jade sadly shook her head. If only that were true.

"Well, even if we can't clean up," Pickle said, "at least we're somewhere where it's secure. It is secure, isn't it?"

Jade nodded. "The power is down, but the doors are manually locked and all fire exits are shut." She shifted uncomfortably. There was information that Jade was holding back.

"What about the canteen?" Paul queried. "Some of us will be hungry, eventually."

Jade nodded again. "Just take what you need. There's three water coolers situated around the gym area, obviously not that cool anymore now the power's out. And there's another eight in the storage room."

"Good," Jack spoke. "As long as we have water, that's a good start, until we can find somewhere where there's food and water."

"And how're we gonna do that?" Paul snapped. It was clear that the group were tired and agitated.

"We'll just have to go outside when the time's right, see if we can get into the van. Or we could starve to death in here. I have a feeling that what's left in the canteen might not be enough to last us a week."

Jade stood back from the new group and decided not to intervene with their bickering. She winked at the small boy that held onto his mother's thigh; he looked pasty. Probably just malnourished, Jade thought.

"Mummy," the little boy spoke at last, with tiredness in his words. "I don't feel too well."

The boy's eyes rolled and he fell back a little, forcing his mother to catch him and Jack Slade to fuss over him.

"He's probably dehydrated!" Pickle snapped. "Get him into a room; give him a drink and lie him down. Where can we put him?" He turned to Jade. Jade pointed behind her to Ian Wilkes' office.

"Oh, great," Paul wandered around the gym and saw the swimming pool in the middle of the area.

"I wouldn't bother," Jade warned.

"Why not?"

Jade said, "It hasn't been cleaned in over a week. Plus, now the electricity is down, the filter is not cleaning and the old water is stagnant with algae and bacteria."

Pickle walked up behind Paul and patted him on the shoulder. "I think one virus is enough without yer picking up another, don't yer think?"

Jade felt a little invaded by the groups' presence, as none of the group had hardly spoken to her in the five minutes that they had been there. But she understood that the group had probably had had a rough time, so she refrained from showing any kind of anger for their lack of appreciation. Her bad feeling evaporated once Pickle approached her.

Pickle turned from the group and walked over to Jade and rubbed his stubbly chin. "How yer doin'? We appreciate yer letting us in, y'know."

Jade smiled and said, "Listen, some of our clients were in a rush to get back home once the outbreak was announced, so there's fresh...well, kinda fresh clothes in the changing rooms if you need them. They've left deodorants and stuff; in the men's room there are razors as well. Obviously the showers aren't working—"

"The electricity," Pickle interrupted. "I know."

There was an uncomfortable silence between the pair of them and Jade announced, "You want me to show you guys round, give you a tour of the place?" She didn't really know what else to do or what else to say.

Pickle turned to his exhausted group; he could see they were dead on their feet now, and some were shocked after seeing Lee and Oliver being attacked. There was no adrenaline to keep them going, and he saw that they were all sitting down on the treadmills that stood behind the wall that separated the gym and the pool. They sat with plastic cups of water they had got from the water cooler nearby. He looked back at Jade, and she laughed nervously, knowing that the group had no energy left for anything else, never mind a tour.

"We just lost a couple o' people," he explained and then produced a wide beam. "Why don't yer show me around."

"Okay." Jade began to walk with Pickle by her side. Nobody looked up to see what was going on, as the two individuals walked towards the left and went through the two wooden double-doors.

"This is the canteen," Jade announced. "There's still food left; the ovens aren't working, but I suppose you could take the rest of the chickens and steaks and make a fire outside or something, if they're still edible."

Pickle looked outside the canteen window and saw that the place was at the back of the centre, and the eight-foot fence that he could see had no creatures around this particular area at the back. He saw an outside pool in the garden area and nodded his head; he was impressed.

Jade took him out of the canteen and back out of the gym, along an open corridor. She went through a door and showed him the four sets of indoor tennis courts as well as a couple of rooms, like the staff room and the spin room that had un-wheeled bikes in there for classes. Then it came to her, and she stopped in her tracks and looked at Pickle.

"There's something I need to show you."

She continued to glare at her visitor with wide eyes. She wasn't sure she wanted to see this scene herself, but she felt that if her guests were planning on staying a while, she was aware that keeping this from them was not in her or their best interests.

Pickle never verbally asked Jade a question. He simply nodded and walked with her and she showed him the door to the first aid room. He peered in the room, through the glass, and could see one of them wandering around.

"The door has no keyhole so it isn't locked, but I'm pretty sure this...thing doesn't know how, and hasn't even tried, to use the door handle. His name is...was, Steve Round." Jade spoke from behind him. "He went out to lock the gates and was attacked. He was brought back in, but this was when we didn't know that it could spread through bites. I only saw that hours after, on the TV screens."

Apart from the being, Pickle could also see the walls smeared in blood and noticed in the corner, an assortment of limbs and a decapitated head lying on the floor. He had seen it all before, but this time he could feel the contents of his stomach rising. He took a heavy gulp to get rid of the feeling, and it amazingly worked, temporarily.

To Jade, Pickle looked unruffled by the scene, which confirmed to her that he might have seen this kind of thing before, unlike her, who had locked herself away for over a week.

They both walked away from the first aid room, and she showed him both changing rooms that led out to the small sauna and spa area by the pool that was surrounded by the gym. They walked alongside the unkempt pool, the dying sun, through the skylight, shone down on the blue water causing it to sparkle. They stepped over the small wall to get back into the gym area, and Pickle followed Jade upstairs to the first floor. He walked to the edge of the thirty-foot drop and looked down on the pool and the gym that surrounded it. He then turned around and followed Jade who was at the opposite part of the open-plan area.

She stood by another set of double wooden doors. "This is the dance studio room," she began to speak. "This one is locked."

Pickle nodded and went to walk away.

"No." Jade spoke with a tremor in her voice.

Pickle stopped in his tracks and turned to face the young woman. "What is it?"

"This is something else that you need to see, something else you need to know about." Jade nodded towards the small rectangle glass panel of the doors, urging Pickle to go and take a gander.

Pickle braced himself at what he was about to see. He knew it wasn't going to be pretty, he could tell by the expression scrawled on Jade's face. He walked over and peered through the glass and gulped hard to see nearly a dozen of the things, stumbling around in what used to be the fitness centre's dance studio. He looked on in astonishment and then glared at Jade for answers.

He sighed, "What's the story with them?"

"The guy ... the thing in the suit ... used to be the deputy manager of this place, Ian Wilkes." Jade gulped and tried to control her emotions. "The rest used to be instructors and personal trainers."

Pickle could see that most had the same attire on, apart from the defunct Wilkes, and there were two beings that wore black sweaters with Personal Trainer on their back.

Jade added, "Wilkes wouldn't let any of us leave when it first broke out. He thought it was some kind of hoax. We persuaded him at least to close the gates, which he sent two instructors out to do exactly that. Steve Round came back bitten; he's the ... the ... thing in the first aid room. Wilkes was then attacked himself; he panicked and left the two instructors inside the first aid room."

Jade cleared her throat and added, "Wilkes then told everyone to get into the dance studio and stay there until help arrived, because they weren't sure whether it was an airborne virus. We also didn't really know if these things could climb the fence and if they were strong enough to break in, but I refused. I told them that I needed to see Chris and Steve, but Wilkes screamed at me that I could be infected if I went anywhere near them and I could bring it back to the studio. He said that if I went, I wouldn't be aloud in the dance studio. I couldn't just leave Chris and Steve in there on their own. So I went back and saw the carnage.

"When I realised there was nothing I could do, I then ran up to the dance studio and hammered on the door to be let in, but they all, in unison, refused to let me in, just in case I had picked up a bug or something. I didn't realise at the time, but that refusal had saved my life. It was a long day, and I decided to go for a sleep, surprisingly, considering what was going on. I slept for an hour in the office, paranoid that the defunct Steve Round could open the door and get out of the first aid room. I then wandered around the gym and watched the TVs. I then heard some screaming from the dance studio and ran up to see everyone had been infected; the only one left was a man called Richard, who was being attacked by Wilkes and his cronies."

"So Wilkes was bitten," Pickle began, "and infected the rest o' them. Yer a lucky lady." He shook his head and released a long whistle, sounding similar to a released bomb from a Spitfire.

They both returned back to the group and Pickle announced to the group what he had seen in the dance studio, and that they should go and look for themselves if they felt like it. He then turned to Karen and told her that there was also a Snatcher in the first aid room.

"I want yer to get rid o' it," Pickle instructed. "The dance studio is locked, so we're safe from them, but the first aid room isn't. We can't all fit in the office, so if that thing gets out during the night, while we're all sleeping..."

Karen nodded. "Okay."

"Dump it outside, through the fire exit."

"Sure thing. I only have a few bullets left."

"I know. We're gonna have to leave the dance studio alone. Try and just use the one bullet."

Karen released an exhausted and negative sigh.

"What's up?" Pickle smiled warmly and touched the top of her hair.

Karen said, "I was just thinking."

"Careful."

Ignoring Pickle's attempt at mild humour, she continued, "Maybe it would have been better to kill Bonser."

Pickle shook his head. "Nah. We're not cold-blooded killers."

"Even you?"

"Look, back in the days o' my... empire, shall we say, most o' the time that violence had to be used, it was slashings, shootings and knee cappings. I only had two people murdered, and even though that was done on my order, I never killed anyone directly." He added, "As for killing him; those things would have come eventually. All in all, it's probably better we're away from the house. Can yer imagine spending more than two days with seven o' us in one house? With no electricity, water—"

"Probably would have killed one another eventually."

"Exactly." He sighed, "We just seem to be runnin' from one place to the next."

Karen patted Pickle on the knee and strolled down the corridor, leaving Pickle to explain to the group that they will be hearing a gunshot within the minute.

Karen peered into the first aid room and saw the carnage. She opened the door gently, as the Snatcher stood motionless with its head facing the back wall. As soon as she opened the door, the erroneous smell assaulted her senses. She pulled her T-shirt over her nose, and crept inside. She carefully shut the door behind her and the gentle click of the door aroused the creature's suspicions—if he had any. Hoping the gun wasn't going to jam, as it still hadn't been cleaned, she aimed and squeezed the trigger successfully. The thing fell backwards against the wall, re-decorating the cream wall with blood, and it continued the decoration as the back of its head slid down the wall as it slumped to the floor.

She turned around quickly when the door opened, and saw Paul standing there. "I thought I'd give you a hand taking it outside."

Karen nodded. "Probably a good idea," Karen agreed. "With two of us, we can carry it out, rather than smearing the corridor with the back of its head." Karen then looked around at the blood-smeared room with an assortment of limbs. "We can clean up the rest at a later date."

Paul's nose twitched at the awful smell of death. He looked around the room and saw that it looked like something from a modern art studio, the way the assortment of blood was scattered around the floor and walls. He picked up the arms of the deceased and Karen took the legs. Dodging Steve Round's blood that was on the floor, they took the short walk to the fire exit and opened it with no hesitation, as the grounds were secure.

They were at the back of the centre and could see through the metal fence, acres and acres of farmland, knowing that opposite them was the entrance gates, the start of a new town and an assortment of ravenous creatures who couldn't be bargained with.

They dumped the body in the corner of the garden and went straight back inside. They made sure the door was shut securely and both walked through the corridor and entered the gym area, where a distraught Kerry Evans ran over to Karen with Jack in tow; he had both hands clasped on his head.

"What's wrong?" Karen quizzed, seeing that both set of parents were upset.

"It's Thomas," Kerry sniffed. "He's not well."

Karen walked into the office and looked over to the young boy who lay on the office's couch. His head was covered in droplets of cold sweat and his frame shuddered every now and again.

Karen took the boy's temperature and felt his weak pulse. She could feel his parents' glare drilling into the back of her head, aching for answers.

Karen took a look at the parents and said, "I think he has a fever."

Both parents revealed a relieved sigh, and Karen instructed them to keep hydrating the boy whenever he was awake. She got to her feet and walked out of the office.

"Everything okay?" Jade asked.

"Fine." Karen smiled.

Karen walked with long strides, halfway across the gym area, and made eye contact with Pickle.

"How's the kid?" Pickle stood up from the seat of a rowing machine he was sitting on, and shuffled over to Karen. He was beginning to feel tired, his legs ached, and his right foot had created a blister near his big toe.

Karen looked behind her to see if there was anyone in earshot. Satisfied there was no one around, she gulped, and refrained from saying anything.

Pickle could tell by her face that there was something wrong. "What is it?"

Looking stony-faced, Karen answered, "I think Thomas is infected, from what happened outside."

Pickle sighed, "How did that thing manage to release blood out of its mouth anyway. I thought they were supposed to be dead from the neck down?"

Karen shook her head. She had no answer to his question.
Chapter Fifty One

Paul Parker had found an old-style radio in the centre's canteen, and took it into the gym area where everyone was situated. He began to fiddle with the knob to tune it in. The radio was running on a couple of batteries, and he sat down on one of the treadmills whilst he tried to get a station. Nobody else paid attention to what he was doing, apart from Jade who sat next to him, and once he found a station, they both listened intently while the rest of the group continued to converse with one another.

Once Pickle heard the noise coming from the radio, he broke away from the conversation he was having with Karen and shouted over to Paul, "We've heard it all before. It's usually the same old shit."

"Just checking anyway," Paul responded back with a shrug of his shoulders.

He had finally found an English-speaking station.

" _...known for a while that something was up. The level of violence was incredible. Most of the media, who are controlled by big corporate companies, never reported the stuff that was happening. But with Facebook and Twitter, and other sites, where videos can be uploaded, it was impossible to ignore. I suppose the government must have thought they could control the situation; if you panic people too early or unnecessarily, it affects the country financially, and the country is in its worst recession in its history as it is._

" _Then it was announced on the Saturday night by what media reps we had left, but a lot of governments across the world were disbelieving the 'alleged' reports, especially our enemies, shall we say. Then borders and flights were cancelled, but it was too late by then. In the last few days Ireland and France have received thousands of refugees; a bitten person had made it on board on a ferry to Holland—a child. Obviously the concerned parents had no idea that this was the way it spread. Despite there being pockets of carnage in France, at the time it wasn't on its knees like the UK. Anyway, when the ferry arrived, well, you can guess the rest. A few of the passengers were infected, others were in comas, ready to reanimate. Others were ripped apart while surviving passengers had locked themselves in the cabins. Some even jumped overboard._

" _What are we living for now? Everything is turned upside down in the world, and our lifestyle is destroyed, with the loss of electricity and clean running water. How are we going to survive, and what would we value? People will discover that what is most important in life, isn't the type of car they drive, how big their home is, how cool their last vacation was, or how attractive they are, but the simple fact that they have relationships, community, and love. We need to focus on what is important ... these things won't last forever; they will be destroyed. As people, we need to survive._

" _A lot of people are asking: Is this thing global? Last week I would have said no. But from reports I'm hearing, I'm afraid to say that we now have a global catastrophe on our hands. It's not just a UK thing anymore, and the British Government, wherever they are now, or what is left of them, are being condemned by most world leaders and the World Health Organisation for their reluctance to address this weeks ago. As far as reanimation is concerned, I think the general consensus is that it took about an hour to turn, but I've seen people take up to four to eight hours to turn. We still don't know why this is the case..."_

Paul then lost the reception. He had no idea who was speaking, whether it was a scientist, politician...whatever, but there was confidence in the voice, and the 'global' remark unnerved him.

Jade shook her head, then took the radio off of Paul and then shook the radio. "It must be the batteries."

Paul glared into nothingness. "Shit. This thing is global. We're never gonna get any help."

Pickle walked over to Jade and Paul, and said with derision, "And this has come as a surprise to yer?"

"I just hoped—"

"Don't. The only people that are gonna help us now, are ourselves."

*

As the minutes dragged by, Thomas' condition had deteriorated massively and Kerry and Jack knew that he had been infected. Kerry was in the office and held her unconscious boy and whispered nursery rhymes into his ear, her emotions forcing her words to shudder, as she feared for her little man. Jack Slade found her behaviour a little confusing and wondered if his boy's situation was down to the spray of blood he received in his eye and mouth when they were outside.

Kerry kissed her son on his icy head, tasting the salt off of it, and looked out of the office to see Karen and Pickle chatting to one another, heatedly. She could feel her nausea increasing, as she knew exactly what they were talking about, from their body language, and the occasional glance that was thrown her way.

Kerry saw the Browning that was sticking out of Karen's jeans at the front and had made a decision, a decision that was going to change her life, a decision only a mother could make.

She kissed her unconscious son once more, and lowered his head back onto the couch. She looked up at Jack and smiled thinly at him, her rainy eyes wasn't fooling anybody. He could see in her face that she was losing hope and it appeared that they were both thinking the same thing. Jack fought back the tears and raised his head, hoping that would make a difference to stop the water from falling.

"Could you get me some water?" she asked him in a hoarse voice.

"Sure." Jack turned on his heels and left the office and was outside in the gym area. A concerned Paul and Jade asked how Thomas was, but all Jack could muster was a shrug of his heavy shoulders. Kerry got to her feet and walked out of the office and headed towards Karen and Pickle; as soon as they saw her presence, they stopped talking. Without a thought, Kerry grabbed the handle of Karen's pistol and stepped back a few yards and pointed the gun at both Karen and Pickle.

"Don't come any nearer!" Kerry screamed, forcing Jack to run from the water cooler and head back over. She indiscriminately pointed the gun at Pickle, Karen, Paul, then Jade, and even Jack, and then repeated this action three more times.

"What the hell are you doing, Kerry?" Jack was flabbergasted at how his ex had turned.

Kerry's uncontrollable tears fell as she continued to point the gun. Her hands shook, making the pistol wobble uncontrollably. One thing Pickle was aware of: an out-of-control individual with a gun was even more dangerous than someone who knew what they were doing. She began to slowly walk backwards. She screamed, "I know he's infected! I just know!"

Pickle stepped forward. "Look, Kerry—"

"Stay back! Or I'll blow your head off!"

Even though he knew the safety catch was on and Kerry had probably never held a gun in her life, Pickle wasn't taking the risk and raised both hands in the air in defeat; his body language promising that he wouldn't take a single step more.

"I could see you talking." Kerry glared. "He's my son! You hear me? Mine! I'll deal with this!"

Kerry pointed the gun at a surprised Jade, who raised her hands automatically and begged for her life.

Kerry said, "I'm going back into the office to be with my son." She nodded towards Jade. "Give me your keys."

Said Jade, "The key to the office is also the key to most rooms in the centre."

Pickle stepped in to Jade's defence. "If she gives yer the key, then the rest of us could be in potential danger."

Kerry nodded and sighed, "Okay. You lock the door once I'm in," she instructed Jade. "And if I hear that door being unlocked during the night or any other time, so help me God..."

Jack stepped forwards, but was pulled back by Paul, which he tried to shrug off. Then they started to scuffle. Jack threw a couple of weak and misfiring punches, screaming at Paul to leave him alone. Paul refrained from retaliating, knowing that Jack Slade wouldn't last a minute if he decided to lash out.

Pickle walked over to the scuffle and tried to calm down the melee. By this time, Kerry had already entered back into the office and had shut the door. Jade adhered to Kerry's instruction without consulting anyone else, and nobody tried to stop her when she walked over and locked the door. Karen walked over next to Jade and tried to look through the rectangle part of the door, which was quickly covered, as Kerry had pulled down the blind. She wondered if Kerry knew how to use the gun.

The demise of poor little Thomas had been discussed by Karen and Pickle and they had come to an agonising agreement, for the safety of the group, that Thomas should be dealt with, but in the most respectful and gentlest way possible. Karen thought that Kerry must have picked up on their signals and put two and two together and came up with the correct answer.

Karen was still angry with herself that Kerry had whipped the gun from her without giving her time to react, but the more she thought about it, she was glad a fracas had been avoided. It was those situations that the gun could have gone off and they could have ended up with another casualty.

"Give me the key." Jack stood up and snarled at Jade, who, to her credit, shook her head.

"Yer heard the woman," Pickle snapped at Jack. "If yer try to go in, you'll get a bullet."

"She won't shoot me."

Pickle smirked at Jack's arrogance and said, "And who are yer, exactly? A man that treated her like shit in the past? A shitty father that hardly saw his son? I think she'll put a bullet in yer no probs, sunshine."

Jack stormed over to Pickle with both hands outstretched, ready to grab him by the throat. He was too quick for Paul to hold him back, who failed to grab him. Pickle, with his right leg, swept Jack's legs, forcing the man to fall to the floor with a painful thud. He groaned in pain and began to sob. Pickle felt for the man and didn't want to take any action, but had no choice.

Jack's sobbing stopped as soon as he heard the painful wails coming from inside the office. The unmistakeable cries of sorrow were the worst and the saddest sound that any of the group had ever heard. It could only mean one thing when a woman cried out like that, with that much pain in the voice.

"Thomas!" Jack cried, and ran towards the office door again. Jack banged on the door and was dragged back once Kerry screamed and threatened to shoot at the door. Pickle and Paul dragged the manic father back, still screaming his son's name, knowing that he was gone. But now the worry, as far as the group were concerned, was what Kerry was going to do next. If she stayed in there for longer than an hour, then she'd be face to face with her dead son in the form of a Snatcher.

To shoot one's child would take bravery to a new level, and Karen wasn't sure whether she had it in her, as well as the fact that she wasn't sure that she knew how to use the gun. Both her doubts were quashed immediately when she heard a gunshot, which made the whole group jump. In reaction to the gunshot, Jade released a short scream, and Jack threw his head in his hands and began to sob.

His son was dead.

A minute of silence passed, and members of the group began to look at one another, as no one knew what was going on inside the office, let alone inside Kerry's head.

The second gunshot was something no one was expecting.

Everybody stood in the gym area. Nobody moved, as if they were playing a game of statues and each individual was damn good at it. They all looked at one another. A second gunshot was something that took them all by surprise and it took Jack a while to realise what might have happened. Was it two gunshots for Thomas? Or was it one each?

Karen was the first to move, and walked over to a shell-shocked Jade Greatrix and took the key off her. She looked to the silent and stationary group, and walked over and opened the office door. She peered in to see six-year-old Thomas Slade, lying peacefully on the couch, whilst his mother lay next to him with her arms draped around her boy. It was apparent that both persons had received massive head wounds, due to the blood that was being soaked up by the material from the carpet and the couch itself.

She gulped hard and went in to pick her gun up that lay on the floor. She took the Browning and put the warm weapon into her jeans' front pocket. She peered sadly at the two, and understood why Kerry Evans had done what she had done.

How could any mother live with herself after killing her own child, whether it was the right thing to do or not?

Thomas not being around anymore was probably something that Kerry couldn't cope with either, and Karen could understand why Kerry felt she had no other option.

The world outside looked bleak, and what was the point of trying to survive if your own flesh and blood didn't make it? What was the point in carrying on?

Karen looked again, and came to the assumption that Kerry must have placed the gun into the mouth of the child before doing the same to herself, as the only trauma she could see on both individuals was the damage to the back of the head. She had seen this type of wound before when she was in Stafford's A and E department a year ago. At that particular time, she couldn't sleep for a week after witnessing the arrival, but now she seemed more desensitised to violence since the horrific outbreak had exploded into life. Despite all of this, what she was looking at now was the saddest thing her eyes had ever witnessed.

"I'll take care o' them," Pickle announced, whilst in the background he could hear the screams from Jack Slade who was on his knees, with his arms wrapped around himself. Pickle's eyes were glassy and couldn't stand to look at the two bodies of mother and son. He stared at the back wall, not even making contact with Karen, in case the corner of his eye clocked a fraction of the macabre scene in the office.

Pickle said in a quaver, "Over the last week I've buried Laz, and I've taken care o' Davina. But I'll give these two the best send off yet."

Karen blew out her lips, releasing carbon dioxide full of tension. "We can't leave them in here all night."

"We'll do it now," another voice announced. It was Paul. Tears rained from his eyes. "I'll get Jade to take Jack to another room while we ship them out." Paul then broke down and walked away. He thought of his own family.
Chapter Fifty Two

# June 20th

It was a miracle if any member of the group had managed to get a full night's sleep. Jade had managed three hours, but the rest had either none, or an hour at most. Most of the late night and early morning had been spent comforting Jack Slade. The burial the night before was a quick affair, and Pickle chose to bury them by a young tree that was planted at the back of the building. Pickle said a few tearful prayers and the whole thing was over after ten minutes. Jack spent all of those ten minutes standing with his wide, disbelieving eyes, raining tears.

It was now Wednesday morning. Jade was still new to the group and was very quiet, and only spoke when she was spoken to, mainly. The group was split; Jack had been on his own for the last hour. He was sitting in the spin class and the last time Pickle looked in, it appeared that, miraculously, Jack had collapsed into dream-world after a sleepless night. Paul and Karen were sitting up on the leather couch that was near the reception area, both heads nodding as they were losing the battle to keep awake.

Pickle could see a nervy Jade strolling over towards him, and he greeted the tense twenty-five-year-old with a big friendly smile.

"So what happens now, Harry ... er ... Pickle?" Jade asked him. Her eyes were red; she had never witnessed anything like this in her life, and it was badly affecting her.

Pickle shrugged his shoulders. "Not a lot. Survive, I guess, whatever that means." He looked at Jade and was about to ask her about herself and her family, but decided to refrain from forcing Jade to dig up her past. He assumed that most of her family were possibly dead, and didn't want to highlight that fact when she had probably spent days putting those thoughts to the back of her mind.

"What's gonna happen to the office?" the fitness instructor quizzed.

He shook his head timidly and released an exasperated sigh. "Well, originally I was gonna clean the place up. But with no electricity, we have no hot water. And I don't wanna be using cold water from the sinks or the coolers to clean the place up. We'll need that ourselves, as selfish as they may sound."

"So?"

"So, from now on, like the first aid room, the place is out o' bounds. Give me the key to the office off yer key chain." Pickle held out his hand. Jade took a while to get the key off and eventually handed it to the man who seemed in charge of what was left of the group.

He took a look at the key and put it into his pocket. He then looked at Jade who was confused by his actions. "The office is out o' bounds. I don't want Jack using it as some kind of unhealthy, warped shrine to his kid. That wouldn't be right. I know the key is used for other doors, don't worry, I won't be losing it. If Jack...loses the plot, shall we say, I feel getting the key off yer would be an easier task than getting it off me."

Jade agreed, and even if she disagreed, she didn't think she would be brave enough to argue with the man who seemed to ooze power, not just because he was muscular, but the tone in his voice was strong and confident. She didn't know his background, but all the same, this was a man who had been out there for over a week and was still alive. Jade convinced herself that she was in good hands, and whatever he decided, she would go with it. It had been the longest and loneliest week and a half of her life, and she was glad of the company, despite now that the food supply would go down much rapidly.

He patted Jade on the shoulder and she tearfully asked him, "Do you think we're gonna be okay?"

Pickle opened his mouth, but then refrained from releasing any words that were dipped in negativity in order to protect the young woman. He thought about what had happened over such a short period of time: Seeing Conor Snodgrass being devoured before his very eyes, burying Davina Pointer, having to kill an infected Laz, watching his lover, KP, walking out into the darkness, ready to end his life after being bitten himself. Then he thought about the family in the attic when he and Karen arrived at Heath Hayes. He stopped himself from what he really wanted to say, as he wasn't sure Jade could take the news. She certainly wasn't as strong as Karen Bradley, even though she was two years older. He just smiled. "I think we'll be okay, if we stay where we are for now."

He gave Jade a reassuring wink and walked away slowly. He walked past the gym area and went down the corridor, passing the first aid room. He looked into the staff room and smiled as he saw the mugs sitting on the sink top, as well as a box of teabags, a kettle and a jar of coffee. He continued with his walk, his eyes scanning his temporary new home, and reached out his hand to open the door to the fire exit. He opened it and welcomed the breeze that excitedly swirled around him. He opened the door as wide as he could and used the latch, attached to the outside wall, to hook it onto the opened fire door, just so it wouldn't shut firmly behind him whilst he went for his walk.

His walk was ponderous and as he strolled around the perimeter of the grounds, he stared at the solid fence that separated the fitness centre and the farmland. His walk attracted attention, and two other bodies within the grounds began to follow behind him. He walked by Kerry and Thomas' fresh grave and noticed in the corner of the grounds was Steve Round's body from the first aid room carnage. He shook his head and continued with the stroll until he was nearly at the front of the fitness centre's building; that was when he stopped in his tracks. He knew there were two entities behind him, but never bothered to turn around.

He took in the fresh air from a foul new world, and saw the army of monsters at the front of the gates that, when opened, provided the entrance to the establishment. There were also many across the perimeter of the front of the fence. Pickle took in a deep breath and said a soft prayer to himself and looked back up. Jesus Christ. There's fuckin' hundreds of 'em!

If he had to estimate, he would guess that there was a least three ... four ... maybe even five hundred of the things. The fence was solid; but would it hold if there were thousands of them trying to force their way in? He wasn't sure, and had a vision of a potential scenario in his mind.

He daydreamed about the steel railings finally giving way, and having to jump the fence and run along the farmers fields at the back of the centre. He didn't know where the fields led, but he supposed it depended on what direction they ran in. The direction that seemed the safest was behind them, but that would eventually take them back to Rugeley. His head went to the side, ever so slightly, as he heard the two beings behind him that were only a matter of yards away. It was Paul Parker and Karen Bradley.

Paul Parker's hand eventually grabbed Pickle's shoulder softly. It was a friendly gesture, and Pickle replied the gesture with a smile. Karen appeared to his right and hooked her arm in his, and caringly placed the side of her head against his arm.

"Doesn't look good, does it?" Paul said with a mixture of scepticism and realism.

"Not at the moment," was Pickle's response. His gaze remained transfixed at the crowd of cannibals. Two weeks ago, his heart would have been elevated to an alarming rate, but now, this was normality, whether they liked it or not.

They watched some of the creatures moving away from the front of the gates and a handful spilling out to the sides of the fence, left and right, and moving forward.

"Shit!" Karen exclaimed.

"Yep," Paul said with defeat. "Looks like in a matter of hours, the whole fence—the whole place'll be surrounded. When's this going to end?" Paul snapped.

"Dunno," Karen remarked. "But the question is: Will we be here when it does?"

"Trust me," Pickle sighed and looked out and scanned the scavengers that ached for their flesh. "This is just the beginning. Oh well, another day to get through."

Paul's heart jumped as more could be seen clambering from the nearby town. He looked up at the grey atmosphere above him, and muttered to himself, "We may not be around when ... if, all this comes to a head." His thoughts went to his wife and daughter and felt an urge to cry, but decided to wait until he was alone.

Pickle sighed, "Why are we so insistent on surviving anyway? Why are we putting ourselves through this? Is death such a bad thing?"

They walked away from the scene, back into the fitness centre, and wondered what the hell they were going to do next. Do they stay, and hope that the ghouls would eventually become weary and leave for elsewhere? Or, do they leave, in case the crowd gets bigger and ends up breaking through the barrier?

No one knew what was for the best.
Chapter Fifty Three

In the afternoon, Pickle had spent half an hour walking around the sports centre and came back with a look of defeat on his face. Karen knew that face, and had to ask, "What's up?"

Pickle sat on one of the treadmills and conversed with Karen, out of earshot from the rest of the group. "I've been into the kitchens, looked at the vending machines, and there ain't much here that's gonna last us for more than a day or so."

"So what do you suggest?"

Pickle glared at Karen as if he was getting her to read his mind. She thought for a second, then blew out her cheeks and nodded. "Well, I'd be up for it. Not too sure about the rest."

"Up for what?" came a voice from behind them. It was Paul Parker; he had been put on a watch by Pickle to keep an eye on the things outside and report if there was any sign of the gate eventually giving way.

Pickle and Karen remained tight-lipped, and this irked Paul somewhat. "Look," he began, "to get through this, we need to be solid as a group. Not keeping secrets from one another."

His statement made sense, and without consulting with Karen, Pickle cleared his throat and asked Jack and Jade to come over and join them.

Jade was sitting with a shell-shocked Jack; they both slowly got to their feet and stood over a sitting Karen and Pickle. "Right, guys," Pickle spoke up. "We don't have much food and water in this place that'd last us to the weekend, let alone for a week."

"So what do you suggest?" Jade was the first to throw a query at the male leader.

Pickle sighed, "Yer not gonna like it."

"I'll go," Jack stepped in.

"You don't even know what it is yet." Karen cleared her throat, waiting for Pickle to finish off what he was about to say.

"I do know what it is," Jack spoke. "You want to get supplies from the van."

The silence fell among the group and Pickle could feel Paul and Jade's eyes on him. His silence suggested that Jack was right about the plan that was being created in Pickle's mind.

"No, no." Jade shook her head and then looked at the rest of the group as if they were crazy. "I can't go out there."

"That's okay." Pickle tried to calm Jade down, as her tears began to fall from her eyes. "If yer wanna stay behind, that's fine, but I need at least another person."

"I'll go." Jack Slade volunteered for a second time. This was followed by Paul Parker and Karen Bradley volunteering in unison.

"Thanks, guys." Pickle stood up and looked at Jack. "I don't think yer should be going, Jack. Not with what yer going through. Me and Paul will go. No offence, Karen, but we're stronger."

Paul added, "I think once the food runs out, we should leave this place via the field behind the centre. If those things keep turning up, the fence—"

"Let's just worry about now," Pickle interjected.

"I want to go." Jack was vehement with his response and Pickle was impressed with his determination, despite losing his son.

"What's the plan?" Paul asked.

Said Pickle, "Okay, first of all, we need some kind o' distraction."

"What do you mean?" asked Karen.

"Right, these things are out there in their hundreds, but if we somehow create a distraction, we could get to the back o' the van and empty what's in there, put the food, water...whatever, in bags and run the perimeter o' the fence and get back here."

Halfway through his speech, Jack looked to his left, and glared out of the windows that were in the reception hall.

Jack began to walk slowly towards the reception area, while Pickle continued. "It only has a flat, but it may as well have four flats the way it affects the speed 'o the van ... it..." Pickle stared at Jack. "Where the fuck are yer going?"

Jack was being followed by the rest of the group; firstly Paul, then Jade. Karen and Pickle then decided to follow suit and wondered what was drawing and almost hypnotising Jack Slade towards the reception window, where the view of the entrance could be seen.

Jack stopped once he arrived a foot away from the reception windows, and his gaze continued. "I think it might be a little too late to execute your plan," he spoke nonchalantly, as if he was under the spell of a hypnotist.

The remaining four stood behind him, and could all see the infected in their hundreds, swarmed around the perimeter of the fence. The entrance gate, where Lee and Oliver had met their fate, was giving way with the weight and pressure that was being applied by the endless amount of bodies that were desperate to get in and feed. The only possible way out would be out the back, across the farmland.

The gate was being rocked back and forth as if they knew how to open it, and then it eventually, and predictably, opened slowly. This caused a mass of bodies to squirm their way through the small gap, and the more bodies that tried to squeeze through, the bigger the gap created with the pressure of the ravenous hundreds that knew that there was food inside the building.

"Oh shit!" Jade cried out. She turned to Pickle and began to beat him on his chest. "This is your fault! You brought them here! You brought them here!"

Pickle allowed Jade to take out her frustration on him. She was right. It was his fault. When they left the van, there were only six of them up ahead. As soon as Lee and Oliver were devoured, like flies round shit, they slowly turned up in their hundreds. It was probably good for the scared and trapped that were still in their houses of the nearby town, but it had put the group in the sports centre in a predicament that he was responsible for, but there was nowhere else for them to go, and they did have a very frightened boy with them at the time.

"I'm sorry." Pickle lowered his head. "Do yer think the building will hold them?"

Jade shrugged her shoulders. "I don't think we should take that risk. If they get in, there'll be nowhere left to run."

"Of course it won't hold them!" Paul snapped. "It's only panes of glass we have for protection, now that they've broken through a supposedly secured gate."

Pickle nodded and knew that there were a dozen of them inside already, in the dance studio. Pickle sighed, "Get the sports bags from the changing rooms that some o' the customers have left. Empty them, then begin to empty the vending machines and let's go out the back before they get to the front entrance." He ran his fingers through his short dark hair as the stress was beginning to mess with his head. "And grab a few o' those dumbbell bars, we might need them." The dumbbell bars were situated in the free weights section, solid steel and twelve inches in length.

As soon as he made the decision, Paul, Jade and Karen ran away and did what was instructed, apart from Jack Slade.

Jack stood wide-eyed. He wasn't depressed. He wasn't feeling sorry for himself. He was giving up.

Without Thomas, he didn't see the point in running anymore. People running, meant that those particular people wanted to survive, but he was sick of living in such a cruel, macabre world. The old one was bad enough!

He had made his mind up. He wanted to be dead. He didn't want to go through the experience of dying, especially in this world where dying by natural causes now meant being ripped to pieces and disembowelled before your very eyes. That was too horrific to go through; he needed to think of something else. He wanted to be with his son, but he didn't want to go through the process that thousands of others had gone through.

Tears emerged in his eyes, but refused to fall. He had been a shit father, and the forty-year-old didn't see the point in carrying on without the little boy that was his world, yet had seen very little of since moving to Glasgow. He wiped his blurry eyes and could see that dozens were in the car park and heading his way, only two hundred yards away.

He suddenly felt a slap on his shoulder, which made him jump, and he turned around to see Pickle.

Snarled Pickle, "We gotta go, Jack. Now!"

Jack looked at Pickle and saw Karen, Paul and Jade, waiting at the other end of the centre near the room where the spin classes used to be held. They were a matter of yards away from one of the fire exits and were waiting on Pickle and Jack to hurry the hell up.

Jack stared at Pickle and his eyes were glassy. Pickle could see heartbreak in his eyes and could almost read his mind on what he wanted to do. He tried to ignore the scores of infected bodies spilling out onto the car park outside, and tried to remain calm and said, "I also nearly gave up when I lost somebody I loved."

"I've lost a six-year-old boy." Jack could just about get the words out of his mouth, as the emotion was strangling his throat, making it almost impossible to breathe. "No mother or father should have to bury their child."

"I know, I know."

"Go."

Pickle blew out his cheeks and tried to persuade Jack, but the determined man had clearly given up and turned his back on Pickle.

"Yer won't change yer mind?" Pickle had to ask.

Jack shook his head. "I'll stand by the reception area where they can see me. At least that might stop some of them from going round the back while you make your escape over the back fence."

"What's the hold up?" Pickle could hear Karen shouting in the background.

The first lot of the contaminated had now reached the reception's windows and desperately clawed and pounded at the hard, thick glass to get in; Jack took a few steps closer in the reception area. Knowing that some may be on their way around the perimeter of the building and round the back, Pickle knew he had stayed long enough, wished Jack good luck, and trotted away from the man that was in mourning, and that had given up with life and with the new world. Paul took some persuading by Pickle not to go back for Jack, and it worked, once he told him two things: Jack had given up and the things were near.

The four remaining members of the group, Harry Branston, Karen Bradley, Paul Parker and Jade Greatrix, headed for the fire exit, and Pickle made sure the door was shut to protect Jack, especially if he suddenly changed his mind.

With the fire exit door shut and the group outside, there was no going back now for the remaining four, and this was confirmed when Pickle stuck his head around the wall of the sports centre. He pointed at the fence at the back of the sports centre that led onto a desolate farmers field. He could see three of them stumbling at the side of the building, heading their way. "Hurry up, they're coming."
Chapter Fifty Four

Once the four people had left, Jack Slade remained standing in the reception area. Outside, the clouds were suffocating the sun's glow and allowed in little light. He remained on his feet and thought about the out-of-bounds office where his son died and where Kerry had taken her life. He rested his head on the palm of his hand and began to cry. How could he live without his boy? He seemed to have coped reasonably okay when he was living in Glasgow and spent weeks without seeing him. But now he was dead, there didn't seem much point carrying on.

He stepped away from the door and tried to compose himself, ignoring the clamour coming from outside where the things were in their hundreds, desperate to get through the glass and devour Mr Slade.

Unbothered by the attention he was receiving, Jack walked further towards the window in the reception area and went face to face with the dead, and the only thing that was stopping them from eating him was the thick pane of glass. His closeness seemed to excite them as the sea of rotting faces snarled, grabbed and spat blood onto the pane, desperate to get in and rip him to bloody shreds.

He stared at them and knew that Kerry had done the right thing. It would have hurt him even more if Thomas had turned into one of those things, and Kerry felt she had no choice but to kill herself. She couldn't live with herself that she had to take Thomas' life, before the infection did. She wanted to be with her boy. She didn't want him to be on his own.

Jack agreed with her thinking. He was sick of running. What was he surviving for, now that his son was dead? What was the point in running? There was no point.

Jack's gentle sobbing turned into anger and he punched the glass of the reception area, then punched it again, which seemed to stir the dead even more, if that at all was possible, as dozens upon dozens of rotting hands clawed, smacked and hammered against at the window pane, creating the first crack. Jack then turned his back and began to walk away, fuelling the excitement of the beings on the other side, and he walked nonchalantly past the gym area and up a flight of stairs where the free weights section was, as well as the dance studio where Wilkes and co were shambling about in their new, dead world.

Jack looked over at where a set of weight-plates stood against a wall near a dip station. He walked over to pick up one of the three leather belts that sat in the corner that was used by serious lifters to protect their back, and glared at the Weider belt in morbid fascination. He then walked to the front of the first floor weights section and looked over the edge, staring down at the swimming pool. The first floor had a barrier that consisted of three metal bars that went horizontally to stop people falling over the edge.

Standing against the metal barrier, Jack could see the view of the sports centre. The swimming pool was right below him, and the cardio machines were around the pool area as well as other machines. He then looked at the barrier again, and then stared at the belt. He slowly tied the belt into a hoop and tied it to the highest horizontal bar of the barrier.

He was going to hang himself. He felt it was the only dignified way out of this mess.

Then suddenly he heard a crash, and knew that through the reception they were getting in. He glared down at the area from the first floor and could see the first two coming from the reception area to his left, entering the gym.

Jack gulped, and a hint of regret from his body began to emerge that he never went with Pickle and co. There was no going back now, or so he thought.

He tied the belt around his neck and knew that one jump could end it all right now. And it would be reasonably painless; the belt had enough slack to make it reasonably quick as well. He knew he would suffer for a few seconds, maybe even a whole minute, rather than immediately breaking his neck, but it must have been better than being eaten alive, surely. His feet stood on the first horizontal bar. He slowly climbed over and was now on the other side of the barrier, his arms behind him, holding on to the third and highest bar, leaning forward.

He looked up; at least twenty were in and they knew exactly where to go in the open gym area; they were heading upstairs towards where he was. All he had to do was let go of the third horizontal bar of the barrier and then he would fall to his death, but he was reluctant, and this angered him, as he knew what the alternative method of death would be if he didn't hurry up.

He closed his eyes and prepared himself to jump, trying to blank out the groans to his left and right as the creatures clumsily stumbled and crawled up the stairs on all fours. He thought about the crazy ten days that he had experienced.

He thought about waking up in that Glasgow hotel to find the world had changed. Meeting Robbie. Then hacking a reanimated Robbie in his own driveway. Then driving south. Crashing the car. Passing out. Being attacked by a ghoul near the pond. Meeting Gary. Finding his son. Then losing Gary.

It had been a fucked up ten days, and what scared him was that he didn't know if he would last another ten if he decided to have gone with Pickle, but if he did, what was about to greet him? More episodes of terror? Surviving day to day? Would he be given time to mourn for his son? He didn't seem to think so.

Fuck it!

He jumped.

And as soon as he did, he regretted his decision. He could feel the burning across his throat as he swung thirty feet above the swimming pool and tried to grab the belt to loosen it.

He had changed his mind. He wanted to live. Or at least, he wanted to give it a go.

His legs kicked out as his throat got tighter, and his giddiness was telling him that the lack of oxygen to the brain was occurring and that he may have a minute left to live, if that. His eyes rolled as the belt cut into his throat and suddenly he felt like he was floating. He could feel the brush of air over his face as if he was flying, but that feeling was soon quashed once he was engulfed in water.

He quickly stood up and began to cough violently, which was due to a mixture of his strangulation and swallowing the water. He rubbed and opened his confused eyes and found himself standing in the middle of the shallow end of the swimming pool. He looked up to see that the belt had untied itself and hadn't been strong enough to hold his weight.

Having no time to embrace the second chance fate had given him; he looked around in panic and saw some of the things calmly tumble into the pool after him. It took a while before they found their feet in the pool, but once they did, they walked towards him as determined as ever. He knew they couldn't drown; they were already dead.

Fearing the kind of death that could be experienced, he swam to the other side of the pool, as one-by-one the bodies tumbled in until the pool was awash with the things. He needed to get to the edge and although most were behind him, there were two in front, blocking his escape. He remembered the time at Stile Cop Cemetery when he and Gary were ambushed by three of them. He used the same, desperate technique Gary had used. It was either that or die.

The first one, a female, grabbed him by the shoulders, but with no hesitation Jack rammed his forefinger into the eye socket, grabbed the back of the thing's hair, pulled the head back and continued to stab at the brain with the finger until the thing collapsed and dropped into the pool. The last one was tough and Jack threw a punch at the thing, which forced it to tumble over clumsily. Aware that they were gathering around him inside and outside the pool, Jack had to make it quick. He pushed the thing over and tried to climb out of the pool. Feeling hands grabbing him and trying to pull him back in, Jack panicked and cried out in fright. A vision of him being pulled back into the water and being bitten by dozens of the things, creating a mass of blood like something out of the film Jaws, flashed through his mind. He didn't want to die the way Quint did, by being dragged into the water and being torn to shreds.

He finally got to his feet and could see the things from the first floor were now trying to get back downstairs. Jack tried to run, but his soaked clothes were weighing him down. He grabbed a 5kg kettle bell from the racking and swung it at anything that got in his way, as he tried to make his way to the fire exit door where the others had escaped. He was aware that there could be some nasty surprises waiting for him outside, if he made it outside, and was determined to keep hold of the kettle bell.

He swung it violently to his right, hitting two of the things, although not killing them, and used his foot to kick them away as most were behind him in their dozens in the sports centre, with the other hundreds in the car park, still clambering to get in through the smashed window of the reception area.

There was one solitary being by the fire exit with a T-shirt that had Slightly Damaged Human on it. He swung the kettle bell as hard as he could at the thing that used to look like a male, and its head with the weight and force of the kettle bell was almost obliterated.

The almost headless body fell to the floor with a slump and Jack crashed out of the fire exit—a stupid tactic in hindsight, as he didn't know what was behind it—and saw that there was ten of the things round the back, wandering around, lost, whilst most were in the car park still following the rest into the centre through the gap in the reception area.

As soon as a handful of them clocked him, he knew it was going to be a punishing, tiring, and bloody battle if ever there was a chance he could get over the metal fence.

They walked towards him and with one swing, two were taken out. It didn't create too much mess, but they never got back up again. He kicked the next one that went for him, which tumbled over. He ran ten yards around the small horde, giving his tired arms some breathing space. Three stepped forwards, and the kettle bell was swung like a hammer throw in the Olympics. Two went down with massive head injuries, causing black gunk to fly out. Another swing took out the third, with half of its head falling away to the floor; the dark diseased brain fell with it. There was five left, including the one he had kicked earlier. A bloated figure that resembled an elderly lady went for him; he grabbed her hair and simply threw her to the ground and brought his heel down, crushing the head. He was surprised how easy it died and although the kettle bell was hard work, he didn't want his shoes and socks drenched with the thing's blood, so it was a tactic that he never went back to.

Four left.

Jack jumped forwards and kicked one of them over, he then took a step backwards and swung the kettle bell into the side of the head of one of them, immediately killing it, and it dropped to the ground. The two others were taken out with three more swings. One remained twitching on the floor, which ceased once he brought down the kettle bell that smashed its skull into a bloody and squishy mess. The kettle bell looked like it had been dipped in tar.

One left.

The one that he had kicked over was scrambling to its feet and at this point, Jack Slade was exhausted.

"Come on, Jack." He tried to urge himself on. "Just one more." He then saw scores spilling out of the fire exit door he had crashed through earlier. He cried in exasperation, "Oh, fuck me." He swung the kettle bell into the head of the thing and knowing they were spilling out just twenty yards away from him, he dropped the 'weapon', ran for the metal fence and tried to climb over.

With his life on the line, it still wasn't as easy as it looked, especially with him being soaked to the bone. He released an angry cry to give him that extra adrenaline, extra strength and determination to get himself over. He felt scores of hands grabbing his ankle as he got to the top of the fence, and the panic of being bitten or scratched allowed Jack to release a cry and then he simply fell to the other side. He fell and hit the dirt with a painful thump, his shoulder taking most of the impact.

He was sore, but fuck it, he had made it.

Desperate arms filtered through the fence, aching to tear at his flesh. Now on the other side of the fence in the farmers field, Jack didn't waste any time and began to jog away from the back of the sports centre with his heavy, soaked clothes on his back, and further onto the farmers field, to the disgust of his admirers.

He could see four figures in the far distance as they entered the woods, but he knew it would be fruitless to shout or run after them. Pickle, Karen, Paul and Jade were too far away. It was his own fault, but now he was on his own, but he was still alive. That was something, at least.
Chapter Fifty Five

The four bodies continued to run, but at a much slower pace now that they were away from danger. They entered the woods, two miles from Stile Cop to the north, and two miles from Hazelslade to the east. The woods were vacant from any life from what they could see, and their run slowly turned to a jog and then a brisk walk. Twenty yards into the woods and still not a word had been spoken, as some of the group were showing signs of tiredness. Pickle was the first to stop walking, and took a seat on a tree stump and plonked a bag full of food from the vending machines next to his feet; he was exhausted.

This particular part of the woods wasn't condensed as what they were used to. The trees were in full bloom, but were reasonably spaced out, allowing the survivors to be able to see for many hundreds of yards ahead of them. This pleased Pickle, because it'd give them enough time to make a move if a predator could be seen from far away. Karen stopped, clearly out of breath, and sat on the grass with her legs crossed and her head bowed. A fitter Paul Parker and Jade Greatrix remained panting, but kept on their feet.

Karen felt the back of her dark blue jeans and cursed aloud. She had lost the Browning during the escape. Pickle calmly reminded her that it only had a couple of bullets left anyway, and the chance of coming across a box of ammo for such a gun, especially in the UK, was an impossibility.

"So what now?" Jade asked.

Pickle held his hand up in defeat, while he tried to get his breath back. "Give us a second, Jade."

"We've just escaped those things," Karen butted in, trying to get her breath. "Relax for a bit."

"I can't relax," Jade said tearfully. "I want to go somewhere safe."

"Nowhere is safe," Paul spoke up.

Jade's tears fell freely; she wasn't used to this world like they were. She was used to being shielded from it, being cooped up inside. Even though she was with numbers, she felt vulnerable now she was outdoors.

"I'm sorry to be a wee bit blunt, Jade." Pickle ran his fingers through his stubble. "In the last ten days or so, I've been in a prison, on a hill, and in a house. It still wasn't safe."

"So what do we do?" she cried.

Paul looked at Jade with sympathy; this was all new to her. She squatted down and lowered her head; her shoulders shuddered with her crying and Paul was quick to comfort her. She cried, "I don't even know where my family are."

"Neither does anyone else," Karen said with coldness in her voice. "There're millions in your position. You're not the only one, you know." Karen looked agitated and emptied her nose onto the grass, sniffed, and looked at Jade for a reaction.

"Relax, Karen," Pickle tried to appease. "She's just a young girl."

"She's older than me!"

"I mean ... this is all new to her."

"I don't wanna hear her bitching, that's all. We've all got people we care for. My Gary turned into one of those things as soon as it happened. My dad and my stepsister, Kelly, are stuck somewhere in Glasgow, my mother is...well, God knows where—"

"That's enough," Paul scolded Karen, still comforting a clearly upset Jade.

A silence enveloped the group; each one was nervous, some more than others, and their backs were soaked with perspiration thanks to the unwanted exercise session and the muggy climate. The clouds were dressed in grey, but the day was clammy and made all four irritable.

"I need a wee drink," Pickle announced.

The group all took their sports bags off that were full of contents from the vending machines, and dumped them onto the floor. They had four bags, one each, and the only food and drink that was on offer was fizzy drinks, sports drinks, chocolate bars, crisps and protein bars. It wasn't great, but it'd have to do for now. Out of a bag that was packed by Karen, Pickle took out a bottle of cherry coke, opened the bottle that fizzed everywhere and took a generous gulp, belching quietly with every swig he took.

The group were lost in silence.

Now that they were safe, temporarily, and their adrenaline had begun to subside, they all remained sitting and continued to be silent as Pickle finished off his drink. Karen ate a squished chocolate bar, and Paul and Jade just sat and stared at the grass. For minutes this continued, until a snap of a twig could be heard in the suffocating silence. All four turned their heads correctly in the direction where the noise was coming from. Jade quickly got to her feet and released a gasp.

"Calm down," Pickle said. "It's just the one."

The group glared at the lonesome figure, stumbling through the wooded area. It was one of them, and thankfully there didn't seem to be more of them.

"Looks like somebody got lost." Paul Parker looked around on the floor and picked up a rock. It was a large rock, enough to cause penetration if enough forced was used.

The lone Snatcher picked up speed as it clocked the group, even though it was a hundred yards away. It was a mess, they all were, but this particular one's skin was peeling away. Its eyes were sunken in, an ear was missing from the left side of its head and it was so gaunt, its face almost looked like a skull that had been painted a dirty yellow colour. It was hard to fathom what the age of the thing was when it was in human form, although it was definitely a male and dressed in a now dirty suit that would have been a navy blue colour when first put on.

Jade shook with fear; Karen looked at the young fitness instructor with sceptical eyes. Karen knew how Jade felt, but she had to toughen up quickly, because Karen Bradley didn't want any passengers involved. Everyone needed to be able to fight, if need be.

Paul stepped forwards with the rock in hand; Karen got to her feet and placed her opened hand on his chest, stopping him from progressing any further.

"What are you doing?" Paul and Pickle asked in unison.

"Give me the rock," she demanded.

Paul looked at Pickle. Pickle shrugged his shoulders.

Without saying a word, Paul handed Karen the rock.

Karen then handed the rock to Jade, who refused to take it.

"Take it!" Karen snapped.

The frightened Jade looked at both men who were now on their feet, and were wondering what the hell Karen Bradley was up to. She reluctantly took the rock off of the twenty-three-year-old former nurse, and shook with fear. Karen then walked towards the infected being with long strides, which in turn excited the thing. As soon as it got close, she swiped its legs from underneath it, making it immediately fall to the floor, face down. Karen placed her hand on the back of its head and knelt on its extended arm, making it impossible to get up. She gazed over in Jade's direction. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

Jade looked to Paul and Pickle. They stepped back and Pickle nodded in Karen's direction; it was as if they knew what she was trying to do. This was some kind of half-arsed initiation test, but what if Jade failed? Would they leave her to her own devices if they thought that she would be nothing more than a hindrance to the group, a weak link? Jade stepped towards Karen, clutching the rock tightly. Tears rained down her cheeks, but she had already made her mind up that this was something that she couldn't go through with. This world was too much for her, and she cursed the group mentally for breaking into the sports centre. She was doing just fine before they turned up. Bastards!

"Do it!" Karen urged. "It's rotten. You'll find the head is quite soft. It ain't as hard as you think."

Jade looked at the thing that struggled, snarled and gnashed away. She shook her head and dropped the rock onto the floor. She sobbed and Paul consoled her. Karen got up on her feet and walked to the group. The thing began to scramble to its feet, while Karen casually picked up the rock. Paul looked at Pickle as if to say: What the hell's she doing? but Pickle shook his head at him, telling him to leave it. He trusted Karen.

The thing managed to get to its feet and slowly trudged its way towards them from ten yards away. Karen sighed and said to Jade, "You're gonna have to toughen up, or you won't last an hour out there." Karen then turned away from Jade who was still being consoled by Paul, then marched forwards, towards the being, and rammed the rock into its forehead. The rock obliterated the front of its skull. It fell to its knees and hit the floor face down, then Karen turned to Jade, wiping two specks of gunk off of her cheek. "Because I'm not gonna be your babysitter."

Pickle sighed, "Okay, let's keep moving."

"Where?" asked Paul.

"I don't know."

"What's that noise?" Jade said.

All individuals stood motionless with their ears pricked up, investigating the noise.

Pickle answered, "Sounds like planes. Come on," he urged his comrades. "I think there's a road further up ahead."

*

Jack Slade looked up to the skies as the two Panavia Tornados screamed and roared above him. A smile emerged on his face, and although the scene that he had just witnessed didn't help him personally, it made him smile when he saw the planes above, because it gave him hope.

Nobody knew what was going on, but surely that was a sign that the whole of the country hadn't been decimated by the virus, unless it was a couple of pilots escaping from an infected base, but Jack tried to convince himself that that wasn't the case. He looked up to the heavens, urging the sun to sneak from behind the clouds so he could get his clothes quickly dried. He shivered as he felt the cold torment him, and although it should have been the last concern in this new world, he was hoping that he would avoid a stinking cold.

Still soaked, a playback of the events from when the outbreak was announced went through his head, which darkened his mood so much that he crashed to the floor and hit the dirt. He broke down and cried; he cried so hard he thought his heart was going to break. He couldn't believe after all he had been through, he had lost his little boy.

He looked ahead of him and could see that the woods where he was heading seemed miles away. It would certainly feel like miles with the wet clothes that he had on.

He staggered through the ploughed field; his steps were lazy and clumsy, the steps of a tired man. His feet scraped their way towards the wooded area and once five minutes had passed, he eventually got there. He looked into the woods and saw that the area was quite open which pleased him, as the chance of a surprise attack would be rare, unless he was attacked whilst he was asleep.

It was only the afternoon, but he felt exhausted. He had hardly slept in the last twenty-four hours, and had used a lot of energy with the escape. He was tired and could have murdered a drink.

He continued for a while until he decided to stop; ahead he could see a deceased being. He took tentative steps to get nearer to the being, and saw by the side of him, an empty cherry coke bottle.

They were here.

He laughed at himself. He should have gone with them, but it was too late now. They were probably an hour ahead of him, maybe just half an hour, but they might not even be in the woods anymore.

He walked away for a further minute to escape the stench of the dead body. He sat down and rested his back against the tree trunk and thought that maybe he was better off on his own anyway. He had lost his son and Kerry, possible most of his other family members, and connecting with the group could be a recipe for more heartache once he got to know them, because disaster seemed to be always round the corner.

He had only known Gary for just over a week and felt like he had lost a brother; the group at the village hall seemed pretty solid, until the things overran them. What if he got close to Jade, Karen, Pickle, and got to know Paul even better, then one of them was killed? There seemed to be heartache whatever happened. He was glad the belt had slipped and he had crashed into the swimming pool; he did want to live despite losing everything and everyone. Deep down, something inside of him was urging him to continue to live.

It was only the afternoon, but he needed a sleep. It seemed crazy to do so, but he would rather sleep during the day than through the night, especially if he were to remain in the woods. Looking around in the spaced area, there wasn't even a sign of a bird. Confident that he would be practically sleeping with one eye open anyway and any kind of rustle would probably alert him, he decided to close his eyes, and once he did, he broke down again.

After ten minutes, once his breakdown was over, he tried to control his breathing and lowered his heart rate, whilst opening his eyes every other second, just to make sure. This went on for a few minutes until Jack was eventually swallowed up by tiredness.

One hour later, he woke up, and was ready for his journey, his next adventure. He was alone in the woods; he had no food or water, and wondered if he was going to survive by the end of the week.

Only time would tell.
**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 whilst 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' comment, 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 were 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 forklift 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, whilst behind, Ian David, the forklift 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 bitten, 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 works stations, 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 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 whilst 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 bitten 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.
Chapter Three

Pickle rubbed his hairy chin which annoyed him. He had never had a beard and was always a clean-shaven individual. His grey jogging bottoms and his black T-shirt were days old now, and he wondered when he was going to get himself a new set of clothes. For three nights they had slept in the woods, and they were now on the brink of starvation. Their stomachs were empty and now they had to leave the area and venture somewhere where food was available.

The woods were reasonably quiet and the original plan was for the group to stay in there for as long as possible. The more days passed, the less chance there would be of those things to deal with, or so they hoped. But the hunger was now drawing them out.

Karen sat down and the main unpleasant experience of the woods wasn't the fear of the Snatchers, but the fact that they had to do their business with no toilet roll for the last three days. Leaves were all they had, and the twenty-three-year-old former nurse was paranoid about picking up infections.

Karen watched as Paul and Jade were standing ten yards away, giggling to one another as if it was a private joke. The pair of them had become close over the last few days, but it was innocent, especially as far as Paul was concerned as his wife, Jocelyn, and his two-year-old daughter, Hannah, were constantly talked about by the thirty-one-year-old.

She put her head in her hands and Pickle asked what was wrong. "I'm thirsty," answered Karen.

"Tell me about it. I haven't drank water since the sports centre, just a coke and a bottle of vimto."

"I've been in and out of the woods for the past fortnight. I could murder a cup of tea and a hot shower."

Pickle laughed, "A cup of tea would be great. I've even thought about breaking back into my old prison."

"Seriously?"

Pickle shrugged. "There should be a generator o' some sort to keep the place goin' for a few weeks, but I suppose it'll be overrun with those things now. Either that, or some gang have claimed it."

"Probably," Karen said, then winced with the pain in her head.

"What is it?"

Karen looked over to Paul and Jade who were standing ten yards away, and seemed to be involved in their own conversation. Karen put her forefingers to her temples and winced again. "It's nothing. Just a headache." She then cupped her right hand, sharply breathed into it and took a sniff of her cupped hand. "My breath smells like shit."

Pickle smiled. "Don't worry about it. We all stink."

For the last three days the four individuals had been trying to stay low, but the lack of food was beginning to entice them out. The group, after living off rations of crisps and juice, were finally running out of food, and Pickle knew that staying in the woods was not practical unless they came across a stream of pure water and a field of animals. This, of course, was nothing but a pipedream, because for the last three days they had remained in the woods, they had no idea where they were. They never had a plan; they just wanted to stay reasonably safe and away from roads and general population.

Their thinking had now changed. They needed to be hydrated and have food in their bellies.

When they left the sports centre, the goal was to somehow find sanctuary, because all Pickle, Karen and Paul had done since the beginning of the outbreak was to run away from those damn things. Even though being in the woodland made them less vulnerable to predators, they were also hidden from any chance of being picked up by a rogue driver or any other kind of help. They didn't know how many miles they had walked over the last three days, but it was becoming clear that the woods were thinning out and appeared to be coming to a halt, which now pleased them.

Wordlessly, they all stepped out onto the edge of the area onto a country road. They were out in the open and it felt good. Being in the woods was the safest option, but the heat was stifling and it was good to feel the cold wind on their sweat-stained shirts.

They were all desperate for washes; their mouths were rank with the stench of not brushing for days, and they seemed to itch all over from a concoction of the dirt and the heat. Throughout the nights, they had all slept on the grass with one keeping guard.

Jade had estimated that she had probably had seven hours sleep over the nights, if she was lucky. Her body was sore; her mouth was as dry as sand paper; her teeth ached from the neglect, and she stunk. She had become used to this as the rest were also stinking; it seemed to be something that was just accepted now. Jade Greatrix was still a nervous wreck, even after three days of being outside, and Karen was still irked by Jade's presence and had hardly said a word to her over the three days.

Jade was the first to speak whilst the rest of the group had their eyes closed and looked up to the dull sky, enjoying the breeze that caressed their frames.

"So what happens now?"

Nobody answered her straight away.

Eventually Pickle spoke, "Not sure. I think we should have a wee sit down and discuss what our next move should be."

Jade was the first to slump onto the grass bank at the edge of the road. Paul did the same and began moaning about the smell that was coming from his body. Paul Parker lowered his head and thought about Jocelyn and Hannah. He hoped they were okay, but he also knew that they may not be alive anymore. He realised it was pointless and now too far and dangerous going back to his house, but it was still killing him not knowing where they were or how they were doing, or if they were even still breathing.

Pickle squinted his eyes. He was lost in thought and threw his head to the right, then to the left, looking down the country lanes.

Noticing his confusion, Karen asked, "What's up?"

His eyes narrowed, furrowing his brow, and began scratching his head. "I think I recognise this place."

Karen coolly nodded her head. "That's because we've been here before."

"What?" Pickle looked bemused. "When?"

"We've practically walked in a circle. Don't forget, I've lived in this area all my life. This road..." Karen allowed her sentence to trail off and paused, until Pickle's raised eyebrows urged her to continue with her sentence. Karen cleared her throat. "This is the very same road where KP got out of the van."

Pickle's face was emotionless, but he could feel a sick feeling in his stomach; his hand rubbed his thin beard in thought. "So ... we're back at Stile Cop?"

"More or less. It's just round that corner and up the hill. Do you think we should check it out?"

The forty-three-year-old never answered her straight away; he was lost in deliberation. He stared down at the road and suddenly felt his body sway; he widened his eyes and looked back up to re-focus his blurry eyes. For a moment he thought he was going to pass out. "I don't know," he finally answered. "The last time we were there, we were swamped with the things. Don't yer remember what happened to Jamie and Janine?"

"Don't forget Davina," Karen chipped in. "Anyway, that was nearly two weeks ago. These Snatchers ain't gonna hang around if there's no ... well ... food about, are they?"

"Yer reckon the place could be empty?"

Karen made a face as if she was unsure what the outcome would be if they went back there. "Won't harm to check it out, then we'll take it from there."

"We're gonna have to eat ... soon," Paul spoke up and began walking towards the pair of them.

Both Karen and Pickle nodded in agreement. Both their stomachs were beginning to grumble with dissatisfaction of the lack of action they'd been getting since yesterday. "I know there's a supermarket not far from here, but there might be fuck all in there now," Pickle half-scoffed.

"We could always try and go back into Rugeley," Karen said, "after we've checked out Stile Cop."

"Didn't yer tell me the town was swarming?"

"A while back, yes. But who knows what could be happening? We could be hiding in the woods while the Rugeley residents have ... I dunno ... kinda taken control of their town. Maybe it's been quarantined by the army."

"Or..." Paul smiled sarcastically at Karen's positive attitude, "maybe ... there's no one left, because they've all been ripped to fucking pieces."

Pickle and Karen looked at one another whilst Jade picked her teeth with her little finger. She was in a world of her own, and never reacted to Paul losing his temper. Both Pickle and Karen never responded to Paul's angry outburst either. They knew he was still unsure whether his wife and daughter were alive or not, and put his fury down to frustration.

"Well," Pickle began, "food and drink isn't going to fall into our laps sitting here, is it? Something has to be done. We'll go to Stile Cop first, it's on the way anyway, see what's been occurring, then we'll go to Karen's hometown and see what we can get."

"A set of wheels would be good." Paul spoke as if he was in a daydream. His eyes were wide. He looked like he was a million miles away, and his short-lived anger had begun to evaporate.

"A set o' wheels would be great, but let's see what's about." Pickle investigated the inside of his mouth with his tongue and could feel the wrinkles in the roof. He was dehydrated. He knew he was dehydrated because his head was pounding and he hadn't shat for two days. "If any o' yer lot come across any thick branches, pick them up. I'm not going into that town unarmed. It's only Karen that's armed now."

"I'm sure we can outrun those things, if there ain't too many," Karen piped up.

"It's not just the Lurkers that we need to worry about," Paul spat; it sounded like he was becoming emotional; his voice shook as he spoke. "My friend, Gary, was raped and killed by two men," Paul looked over to Pickle, "in that very same supermarket you were talking about. I'm going nowhere, unless I'm armed with something."

"Well yer better find somethin' then," Pickle snapped.

This kind of talk did nothing to breathe confidence into Jade. What happened to humans pulling together? she thought. She sighed, and thought about her lonely existence, being stuck in the sports centre. But at least she was safe, and had possibly another week left before supplies would have ran out.

"Okay." Pickle clapped his hands together in a futile attempt to rally the troops. "Are we ready?"

Dejected and sleepy, Paul and Jade managed a tired nod and began to follow Karen who was already five yards ahead of them. Jade looked at the back of Karen Bradley and scowled. Jade knew that Karen disliked her, and the feeling was mutual, but nevertheless, she knew that Karen was a tough individual and that she would rather have her on her side than be against her.

She walked with Paul, their conversation was non-existent. Their feet dragged, their clothes were filthy and their morale was rock bottom. The two in front, Pickle and Karen, walked with more energetic and confident strides. They turned left at a junction to find a vacant road, which made them relax a little; there was no sign of life at all. Their strides continued, whilst Paul and Jade did their best to catch up.

"Nearly there," they heard Pickle say to no one in particular. A minute later, the two in front stopped and Paul and Jade did the same. Pickle looked to his left and nodded with contentment, whilst Paul and Jade eventually caught up and stood next to them.

They were at a crossroads and could see a few dead bodies to their right, whilst to their left, the road that led up to Stile Cop, there were even more bodies further up. There were two particular ghouls that were still active and at the side of the road. Their legs were crushed, and it was apparent that they had slowly crawled their way to the side. They didn't look to be a threat, and their presence was ignored by the group.

Jade released a smile and immediately said, "Somebody's been here," she half-laughed. "The army, maybe."

Pickle shook his head, which was noticed by an unhappy Jade. She was annoyed that any little hope she could grab onto was being wiped away by Harry Branston.

"What are you shaking your head for?" she asked with fury in her tone. "Who else could have done this? Who else could have killed these things?"

Karen gawped at Jade and said, "I hate to shit on your cornflakes, but _we_ did this. Just over a week ago."

"What?"

"We got attacked one night." Pickle decided to clear things up and eliminate any confusion and false hope. "We lost a couple o' people. Anyway, Karen created a diversion so me and ... KP ... could escape with the van. The van killed a few on the way to meeting Karen back here," he pointed to the floor where they stood, then pointed at Karen, "then Wild Bill Hickock here began shooting a few."

Karen lowered her head, and thought back where she had a rush of blood to the head and unnecessarily shot the two ghouls, when she should have quickly jumped into the van.

"Shall we go?" Karen stared at Pickle.

They all began to walk up the steep road, stepping over the rotting corpses that even the crows had refused to eat. Another fifty yards and they'd be by the Stile Cop entrance, which they used to block off with the prison van not so long back.

Pickle looked over to Karen and winked. "This brings back memories."

"Yeah." She nodded her head in agreement. "Bad ones."
Chapter Four

Johnny took a walk around the desolate building, and stared at the huge aisles that were there for the cranes. The cranes would be used to go to ridiculous heights so certain car parts could be picked by the operator and then brought back to the ground floor, packed up, and then sent to its destination across the waters.

He sighed and thought that maybe the factory would never be used again, but he had more things to worry about. He had to admit it. His job didn't exist anymore, he knew that, and survival was his only goal now.

In the beginning of the outbreak, he would get into one of the cranes and go right to the top part of the aisle, and that's where he'd go for a sleep. The last time that he tried that was on Tuesday. When he woke up in the cab, fifty feet above the factory's ground floor, he went to use the control panel to bring the crane back to the ground as he was peckish and needed the toilet. The crane wasn't budging, in fact, the whole factory was dim because of the lights above were not working anymore.

The power had finally gone, and Johnny had to perform the nerve-wracking task of climbing down the aisle without breaking his neck.

He snapped out of his self-hypnosis and puffed out his cheeks. The monotony was killing his brain, but he knew he was luckier than most folk. His experience with these things had been short and isolated, and knew that it was a lot worse out there, which was the reason why he had stayed behind. He was sure that if he had a family to go home to, the situation would be a lot different. But Johnny had no family, and for the first time in his life he was thankful for that.

He walked past the empty stations on the ground floor, that would have been buzzing with workers filling pallets full of parts and the aisles would be busy with forklift trucks, and he walked through the door that led to the canteen and toilets, and a staircase was to his right that led to the first floor such as the boardroom and other offices.

He walked through the gents toilets and relieved himself. Once he was done, he placed his ear against the locked canteen door. Those things were mooching about; he could hear it. He had spent the last week or so raiding his colleagues' lockers for food, and the canteen was closed on Saturday. He knew that if he wanted to continue hiding in the factory, the canteen was going to have to be opened sooner or later, as the place had food and also two vending machines. But that meant he was going to have to kill his two colleagues.

Just out of interest, and total boredom, Johnny took the stairs to the first floor. Walking past the boardroom and ignoring the thuds from the reanimated supervisor from inside the office, Johnny released a strident yawn and took a sip of the can of diet coke he was holding in his left hand. In the past, he was always wary of drinking diet drinks because of the aspartame the companies put in the products, but now he had more things to worry about than aspartame.

He glared out of the window, and his eyes watered whilst he peered out into the country lanes that the factory was surrounded by. Although a nightmare to find for delivery trucks, the place had been saving a fortune over the years because it was out of the city and towns where the rent was extortionate.

Suddenly, his eyes clocked a figure stumbling out of the woods and onto the main road that was situated opposite the works' car park. Johnny gasped, but his increase in heart rate was temporary once the figure saw him looking through the first floor window and began waving at him with both arms.

It's human!

The man looked exhausted, almost drunk-like, and Johnny guessed that he was probably severely dehydrated and starving. For the first time he had been cooped up, Johnny ran down the stairs and opened the door into the secured car park and was welcomed by fresh air for the first time in a long time.

He ran over to meet the man and beckoned him over with his hand. "Over the fence," Johnny cried excitedly. "Climb over the fence."

Johnny saw the man stagger towards the wiry, six-foot fence, and he wondered if he was going to have the strength to make it over. Once the figure reached it, he stumbled on the grass and fell into the fence. He looked like his energy levels were at rock bottom.

Johnny took hold of the wiry fence to stop it from wobbling too much once the man had mustered the energy to attempt the climb. The man began to climb, and his arms and legs shuddered. His face was filthy; his hair was dark with grey at the sides, and he had a few days growth on his face.

Once the stranger had managed to get his arms over the fence, he pulled himself over with, what looked like, the last of his strength. Once he was over, he allowed his exhausted body to drop and land hard on the grass, on the other side.

Johnny winced when the stranger hit the grass. It sounded like a sore one. He took a look at the dishevelled man and shook his head. Johnny said, "Let's get you inside."

He helped to get the man onto his feet, placed his arm around his shoulder, and walked him back to the only door that led inside the factory, now that the shutters were down and secured.

Once they both got inside, the man collapsed onto the floor. Johnny helped him and sat him up against one of the wooden pallets that was filled with car alternators, waiting to be lidded and shipped to Jakarta. The man began to moan and was drifting in and out of consciousness. Johnny could see that the man's lips were dry and there was a little white gunk at the corner of each side of his mouth, suggesting he was severely dehydrated.

"Wait there," Johnny said. He didn't really know why he said this, as the man was incapable of going anywhere in his condition.

Johnny returned with a bottle of apple juice and a cereal bar. As soon as the weak man spotted the drink that Johnny was unscrewing, he grabbed it off of him and drunk it in one.

"Just be careful," Johnny cautioned. "Try not to drink and eat so fast." He then handed the man the cereal bar and went away to find another drink. He returned with a half-litre bottle of flat lemonade.

"There _is_ more," Johnny spoke. "But it's in the canteen."

"Great." The man raised a smile and now took a swig from the bottle of lemonade.

"No ...you see, the thing is," Johnny was trying to find the right words to explain his predicament, "there's two of those things in there."

The man's eyes widened, but Johnny tried to appease him straight away.

"It's okay," Johnny added. "I've locked them in."

"They can't get out?" The man's voice was hoarse and he loudly cleared his throat, which echoed through the factory.

"No. They can't get out." Johnny smiled.

"Okay," the man was clearly exhausted, but spoke with calm. "I'll sort them later, once I've slept."

"You'll sort them? Once you've slept?" Johnny was wondering if he was hearing things. "Look, I don't think you know the situation out there."

"Oh, I know," the man guffawed falsely. "What do you think I've been doing for the last two weeks? Not hiding in a factory, that's for sure."

Johnny then realised someone like this man must have killed one or two of those things in order to survive, but why was he outside and why was he not at home with his family? Was his family dead? Johnny then thought that, like himself, maybe he didn't have a family. It wasn't the sixties or the seventies anymore when you were classed as some kind of weirdo if you wasn't a man with a job, a wife, and two or three children.

Johnny asked, "What's your name? I'm Johnny Jefferson." He held out his hand.

The other man shook Johnny's hand and finally revealed his own name. "Jack."

Johnny snickered, "Surname?"

"Slade."
Chapter Five

Karen Bradley, Harry Branston, Jade Greatrix and Paul Parker were nearly at the Stile Cop beauty spot. It was a different scene compared to the last time Pickle and Karen were there, as it was now barren—peaceful.

They walked up to the beauty spot and could see tyre marks. Since their leaving, it appeared that more people had used the place as some kind of safe haven and had left on their own accord, or were forced to move from bandits or the Snatchers themselves.

Apart from the bodies of the things that lay dead on the sandy surface, the place seemed normal and devoid of life, and the picture of them coming through the woods on that early morning replayed in both Karen and Pickle's mind. They explained to Jade and Paul what had happened on that night and the people they had lost. It brought back bad memories, but it wasn't affecting them as much as they thought it would.

"I wonder where they went?" Pickle spoke.

"The dead?" Karen queried.

Pickle nodded.

"Everywhere." Karen shrugged her shoulders, unsure what the real answer was. "Once we left in the van they probably went the same way. Most seem to follow one another; they move in packs. Probably skulking about in the woods."

"It must have been a scary time for you both." Paul joined in on the conversation.

"It was." Pickle nodded his head. "Yer see what happened when we tried to leave the house in Heath Hayes, and the time when we tried to flee the sports centre?"

Paul nodded. Of course he remembered; how could he forget?

Pickle added, "It was worse than that. No disrespect to Lee Hayward and young Oliver, but we lost _three_ that night. Ma lover and the two officers that released me from prison were killed. If it wasn't for them, I'd still be in ma cell, dying o' starvation." Pickle looked around and puffed out his cheeks. "Anyway, I don't really know why I insisted on coming to the beauty spot. To get to Rugeley we need to walk down the Stile Cop Road. Do yer lot wanna rest for a while?"

Karen was the only one that responded; she shook her head. Her body language suggested that she wanted to get to the town as quickly as possible.

"Right then. Lets go." Pickle left the beauty spot and returned to the road, with his small group in tow. They all looked down the steep, decline of the hill and saw a couple of bodies lying motionless in the distance, but nothing was moving, nothing that could attack them. Ahead of the bodies was a smashed car that was still on its four wheels, but had slightly veered off the road and was halfway up the grassy bank.

Their eyes were everywhere as their progression reached halfway down the long road, and to their right they could now see Stile Cop cemetery. It was the same cemetery that Karen had to climb over when she was being chased by some of the ghouls after she had been carjacked.

"Remember," Pickle spoke up as they passed the cemetery, "if we see a horde o' them, we run back where we came from. We shouldn't take any unnecessary risks."

They continued with their speedy walk, the decline helping their momentum, and saw a dead body to the left side of the road. Karen looked over to Pickle. "Remember that guy I told you about; the pervert that attacked me?" She pointed at the body as she casually walked past. "That's him."

"Is that the Oliver Bellshaw character?"

Karen nodded and walked past another two bodies that looked like Snatchers that had been dealt with. One had suffered damage to the head, whereas the other looked like it had had its eyes gouged out.

Pickle looked up and saw a solitary crow sitting on a fence, minding its own business. He then looked back at the bodies that they were walking away from. "Even the birds don't wanna eat these things," Pickle mumbled under his breath.

All four had now reached the car, and neither one could ignore the green Citroen. They all peeped inside to see two adults in the front seats. Both had turned and were struggling to get out, because they both still had their seatbelts on and weren't intelligent enough to unclip themselves or open their door.

Jade took a step back as the driver snarled at her from inside the car. Jade put her hand over her mouth. She could feel her body quaver and a single shudder went down her vertebrae. "What do you think happened?"

"I have no idea," Paul Parker answered.

"Poor souls," Pickle sighed. He lowered his head and said a silent prayer for them and then walked away from the sad scene, as the two inside writhed and struggled as their potential meals were walking away from them.

"Do you think we'll get a vehicle when we get into Rugeley?" Jade asked nobody in particular.

"More than likely," Karen sniffed. "Depends on how many of those things are in the town."

"Maybe we could go back to your house." Pickle suggested to Karen.

Karen ignored him. She would rather they didn't return back to her house. She had a feeling going back to her house would bring all the memories flooding back, memories of how life used to be when everyone and everything was normal. She wasn't sure she could handle going back to her place, besides, she was certain that Gary was still in there.

"Wait!" Paul cried out.

Jade asked, "What is it?"

They all looked at the bottom of the road and saw a pick-up truck leaving Draycott Park and turning onto the Stile Cop Road, heading their way.

Paul raised his black eyebrows at Pickle. "So, what do we do now?"
Chapter Six

"What time is it?"

Jack Slade never received an answer from Johnny straight away, as the thin, bald man was walking around the floor and trying the remaining lockers by opening them with a crowbar. Jack used to have a watch, but whilst he stayed in the woods, it had died on him, just like everything and everyone else.

Jack asked him again, but Johnny wasn't wearing a watch and shrugged his shoulders. "Who cares?" he called over. "Doesn't mean shit anymore. Who's bothered about being punctual nowadays?"

"You'll need to know the time once you're out there."

"What for?" Johnny had successfully forced another locker open. He pulled out some clothes and, more importantly, a sandwich box and a two-litre bottle of water.

"It gives you an idea how much daylight you have left."

Johnny didn't seem to be listening to Jack, so Jack refrained from speaking and looked around the factory. Johnny walked over to the forty-year-old man and opened up the sandwich box. "The bread's stale, but it'll do."

"No thanks."

"Please yourself," Johnny said with slight petulance, almost as if he was hurt that his guest didn't take the food he'd 'worked' for by prising open a stubborn locker.

To Johnny, Jack had a vacant look about him. His eyes and his demeanour were almost ... psychopathic. _If this is what it does to you, being outside, then I'm happy to remain indoors._

Jack glared at Johnny and eyed him up and down.

Noticing this, Johnny asked nervously, "What's wrong?"

"Those overalls and those boots; where did you get them from?" Jack was referring to the blue boiler suit that Johnny was wearing and the steel toecaps on his feet.

He shrugged his shoulders and added, "It's just work clothes. There's probably some spare in the lockers. Want me to have a look?"

Still feeling weak, Jack gave a solitary nod of his head and watched as Johnny walked over to the locker area and went through the lockers he had busted open earlier during the week.

"What boot size are you?" he shouted over.

"Nine," responded Jack.

After searching through his fifth locker, Johnny returned with a pair of boots in his right hand and a set of overalls under his left arm. Jack had managed to thank Johnny for his kindness, and the factory worker was pleased that this outsider hadn't forgotten all of his manners that he should have been taught by his parents.

Jack slowly took his rotten shoes off and threw them into a nearby pallet. He took a look at his dirty and holey socks and shook his head.

Without uttering a word, Johnny walked back over to the locker area and went through the lockers again. He returned with a pair of thick black socks and handed them to Jack.

Jack inspected the new boots and checked them from the soles to the laces and knew with his old socks, the boots would cut his feet to ribbons if ever he needed to go back outside in the long-term.

Jack wondered why a worker would have a spare pair of socks in his locker, and noticing the small confusion on his face, Johnny explained. "Sometimes the guys would do eight to ten hours a shift, and when you work for that length of time, your feet tend to get a little smelly. So once the shift is over, we'd go into our lockers, change our shoes and socks, and go home without our feet smelling like a monkey's armpit." There was no response from Jack, and Johnny sighed with exasperation at his anti-social guest. "Fine."

A silence enveloped the pair of them and although Johnny's guest seemed content to just sit and stare into space, Johnny wanted to know more about this stranger. "I bet you've seen some mad shit out there, haven't you?"

"I suppose," Jack sighed, "but you get used to it."

"Used to it? How?"

Added Jack, "It's like everything." Jack nodded over to a forklift truck sitting by one of the shutters. "Can you drive that vehicle?"

"Sure."

"Right," Jack continued. "How did you feel when you first jumped onto that thing?"

Johnny couldn't really see where Jack was going with this, but decided to answer him as honestly as he could anyway. "I was nervous, obviously."

"And are you still nervous when you jump on it now?"

"Of course not. I've been driving those things for years. I'm used to it now."

"Well, that's how it is out there. When you first smash one of those skulls in, you panic, you become nauseous, you freeze. Now, it's just normal, something that you have— _need_ to do. Like sex; the more you do it, the less nervous and the better you become at it."

"I don't think I want to get used to that kind of life."

"Well, you'll have to." Jack was cold with his voice. He wasn't being threatening or trying to frighten Johnny, but the factory worker had been hiding since the virus had broke out. Jack thought that he needed a reality check. Jack added, "You can't stay in here forever; and if you freeze out there, you'll be dead within a day."

"You ever thought about doing stand-up?"

"I'm serious," Jack continued, ignoring Johnny's attempt at humour. "I spent the last few weeks on the run, and I've lost count how many heads I've had to pulverise in order to survive."

"Is it that bad out there?"

Jack nodded and added, "Think of your worst nightmare. Times it by ten, and you're not even close."

"Well, that's hardly the confident-boosting response I was hoping for, but at least you're honest." Johnny blew out his cheeks and wanted out of this nightmare. But what Johnny Jefferson didn't know was that the quandary he was in would only get worse once the days ticked by.

Jack began to put his boots on and Johnny decided to give him some advice.

Johnny said, "I usually find it easier to put the overalls on first, _then_ the boots. It's just that I find it hard to get the legs of the overalls _over_ the boots."

Jack stood to his feet and asked, "So how much food is in that canteen?"

Johnny raised his eyebrows and puffed out his cheeks in thought. "In the actual canteen itself, I don't know if there's anything worth eating, because I don't know if the food is off. The vending machines should be okay. Nothing will be cool anymore now we've lost power, but there's still bottles of juice, crisp and chocolate."

Jack seemed lost in thought and finally shook his head. Keeping his new boots on his feet, he nodded over to the boiler suit. "I'll put that on after."

"After?" Johnny began to scratch the top of his bald head. "After what?"

Jack walked over to the crowbar that Johnny had used to prise open the lockers, and picked it up. He then took a pair of plastic goggles from a works station and put them on.

Johnny had no idea what was going on and what was going through this man's mind. Where was he going? Surely he wasn't going to the canteen?

Johnny questioned with angst in his voice, "Where are you going?"

Jack walked away, dressed for 'battle'. "The canteen."

"The canteen?" Johnny scowled in confusion. "Didn't I already tell you that two of those things are in there?" Johnny had now ran over to Jack and was now briskly walking alongside him.

"Yes you did," Jack Slade finally answered the man, "but I fancy a coke."

Johnny ignored his 'coke' remark, looked at the insane man and asked, "And what are you going to do when you get inside?"

Without breaking his face, Jack told Johnny. "I'm going to walk in and give them both a Swedish massage."

"No," Johnny sighed; he placed his right hand on his forehead and waggled his head in frustration. "I mean, seriously."

"Oh, seriously?"

Johnny nodded.

"I'm gonna smash their brains in with this crowbar."

Johnny gulped and his voice was full of consternation. "I was afraid you were going to say that."

Both men had arrived outside the canteen door and Jack turned to Johnny. "Watch and learn. You're gonna have to do this yourself, one day." Jack held out the crowbar.

"It's okay," said Johnny. "I've got a key for the canteen."

Johnny unlocked the canteen with the key, his juddering hands making the task harder than it should have been. Jack said, "As soon as I go in, you keep well back."

"I think I can manage that."
Chapter Seven

All four waved their arms frantically at the pick-up truck that was getting nearer, and all looked at one another and smiled once they saw it was slowing down. They needed information on the town they were about to enter.

The vehicle pulled up alongside the group and they were greeted by a middle-aged couple. A man popped his head out of the window and said, "Don't go to Rugeley Town."

Paul Parker asked, "Why not?"

Beside the middle-aged man sat a woman about the same age. Both individuals were very heavy and the woman added, "It's mental in there. Houses are on fire, people are beating up one another for food, and those ... monsters are everywhere."

"A lot of people are leaving now," the man continued. "It's alright the radios telling us to stay barricaded in our houses, but why? There's no one coming to help us and we haven't eaten properly in two days," he patted his large belly, "believe it or not."

Pickle went into his rucksack and pulled out a few mars bars. They were a bit melted, but still edible. "Yer can have these if yer give us a ride somewhere. I've got some water as well."

"It's okay." The man's eyes were full of kindness. "We have a few things in the back for when we're _really_ desperate, but we'll give you a lift anyway. You seem like nice people. Where do you wanna go?"

"Well, now the town is out o' bounds, we have no idea." Pickle looked at his group then turned back to the driver of the truck. "Where are _you_ two going?"

"We're not entirely sure." The man then gaped over to his wife; they both smiled and held hands briefly. "We really want to go to Skelmersdale, to see our only son."

"That's miles away," Karen spoke, the negativity in her tone almost diluting the excitement of the couple's dream.

"I know." The man nodded, and even _his_ face suggested that Skelmersdale would be a risky mission that could end in abject failure, costing their lives. "Our son's there. He said that his village is safe and has been cordoned off by the villagers themselves. If we arrive, he promises that they'll take us in."

"Well," Pickle began. "At least yer got hope. We've been runnin' round in circles for the last couple o' weeks and still have no idea where to go and what to do."

The woman said, "We just want to go somewhere where it's safe, where there's some kind of order. We heard about a place in Armitage, but we want to be with our son."

The man added sadly, "In our street, bandits broke into the end house, looted the place and then set fire to it. "

Karen shook her head in exasperation. "Why would people do that? What's the point in that?"

The man looked down at his chest, sadly. He was appalled the way some individuals were behaving after just weeks of this mess. "There _is_ no point."

"Anyway." Pickle clapped his hands together and looked at his three companions, then back to the male driver of the truck. "We appreciate the lift." Pickle then urged his three friends to jump in the back of the truck. He was surprised that the back of the pick-up truck was reasonably empty. There wasn't much food; there were a few bottles of juice and carrier bags of tins, and that was it. There were no clothing or anything else.

Once the group were in the back, Pickle told everyone to sit down in case there was a danger of falling out.

Karen was initially unsure of going back to her hometown, but now felt a little disappointed that she was only a quarter of mile away from Rugeley, and now it appeared that she was definitely not going back. It would have been interesting to see how the old place had managed to cope over the last couple of weeks. She then thought about her old house. If she somehow got back into her own place, if the street was safe enough, there was still the problem of removing the fiend that was once her fiancé, Gary. If he was still trapped in the house, it would have been an awful sight to see how he had decomposed over the few weeks that had passed, and the smell...

Maybe it was just as well that Rugeley was now a no-go area. Wasn't all populated areas? It was only a town of thousands and she wondered how the likes of Cardiff, Edinburgh, Birmingham and London were coping with this nightmare. It was only a few months ago that Gary and Karen had stayed in Edinburgh for the weekend, at a place in Cockburn Street, just yards away from the Royal Mile. Karen managed a small smirk when she remembered that Gary had joked that 'Cockburn' sounded like an STD.

She snapped out of her emotional daydream as the vehicle started to move and her body jolted forwards, along with the rest of the group. The truck continued to move and the group could see down the road, in the distance, more vehicles leaving the town, but going straight along the Hednesford Road, rather than turning left onto Stile Cop Road where _they_ were.

The vehicles were probably heading to other towns like Hednesford and Cannock, Karen thought.

As they passed the Stile Cop beauty spot for the second time, the truck went straight across the crossroads where Karen had met Pickle and KP during that terrible, early morning when they escaped the ghouls that appeared through the woods in their hundreds at the beauty spot.

It appeared that the middle-aged couple were heading for Upper Longdon.

It was a place that was very exclusive and had a few mansions in the area. Karen knew the couple would eventually be heading for the M6, and had no idea where Pickle was thinking about getting off, so she asked him. "Do you have any idea where to go?"

"I haven't a Scooby," Pickle admitted. "But I want away from these woods. I'll be glad if I don't see another tree again."

Karen chuckled and placed her arm around the ex-inmate, whilst Paul and Jade sat silently, staring at their shoes, exhausted.

"There're a few mansions around here." Karen looked at Pickle for a reaction.

"And?" Pickle stared at Karen. "A mansion is fine and dandy, but it also makes yer a target for bandits and looters. And what happens if yer break into the place and it's already inhabited? I don't wanna get shot, Karen. The emergency services are now defunct, and I don't want to be walking around for the rest o' ma days with a severe limp."

"Like Jason Bonser?" she teased.

"Yeah, well." Pickle shifted his bum to get comfortable. "That fucker deserved everything he got."

Another two minutes had passed as they went through more country lanes. It appeared that they were coming to the end of Cannock Chase, which meant that the nearest place was a town. Pickle had been told by the male driver that once the group found a place or an area where they wanted dropping off, he should hit the roof a couple of times to let the driver know when to stop the truck.

"Oh no." Paul Parker's announcement forced them to look at what _he_ was looking at.

Jade couldn't really see properly and asked Paul, "What is it?"

Paul peeked at Karen and Pickle, then he turned to Jade. "Keep your head down. I think there may be trouble ahead."

Jade placed her hands on her head and cursed under her breath, "Now what?"

The pick-up truck that they were in, was beginning to slow down.
Chapter Eight

Once the two things in the canteen had been killed, Jack Slade had returned to the factory floor with a shocked Johnny in tow, who walked behind him, dragging his feet. Jack placed the crowbar on top of a pallet, removed the safety goggles off of his head and asked Johnny, "Whose is that car outside?"

Johnny, still trying to shake off the image of Jack pulverising the heads of those things, snapped out of his self-hypnosis and gawped at Jack, blankly. "Sorry, what?"

Jack continued, "The canteen's window looks out onto the staff car park. There's a few cars outside, and I noticed that there's a black jeep."

"The cars belonged to the guys I worked with. I can't drive myself; I came here with Terry."

Jack turned to Johnny. "Who's Terry?"

"The first guy you smashed up in the canteen."

Jack looked confused. When he stormed into the canteen he swung the crowbar so much he pretty much put them both down almost at the same time. "Was that the one whose skull fell away?"

"No." Johnny gulped and shook his head at the surreal conversation that he was having. He swallowed hard, trying to keep down whatever was left in his stomach. "That was Martin. Terry was the one that collapsed into the wall."

"Did he have a beard?"

Johnny nodded.

"Well," Jack exhaled hard, "if I was you, I would have stolen one of their car keys and driven out of the place ages ago."

"Well, like I've told you before," Johnny sighed, exasperated that he wasn't being listened to. "I can't drive, and I wanted to stay in here anyway, 'cos it's safer."

"Anyway. The black jeep. Whose is it?" It was clear by his face that Jack had no interest in what Johnny had to say, and after witnessing Jack putting those things down, Johnny refrained from moaning about his rudeness.

"The supervisor's car," Johnny finally answered.

"And where's he?"

"Boardroom. He's one of them. He locked himself in as soon as he was bitten. It was almost as if he knew."

Jack checked his clothes and inspected his old rags. He could see they had fresh blood on them, to add to the old dried-in ones from the last couple of days. Most of the bloodstains were mainly from the episode when he was trying to escape the sports centre, swinging the kettle bell as if his life depended on it, which, of course, it did.

He finally took his boots off and removed his clothes. Once he threw the rags into a pallet, the same pallet he had disposed his shoes, he put on the boiler suit and then put the steel toecaps back on.

"We'll see what there is in these vending machines." Jack began to scratch at his hairy neck and groaned. He badly needed a shave, on his neck _and_ his face. "I'm guessing that we'll be lucky if the food lasts us a week."

"What about Martin and Terry?"

"Who?"

Johnny sighed. _Are you not listening to me at all?_ "The men you killed in the canteen."

"I don't think they'll be eating anything," Jack commented, without cracking his face.

Johnny glared at this strange man and wondered if he was serious or not. Trying to ignore his early remark, he said, "Are we just gonna leave them in there? That's what I mean."

Jack nodded. "Yes, we are."

"What if you're right about the food that's left?"

"I _am_ right." Jack seemed confident in what he was saying. "Look, you're not gonna like this, but we need to be out of here, soon."

Johnny nodded in agreement, reluctantly. He knew Jack was right. "And go where?"

"Somewhere where there's food. Somewhere safe ... ish."

"I suppose it removes some problems now that you're here, someone that can drive. We can now get a set of wheels from the car park."

Added Jack, "But it also opens up other problems, like being carjacked. Me and a few other guys went into a supermarket to get food and only two of us made it out. It's not just those _things_ that are a danger; there's some bad, desperate people roaming around."

Johnny's eyes widened and didn't want any more details about the short story that Jack had just announced. "Look, my place is about eight miles away. I'm already stocked up."

"Eight miles? That's too far. We'll never make eight miles without running into hordes, bandits—even getting a puncture puts us at risk."

"When are you thinking about going?"

"I think we should gather what food is left and then go in the morning."

Johnny's eyes widened with surprise at Jack's announcement. "Seriously? That soon? I've managed alright so far."

"True, but now the food's short. We can either stay in here and go until the food has gone, then go on the road while we're hungry. Or—"

"Go on the road _with_ food."

Jack gave Johnny a mocking wink as if to say; _You're catching on, buddy_. "We're gonna have to do it sooner or later."

Johnny smiled, but Jack could see the sadness in his face. Jack got to his feet, still with the safety goggles attached to his head, and walked away from Johnny and picked up the bloody crowbar lying on one of the pallets.

"Where're you going now?" Johnny called out.

"I'm off to get a set of car keys for later."

"Try the trousers of one of the guys in the canteen."

"Nah; I want the jeep. I'm off to the first floor, boardroom." Jack then stopped and picked some corrugated cardboard, ripped a piece off, and tucked it down the front of his overalls like a bib. He could see that Johnny was giving him a look as if he had lost his mind. Jack laughed and then explained, "Don't wanna be messing up my new overalls so soon."

*

Jack got to the first floor and the first thing he clocked was the supervisor, whose name he didn't know. Through the blood-smeared boardroom window, he looked at the thing inside. It was just what Jack expected; it was rotten, diseased and ... dead!

Jack sauntered over to one of the windows that looked out onto the car park. He really wanted that jeep. From a safety purpose, this vehicle was the best option compared to the rest of the cars that sat on the car park.

Then he saw it!

There were two of the things loitering around the main gates to the factory. "Shit!"

Jack knew that where there was one, or in this case, two, more could follow. He didn't want to wake up in a few days to be surrounded, but he also didn't want to leave now and drive off into the early evening. It was hours away from becoming dark and he knew it would be suicide to go now. He decided not to release this information to an already-nervous Johnny, as he thought it might keep Johnny inside due to fear.

He turned around to gawp at the thing in the boardroom once again, and clenched the crowbar in his other hand.

He prised open the door, adjusted his goggles and walked in. He shut the door behind him, and now it was just him and the contaminated supervisor in the room. Jack snarled at the ghoul that was ten yards away from him.

Man, he fucking hated these things.

He grabbed the goggles that still sat on top of his head, and as the excited ghoul stumbled towards Jack Slade, he put the goggles over his eyes and walked forwards, away from a desk and a screen that was probably used for power-point presentations.

With no hesitation from Slade, the crowbar came crashing down; blow after blow was used, until there was nothing left of the head. Twelve strikes had managed to decimate the creature, and there wasn't much left from the neck up.

Ignoring the debris scattered all around the office's walls and carpet, Jack took the car keys from its pocket and placed them in his own. He glared at the headless corpse and spat at it before walking away. He left the boardroom, removed his 'bib' from the overalls and glared outside once again.

His eyes looked lost, gone.

The old Jack had been replaced with something a lot more sinister, fearless even. Some who had known him for years may have come to the conclusion that he had now lost his mind. Had the new world finally made something snap inside his head? Had he past caring? He was still trying to live, so that was something, wasn't it?

Jack puffed out his cheeks, and then went back downstairs. If they didn't leave in the morning, in a few days the whole factory was going to be surrounded sooner or later. And if that happened, if escape was an impossibility, the only thing they would have to look forwards to would be dehydration and starvation.
Chapter Nine

The pick-up truck came to an eventual stop, and unless the couple floored the gas pedal and rammed its way past the two Ford Focus cars that blocked the road, they were going nowhere for now.

In front of the blocking cars that were parked adjacent to one another, were four men, all stood with their arms folded. Pickle was the first to peer from the back of the truck and could see from left to right, a tall man, wearing glasses; another tall and skinny gentleman that looked like a nervous wreck and didn't want to be there, followed by a man of average height who seemed to be the leader of this rabble. At the far right was a rough, dirty-looking man; his hair was almost black, long, tied back in a greasy ponytail, and he had a scruffy dark beard covering half of his face.

Pickle had just noticed that the leader, Average, had an old-style farmer's shotgun by his side. It wasn't a patch on his Browning that he had lost, but it was still enough to do some damage, if need be.

"Okay, guys." Average looked at the driver in the truck, and was the first of the four that spoke up. "Leave the vehicle, and you won't get hurt."

The middle-aged driver of the pick-up truck wound his window down and popped his head out. He nervously begged, "Listen, boys. We don't want trouble, but we need to get past, please. We're off to see our son in Skelmersdale."

"I don't give a shit, fat boy. We want your truck, and more importantly, we want your fuel. I want you all walking back that way in _one_ minute." Average pointed at the road behind the truck, from where they had just come from.

"Please," the driver begged once more. "We're just a harmless couple."

There was a silence that covered both sets of groups, and Pickle hated these kinds of people: bullies. Pickle only used violence for business; he never hurt people for sadistic pleasure or for greed. These men already had two cars; they didn't need another set of wheels.

In prison, there'd be some cowards that would strut about, and would spend their time picking on the younger remands to enhance their own reputation. But one newcomer, who must have been wet behind the ears, eyed Pickle up one day in the canteen queue, but Pickle ignored him. Seeing this as a sign of weakness, the inmate went for Pickle to enhance his own reputation, and Harry Branston grabbed his attacker and bent his little finger back so much that the inmate collapsed to the floor. Once Pickle walked away from the scene, two of Pickle's men then stabbed the bully half a dozen times with toothbrushes that had been sharpened, whilst the inmate lay on the floor, and the guards were miraculously busy with 'other things'. The inmate survived.

After a minute of nothing, just staring and head-scratching, Average spoke up once again. "Look. I ain't gonna tell you again. We're having that truck. Now, get out, or we'll use force!"

Pickle stood up from behind, jumped off the pick-up truck, and Karen, Paul and Jade followed suit.

"Ain't gonna happen," Pickle announced.

"Oh really." The mangy-looking man with the ponytail had now spoken and revealed a macabre grin; the two front teeth were missing.

"Yes." Pickle nodded confidently.

Seeing that Pickle was the leader of this rebellious group, Average looked at Mangy to his left and they both burst into hysterics. Average looked to his left and beckoned Specks and the wiry individual to walk over to Pickle and sort him out.

If you remove the leader, the rest of the pack will fold.

Wiry was reluctant to do anything that involved violence and said to Average, in a voice that was overheard by Pickle and his friends, "But the man's fucking huge."

Average sighed, went into the boot of one of the cars, took out two baseball bats and handed them to Wiry and Specks.

Mangy snarled at Wiry and Specks, "The only reason you've been eating for the last week is 'cos I killed that farmer. You ain't done nothing for the group yet; time to prove your worth."

Both men reluctantly walked over towards Pickle, and what unnerved the men was that the big man from the pick-up truck didn't seemed remotely bothered about the pair of them heading the short distance towards him.

Karen stepped forwards by Pickle's side, but Pickle ushered her back. "It's okay," he said. "I'll take care o' these little puppies."

They were five yards away from him, and Pickle could see that they didn't have it in them to perform such violence. He had no idea why these four men ended up together, or, if any of them had a family. How have they survived? Were their stories even more horrific and dangerous than theirs? Were they good men back in the old world?

Specks was the first to strike, whilst Wiry lagged behind, purposely. Pickle grabbed the bat with two hands and booted Specks inbetween his legs, then took him down completely with a sidekick to his left kneecap. Specks fell to the floor, screaming in pain, and Wiry made his cowardly strike whilst Pickle had his 'hands full'. Wiry caught him on his shoulder, but Paul Parker quickly intervened and took out Wiry with a punch to the throat.

Both of the assailants were now on the ground with their bats, and Pickle could see Average raising the shotgun, but his attention had been distracted when the frightened, middle-aged driver, with the engine still running, slipped his truck into reverse and quickly backed up.

Out of sheer panic, the driver had decided to abandon his four passengers and leave with just his wife.

Average, completely ignoring Pickle, Karen, Paul and Jade, ran to the truck and quickly put two cartridges into the windscreen. Pickle could see right away that both the man and woman were suffering with injuries and that death, due to blood loss, was a possibility.

Average then turned to Paul Parker and nodded to Mangy. Mangy then ran over to Paul and they began to wrestle to the floor and ended up tumbling to the side of the road. Jade went after them and landed a boot in the man's stomach.

"For fuck's sake!" Average snarled, and began reloading the shotgun with another two cartridges. "Get out of the way. I'll sort them out myself."

Pickle, who was standing on the other side of the road and was a fair distance from Average, ran over to Karen and pulled her by the arm. "Run!"

Whilst Pickle and Karen ran into the woodland at the left side of the road, Paul Parker was still wrestling with Mangy and was oblivious that Average was going to shoot him, once Mangy had managed to get off.

Average eventually said, "Let him go! I've got him!"

"Paul! We need to leave!" Jade screamed.

Noticing that Average had reloaded the gun, Paul staggered to his feet with Jade and they both ran into the woods to the far side of the road. Average tried to pull the trigger, but the gun didn't discharge. "Fucking antique," he snarled. He tried again and released a cartridge, only taking bark from some of the trees. Paul and Jade were too far gone now. By the time he swung the gun over in Pickle and Karen's direction, they had also both disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road, opposite to the direction where Paul and Jade had fled

Average sighed and helped up Mangy. "You lot are fucking useless."

Specks dragged himself back onto his feet and brushed himself down. "That guy must be army-trained, or something."

Average looked at Specks and Wiry and scolded, "You two dicks went down like a sack of shit."

Wiry sniped back, "Well, next time, _you_ fucking do it, instead of standing there, barking your orders."

"Don't forget, I've got a shotgun."

Specks laughed, "Yeah, but does it work?"

Average lifted the gun and pointed it at a nervous-looking Specks. "Let's see, shall we?"

Specks gulped hard and could smell the barrel of the gun that had already released a few cartridges.

Mangy casually walked over to the bickering group and looked over to the pick-up truck. "Okay, that's enough. We got what we wanted."

"What?" Wiry walked over and put both of his hands on his head, and then walked over to the shattered windscreen of the pick-up truck. "You mean this?" He pointed at the windscreen. "Is _this_ what we wanted? Two dead middle-aged people who just wanted to see their son."

Average said, "At least we've got the truck. Besides, they're not dead yet." He walked over to the pick-up truck and looked into the driver's window. The man and woman were in severe distress. The man had suffered wounds to his chest, whereas his rotund wife had injuries to her face and throat.

They both struggled, and Average stared at them for another minute and watched them both die in morbid fascination, before dragging them out of the vehicle, and leaving them at the side of the road for the birds.
Chapter Ten

June 24th

It was Sunday morning. After spending the night in the woods and having alternative sleeps, something that they were very much used to by now, Pickle and Karen rose to their feet, their throats dry and their bellies growling to be fed. They decided to walk through the woods that had managed to be Snatcher-free so far, and reluctantly drank a little by the nearby stream, then continued with their walk.

In hindsight, the group should have ignored the pick-up truck and continued with their walk to Rugeley Town, despite the potential dangers. They were dehydrated and hungry, and Karen knew that from the point where they were now, they could still get to Rugeley via the woods. Once the two came to the end of the wooded area, there'd be a gravel path to walk up to, which would lead them to the top of a hill called Cardboard Hill, where she used to play sometimes as a child.

Pickle never questioned Karen if she knew where she was going; he just followed her. The situation had become desperate. They didn't have a tangible destination in their minds. They just wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, where there was a chance to eat, drink, and possibly have a sleep that lasted longer than five hours.

Although the couple in the truck had initially put the group off from going back to Rugeley with their stories of looting, violence and hordes of Snatchers, Pickle and Karen's options were scarce, and knew that just one vacant house with scraps of food and a bed, could keep their bodies alive for a few more days. And just because the electricity had gone a few days ago, it didn't mean that running water had ceased just yet.

The ex-inmate briefly thought about the sports centre, and was certain that it would have been perfect if they hadn't have already attracted those things. He felt for Jade, and knew she blamed the group for bringing the carnage to her; but they were on foot, and desperate times called for desperate measures. Pickle was confident that Paul and Jade had managed to flee unharmed, as it seemed to take an age for the gun to go off, and when it did, it was just the one gunshot.

The two survivors were casually strolling through the woodland and had not exchanged a word for the fifteen minutes that they had been walking. Their feet trudged through the greenery, and their necks twisted every time a rustle of a tree or a snap of a twig could be heard. Karen was the first to eventually break the silence. "So, where do you think they are?" Karen was referring to Paul and Jade who they had lost during the violent struggle. She sniffed and emptied each nostril onto the floor.

Pickle shrugged and answered, "Who knows? Probably miles away by now. It's amazing how much yer can run when yer attacker has a gun. They've ran one way, and we've gone another, so we could be a fair distance apart. No point looking for them; we'll just run into more trouble."

"So you've no intention going back for them?" Karen queried, and began inspecting the inside of her left nostril with her pinky.

Pickle shook his head. "It'd be like trying to find a needle in a haystack in these woods. Besides, they're not our priority; we're starving and our bodies need water more than anythin' else."

"Tell me about it. My mouth's as dry as a scabby cock."

Pickle threw Karen one of his disappointed-father looks, but Karen ignored it and asked, "What do you think has happened to those men?"

Pickle thought for a moment and guessed, "Probably had a good night's sleep, and are now off to rob someone else."

"Pricks!"

"I agree; they didn't have to shoot that poor couple, but those kinds o' people have got a better chance o' making it than people with families. I suppose _most_ people could be considered a threat now. People will do anything and everything to survive; it's just the way we are." Pickle ran his fingers through his thin, dark beard and released an elongated exhale of breath. "So where to now, Bradley? You know this place better than me."

Karen looked around and gazed through the trees. "If we keep walking, we'll get to the end of the woods and come to a dirt path that has a hill. At the top of the hill is a place where I used to go to as a child, called Cardboard Hill. I know there used to be some kind of shack up there."

"I have a feeling that that place would already be spoken for." Pickle smiled and released a chesty cough, like a forty-a-day smoker. _Christ, not another virus_.

"Maybe." Karen nodded in agreement. "But that's not the reason we're going that way. The top of the hill gives a view of the back of Rugeley. We'd be able to see what places were swarming, then maybe we could try the emptier streets and get a place for the night."

"Like the house in Heath Hayes? And look how that turned out." Pickle was teasing Karen a little, and waited for her sharp response.

"Yeah, but this time we won't have Jason Bonser leading them to us in their hundreds." She then looked at Pickle for a reaction. "What do you think?"

She could tell by Pickle's face that he was devoid of ideas and made a facial expression telling Karen that he would go with her plan, as there was nothing else he could think of. "What if this ... _hill_ is infested?"

"Why would it be? It's a hill; a steep fucker. You've seen those cocksuckers try and climb stairs; their legs can't take it. Not only that, but the hill should be clear of humans as well."

Now she had the ex-inmate confused and he responded with puzzlement, "I don't understand what yer mean."

"No mad bastard with a house is going to go and head for a hill and be exposed out in the open."

"If they see us, these things could still get up this hill yer talkin' about." Pickle reminded Karen, "Stile Cop, Heath Hayes and the sports centre—no matter where we go, these things usually find us in the end. Their determination should not be underestimated."

Karen did her best to convince Pickle. "We made too much noise at Stile Cop with KP shooting Davina and Isobel screaming. Heath Hayes was our own doing. If we had killed Jason Bonser, he would never have led a horde of them our way. And as for the sports centre: they were already heading for us in their dozens anyway. We didn't have much of a choice."

"I hope yer right."

Karen smiled at her companion and playfully slapped him on the back. "Shit, so do I."
Chapter Eleven

Jack woke up with a fright, and found that he was being shaken by Johnny.

Jack looked up at his skinny features. The blue boiler suit was almost hanging off him, and Jack widened his eyes in a way of waking himself up a little quicker. He then immediately thought that something was wrong and bolted upright, twisting his neck from side to side, scanning the factory area. "What is it?"

"Calm down. It's nearly ten 'o'clock," announced Johnny.

"What? Really?"

"You slept for nearly thirteen hours."

"Shit." Jack began to laugh and scratched the side of his hair where the grey was. He thought about the last time he had slept so well: Glasgow City Centre, at his four-star hotel. "We're gonna have to go soon." Slade then began to rub his forehead, thinking back to his sleep. "Man, I haven't slept like that since..." Jack allowed his sentence to trail off and Johnny could see wretchedness emerging on Jack's face. Jack then shook his head, angry with himself.

Johnny asked, "What's up?"

Jack lowered his head, tears forming around his eyes. "My son's been dead for only a few days and I'm laughing. That's not right."

"You have to laugh some time or another."

"A few days?" Forty-year-old Slade was annoyed with himself that any kind of positive emotion had managed to seep through only days after Thomas had had such a violent death. He thought to himself that if this was the old world, and he was caught by a relative, laughing, days after his son's death and before his funeral, they would be baffled and not impressed if he expressed such an emotion. He was supposed to be mourning the loss of his son. Or maybe he was just being too hard on himself.

Johnny put his hand comfortingly on Jack who was clearly upset. "I bet it doesn't feel like a few days, though."

"No, it doesn't." Jack rubbed his face with both hands moving up and down. "It feels like weeks, months even."

"Tell me about it." Johnny began scratching at his chest, his hand was underneath the boiler suit. "It feels like I've been in here for a year. It's just so boring. I even started telling myself jokes the other day. Trouble is, I've heard them all before."

Jack smiled and added, "You're a good man, Johnny. You didn't have to bring me in. I don't know how to repay you."

"Well," Johnny began to joke. "You can cover my back when we're out there, 'cos as soon as I see one of those things, I'm gonna be shitting a brick."

"You'll get used to it, trust me."

"You think?" Johnny looked around the factory, and although he feared what waited for him outside, he wouldn't miss the four walls that he had been surrounded by in the last couple of weeks. Added Johnny, "I was thinking about what you told me last night. I'm not sure I can handle it, to tell you the truth."

"Yes, you can," Jack scolded. He turned to Johnny and placed both hands on his shoulders and glared at him, not in a threatening way, but in a way to give him a boost. "Listen, I left Glasgow when this all kicked off. I travelled four hours on the M6, crashed the car, then took a motorbike to Rugeley and then Hazelslade, almost getting pulled off the damn thing by a horde of them. I then found my son. Then a good friend of mine was raped and butchered by two men, then I was picked up by a woman who took us back to a house, which then was invaded by hundreds of the fucking things. We struggled to escape; then the van got a flat and we ran into a sports centre; my son then died and I hung around when the rest escaped and the things broke into the place—"

Johnny tried to get a word in, "Look—"

"I also tried to hang myself," Jack continued, "but the belt loosened and I fell into the pool and tried to escape the crowd inside the centre. I then got outside and killed a few, before escaping over the fence in soaking wet clothes."

Jack then stopped, knowing he was getting carried away, and took a breath in.

Johnny cleared his throat. "I suppose when you put it like that, it makes my story look a bit bland."

Jack guffawed, "I'm not comparing. I'm just saying: it's not a holiday out there, but after a day or so, you kind of get used to it. I know that sounds a bit weird—"

"Just a bit." Johnny rubbed his hands off of his bald head and sighed, "I suppose I can either come with you, or eventually die slowly in this place."

"Not much of a choice, is it?"

"Not really." This time Johnny's eyes began to fill with tears. "But I _do_ want to live."

Jack then rattled the supervisor's keys in front of Johnny, and a wide beam emerged on his face. "Then we go as soon as we're ready." Jack was hoping that more of the dead hadn't materialised since he saw the two the other evening. It was information he still hadn't shared with Johnny.

Johnny nodded, but the fear was written all over his face, and his body quaked with the nervous adrenaline shooting through his body. "Okay."
Chapter Twelve

Karen Bradley and Harry Branston slowly trudged their way through the Staffordshire greenery and was relieved to have found a dirt path. Walking on the uneven ground and long grass was beginning to tire them out and make their ankles ache.

Karen announced, "I think I know where I am now."

Pickle cleared his throat and spat into the grass to the side of him. "Yer said that five minutes ago."

"I know, but I recognise this path. I've been up here once or twice." Karen then pointed to her left. "Stile Cop is that way, about a mile away."

Relieved that their journey through the place had been a quiet affair, they carried on and eventually came to the edge of the woods. Once they left the area, Pickle and Karen could see that they were now at the bottom of the hill that was nicknamed by the local residents of Rugeley as Cardboard Hill. There was a lot of shrubbery to walk through, but Karen told Pickle that once they reached the top, the other side of the hill was clear.

On the flat part of the hillside was a small section of woods where a cabin stood, but at that moment, they couldn't see it. Pickle twisted his neck from side to side and stretched his arms, almost pulling his back out. He made an exaggerated moan when stretching, and Karen reprimanded him for making such an unnecessary and strident noise.

Asked Karen, "Your back?"

Pickle nodded. "It's givin' me a bit o' bother." He then stood on one leg and began to stretch his quads.

"Your legs as well?" This time Karen was grinning. "You old fart."

"Don't forget, I'm twenty years older than yer, young lady," Pickle cackled; he then looked up to the hill and made a long whistling noise. "That's some walk. So Rugeley's on the other side o' that hill?"

"More or less. Why don't we rest a while, if you're getting stiff?"

Pickle agreed and sat on the grass bank and began to stretch his hamstrings, by stretching his foot back and reaching to touch the toes. He held the stretch for fifteen seconds, and did the same with the other leg.

Karen licked her dry, cracked lips and put her head inbetween her knees. "God, I miss my lip balm." She then looked at Pickle who was staring into nothingness. She gave off a warm smile and put her arm around him while she was still standing. "You're shrinking, Branston."

"What?" He slipped out of his daydreaming and turned to his partner in crime. "What yer on about?"

"I said: You're shrinking."

"Yer think I'm losin' ma muscle mass? I do feel leaner, but then again, we ain't eaten proper in days, 'ave we?"

Karen sat and snuggled up next to her friend, giving her hot feet a welcomed and deserved rest. She then produced a small smirk on her face and glared at him with a scowl. Noticing this, Pickle asked her if there was anything wrong. "You know," she began, "over the weeks, with all the shit we've been through, and all those hours of chats that we have had, I still don't really know you that well. I know you can handle yourself, and used to be a drug dealer, and you like men..."

"What else do yer wanna know?"

Karen shrugged. "I just feel you know more about me, than I know about you. You've told me a couple of stories, but most of the time when we talk it's related to survival, food and avoiding those things."

"Okay." Pickle was sitting down and was resting the palms of his hands on his knees. He said with a sly grin, "What do yer wanna know about? Ma childhood? Ma teens? What 'bout ma first kiss?"

Karen made a face as if to say that she wasn't sure. "Just tell me anything. Basic shit."

Pickle grinned and felt a tad embarrassed. He had no idea why she wanted to know more of his background. Maybe it was a woman thing, he thought. He tried to appease her and began. "Well, I'm not really into political parties. I hate politicians."

"Who doesn't? When's your birthday?"

"October twelfth."

"Wicked; that means you're a Libran, like me."

"Karen," Pickle guffawed, "that doesn't mean _anything_ to me."

Karen sighed, "Okay, mardy bum. Music?"

"U2, The Beatles, Zeppelin—that kind o' stuff."

"Nicknames?"

Pickle created a half-shrug and peered around to make sure there was no sign of a ghoul, ready to stumble out of the woodland where they had just exited. "Apart from Pickle? Just the one." Pickle then blushed, which gave a Karen a warm glow inside of her, as it looked so sweet that a man of his power could be embarrassed by something, anything.

Karen nudged him in the side, playfully. "Come on, Branston," she teased. "Out with it."

"Promise yer won't laugh?"

"Oh, I can't do that." Karen began to chuckle. She then saw that serious look off of him and she settled down. She coughed and asked him, "What was it?"

"In prison, they used to call me..." Pickle lowered his head and cleared his throat. "...The Horse."

Karen bit her lower lip, trying to stifle the laugh that was aching to be released. It eventually _was_ released and even Pickle smiled at Karen's hilarity that he hadn't seen before. It was good to see her laugh, even if it was at his expense.

"The Horse?" Her cackling continued and now there was tears streaming down her face. "You're making me cry."

Pickle looked at Karen wiping the running tears from her cheeks with the back of her hands. "Better for the water to run from yer eyes than down yer thighs, Bradley."

She had almost managed to compose herself. Confident that she could muster a sentence without it being interrupted with a giggle, she questioned, "Why did they call you that? Is it because you used to shit like one?"

"No, you cheeky bitch," he tittered. "Because I'm hung like one, of course."

"A sea horse?"

"Very funny." He feigned hurt on his features and added, "Back in my area I had quite the reputation."

"Oh, I could imagine," Karen continued to mock. " _Here comes Harry Branston, everybody. Quick, lock up your goats._ "

After the laughter had eventually subsided, they both began to sit in silence. Pickle drew in a breath. He cleared his throat and added, "On a more serious note, ma childhood wasn't the best. Ma father was an alcoholic, and could be quite abusive at times. He used to beat the shit out o' ma mother."

"No brothers or sisters?"

Pickle shook his head and added, "When I was sixteen, ma mother had killed herself. Painkiller overdose. I left home soon after that, selling hash to support myself. I was then arrested for selling illegal substances and was sent to prison for a few months. I got a few handy contacts from inside and built my business up once I was out."

"So you've been in the drugs game since you were a teenager?"

"Yip." Pickle smacked his lips together and began to chew the inside of his mouth.

A few seconds of silence came after Pickle's short answer, and Karen assumed that the forty-three-year-old wasn't entirely comfortable talking about his past when he was being questioned, although he had told Karen some stories when she _never_ had asked.

She broke the silence with a less serious query. "So, how much are you worth?"

"Well, not that it makes any difference now, but I had properties all over England, two villas in Spain and—"

"How much?" she asked with a snicker.

"About ten million."

"Wow." Karen's facial expression suggested that she was impressed, but decided not to press any further. She had plenty of time to get to know Pickle more, or at least she hoped she would have, and decided to give him a break from her probing. Maybe he would tell her more about his past when _he_ was ready.

Pickle got to his feet and began brushing the grass off of the back of his grey jogging bottoms. Karen saw this as a sign that he was ready to move, and had interpreted the body language correctly.

Pickle's stomach growled loudly for food, which humoured the pair of them. He looked at his female companion with a grin and playfully patted his stomach. "I could eat a horse."

Karen snickered once again and threw her arms around a man that she adored. "Harry Branston, I love you."

As soon as she said those three words, her laughter quickly diminished and she produced a thin smile whilst her cheeks flushed red.

Pickle put his arm around Karen, brought her nearer to him and kissed her on the top of her head. "I know, Karen. I know."
Chapter Thirteen

"Come here," Jack beckoned Johnny over.

They were both in the canteen and had been emptying what was left in the vending machines, and had taken the tins from behind the kitchen area. Other food such as meats and fruit were rotten, and just the smell of the stuff was making Johnny's stomach turn, although Jack had pointed out that a huge percentage of the smell could be coming from the two deceased that were lying in the corner of the room with their heads bashed in.

"What is it?" asked Johnny.

Johnny had just filled a bag; the main contents of the bag was juice, chocolate bars and crisps. He went over to Jack who was standing still, peeking out of the canteen window that looked out onto the car park.

Surrounding the car park was a wire-mesh fence. Johnny stood next to Jack and they both glared out into the real world, or _surreal_ world. Not one man spoke for a minute as their eyes focused on the events that were happening outside.

Eventually Johnny spoke. "So this is what we're dealing with." He gulped and continued to gawp at the five ghouls hanging outside the fence.

"I didn't wanna tell you before, in case you refused to leave, but you need to see this." Jack remained transfixed on the dead and said, without looking at Johnny, "There was two last time I looked. There's now five, but by the time night comes, there could be fifty. Then the next day—"

"I get it," Johnny snapped. "If we want to leave this place, we need to go soon? Is that what you're saying?"

"Like _now_." Jack turned to face Johnny and asked him, "You need the toilet?"

Johnny thought it was a peculiar question to ask him; he scrunched his face with puzzlement. He shook his head.

"Good. Then we can go."

They took a bag each full of food and liquids, and Johnny kept behind Jack as he pushed open the door to the outside, onto the car park, the fresh air caressing their faces. Johnny couldn't believe how cool Jack looked; he never once looked at the dead walkers that were loitering outside the fence, who were a bit more excited now there were humans on show.

Jack casually went over to the black jeep and opened it up whilst Johnny stared in disbelief at the state of the dead things; one looked like a child, no older than seven years old.

"Johnny!" Jack called over; he was now sitting in the car with the driver's door still open. "Quit eyeballing them. We gotta go."

Johnny took a deep breath in to control his heartbeat. His wobbly legs reluctantly went their way over towards Jack. He sat on the passenger seat, and both men now had shut their doors.

Johnny placed his forehead onto the dashboard and began to cry. His body shook with fright, and he quickly tried to pull himself together and searched through the glove compartment for tissues. He had found a packet, and quickly cleaned himself up and immediately looked embarrassed for his mini-breakdown.

He cleared his throat and without looking at Jack, Johnny nodded forwards, as if to say that he was as ready as he'll ever be and that they should drive on.

Jack knew exactly how he felt, but knew Johnny needed to toughen up quick, otherwise he was going to be lunch for one of the many thousands of man-eaters that were out there. Jack told him, "We don't really have a choice in this decision."

"How am I going to get used to this? I just looked at those things and I felt I could shit through the eye of a needle."

Jack began to laugh.

"It's not funny. I'm gonna have a heart attack in my first week."

"You _will_ adapt."

"What about the gates?" Johnny was referring to the entrance gates which were normally controlled electronically. But now the electricity was no more, the gates could be moved with enough force. It kind of reminded Jack of the situation back at the sports centre.

"The gates won't be a problem." Jack winked at Johnny and fired the engine. "Ready?"

Johnny shook his head. "Er, no."

Jack smiled at Johnny's attempt at humour in such a dire situation. He kind of reminded him of himself when the outbreak first occurred. Jack said, "In the Hollywood movies, you're supposed to say: I was _born_ ready."

Johnny added, "Yeah, well some Hollywood movie this'd make. I _wasn't_ born ready; and I have no intention of running around wearing a white vest and smashing the heads of these things and shouting out, _yippee ki-yay, motherfucker_."

Jack pulled the jeep forwards to the entrance gates and turned the jeep around so that the back-end of the vehicle was facing the gates. Jack slipped the motor into reverse and floored the accelerator, making the jeep's tyres squeal and zoom backwards. Causing minor damage, the jeep forced open the gates and Jack swung the steering round so the vehicle spun one hundred and eighty degrees and was now facing forwards.

Jack turned to Johnny. "You okay?"

He quickly nodded, and winced when he said, "I might have released a little wee."

Jack slipped the vehicle into first and went forwards. The dead, by the fence, had now moved away and had stumbled into the road. Jack knew that he would have to manoeuvre the motor carefully, in order not to cause too much damage to the new vehicle he had stolen.

He was convinced that such a vehicle could mow down these things with ease, but he didn't want dents, blood and brain matter all over it so soon. He took his foot off the gas and weaved around the hideous things that desperately tried to claw at the sheet of metal that surrounded the two men inside.

Jack was doing an exceptional job, until he accidentally hit the dead boy.

The boy went under the vehicle and both men's backsides jumped up as the wheels went over the body. Although he was already dead, Jack immediately thought of Thomas and tried to shake it off.

Johnny asked, "Where to now? Lichfield? Burton?"

"I suppose the best thing to do is lay low. The longer we wait, the more chance, as time passes by, that these things might slowly die off and help could come our way."

"Isn't that just wishful thinking?"

"It _is_ wishful thinking," Jack agreed with Johnny, and was in no way angry for his negativity, "but it's all I can think of right now, and I'm not spending another night in the woods, that's for sure."

"I could imagine the sleep deprivation must have been murder."

Jack nodded. "Especially when you're on you own, and you've go no one to cover your back."

"So where to, if you think going back to mine will be too dangerous?"

"I have one idea. Back to my ex's. That's all I can think of. Depends on how many of those things are there, I suppose. It's not far."

"And if it's too busy there?"

Jack shrugged his shoulders. "I dunno."

That wasn't the answer Johnny was hoping for.
Chapter Fourteen

Their journey had been mundane and unproblematic throughout, but now the only thing they had to moan about, apart from the obvious dehydration and hunger, was the stress the hill was putting on their thighs and lower back. They both eventually got to the top of the large hill, where five hundred yards of flat ground greeted them.

The wind was predictably boisterous on this reasonably dry day, and Karen pointed over to a cluster of trees where the cabin should be. Their eyes couldn't see it at that moment, but Karen was convinced that behind those trees was an open area where the cabin was.

Pickle looked around at the view and could see the back of the Pear Tree Estate of Rugeley. The streets seemed reasonably clear and he couldn't understand why. Unless everyone in that area had escaped, or had been slaughtered.

Granted, his eyes could only clock half a dozen streets, but at the moment he couldn't see any signs of bodies strewn across the roads. There were fires in the distance, but he was hoping that the worst of it had already happened, because if this cabin was a pointless exercise, they were going to have to go to the edge of town to find somewhere to sleep.

Karen was looking at the same area _he_ was, and spoke up. "Looks fairly clear."

"True," Pickle said, "and if that shack is still there and clear, we can stay there for as long as we can. The longer away from those things, the more chance we stand o' surviving, providing we get some supplies."

"What happens if this cabin is empty? No food or nothing?"

"Then we're gonna have to raid a few houses and bring the food back up here."

Karen fired another question. "And if the cabin is inhabited?"

"Then we move on, if they don't give us a bed for a few nights. I'm not gonna harm people to get what I want."

Karen raised her eyebrows at her companion as if to say: Isn't that what you used to do?

"Okay." He smiled, realising what he had just said was a little hypocritical. "Back then it was about business. This is about survival. I've never harmed anyone that didn't deserve it."

"Really?" Karen was unsure. She placed either hand on the side of her head and sat down on the grassy, steep hill. "We _are_ getting desperate now, though."

Pickle was a little perplexed at what Karen had just said. Was she hinting that the pair of them should be a lot more ruthless? Was it the dehydration talking? Or was she just physically and emotionally exhausted?

Pickle asked, "So if there's a family in there, are yer quite happy to move them out by force, is that what yer sayin'?"

"Of course not."

Pickle motioned with his hand for Karen to get back on her feet. She did as she was told, and wearily followed behind the man she had known for a short time.

Pickle walked towards the cluster of trees, with Karen following suit. Once they got near to the area, they both stopped, then cautiously walked and came to a six-foot fence with a gate the same size as the surrounding fence that was situated in the middle.

"I don't remember there being a fence." Karen rubbed her eyes, ready to collapse in a heap and sleep for a day.

"Who used to live here?" asked Pickle.

"Some old man. When he died, numerous people bought it and used is as some kind of retreat."

Pickle rubbed his thin beard in thought, and added, "I suppose it's one o' these places that yer can use to have time for yourself, to pray, and get in touch with nature."

Karen glared at the man to see if he was being serious or not. "Sounds boring to me."

Pickle smiled and playfully punched Karen on the arm. "That's because yer a young chick. Yer should be still going to clubs and gettin' drunk."

"Those days are well and truly over."

Pickle went to reach for the gate's knob and tried twisting it. It wouldn't open. He used a little force this time and the gate rattled. If need be, Karen was sure that Pickle could smash through the gate, but out of respect for whom or whomever was in there, she never suggested such a thing.

Impatiently, Karen snapped, "Just look over."

"Okay."

Being the same height as the fence, Pickle went on his tip-toes and could see over. The cabin was reasonably large, and in front of it there was a small garden that was dark, as it appeared to be congested with the shadows of the tall trees that surrounded the area that allowed in little sunlight. Twenty yards in front of the house was an old-looking shed to the left side of the garden. Opposite the shed was a tree stump that seemed to be the place that maybe some wood-chopping would take place.

Pickle could obviously not tell from looking outside, but he guessed that maybe it was one of those recluse cabins that had no electricity, gas or phones. He guessed that the person/people who came here, came to get away from the stress of twenty-first century life, away from technology, and to converse with Mother Nature.

Without warning Karen in advance, Pickle pulled himself up and threw himself over. From behind the fence he could hear Karen releasing profanities that were about him, and he stayed where he was until seconds later she followed his lead.

Karen was clearly exhausted, and it looked as if that one climb over the fence had sapped any energy she had left. Once they were in the grounds, they both stood at the end of the garden and looked at the front of the cabin. She then questioned Pickle, "What now?"

"Knock on the door and introduce ourselves."

"Simple as that? We're trespassing on their property."

"Doesn't matter what we do, Karen, they're gonna be startled at first anyway. Let's just hope it's empty."

They tentatively walked forwards and could see that the windows of the place were in desperate need of a wash. They went past the stump and the dilapidated shed, then Pickle progressed a little further forwards than Karen, and was only yards away from rattling the front door.

"That's close enough," a voice snarled.

Pickle and Karen both stopped in their tracks, and gazed at the slightly opened window to their right—the one to their left was shut tightly, and although they couldn't see a face, they could see the double-barrel shotgun pointing at Pickle's midriff.

Both Karen and Pickle slowly raised their hands in the air without being asked to do so.
Chapter Fifteen

Going back to Rugeley and heading for Kerry's house was forcing Jack to re-live some of the events that had happened to him in the first few days when the news of the outbreak was announced. The days of riding on the lime-green, stolen BMW motorbike seemed like an age ago.

He drove the jeep carefully as they entered the town of Rugeley. It was a few miles from the factory to the town, and Jack was astounded that there were hardly any incidents on their journey back to the place.

There were only a few incidents on the two-mile trip. The first one was when Jack and Johnny drove past a village and found scores of the things wandering aimlessly. A few attacked and clawed at the jeep, but the jeep was too quick and powerful, and they were too slow and weak to cause any damage to the vehicle and the men that were inside it.

The second incident involved humans. Jack passed a parked van on the side of the road where a male dead body lay, and three men and a woman left a house and got into the van. All he could think of was that the man was the owner of the house and the four people that owned the van, parked up, and killed the man for his food, as well as other items that would be deemed as necessary for survival.

At first, Jack thought that the van was going to follow them, but thankfully it never happened.

As soon as they entered Rugeley, they got to the road, Horsefair, and saw at the roundabout that there was a horde of them, all congregating to the left side of the roundabout where a few cars were parked horizontally across the beginning of the road, Sandy Lane. The cars were being used as some kind of barricade, and the Snatchers were trying to get through, knowing that there was something of interest that could be devoured.

Jack had a quick peep and could see people behind the cars, armed with swords and knives, and it seemed to him that some people were trying to take control of the situation. Sandy Lane was the road that led to Draycott Park, and further on was the end of Rugeley and the beginning of Hednesford Road, which bypassed Stile Cop Road.

The jeep turned left onto Green Lane, and passed a street called Park View Terrace where Jack lived for a while when he was a young boy. As the jeep got to the top of Green Lane, it turned left and was now on Crabtree Road, Kerry's old road.

There was just the one dead walker in the street, and Jack made sure that that one ghoul was going to test the jeep's mettle. Back at the factory, despite hitting the boy, he didn't want to run down the small group in case it gave the vehicle unnecessary damage. But now he was at Kerry's and there was just the one of them, Jack wanted to see how the jeep would 'react' hitting an adult's body. They certainly couldn't leave it to roam about. They had no weapons of their own to take it out, and if they entered Kerry's house, it could follow them, which could attract more from afar.

"Hold on." Jack dropped a gear, and floored the gas pedal.

Johnny closed his eyes as the jeep made impact. Once he opened them, Jack had stopped the vehicle and had the wipers on, clearing the black gunk off of the windscreen.

Jack said, "Well that was relatively painless."

"Have you a key for this place?" asked Johnny; his hands were shaking and his bottom lip wobbled a little when he spoke.

Jack shook his head, but didn't answer Johnny verbally. He parked the jeep at the side of the road and jumped out. He looked at the street and could see the end house had been burnt out; whether it was an accident, he had no idea.

The first time he arrived here from Glasgow, he remembered that he had taken out a pane of glass to get into the house; so getting _in_ would be pretty easy, even easier if the place had been broken into and ransacked by desperados.

"You told me about your son and your ex," Johnny began, and was reluctant to finish his sentence, but he did. "Isn't this a little weird coming back to this house? There should be plenty of other houses abandoned."

"I _want_ to be here. You can go whenever you want."

Johnny shook his head, as they were both now walking down the garden and around the back of the house. Jack noticed the shaking of Johnny's head and asked him what was wrong.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah." Jack nodded. "What's up?"

"You're an ungrateful fucker, Jack Slade."

"What?" Jack stopped walking and turned to stare at a clearly-upset Johnny.

"You were nearly dead when I brought you in, and all you've done is bark orders at me; I just feel you're really ungrateful. You drive me all the way to this town, miles away from my own house, and then tell me that I can go if I want. What's your problem?"

Jack look baffled and had no answer for Johnny. He could see he was upset, but felt that it wasn't necessary to apologise to the man, as he didn't know what he would be apologising to him for.

"I appreciate you taking me in." Jack looked around and was stroking his thin beard that had been itching the hell out of him over the last few days. "But what do you want me to do? Give you a wank? The factory was eventually gonna be your own tomb. You would have starved to death in there eventually, whilst hundreds of those fuckers would be gathering outside the place. I've taken you out of that place," Jack then looked and pointed at Kerry's house, "and I'm giving you a bed for the night. I think we're even, don't you?"

Jack never received a response from Johnny. He continued to look all around him, as he was paranoid that standing where they were and having a conversation, wasn't the best thing to do in an apocalyptic situation where the dangers were everywhere.

Jack patted Johnny on the shoulder. "Let's go inside."

The two men went round the back of the house. Jack could see that the pane of glass he had broken, to get inside two weeks ago, was still sitting on the floor in pieces. He raised a sad smile, knowing that Kerry and Thomas were alive back then.

He let himself in and Johnny followed.

Jack looked around. It looked exactly the way it was when he came here the other week, and couldn't believe it hadn't been ransacked yet. It would be eventually; he was certain of it.

Johnny scanned around and asked Jack, "Can I check upstairs?"

Jack nodded his head and said, "It's clear upstairs, I'm sure of it."

Johnny smiled and opened the door that led to the stairs, where there were three bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor.

"Don't go into the bedroom on the right," Jack spoke out in a sad voice. "That's my son's room. Even _I_ won't be going anywhere near that."

Johnny released a sympathetic smile and could only imagine the torment that Jack had, and still was, going through. No wonder he was rude and uptight, Johnny thought.

Jack had told Johnny in a brief summary what he had been through over the last week or so, and Johnny had come to the conclusion that this world was now either going to strengthen him, mentally, or break him. He had no idea where Jack was, as far as his mentality was concerned. Johnny thought that Jack Slade had been moulded into the figure he was now, and was probably a normal bloke before all this shit happened. He was probably a simple guy, with a simple job, and enjoyed a beer and the company of women.

The new world had stripped down all the perks of the world. Playstations, Facebook and job promotions were now things of the past. Food, drink and shelter were taken for granted in the old world, but were the only targets that people were aiming for now. The days of walking into a supermarket and getting a week of food had disappeared; from now on they were going to be living from hand to mouth.

Johnny got to the top of the stairs and went into the bathroom. He tried the cold tap of the sink and raised a scowl as nothing came out. He took a damp flannel that was sitting on the side. He then washed his hands and face with a bar of soap and the wet flannel, lowered his head on the ceramic and began to cry.

From the bottom of the stairs, Jack called out, "Johnny."

The thin, bald man, who was nearly at the age of fifty, composed himself and called down the stairs, "What is it?"

"We're gonna need to block this front door off and some of the windows, if we want to sleep easy tonight."

Johnny took a look in the mirror. He looked hideous. He looked hideous anyway; some people had remarked over the years, since he had lost his hair, that he looked like one of the cannibals in Wes Craven's _The Hills Have Eyes_. He may have looked scary to some folk, but he was one of the biggest cowards on the planet.

How on earth was he going to last more than a week in this world? He couldn't rely on Jack to carry him; and even if that was the plan, Johnny had a strong notion that if you were slowing Jack Slade down, he would eventually leave you to fend for yourself.

Jack's voice was heard once again. This time it was a lot louder, angrier, and made Johnny jump. "Johnny, hurry the hell up!"

"I'll be right down," Johnny finally answered.
Chapter Sixteen

June 25th

Jade Greatrix and Paul Parker had managed seven hours of broken sleep between them, and were both feeling the effects of dehydration. Jade had drank a few gulps of stream water the evening before and had contracted diarrhoea, but she was unsure whether it was down to the water she had drank, or it was her nerves that were causing her bowels to be so upset. Maybe a mixture of the two.

Paul had splashed his face by the nearby stream, but refused to drink it, despite that his body was aching to have water. He stood to his feet and stretched his body. Jade looked at him and was concerned for him. They were both tired and thirsty, and Paul seemed to have given up. He was such a different character to the one she had first met in the sports centre.

Back at the sports centre, he was strong and confident, and despite the fact he was a man that was missing his family, she did find him attractive. Maybe that's what it was! It wasn't just the tiredness and the dehydration that was making him feel so down; he was more than likely pining for his wife and daughter, she thought.

"You okay?" Jade glared at Paul for some kind of answer. Talking hadn't been his strong point of late.

He shook his head. "This is hopeless. Living in this," he opened out his arms and looked around the woods, "is hopeless. I've made a decision."

"Oh?"

Paul's shoulders rose up as he took a deep breath in. "I'm going home."

"But what about those things? I thought they were all around your village."

"I don't care anymore!" he snarled. "When I woke up on that morning, my family were gone and my house was swarming with the things. I had no choice _but_ to run. Now, who knows?"

"If you go back to your village, there could be hundreds of the things."

"True. But what if they're not there? What if there's no one left, and the Lurkers have moved on somewhere else? That means my house is lying vacant. I have more of a chance finding my family being back at the house. Since I left for the village hall, I seemed to be moving further and further away from where I used to live, which probably means further away from Jocelyn and Hannah. I need to go back. If we ever get to a stage where it becomes safe to walk outside again, the family home is where they'll go."

"Okay." Jade sounded dejected with Paul's determination, but she knew that she could hardly stand in the way of a man wanting to find his family.

"And I want _you_ to come back with me," said Paul.

"Really?"

"Really."

Jade released a smile; her face was full of so much relief and happiness that she began to cry. She was convinced that Paul was going to suggest for the pair of them to part their ways. Paul walked over to the fragile, young lady and gave her a hug. Once their embrace was broken and Jade managed to pull herself together, she asked, "How far is it to your house from here?"

Paul Parker shrugged his shoulders and released a false smile. "With travelling in that pick-up truck, and then running about a mile in the woods, away from those four arseholes, I have no idea where we are and what direction we should be heading. I'm guessing we're about four or five miles away from my village."

"So we need to find a road."

"Yes," Paul agreed. "There's a good chance I could recognise the road, and even if I don't, we should eventually approach a junction. Junctions usually have road signs to state which village is what way and how many miles it takes to get there."

"So do you wanna head back the way we came from?"

"No, I don't," he said sharply. "I think we should go that way," he pointed to his right, "and see where it takes us."

He walked on, with Jade following behind. Their tired feet were dragging through the long grass and bracken, and once they finally came across a dirt path, it made their walk a little easier.

Jade ran her fingers through her dark, greasy hair and pulled a face that was the same kind of expression one would show if they had tasted a bitter lemon. Her fingers struggled through her hair, and her expression was made because of how greasy and unkempt her hair had become from days of not washing and sleeping rough in the woodland.

Her eyes stared at her feet as she walked on the dirt path, and she felt a sudden slap on her chest from Paul who was in front of her.

"Ow!" Jade rubbed her chest and looked up at Paul. "What was that for?"

Paul shushed the twenty-five-year-old and urged her to crouch down behind him. She did as she was instructed, and followed him as he crawled off the dirt path and hid behind a tree. He then pointed ahead of him and she took a gander; her eyes widened when it was clear what she was now witnessing.

There were nine Lurkers—a name Paul gave them—about a hundred yards away. They appeared to be walking away from Paul and Jade, and they had no idea where they were going and where they had come from. They both continued to watch as the small gang of the dead stumbled, very slowly, away from the two hiding humans.

Paul turned to Jade. "We'll keep away from the paths for a few minutes, until they're gone. When we're on the paths, we're more exposed and less hidden."

Jade silently agreed with head movement.

The two of them slowly walked through the long grass and Paul whispered to Jade, "Once they're completely away from view, we can get back on the path and head that way." He pointed to the right.

Jade giggled nervously a little, and asked Paul, "Why are you whispering? They're almost out of sight."

Paul had managed a smile himself. It was a smile Jade hadn't seen in a while, and he puffed out his lower lip and shook his head. "I have no idea."

"You're not right in the head," Jade joked.

"I don't think many survivors _are_ these days, not what after some of us have seen."

Paul's comment had quickly crushed the light entertainment they were experiencing. It wasn't intentional; it just slipped out.

Jade then suddenly heard a snap to her left, where Paul was situated, and heard the thirty-one-year-old cry out and fall to the ground. Paul was on the floor, holding his right foot. "Bastard poachers!" he screamed. "Get it off!"

Jade scanned around and began to panic. She had no idea what he was talking about and what was actually happening. "Get _what_ off?"

Paul screamed out again, and this time Jade shushed the man that was in excruciating pain. Paul Parker raised his foot a little to reveal that his body part had been the victim of a coil-spring animal trap. He couldn't raise his foot any higher as the chain of the trap was hammered into the ground with a metal peg.

"What shall I do? What shall I do?" Jade was hysterical and was no use to anyone. She was a fitness instructor and had to take her HSE First Aid course every three years, but a foot being caught in an animal trap didn't cover what she had been taught.

The sweat on Paul's head was raining down and he was certain that his foot was broken. He spoke with a grimace, "Grab both jaws of the trap, and pull them back as wide as you can. At least then I can get my foot out."

Jade did what she was asked, but she found that it was difficult and was struggling to get the jaws open. "I can't do it."

"For fuck's sake. Let me do it."

Paul leaned over and pulled back the jaws of the trap. He cried out again when his fingers slipped and the trap snapped shut once more, sending the pain straight through his body. He stuck his fist in his mouth to prevent him from screaming any more, and drew blood as his teeth sank in.

"I'll try again." Jade bent over and tried once more; this time she had managed to get the jaws wide enough for Paul to remove his foot. Once he did, he could feel his foot pulsating. His head dropped in his lap and tears were released, due to the pain.

He heard Jade say, "Oh no."

He blew air out of his mouth, wiped the tears from his face, and spoke with frustration. "Now what is it?"

She tapped him on the shoulder and pointed ahead of her. The melee had attracted the horde from afar. They had turned around, and were now shambling their way towards Jade Greatrix and an injured Paul Parker. "They're coming."
Chapter Seventeen

They had spent the night in the garden, but felt it was reasonably safe with the fence and the gate as protection. The owner had offered them the poky shed, but once they took a look inside, they kindly refused and wondered when was the last time it had been cleaned. It stunk of animal droppings.

This wasn't the first time these pair had slept under the stars, but it was the first time that they had had a good night's sleep in a long while.

Karen was the first to wake.

Still lying on the floor, she stretched out her arms and felt amazing. For the first time in a long time, she had slept for more than five hours—in this case, nine—and was hydrated. Her throat wasn't sore with dryness anymore and her headaches had disappeared. She sat up in the sleeping bag that had been given to her by the owner of the cabin, and she looked over to Pickle who was still sleeping.

After much talk, the pair of them had convinced the occupier that they came in peace, and only arrived at the cabin in hope that it was empty. They were honest with the man and each one told him their story, from the moment the outbreak occurred to the present day. The man had then lowered his gun, told them that he believed them, but made them sleep outside and appeased them that it would be safe.

He had been a man of his word.

The occupier off the cabin was called Wolfgang Kindl. He was a sixty-nine-year-old man with grey hair, a thick grey beard, with a straw hat sitting on top of his head. His appearance was like something out of Deadwood in the nineteenth century, and his shotgun was an old thing, and he admitted to the pair that he only had one box of shells to his name.

Karen heard the door of the cabin swing open and slowly stood to her feet. Wolfgang stepped out into the new day and greeted Karen with a smile.

She said nervously, "Good morning, Mr—"

"None of that _Mr_ bollocks, Karen." He tittered, and revealed his yellow grin. "I told you before; it's Wolf, and Wolf only."

"Sorry ... er, Wolf." Karen felt silly calling him that; it was like something out of a DC comic. Karen watched as the old man began to walk the perimeter of the fence, checking for irregularities. She took a deep breath in and had to ask, "How did you get the name Wolfgang Kindl anyway? You sound English; you don't sound foreign."

"My parents were Austrian. They moved over here in the fifties." He walked over to a little black part of the grass where it looked like there used to be a fire or two in the past. He went to the corner of the garden to pick some already-chopped sticks and disappeared into the cabin, only to return with some firelighters. He placed the firelighters under the sticks and pulled out a lighter. He used the lighter to light them and they both watched in silence whilst the fire began to take shape. Karen looked over to him with slight confusion and consternation on her face.

As if he could read her mind, he said, "Relax. It gives out a little smoke, but not too much. I've been doing this for two weeks now, and I haven't attracted much attention. Just make sure when you put it out, you do it with dirt, not water. Water makes the fire smokier, plus it's a waste of water." He pulled out a frying pan from the end of the cabin that must have been sitting in the grass, checked it was clean—ish—and put it by Karen's feet.

Wolf explained, "I'm sorry I didn't offer you any food last night. I'm pretty short, but if you are going to eat, and you can only have one meal a day, it has to be breakfast. You hungry?"

Karen nodded. "Starving. We both are."

"Well, have _I_ got a treat for you two." He began to chuckle and disappeared into the cabin once again. He returned into the enclosed garden with six rashers of bacon and an egg box with eight eggs.

Karen couldn't help but smile. "Oh my God. I think I'm gonna cry."

"Happy?" he asked.

"Like a pig in shit." As he began making breakfast, she looked over to Pickle who was still sleeping. "Wait till Pickle sees this."

He hovered the pan over the fire and explained to Karen that it may take a while. Wolf said, "Probably one of the best feelings is waking up on a morning to the smell of bacon. My wife used to cook the stuff every Sunday morning."

Wolf lowered his head sadly at the mention of his wife, but continued to cook. Karen was dying to ask him about her, but feared of upsetting the kind man that had just taken them both in. She tried a different approach and asked him where he was when the outbreak was announced. He knew all about _them_ , when he had the shotgun pointing at them, it was now _his_ turn to be grilled a little.

He stroked his grey beard in deliberation and rolled his eyes. He finally spoke. "Well, at the beginning, the first thing I did was pack our things and told my Grace that we were heading for our cabin."

"Oh." Karen looked around the place, and thought at first that maybe Wolfgang had come up to the cabin on his own accord, and claimed it for himself. "So this place is yours?"

"Yeah. I used to come up here on the weekends to shoot, relax—that kind of stuff. The hill was beginning to kill my back, and Grace had stopped going altogether, so we decided that next year we were going to sell it. I'm seventy years old next year."

"So why didn't you stay indoors like we were told to?"

Wolf gave off a laugh that was infectious and stroked his grey beard again with his left hand, whilst gently shaking the pan with his other hand so the bacon and eggs wouldn't stick too much. There was just two of each on the pan, and Karen assumed that he was making them all breakfast individually. Wolf spoke, "Once all the rules of society have disappeared, you're on your own. We had to escape, from those things, and from man."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm too old to be fighting, Karen. If those things or looters came into our house, we wouldn't stand a chance, so we had to be somewhere away from the public. We came up here before the weekend announcement; I knew something wasn't right beforehand. There were reports for weeks about biting epidemics, riots. You know what the main cause of this disaster is?"

Karen shook her head.

"Denial. Denial occurs because of the arrogance of the government, and also one of the worst things governments hates is social panic."

"You said, _we_. Is your wife here?"

Wolf lowered his head despondently; the first breakfast was nearly ready. "She's dead. She's in the back room. Another reason why I didn't want you guys sleeping in there."

"I'm sorry." Karen felt a shiver rattle her vertebrae, and thought that it was rather odd and unhealthy to have his dead wife still in the cabin. She thought that the stench must have been awful. Was that why he didn't want them to stay inside for the night, or was it the fact that they were strangers and he didn't trust them yet?

She had noticed when she and Pickle turned in, he had locked the door from the inside. Despite taking them in, it was too early to trust them. _Why didn't he just tell us to go away?_

Karen decided to tackle the subject a little later as she didn't want to piss off her host so soon. She then looked over to Pickle; he was stirring. It appeared the smell of the bacon was working its magic. To break the silence between her and Wolf, she asked, "You have kids?"

Wolf nodded his head. "Somewhere; well, not really kids anymore, they're grown ups." He then changed the subject. "Right, your breakfast's up." He slid the contents onto a plastic plate which was accompanied with a plastic fork. "I'll do your friend next."

The body of the woman inside was still irking Karen. She couldn't help herself. She couldn't keep her mouth shut. "Look," Karen forced a full rash of bacon in her mouth, quickly chewed, and swallowed before finishing off the sentence she had started. "We can give your wife a decent burial, if you want. It's not healthy for you to have her—"

"I'll deal with it!" Wolf snapped. His face was thunderous, but as soon as he released a long breath out, the redness in his cheeks quickly diminished and he put on a brave smile, knowing that Karen didn't mean anything by her interfering. He was sure she was just trying to help.

Karen nodded her head apologetically; she didn't mean to upset the man, but it appeared he had forgotten all about the incident within seconds. Karen tried to lighten the mood. "By the way; the cabin being on a hill is a stroke of genius."

Wolf tittered a little. "I know. The hill's that steep, the atrophy stops them from getting up here. Some have crawled, but they can only get so far. There's a few at the bottom of the hill. Did you see them by the hedge?"

Karen shook her head, and became a little unnerved once he had revealed this information. "For a person who has hardly any contact with these things, you seem confident they can't get up."

"I am." He released a smirk. "They've been there for nearly two weeks now. They won't turn back knowing I'm up here. These things don't walk away; there's no surrender, and that's what makes them so dangerous. As long as you have a heartbeat, you're a meal."

"What about humans? Have you had any bother with _people_ coming up here?"

"No. Just you two. I think most people have moved elsewhere, barricaded themselves in, or dead. I listened for the first week on my radio, before the batteries conked out, and I was pleased when they informed us that these things were unable to run, climb—whatever."

"You're a lucky man, Wolf."

"Am I?"

Karen had briefly forgot about his wife and was about to apologise once again, but Wolf had halted her temporarily.

Said Wolf, "Aren't we just putting off the inevitable?"

"You mean ... death?"

Wolf smiled and watched Karen tucking into her eggs. He wished he had more food on offer; she looked ravenous. "Karen, the trouble now is that the boats have stopped sailing, and the trucks have stopped moving. Where are we going to get food and medicine in the long-term? These things are not just killing the human race by eating us, they're killing us with starvation, dehydration and disease."

Karen nodded, and already knew that this disaster was in its infancy and their problems were just beginning. Even though the dead were the main source of the collapse of the old world she loved and had taken for granted, just like every other human, she was certain that the Snatchers were eventually just going to be put in the background and the main problem was going to be humans and how the desperate survivors were going to react. Most of the people out there were scared, hungry, and psychologically scarred by witnessing death in such a destructive and bloody way, and some of that death may have been members of their own family.

She finished her meal, but she refrained from telling Wolf that it was a meal she could have eaten four times over. She didn't want to offend her gracious host, so she told him it was lovely, and verbally greeted Pickle with a 'good morning' when he opened his eyes.

Wolf looked at the two of them; they seemed like a nice, genuine pair, and was contemplating on telling them something that they probably had a right to know about if they were to stay for a day or two.

He decided to hold off. It can wait, he thought.
Chapter Eighteen

Jack and Johnny had spent most of the time blocking off windows and the entrance to the front door that led out onto the road. It had been a laborious couple of hours, but they still had air in their lungs and there were scraps of food and liquid in the residence that could be consumed.

"Fill the bath," Jack commanded Johnny.

"What?"

"Fill the bath." Jack tried to explain, "The power's out. Running water could be next. It's the power that helps the water pump."

Johnny didn't really understand what Jack was talking about; he even thought that Jack was unsure himself, as he didn't seem convincing in his explanation.

Johnny went into the bathroom and tried both hot and cold taps from the bath and the sink. Nothing came out, and Johnny cussed under his breath. He tried the taps again, but his efforts were ineffectual. "There's no running water," Johnny announced. "I did try earlier."

"Shit." Jack stroked his chin in thought. "There's a kettle full of water downstairs, some juice and a few cans of vimto. It'll have to do for now."

"I'll have a can; is that okay?"

Jack's nod of the head informed Johnny it was okay by him, and Johnny trotted down to the ground floor, leaving Jack Slade alone upstairs.

Jack walked into the bathroom and inspected his features in the mirror that was hanging over the sink. Even after a couple of weeks, his hair looked a little longer—that was to be expected in the long-term. His thick eyebrows hadn't been plucked for a while either. He knew that if he didn't pluck, his monobrow would return. His toenails needed trimming as well. It seemed like a trivial thing with the world they were living in now, but with time on their side, Jack decided to prune himself, even if he did smell like a horse's arse.

He walked into Kerry's bedroom and went through her dresser drawers. He pulled out a little white bag and found some nail-cutters. He looked to the right of the mirror and saw a school photograph of Thomas. He must have been only five years old. Jack took the photograph and gently lay it face down, and stroked the back of it as if it was a living thing.

He peered into the mirror and thought, God, I'm looking old. His annoying stubble over the last few days had now turned into a thin beard, and he scowled at the grey bits at the chin area.

Jack then looked at the back of the picture frame of Thomas and picked it up. He sat on the end of the bed, gave off a heavy sigh, and turned the frame around to see the picture of his boy. He was beautiful. His dark eyes and gleaming white smile twanged Jack's heartstrings, and he looked at his boy's cute, overgrown Beatle haircut.

With his forefinger, he stroked his son's hair on the picture and released a small laugh. Thomas was a nightmare to take to the hairdressers.

When Kerry first took him, Thomas had his mouth open and cried whilst the patient lady was cutting his mop. The loose hair had fallen into his mouth, which made him panic and upset. Sometimes Kerry would have to drag him round for his haircut. He would spend the whole time, from leaving the house to once his hair had been finished by the hairdresser, screaming. Other times she didn't have the mental and physical energy, and would give in to him when he refused to go.

Jack placed both hands on the back of the frame and lay back on the bed. His sobbing was loud, and the tears ran plentifully down the side of his cheeks and onto the bed sheets, staining them a little. He held the frame tighter against his chest, as his heart continued to break, and wished briefly that the leather belt in the sports centre hadn't weakened. If it hadn't, he would have been out of this nightmare for good.

A few minutes had passed, and suddenly Jack heard the voice of Johnny from the bottom of the stairs. "Jack! You need to come down and see this shit!"

Jack wiped his eyes quickly with the backs of his hands and headed for the window. The curtains were already closed, and he peered from them. There were two pick-up trucks sitting outside the street, and Jack could see eight people, six men and two women, standing around the vehicles. None of them were armed with firepower, but all were holding some kind of weapon, whether it was a knife, a baseball bat, or a cleaver.

Johnny turned up from downstairs. "Did you hear me shouting?"

Jack nodded, and continued to observe what was unfolding. "You get a better view from here."

Johnny asked, "What's happening?"

"Hazard a guess," Jack began. "These people are trying to survive, but at other peoples' expense."

"What?"

"They're robbing the whole street." Jack then beckoned Johnny to take a step forwards to stand next to him, which he did. They both watched out into the street. "And whoever puts up a fight, gets punished."

They both glared out as a father, whose family were outside their house, was thrown to the ground. Jack looked to the side to see his wife—he presumed—and two little girls crying as the man struggled to get to his feet.

Jack and Johnny heard one of the men shout, "You don't ever tell me to go and fuck myself again. You hear me, cunt?"

Two big men, carrying baseball bats, walked over to the man as he staggered to his feet, whilst three others went inside the house to see what they could get. The men began swinging their bats at the individual. He collapsed to the floor after receiving his seventh blow, and his wife and children screamed so loud, one of the men yelled at the woman to shut the fuck up.

As the two men with bats walked away from the victim lying on the road, another individual from the truck, a red-headed woman, went over to the man, pulled out her knife and stabbed him three times in the back.

The man never got back up. He was dead.

"Fucking hell," was all Johnny could muster. And Jack Slade knew how he felt. He wasn't expecting that. He was expecting the man to get a bit of a slap and be told to be on his way; that was it. It seemed incredible to Jack that the country was only in its third week of this disaster and people were already behaving like this.

Jack looked to Johnny. "I wasn't expecting that."

Johnny's frame shuddered and felt like slapping Jack for bringing him out of the factory; starvation didn't seem so bad after seeing that. "We gotta get out of here."

"No chance. I'm going nowhere." Jack was obstinate, and Johnny could see the determination scrawled over the man's face.

"Didn't you see what—?"

"Of course I did, but I'm not backing down to bullies. Fuck 'em."

"So what're you gonna do?"

Jack peered out of the window and saw that the gang were starting from the end of the street and working their way down.

They were three houses away from them.

Jack looked at Johnny and gave him a psychotic smile. "If they come in," Jack began. "I may have to introduce them to Mr Bar." Jack crouched down in the dim room and picked up the crowbar and revealed a smile reminiscent of Alex from A Clockwork Orange.

"You're fuckin' nuts."

"Possibly." Jack snarled, and puffed out his chest. "I've got fuck all to lose, Johnny. I've already lost everything. I _am_ gonna hide, but if my back's against the wall..."
Chapter Nineteen

Jade and Paul moved as swiftly as they could through the woodland, as the creatures from the woods now moved towards them in healthy numbers. Jade had her arm around Paul's waist and was desperately trying to help him move. His foot was broken and every time the thirty-one-year-old accidentally put pressure on the damaged area from the animal trap, he would release a cry of pain.

Jade kept on looking behind her as they both struggled to move in unison.

"Don't look back," Paul scolded with what little breath he had left. His breathing was inconsistent and he was already tiring. "Just keep moving. Every time you look back, you slow down."

"I'm sorry," Jade was now in tears. "They're—"

"I don't want to know. Just keep looking ahead, and keep moving." Paul was certain that Jade's full sentence was going to be: They're gaining on us.

He didn't need to be a genius to work that out. He could hear the noises of movement getting louder and louder from behind him. He didn't need to look, and he didn't want to look; he knew that the future appeared to be drastic for the both of them.

"Turn left," Paul commanded.

They both turned left and Jade took another peek behind her, despite Paul telling her _not to_ only a few seconds ago. The paranoia was making it hard for Jade not to turn around, but the image of her being grabbed and pulled to the ground and then experiencing dozens of mouths taking chunks out of her well-toned body, repulsed and frightened her. She could now see at least twenty of the things, stumbling and groaning in their direction. She was hoping that they would soon be giving up.

Fat chance!

"Argh!" Paul screamed out as he went over his already-damaged foot and Jade stumbled as he lost his balance; they both fell to the ground.

They wasted valuable seconds whilst they straightened themselves up. They went back to the old position, with Jade's arm around Paul's waist for support, and Paul's hand around Jade's shoulder, and the two progressed the best they could with only three working legs.

"We need to speed it up," Jade stated the obvious.

"I can't," Paul snapped. "It hurts like a bastard."

Jade was quaking with panic and screamed, "It's gonna hurt a whole lot more if we don't hurry the fuck up."

Paul was still moving with Jade, and they could see through the trees that there was a road up ahead. Paul went over his foot again and exclaimed, "Jesus Christ!"

"Come on!" Jade screamed; her heart was now banging the inside of her chest, quick and hard. She looked at Paul; he was exhausted. There was no way he was going to make it. She was sure of it.

She looked around again, and could see them in their loose formation; the nearest one was now only ten yards away.

Jade could see the tears streaming from Paul. He really _was_ pushing himself through the pain barrier. He was struggling to catch his breath, and he was leaning on her and getting heavier, which suggested to Jade that he was becoming weaker. Trying to move on one working leg must be really difficult, almost impossible, she thought.

"We're nearly at the road." Jade gave Paul a false smile, in order to give him some false hope, but he shook his head. "What is it, Paul?"

With his gasping breath, Paul struggled to get out his sentence. "And what do we do once we're at the road? We still have to keep moving, and these things are not going to stop, ever."

_Shit, he's right_.

Jade looked up to the sky and her lip wobbled with emotion. She had never been a bad person, and would like to have thought that she could go back to her house one day and see if her family were still around, but she couldn't do that if she was dead.

She wondered if her parents were still alive; and if they _were_ , she was certain that they were probably distraught that their little girl hadn't come home yet.

What worried Jade the most, was her father. He knew she had gone to work that day, and she was certain that her pig-headed father may have taken the car and took a drive to the sports centre to see if there was any sign of his little girl. With the state the sports centre was in when they left, with the hundreds of ghouls around and inside the centre, she feared that there was a possibility that her father may have been killed looking for her. But she wasn't sure. She wasn't sure of anything; and the only way she was going to know if her family were okay was to achieve her overall goal, and that was to go back home.

A few scenarios could greet Jade Greatrix if she made it back home. Her parents could have turned, or they could be alive and hiding in the house. She wanted to know if they were okay. She was desperate to know.

She had a choice to make, and she made it with a heavy heart.

Jade cried, "May God forgive me."

"What are you talkin' about?" Paul spoke.

Jade looked at him, removed her arm from around his waist, took his arm off around her shoulder and pushed him to the ground.

She heard Paul scream, "Jade! No, Jade! Don't leave me here! Jade! No! Jade! Jade!"

Jade placed the palms of her hands over her ears as Paul continued to call out for her. Her guilt was immense, but her need for survival was even stronger. She was now out onto the road, crossed it, and went into the woods on the other side. She was in tears, but she wanted to live. Christ, she wanted to live!

Once she was a few yards into the woods, she removed her hands and heard the awful screaming from Paul Parker, as he was being grabbed, bitten and torn to bloody pieces by many hungry fiends. There would be nothing left of him eventually, and Jade constantly begged God to forgive her as she walked briskly through the woodland. Once the cries had faded, she stopped walking and sat against a tree.

She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She then rocked back and forth, and overcome with guilt and shame for what she had done to a man that looked after her over the past few days, she screamed out, "I'm sorry!"

It wasn't the greatest thing to do whilst there were marauders about, but it was something she just couldn't hold in.

What was she going to do now?
Chapter Twenty

"So how long you thinking about staying?"

Karen was sitting on a tree stump in the enclosed, suffocating garden that let in little light, whilst Pickle was in the corner of the garden, near the fence, and was doing press-ups. Both guests looked at one another and were both wondering if this was the old man's way of telling them not to make themselves too comfortable.

Karen eventually answered the man. "It won't be for long."

"Just a wee while." Pickle walked over, slightly perspiring and out of breath, and patted the man on the shoulder as a friendly gesture.

Wolf was convinced he was amongst good people. If they wanted the cabin for themselves, he was pretty certain that the Pickle character would be able to snap him in half. "I fancy a walk. Wanna come?"

Both Pickle and Karen nodded their heads and Wolf went back inside for the shotgun. He was gone for a matter of seconds and soon returned with the weapon tucked into his left arm. He put a set of keys into his pocket, and then began coughing. His coughing was so loud and violent, he ended up clearing his throat, turning away from his two guests, and spat onto the grass. He apologised right away.

"That's okay." Karen then pointed at Pickle jokingly. " _He_ does it all the time."

Once they all left the place, Wolf locked the tall, wooden gate behind him and told his two guests that they were heading for the very top of the hill.

In silence they all eventually reached their destination, with Pickle helping Wolf with his last few steps, as it appeared the sixty-nine-year-old was struggling. Once they all got to the top, they took in the view and it brought the childhood memories flooding back for Karen.

The bottom of the hill was surrounded by a huge hedge, all around, apart from a twelve-foot gap where Karen was looking. That gap led to the football field and the back of the Pear Tree Estate of Rugeley Town. She used to pass through that gap to get to where she was now, Cardboard Hill, and would spend hours with her friends. The hill wasn't officially called Cardboard Hill, it was just a nickname. It didn't have a name as such; it was just a large, steep hill that gave off the view of the woods when looking to the right. Looking to their left revealed the sight of the football field and the estate, and Flaxley was behind them—another area of the town.

"It's nice up here." Pickle released a smile and tried to ignore the sight of the smoke that was coming from burning buildings from afar.

"It _was_ ," Wolf chuckled. "I had the occasional bother with kids in the past, but I suppose this outbreak, or whatever the hell it is, puts my _bother with kids_ into perspective a little."

"What kind of bother did you have?"

"Just people breaking into the cabin, trespassers, that kind of thing."

Karen reminisced, "I remember, when I was a kid, you used to be able to _see_ the cabin. The trees weren't so dense."

"I built the fence a few years ago." Wolf then sat down, and the other two did the same, one on either side of him. "I was getting sick of coming up and finding it vandalised, and I just let the trees grow. The trouble is, I don't own the hill, just the cabin, so anyone can come up here. Joggers, dog walkers, junkies—we used to get them all."

Pickle nodded down the hill, towards the gap in the hedge, and said, "I see what yer mean 'bout them things." They looked just in front of the gap, where the hill began to incline. There were five ghouls lying there, hundreds of yards away at the bottom of the mount. They could see a little movement, as if they were still trying to climb their way up. They were clawing at the ground, desperate to move, but the steepness of the hill was eventually too much for their weakened muscles in their legs.

Pickle then turned to Karen. "Why did you call it Cardboard Hill?"

She thought for a second, almost as if she had forgot herself, and said, "We used to break bits of cardboard off, walk up to the top of the hill where we are now, and slide down. You can imagine how popular this place was whenever we had snow."

A comfortable silence enveloped the three of them and all, but Wolf, closed their eyes, feeling the gentle wind lick their sweaty faces.

"You guys can stay here for as long as you want, you know," Wolf announced. The comment came right out of the blue, but it was a welcomed comment, and Pickle and Karen managed a smile on their faces. "But I need you guys to do me two favours."

"I'm happy to earn my keep, Wolf." Pickle waited for the 'favours' that Wolf was about to ask.

"Same here." Karen nodded.

Wolf smiled his yellow grin, and turned to the ex-inmate and admitted, "I don't have much supplies left, Pickle. But if you and Karen could find it in yourselves to loot a few houses over there, preferably empty ones," he pointed at the back of the Pear Tree Estate, "my place is your place. Take anything you can from the street, food, water, batteries, buckets—anything. What do you say?"

"I think that's a fair deal," agreed Pickle. "We do need a break, both mentally and physically, from the woods. The cabin is just what we need."

"I'm glad you agree." Wolf patted his own legs. "These old things are finding this hill troublesome these days, and I can't even run the length of myself. If I went with you, and we ran into trouble, I'd just slow you down."

"We'll go soon," Karen said, and Pickle nodded his head in agreement. "There should be nothing there that we're not used to."

"Well, my dear," Wolf said with a slight embarrassed look on his face, "I have very little experience of what could be down there, because I've been hiding up here since day one."

Wolf then stood to his feet, adjusted his straw hat, and began to make the short walk back to the cabin with the other two. The decline was proving a little tough for Wolf, especially on his knees, and Karen came to his aid. She placed her hand under his armpit and he smiled and thanked the young lady.

Wolf added, "We'll need to find some bleach as well, if you can."

"Bleach?" Pickle queried.

Said Wolf, "It's to disinfect the water that comes out of the sink's tap. It should be okay, but I'm paranoid to drink from the tap. I still have some bottled water and a small bucket of rainwater, as well as the barrel. I can't really boil water; it takes ages with the fire, but with a little bleach you can disinfect it. Bleach will kill some, not all, types of disease-causing organisms that may be in the water. If it's still cloudy, we can filter it through clean clothes or allow it to settle, and draw off the clear water."

"You mentioned getting buckets," Karen reminded him.

"I have a couple inside the cabin," Wolf said. "It's for rainwater. If the tap in the sink goes, we'll only have the barrel and buckets to rely on. Just trying to think ahead, especially if the water coming out of the tap becomes polluted with ... whatever."

Pickle and Karen nodded in agreement.

Wolf had already explained that the water supply to the cabin was very basic and came from a tiny stream near the bottom of the hill, by using inexpensive sprinkler-type tubing that was placed underground. But for drinking water, Wolf preferred using buckets for rain water and the large water barrel that collected the rain that hit the house and went into the guttering, because he was paranoid about what state the stream could be in.

A pipe from the barrel to the guttering was attached, and this was how he got most of the water. He hardly used the water for drinking in the past, because he never had to, as he only used to come to the cabin for retreats. Now he was here on a permanent basis.

Pickle thought that their little expedition may consist of numerous trips to the Pear Tree Estate over a period of days, instead of just the one trip. Apart from the lack of food and sanitation, the cabin and location seemed perfect. The sanitation wasn't a problem for the pair of them, considering they had been living in the woods for the last three days.

They entered Wolf's garden and Karen turned to Pickle and asked him if they should both head right now. Pickle agreed, but Wolf politely asked them to wait outside the cabin for a second. They did as they were told, as the elderly man walked through the cabin's door and disappeared. He then returned, holding a machete in each hand.

Wolf released a smile and said to his guests, "Well, you didn't expect me to send you down there without being armed, did you? I bought these to keep the bushes and branches trimmed back."

He handed one machete each to the newcomers, and he thanked them, even though they were getting something in return.

Looking at the reasonably new machete, Karen asked, "You said back at the hill that you wanted two favours; so what is the second one?"

Wolf lowered his head forlornly. He gaped back up in Pickle and Karen's direction and they both could see desolation in the man's face, his eyes were reddening as if he was about to cry. He cleared his throat. "Follow me."

With no hesitation, they walked inside the cabin.

Karen was glad to be inside, as she was intrigued to see what it was like. She walked in and it was a basic set-up as to be expected. As soon as they stepped inside, they were greeted by a small kitchen. The sink was basic and was the only place in the cabin that produced running water; the place didn't look big enough to have a bathroom, even if Wolf wanted one.

Once they walked past the kitchen there was a reasonable-sized living room, with a set of stairs at the end of the room leading to just the one bedroom. That was it.

Once they reached the top of the stairs, Wolf allowed his guests to take in what he was showing them.

A once-female human was tied to a wooden chair in the corner of the bedroom. Her appearance was now becoming stereotypical to pretty much most of the others they had seen on their travels. Its face was yellow, eyes milky, and its face was bruised-looking.

She was one of them now, and her teeth snarled and gnashed at her guests, informing them that if she could ever get out of this, they would be on her menu as far as lunch was concerned.

They didn't need an explanation, but Pickle had to ask, "So, how long has yer wife been like that?"

Wolf explained, "As soon as we left, a couple of those things grabbed us. Grace took a little bite to the hand when we fought them both off, and thought nothing more of it. Then she got sick, and the radio was telling people that bites, sometimes scratches, was causing this thing to spread, so I knew she was finished."

Asked Karen, "So what happened next?"

"She became unwell. And when she became unconscious, I decided not to take any chances and tied her to the chair she was already sitting on. I hated doing that to my Grace, but I was already convinced that I'd lost her."

Pickle placed his hand on Wolf's arm as he could see the man was becoming upset, whilst the shell of his wife, that looked to have been taken over by some possessed demon, continued to struggle in the corner of the room because of the ropes that bound her to the chair.

"How on earth can yer sleep with that in here?" queried Pickle. He didn't mean the question to sound so cold, after all, 'that' used to be the woman Wolf was married to for many decades.

"It was a struggle for the first week, but you kind of get used to it." Wolf then looked over to his wife and began to sob. His quavering hands wiped away the tears that ran down his cheeks, and Pickle was beginning to feel emotional for the poor man.

Pickle looked at Karen, but she looked unmoved.

Wolf added, "I couldn't do it. I know it's daft; I know she's already gone, but I just couldn't do it."

Pickle couldn't make out what Wolfgang Kindl meant. "Couldn't do what?"

Wolf was beginning to compose himself. The weeping had now ceased, but the bloodshot eyes and stained cheeks would be there for a while. "That's my second favour that I want from you."

"What is it?" asked Karen.

"I want you to kill her for me."
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 forwards, 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 whilst 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 this?" 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, whilst 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. Whilst 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 heads 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 forwards, 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.
Chapter Twenty Four

Jack remained in the cupboard, unsure on what to do next. He heard scuffles coming from the spare bedroom, and Johnny making a noise as if he had just been punched in the stomach.

Jack heard a man growl, "Where's the keys to your jeep?"

Johnny cried, "I don't have them. Jack..."

"Who the fuck's Jack?"

Jack sighed inside the stifling cupboard and shook his head. _Nice one, Johnny_.

The man repeated, "Who the fuck's Jack?"

Jack could then hear two sets of footsteps stomping their way upstairs, and it appeared now that there were three people on the first floor. He had no idea what to do, but was pretty sure that Johnny wasn't the type of person to take too much of a beating before he eventually talked.

Jack then heard the people discussing what to do with their new find. He then heard another voice. "Who's this Jack you mentioned? And where's the keys to that jeep?"

Jack then heard Johnny plead, "Please..." This was followed by a pounding noise, Johnny releasing a cry, and a big thud as if something had hit the floor. To Jack, it sounded like Johnny had taken another blow from one of the thugs and fell to the carpet. _Shit! He ain't gonna last another minute_.

"Have you checked the _whole_ house?" a voice questioned angrily.

"Apart from the other bedroom," the other male spoke.

As soon as that sentence was released, Jack knew his hiding days were over. His heart thumped his chest, and his head had begun to produce even more sweat that tickled and irritated the sides of his face.

The door to Kerry's bedroom swung open and clattered off the wall, as if it had been pushed very quickly. Jack clasped the crowbar and waited for his fate. He then heard Johnny moaning and a woman telling him to shut the fuck up. He heard ruffling about in Kerry's room and then could feel the presence of someone walking towards the cupboard. The cupboard's handle was grabbed and it slowly opened.

The unsuspecting man received a headbutt from Jack; the man released a cry and fell backwards onto Kerry's bed, clutching his nose. Jack left the cupboard and went to the landing to see the other man running down the stairs, leaving the house and entering the street. Jack then turned to see Johnny. He was on the floor, holding his stomach, and standing over him was a woman with long ginger hair. She was in the room with Johnny and hadn't reacted as quickly as her male colleague that had left the house.

"Look," the woman began to speak nervously; she had a knife in the side of her belt. "We can work this out."

Jack recognised her straight away. She was the same woman that cowardly bent over the beaten man in the street earlier, and stabbed him three times in the back.

"Get out," Jack snarled, the crowbar being tightly gripped with his right hand. "Get out of my son's house."

Jack stood to the side to allow the woman enough room to get out, and she took the hint. "What about my friend?" She was referring to the man on Kerry's bed, clutching his nose.

"Take him with you."

She nodded and tentatively went into Kerry's bedroom, her eyes never leaving Jack's. She then came back out, her arm around the injured man's shoulder and without warning, the man turned and ran at Jack.

Both men fell onto the floor, which gave the woman the opportunity to pull out her blade, and Johnny, who was still lying on the floor, reacted by side-kicking her in the shin. She released a scream, dropped the knife, and the male on top of Jack, realising that Johnny was getting to his feet, took off and ran downstairs. The woman tried to follow him, but she fell over on the landing as soon as she put weight on her foot. She held her ankle, and tried to stand up once more.

Jack picked up her knife, and put it into his belt. He then passed Johnny the crowbar to hold as he was sure, with the woman unable to walk and the knife out of her reach, she posed no threat anymore.

"Jack," Johnny spoke; his breath was returning. "We need to get that front door shut before more of those fuckers come in."

"Don't worry," Jack said.

The ginger woman turned and hopped twice, away from them on the landing, but her attempt at escaping was pathetic and impossible. She was now at the top of the stairs and could see down them; the front door was left wide open. She hoped that some of her colleagues would hurry up, as she was unsure what this unpredictable man was going to do to her.

Jack glared at the woman, who, in return, revealed a false smile.

She said nervously, "I was just following orders. I just do what I'm told."

"Is that right?" Jack spoke with suspicion.

"Before all of this shit happened, I was a normal person. I had a family."

"You got kids?"

She nodded her head, but Jack didn't believe her. Even though he didn't know this woman at all, he could tell by her face that she was lying.

"So where are they now?" quizzed Jack.

"They were killed."

"You look distraught," Jack sarcastically added.

She tilted her chin and released a sigh. It was obvious that this man didn't believe a word that came out of her mouth.

Continued Jack, "A woman with kids—with any kind of empathy, wouldn't go up to an injured man in the street and stab him to death in front of his own screaming children."

Her eyes widened.

"Oh yeah." Jack smiled and took a step forwards. "I saw _everything_."

She hopped backwards just the once and leaned against the wall, with the toilet door to her right. She could see the coldness in Jack's eyes. She thought: Here is a man who has probably lost everything and wasn't really giving a shit anymore.

She gulped and gawped at Jack with pleading eyes. She stammered, "You-you wouldn't hit a woman, would you?"

"No I wouldn't."

Jack took another step forwards, grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her down the stairs. She screamed as she descended painfully, bouncing three times before crashing into the main door.

Jack trotted down the stairs and threw her out onto the front garden, walked back into the house and shut the front door.

"Shit, we're done for now." Johnny had his head in his hands.

"We were done for the moment they entered the house," Jack said calmly.

Johnny began to inspect the area of his body where he had been punched. He touched the area where he thought an eventual bruise would appear, winced a little, and without looking at Jack, he added, "We could have reasoned with them, for Christ's sake!"

Jack turned to Johnny and looked at him, making sure he was being serious. His eyes suggested to Jack that he was! Jack said, "Well, next time they come in, I'll just pin them down and tickle them. Maybe I'll just give them a Chinese burn."

"This isn't funny."

"Can you see me laughing?"

"I think they'll torch the jeep."

"They won't torch the jeep."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because they want it."

"And what if they torch the house?"

"Then we make a run for it."

Johnny looked out of the bedroom window, and sighed, "We can't stay here a second longer."

Jack walked over and saw cars pulling up outside the house, making it impossible for the jeep to move even if they had managed to get inside the vehicle. Jack looked at Johnny. "Downstairs. Out into the back garden, now!"
Chapter Twenty Five

Pickle and Karen had returned to the cabin.

Burying Wolf's wife had been exhausting and thirsty work, so they returned to get refreshments before heading to the edge of town for their first trip to get supplies.

It had been nearly an hour since Karen's breakdown, and the digging and burial had been completed in total silence, until Pickle muttered The Lord's Prayer under his breath.

Wolf had made it clear that he didn't want to attend the burial as what he saw tied to the chair wasn't his wife anymore, and even though he strongly believed she had died many days ago, he still didn't have it in him to kill her himself. Sleeping with that thing in the house was impossible for the first few days, so Wolf had to rely on exhaustion to put him to sleep, whether it was in the cabin on a night, or a sneaky hour in the garden.

"You've got plenty of hours of daylight left," Wolf spoke, and handed Karen and Pickle two over-the-shoulder sports bags. "I really appreciate this, you know. I just wish I could come with you. With my aching bones, I struggle to get out of bed on a morning."

"And we appreciate yer putting us up, Wolf," Pickle said and winked at the old man. "We'll get these bags filled, and come back. If it's quiet, we might have time to go for a second stint."

Wolf said, "We'll have a good night. I'll get the fire on, and we'll have a hearty meal. See if you can get some booze. Red wine would be good."

Pickle laughed, "Yer do realise we're not going to the supermarket?"

"Sorry," Wolf chuckled, and glanced over to Karen who was staring into space. "Say, Karen, you okay? You've hardly said a word."

"I'm fine." Karen put the bag over her shoulder and looked around the enclosed garden, then called over to Pickle. "We ready?"

Pickle nodded.

"You sure you don't want the shotgun?" Wolf began scratching at his grey whiskers, and adjusted his straw hat.

"It's too loud," Pickle said. "Anyway, I think we'll be okay with these." He patted the machete that was tucked in his belt to the left of him.

Harry Branston walked towards the garden gate and opened it; Karen followed behind and left Wolf to shut the gate after them. Once the two survivors were out on the hill, in the open air, Pickle took a big breath in, which amused Karen.

"What is it?" he chuckled, and was glad that she was starting to lighten up.

"How can you breathe in like that, and have that face on you like you're happy to be alive?"

"Well, I _am_ happy to be alive. Don't forget, I only left prison two and a half weeks ago, Karen. I'm still getting used to being out in the real world."

"The real world?" she tittered. She pulled out her machete and used it to point at the back of the Pear Tree Estate, where they were heading, and they both looked out and saw smoke smouldering from the area. She then pointed down the hill. The seven Snatchers were still there, not giving up, crawling hopelessly, trying to get to where they thought food might be, but were simply just clawing at dirt. "You mean all this? _This_ real world?"

"Okay." Pickle scratched his head; it was irritating him and it was desperate for some soap. "It's no' quite how I envisaged ma 'ventual freedom when I was inside," he slurred, unusually more than he normally did.

They descended down the hill, gaining on the seven things that were all on their bellies, clawing at the ground as if they were unable to get back onto their feet. They were now ten yards away from the seven bodies and Pickle warned Karen not to get too close.

"I _have_ done this before, you know." She shook her head, but secretly liked the fact he was concerned for her.

"Not with a machete, yer haven't. Just make sure yer squint yer eyes, just in case."

Karen walked over to the one furthest left and walked around it, grabbed its ankles and dragged it away from the other six, so she could kill it without fear of being scratched or bitten by the others.

"Good idea, Karen," Pickle said sarcastically. "Handling a diseased-ridden ghoul is a great idea."

"Shurrup," said Karen.

Karen drove the machete into the skull, instead off hacking at it, and was surprised that it didn't require too much effort. Pickle wasn't messing about. He was going for the hacking method, and had killed three already. Each one feeling the huge blade slicing through the skull and killing off the brain, halving their craniums.

Karen dragged number two away from the remaining two that Pickle was about to execute. She stared at the ghoul that was trying to twist round to get at her. It used to be a female, and it looked to be no older than eighteen.

What a waste, she thought.

She allowed the thing to grab her trainer whilst Pickle was finishing off his fifth and Karen wondered what _she_ had become. Three weeks ago, this scenario would have emptied her stomach, but now she had adapted to this apocalyptic world quite easily.

The female Snatcher was like all the rest: discoloured, milky film over the eyes. This particular one was affecting her, but why? Karen was thinking about her step-sister, Kelly, in Glasgow. Was she one of them now? Is this what she looked like? She was convinced her mother was dead, but had a feeling that Kelly, maybe even her father, could still be kicking about in Scotland's biggest city.

"Ahem." Pickle tried to get Karen's attention, bringing her out of her hypnotic gaze and back to reality. With his bloody machete, Pickle pointed at the creature that had its hands on Karen's feet, trying to pull itself towards her on its belly to get a bite. "Yer want _me_ to get tha'?"

Karen took a step back and looked at Pickle. She then shook her head as if she had just woken from a dream, and pulled the machete back, ready to strike. She brought the weapon down three times, and the damage was so severe that a portion of its head gave way with the severed diseased brain inside it.

She wiped the blade on the grass, and Pickle did the same before putting it back into his belt. With her empty bag nearly slipping off her shoulders, she adjusted it and nodded towards Pickle to see if he was ready to go.

Despite his reservations of touching them, he helped Karen drag the bodies to the side, near the hedge, so they didn't have to see them every time they walked past. Once this was achieved, they went through the large gap in the hedge. They were now on the football field, and only a few hundred yards from the Pear Tree Estate, which was half a mile from Draycott Park where Karen used to live, when the world was normal, when she was a nurse, and her fiancé, Gary, was a young lawyer.

As they walked across the football field, Pickle turned to Karen and said, "Oh, by the way. When we get there, I want no stealing off o' families, okay?"

Sarcastically, she saluted Pickle and said, "Yes, Saint Harry."

"I'm serious, Karen. One vacant house alone, should be enough to fill these bags." Pickle watched her for a response, but she never made eye contact. "Yer follow ma lead. Straight in, then straight out. No messin' about."

They were coming to the end of the field, and were now a hundred yards away from the concrete path that led into the estate. Once they were on the path, Pickle drew his machete; Karen did the same.

They were preparing for the unexpected.
Chapter Twenty Six

Both Jack and Johnny ran downstairs and went through the door into Kerry's back garden. As soon as they entered the grounds, they heard the angry voices of men entering his ex's house.

With Jack carrying the crowbar, and Johnny carrying the knife that used to belong to the ginger female assailant that Jack had thrown down the stairs, both men jumped the garden's fence and landed in the next street.

They ran as hard as they could, veered right into an alleyway, and turned their sprint into a jog. This continued for another minute until Johnny had got stitch, forcing him to stop running. He doubled over in agony and was focusing on getting his breath back.

In the distance they could see two ghouls with their backs to them, stumbling into someone's driveway. "We better go another way," Johnny said, "before they see us."

Jack shook his head satirically at Johnny. "And what are they gonna do if they _do_ see us? Run after us?"

"Some do seem to be quicker than others."

"Just relax." Jack looked around the area, seeing if there were any signs of an empty house. His eyes continued scanning the street, but it was difficult to tell if any houses were vacant at all, as most, not all, had their window curtains closed. The only strong hint that there were people inside was the barricading of the front door, which sometimes could be seen through some doors that had frosted glass, but not all doors had this design and possessed a simple wooden door.

Suddenly, noises of engines could be heard, and Jack and Johnny immediately ran away and hid behind a large bush. Three vehicles pulled up in the street fifty yards from the two hiding-men, and six men and two women got out, all holding a sharp weapon or a bat each.

Jack had a sneaky peek, and recognised two of the men from before. He couldn't see the woman or the other two males that had invaded Kerry's house, which suggested to Jack that this gang had a healthy number of people involved in their clan.

There were two men in front of the rest of the group, having a heated conversation with one another. The one on the left was dressed in a skip cap and had an Aerosmith T-shirt on. The one on the right looked more slicker. He was wearing jeans, a nice, well-ironed shirt and was clean-shaven.

The man in the skip cap spoke with Slick. "Let's just forget 'em. We got plenty of supplies."

Slick shook his head; he was the one that seemed to be in charge of the mob. "No chance. They've got the keys to that jeep, and one of those pricks threw my sister down the fuckin' stairs."

Crouching behind the bush, Johnny shook his head at Jack. "Sister?"

"Oops." Jack reminded Johnny, "To be fair, you're the one that fucked up her leg."

Slick then went round the back of one of the vehicles and opened the boot. The sounds of dogs barking had sent shivers down Jack and Johnny's frame, and Johnny looked at Jack. It was clear from his face he was fearing the worst.

Said Johnny, "I hope that's Yorkshire Terriers that they've got." He then put his head in his hands. _Could this day get any worse?_

Still looking, Jack could see that on two leashes, Slick had two Pit Bulls, each one with a grey coat. "Er ... not quite."

"Fuck this." Johnny ran from the bush, which alerted the dogs. Jack followed suit.

Slick couldn't see that the men had fled from the bush, but knew by the dogs' reaction that something was up. "It must be them!"

Trusting their instinct, he took each one off the leash and watched as they sprinted to the end of the street and turned left down an alleyway. Slick then ordered two guys to follow where they went, if that at all was possible.

Meanwhile, Jack and Johnny ran through alleyway to alleyway, from street to street, but with the pace and the nose of a dog, it was like a fighter pilot trying to avoid a heat-seeking missile.

Johnny was becoming exhausted, and carrying the heavy crowbar wasn't helping Jack's plight either. "We're just gonna have to kill 'em ourselves." Jack looked at the crowbar, then looked at Johnny's knife.

"Fuck that." Johnny wasn't confident at all, and began running again. They both turned into a main street that descended a little and were greeted by nine Snatchers stumbling in the middle of the road.

"We can dodge them!" Jack shouted at Johnny, but Johnny took a look behind him to see the Pit Bulls turning the corner of the street, onto the main road, and hurtling towards them with a vicious speed. Jack looked to his left. "Garage!" was all he bellowed, and they both headed for the nearby garage that was attached to a house.

The dogs weaved and swerved by the dead as they had no intention of harming them, and concentrated on the two men that were now struggling to climb the garage.

Jack threw the bar onto the roof and climbed up with ease on his second attempt, but Johnny was struggling. Jack gave Johnny his hand and tried desperately to pull him up.

"Fuckin' hurry up," Jack shouted, seeing the two Pit Bulls gaining and gaining. "You've got three seconds before they take you down."

Johnny released a cry of anguish, and Jack pulled him up, just as the dogs had jumped and gnashed at the man's legs. The canines remained where they were and snarled and barked at the two relieved men who were standing on top of the garage, catching their breath.

With the melee of the escape and the arrival of the dogs, who were still barking furiously at Jack and Johnny, all nine ghouls slowly shambled their way over to the garage. At this point, Johnny nudged Jack. "If we jump off the back of this garage, we should land in the back of that garden, away from those things and those dogs."

"Wait a minute." Jack held out his hand to his friend, trying to catch his breath. "This might be interesting."

Jack looked down from the garage as the dogs gnashed and tried to jump up at the man, desperate to tear his face off. The dogs were still oblivious of the dead that were gaining on them from behind, but the dead were strongly attracted to the noisy animals.

The nine continued to walk towards the dogs and eventually circled around them. At this stage, Jack looked away as the cries and wails from both animals pierced and assaulted his ears, as the nine Snatchers ripped the dogs to bloody shreds.

Johnny looked down and saw that there wasn't much left of the dogs already. Jack then saw two men, belonging to Slick, turn the corner of the street, onto the main road. Jack pulled Johnny onto his front on the garage roof, away from view of their eyes.

"Holy fuck!" one of Slick's men yelled.

"Fuckin' shame," the other one laughed.

"But where are the dogs?"

Jack then looked at Johnny with confusion. "What are they talking about?"

It took him a while to realise that the two men, who could see the nine ghouls from afar munching on bloody pieces of meat, thought that they were eating the remains of Jack and Johnny.

"Fuckin' dogs have just bolted," Jack heard one of the men say. "Gavin ain't gonna be pleased."

"I know," the other one spoke. "Let's go back and tell him the news."

Jack assumed that the 'Gavin' that they were talking about was Slick. Nevertheless, they seemed to have got away with it, thanks to a huge slice of luck.

"Let's hope we never see these men again," Johnny snorted.

"Amen to that," was Jack's response, but Jack was unsure whether groups like this were isolated incidents.

If such a brutal gang like this could exist in this part of a small town, how many more could there be? What was it like in cities across the UK? Was this now becoming a normal thing? People getting stabbed in the street in front of their families? Men having dogs set upon them because of retribution and a set of car keys? Seriously?

"Week three," Jack said, and shook his head, wearing a fictitious smile.

"What?" Johnny was now getting to his feet, ready to jump off the garage, into the back garden.

"Week three, and some people are resorting to this already."

"I know." Johnny lowered his head sadly, stood his skinny frame up and ran his fingers over his hairless head. "What's this place gonna be like after three months, let alone three weeks?"

"I dread to think, my friend." Jack also got to his feet. "I dread to think."
Chapter Twenty Seven

As soon as they entered the first street of the estate, Karen and Pickle walked and looked from side to side at the houses on either side of them. There were sixteen houses in all, eight on either side, and the first one to the right looked all burnt out. The rest looked to be in decent condition, and some had a few doors that had been left ajar from possible fleeing residents.

The houses that weren't open seemed to be barricaded. Living room windows had curtains and blinds closed; some front doors could be seen through the frosted glass and cupboards, and other furniture, had been stacked up against them.

"The few houses with the doors left open," Pickle began, "are the ones we're gonna search."

Karen responded with a single nod and brushed her dark hair behind her ears. She followed Pickle into the front garden of one of the places in the street and both went into the house, machetes drawn. The living room was dark from the drawn curtains, which Karen opened, and once it was established that the living room and kitchen was devoid of life, it was time to check upstairs.

"Where're you going?" Karen snapped, seeing her partner heading for the stairs. "Just see what they've got and go."

"I want to make sure the house is empty before we ransack the place. We'll need sheets as well."

They both crept up the stairs to the dim area of the landing. Pickle tried the bedroom on the left, checked it, then returned a minute later, then tried the other two, only to find all three vacant. Judging by the state of the quilts in all bedrooms, it appeared that the family had left in a rush.

Karen clapped her hands together and said, "Now it's safe, we can see if this lot have left anything for us."

"What about the attic?" asked Pickle, looking up to the hatch that was above him.

"What about it?" Karen asked, bewildered.

"There may be people up there."

"So what? We're here for supplies, not people."

Karen ran down the stairs, leaving Pickle on the first floor, and took the bag off of her shoulder. She went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. There wasn't much left, and what was in it, some ham and cheese, had become mouldy since the fridge had stopped working.

She crouched down and opened one of the cupboards that had a food carousel with two levels. On the first level was a packet of croissants and some bread rolls, still in their packet. On the second level was a jar of crunchy peanut butter, ketchup, two tins of tuna, a jar of bolognese sauce, four tins of baked beans and bottle of maple syrup.

She put the lot in her bag.

She opened the cupboard above and took the bleach. She even took the toilet cleaner, some sponges and a bottle of cream to clean baths—she had no idea why. In the glass cupboard, next to the one full of cleansing products, there was a biscuit tin. She opened the tin and saw an assortment of chocolate bars that produced a huge smile across her face. There was Crunchies, Caramels, Snickers, Fudges, and chunky Kit Kats—mint flavour.

"I think I'm gonna have an orgasm," she giggled to herself, and put the tin into her now full bag.

Pickle returned from upstairs and asked, "Anything?"

"Plenty," Karen answered with a smile.

Pickle then clicked his fingers. "Batteries. We need batteries."

He began to check through the cupboards; Karen told him which ones she had already checked. He searched the last two and pulled out a tin that looked like it used to hold an assortment of expensive biscuits, something a person would get for a Christmas present. He shook it and then looked on the shelf above where the tin had sat and produced a beam. There was a torch sitting there.

He reached for the torch, put it into his bag, then opened the tin to confirm that it was now a tin that held batteries of many sizes.

"Perfect." Once they were in his bag, he lifted it back up. "Christ, this is heavy already."

"Tell me about it." Karen nodded to her own bag that was bursting. She then looked in the cupboard, under the sink, and pulled out two bottles of Merlot. "Put them in your bag. We deserve them."

"We'll take these back up to Wolf and come back, or we can return tomorrow."

"What's that noise?" asked Karen.

"I can't hear anything."

Karen walked towards the kitchen window and opened the blinds and beckoned Pickle over. He plonked his bag on the floor and took a gawp out into the back garden. There were two Snatchers lumbering around an oak tree that was at the back, and Pickle could now see why the two creatures weren't moving from the tree.

Up at twelve feet high, sitting on a thick branch, was a young girl, no older than fourteen. Her dark hair was tied back, and she looked exhausted, as if she had been there for hours, days even.

"I've got it," Pickle said.

He walked from the kitchen and headed for the back door that led out into the garden. He was greeted with the blistering sun burning down on his features, and closed his eyes for a few seconds to take in the wonderful heat. He then took a few steps closer towards the creatures that had their backs to him, and produced a whistle that someone would use to beckon their dog.

"Thank God," was all the exhausted girl could muster, as she saw this huge, rough-looking man, standing in the middle of the garden with a stained machete, proving that this man was not scared of using the thing.

The two creatures, a male and a female, turned and stumbled towards him. Pickle had done this many times before now, and the two things were more of a nuisance than a scene of terror. He sighed hard, as if someone had spilt his drink, and pulled the machete back and took a swipe at the female. The blade nestled into the right side of the cranium, and once pulled out, a small amount of dark blood spat out, followed by the body collapsing in a heap.

The male ghoul, who was initially behind the female, made things a whole lot easier when it tripped over its fallen comrade and hit the floor. Pickle drove the blade into the back of its head, and withdrew it. He wiped both sides of the blade on the long grass, and placed it back into his belt.

He then looked up at the girl and held out his hand to beckon her out of the tree. "It's safe now."

She hesitated for a few seconds, and looked around her garden and tried her best to fight back the tears.

Gestured Pickle, "Come down. I'm not gonna hurt yer."

She finally did, with Pickle's help, and she was in two minds whether to hug the man or not.

"How long yer been up there?" he enquired.

The girl answered, "For a few hours. I ran into the garden, but I was trapped."

"Are yer alone? Is it just you?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Where're your parents?"

"Erm..." She cleared her throat and nodded to the creatures that Pickle had just attacked. "You've just killed them."

"Oh."

Karen had emerged out from the house and asked Pickle what was taking so long.

Pickle walked up to Karen and whispered, out of earshot from the fourteen-year-old, "This house belongs to this girl and we've just emptied the place."

Karen made a loud noise as she exhaled, and looked over to the girl. "What would you prefer: To stay in the house alone, or stay with other people?"

"Other people," the girl spoke with little hesitation.

"Sorted." Karen then walked out of the garden and disappeared. Pickle looked at the frightened girl and shrugged his shoulders as he had no idea what Karen was planning on doing.

Five minutes later, Karen had returned, and said, "The family from two-doors down are gonna put you up. I'll walk you round."

"That's great," the girl cried and gave Karen a hug; she then hugged Pickle and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you for..."

Pickle laughed, "Killing yer parents? No worries."

Karen walked with the girl and Pickle gave off a smile. Karen was full of surprises, sometimes even nice ones. One day he wanted to strangle her; the next, he wanted to hug her.

Harry Branston decided to walk around the garden whilst waiting for Karen to return, and peered over the fence to look at the others. Two gardens down he could see a greenhouse and his face almost lit up.

A greenhouse?

A greenhouse usually meant fresh vegetables. If there was no family there, he thought, then great. If there _was_ , but they were too scared to come out of the house, then Pickle thought about raiding the garden and splitting the produce with the family. He had no idea about what could be available. It was nearing the end of June, so he didn't know what was in bloom and what wasn't. Did there need to be a special time of the year to pick the tomatoes? Would everything be edible? Had the products in the greenhouse shrivelled up because they had been neglected and were now overripe, if that was possible, or had the family already cleaned out the greenhouse anyway when the apocalypse was in full swing?

Karen returned to the back garden with a swagger. Pickle pointed out the greenhouse to Karen. "Excellent. We can check it out tomorrow," was her response.

"Good work with persuading that family to take in that poor wee thing."

"No problem," Karen smirked. "They were reluctant at first. Probably have got their own family to think about."

"But yer twisted their arm." Pickle winked and nudged Karen, proudly. "What was it? A bit o' emotional blackmail?"

"I just told them that the girl needed to be with people. And if they didn't take her in, she'd die."

"Good job. I suppose seeing that machete may have persuaded them."

"And the fact that I told them that if they didn't take her in, I'd torch their house."

Pickle looked at Karen with wide, disappointing eyes. "Yer shouldn't be threatening people like that, Karen. They're just frightened, that's all."

"Relax. I'm just kidding." Karen chuckled and slapped Pickle on the shoulder. "They were pleased to take her in. Apparently they've known her all her life."

Pickle stretched his back, ready for the arduous walk back up to Cardboard Hill, back to the cabin. With a heavy bag, he knew he was going to be exhausted once he had left the street, walked the length of the football field, and then hit the incline of the hill.

He confessed, "I'm never going to make another trip down here, not today."

"We can come back in the morning," said Karen. "We've got all the time in the world."
Chapter Twenty Eight

Jack and Johnny had walked nonchalantly through a street, and had no idea what was around every corner they approached. The dead either seemed to be everywhere or nowhere.

Curtains twitched as they walked through the lane, and one individual bellowed out of his bedroom window and asked the two men if they knew if there was anywhere safer. Jack thought that it was a bizarre question. If he knew that there was anywhere safer, he wouldn't be walking down this particular road in the open air.

There were potential hazards everywhere, and although walking down a street left the two men exposed, being in the open made it easier to see any dangers.

"I need to sit down." Johnny stopped walking and sat on someone's front garden.

Jack knew exactly where Johnny was coming from; he was also exhausted. Jack placed the crowbar onto the grass and sat next to the weapon that was lying inbetween the pair of them.

Johnny shook his head and asked, "How the fuck did you manage to stay outdoors for more than a fortnight? This is a nightmare; the longer the hours go by, the more the factory and starvation seems more appealing."

"It was worse than this at the beginning," Jack said. He then grabbed the chest part of the boiler suit he was wearing and wafted it to get some air on his body. "It's roasting out here, and these boiler suits are not helping."

"Look, even if we were wearing just our shorts we'd still be sweating our bollocks off." Johnny pointed up at the sun; there was only one solitary cloud in the sky. "That doesn't help, and neither does running from two big fucking Pit Bulls, avoiding flesh-eating creatures, and men who would kill you for a fucking banana."

"A banana?" Jack tittered.

"Oh, at last. A bit of hilarity from the cool Jack Slade."

"Look, Johnny." Jack placed his hand on the man's shoulder. "I didn't say it was gonna be easy."

"Look." Johnny pointed at his stained boiler suit where his legs were. "My thighs are fucking killing me. I've pissed myself twice in just a five-minute period—"

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously. Let's just find an empty house and crash for a few days."

To Johnny's relief, Jack nodded in agreement to his suggestion. He picked up the crowbar, and used it to get to his feet. With the bar, he pointed to a house at the end of the road. "That front door is open, which means two things: it could be empty, or there could be some of those things inside."

"I don't care," Johnny sighed. "I need a fresh change of clothes and a decent kip."

"Sounds good to me." Jack licked the roof of his mouth. It felt all wrinkly, telling him that his body needed fluids. "If it's clear, we'll see if they've got any running water. Do you want a drink when we get in?"

"Does a bear shit in the woods?" Johnny cackled.

Jack glanced at his companion with a stern look. "I don't know. Does it?"
Chapter Twenty Nine

Everything in the bag had been emptied and stored in the kitchen cupboards of the cabin. Wolf was delighted with the items Pickle and Karen had brought back, and asked if there had been any problems.

"Nothing we're not used to," Karen answered Wolf. "But you'll be amazed what we've been used to."

Wolf shook his head and patted Pickle on the shoulder and pointed at Karen. "Where'd you get this one?"

"Long story," laughed Pickle, and began to insert a couple of firelighters underneath the wood where Wolf had built a fire that hadn't been lit yet. Wolf was convinced they were going to come back with something, but had come back with more than he was expecting. He was more pleased with the bleach and batteries more than the food, and told the two that at least now they could drink water from the kitchen sink, if they wanted, without worrying too much about poisoning themselves. He was still adamant on getting his liquids from the barrel full of rainwater, but the sink-water didn't bother Karen and Pickle anyway.

They drank water whilst Wolf got the fire going; Pickle looked around the enclosed garden. For the first time in a long while, he felt safe. The fence around the cabin looked solid, and he knew that if there was even a tiny chance that those things could get up the hill, they'd still have to get through the solid perimeter.

He looked at Karen as they both sat near the fire, and she flashed him a smile.

"Are yer thinking what I'm thinking?" asked Pickle.

"Stile Cop?"

"Actually, no." Pickle took another swig of water that Wolf had given him. "I was just thinking, after everything that's happened, I didn't think we'd be sitting here. I don't want to jinx things, but this place is almost perfect."

"Apart from having to piss and shit outside."

"We should be used to that with the woods. At least we have toilet roll now," he guffawed.

Karen managed half a smile, suggesting she wasn't sharing his positive outlook, but it didn't dampen Pickle's spirits. Everywhere they had gone to had turned to shit after a couple of days, whether it was Stile Cop, the house in Heath Hayes, or the sports centre. Pickle could understand why Karen wasn't getting carried away. She was being realistic, not necessarily pessimistic.

Wolf was in the kitchen and it looked like that he was making a big pot of soup. He placed a metal rack over the now blistering blaze, and told them that once it was prepared, it'd take a while to heat up on the fire.

Going back to what Karen had said earlier, Pickle then asked, "Why does this remind you of Stile Cop?"

"Remember the fire? The food?" Karen smirked. "KP doing the barbecue?"

Pickle snickered, "And giving Jamie the shits."

A silence fell upon the two of them as they realised that they had been talking about people that were no longer alive anymore. Pickle dropped his head, and could feel his eyes welling up for KP.

"Poor KP," Pickle spoke with a quiver in his tone.

"Poor _everyone_ ," Karen said with genuine affection.

"Poor Grass, Laz, Jamie, Janine, Davina ... I wonder how David and little Isobel are? Man, she was the cutest thing I'd ever seen."

Karen smiled and nodded in agreement. "What about poor Jack and his family?"

Pickle nodded and sighed once he could feel his throat getting tighter with emotion. "That was the most heartbreaking thing I'd ever witnessed, seeing that woman and her son lying in that office."

"I wonder how Jack managed to ... well ... die?"

"Poor bastard was probably ripped to pieces like that Lee and Oliver kid at the gates." Pickle's sombre reminiscing wasn't helping his mood and wondered briefly what fate had in store for _him_. How was he going to leave this earth? Would it be painless or painful? He added, "There was nothin' I could do about Jack. After losing his son, he just gave up, like _I_ nearly did when KP went."

"No one blamed you," Karen appeased her male friend. "You led the group; but you're not a hypnotist. You can't control what people are thinking and feeling. Jack made his choice, and is probably better off where he is."

Thinking about things that had happened in the recent past, Karen wondered aloud, "I wonder how Paul and Jade are getting on?"

"Fine," Pickle said with heavy confidence.

"You seem certain."

"Paul's a tough bastard, and besides, he's got desperation running through his veins. He needs to stay alive so he can eventually find his wife and daughter. He mentioned going back to his house, if it's safe enough. Shit," cackled Pickle, "he's probably there now."

Wolf then appeared from the cabin with the pot of soup being carried with both hands. He gently put the soup on the metal rack and said, "One thing I don't have, and that's pepper."

"We'll put that on our shopping list for tomorrow," Pickle spoke with a chuckle.

Wolf knelt near the fire, wearing a set of denim dungarees, and began to stir the pot with a metal spoon. He was reasonably quiet and Pickle asked if he was missing his wife.

"Yes, I am," Wolf remarked. "But I'm mourning for the woman that had died two or so weeks ago, not that thing you killed and buried on the hill. That wasn't her. That was just evil that had taken over the shell she used to dwell in."

"Well this is a barrel of laughs," Karen spoke with a sarcastic tone wrapped around her words. Pickle was about to reprimand the twenty-three-year-old female for her crass and insensitive comment, but Wolf burst out laughing when she said it.

"You're not shy, are you?" Wolf shook his head whilst he continued to titter. "I know you said it was a long story," Wolf turned to Pickle, "but how did you two meet?"

"I was in the woods," began Pickle. "Karen was hiding and thought I was one of them, so she attacked me and broke my nose."

"I didn't break it," Karen protested. "It just bled a little. He went down like a sack of shit, though. _And_ he was carrying a handgun."

Wolf winked at Karen, telling her that he was about to try and wind Pickle up. He then turned to Pickle, feigning surprise on his face. "A big, strong lad like you, and you allowed this petite thing to knock you down?"

Picking up on Wolf's ribbing, Pickle spoke with a fake defensive tone, "In my defence, she _was_ well hidden."

"Still," Wolf cackled. "You're built like a bear, and Karen put you on your arse."

Pickle was starting to give up and was now ready for the soup that was now bubbling in the pot. Wolf could see his guests were getting hungry, so he stood up to get back to the kitchen to get three bowls and three spoons.

Wolf straightened his straw hat, stroked his grey beard and said, "I tell you what, Karen, you're a cracking girl. You remind me of my wife when I first met her."

"Hot, was she?" she joked.

"She certainly was." Wolf stared at Karen, admiring her natural prettiness. "You know what, Karen? If I was single, and forty years younger—"

"I'd be knocking you back right now."

Pickle and Wolf both laughed collectively, and Karen tried her best to keep a straight face so her dead-pan humour was more effective, but her face eventually cracked.

Karen stood to her feet and brushed the back of her trousers with the palms of her hands. "Fuck this. Let's get the wine open, and then we can tell you everything that's happened."

"Now yer talking, Karen," Pickle continued to cackle. "Now yer talking."
Chapter Thirty

June 26th

The two men had slept through the night. Neither one had arranged for one or the other to keep guard and take turns in sleeping; they were so exhausted once their backs touched the soft mattress that they had crashed right away.

When they arrived at the house and settled down after a few hours, they felt safe almost immediately. The house was locked and secure, and the street had no presence of the living or the dead, and no barricading took place this time before they went to the bedrooms on the next floor.

Jack was the first to wake; he sat up in the nude and rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. He looked around and noticed that the bedroom that he was in was probably one belonging to a teenage boy. The seductive posters on the wall of Cheryl Cole and Amy Childs suggested that the teenage boy was a heterosexual and probably used the posters for times whenever he felt horny. Jack looked at the posters of the two women and thought that they were more than likely dead now—either mutilated, or walking round like the rest of the deadheads.

Jack got off the bed and opened the cupboard that stood by the window. He wanted to check to see if there were any clothes that would fit him, as he didn't know whether the teenage boy was a schoolboy-teenager or a young man-teenager.

He looked inside the cupboard and it appeared that the family had packed before leaving, so it appeared to be a planned-leaving, rather than a spontaneous one. There wasn't much left in the cupboard, but Jack did help himself to some new briefs, a pair of black socks, a blue T-shirt with bright colours splashed on the front, and a cream pair of combats, which he was sure would not remain cream for too long once he went back out in the new world, but he was glad to be out of the boiler suit.

He heard a knock on his door and for some reason he asked who it was.

"Er ... it's Johnny," was the reply,

Jack opened the door and shook his head at his daft query, and had a small snigger to himself. "Morning."

"Sorry," Johnny looked around; he was in a slight jovial mood. "Were you expecting someone else?"

"Wasn't thinking."

Johnny was fully dressed, and it appeared that he had also decided on ditching the boiler suit, and had taken clothing from the man of the house's wardrobe. He wore blue jeans and a yellow polo shirt. "I've found a toothbrush we can share, no toothpaste though ... er, or water, of course."

"I need a drink." Jack ruffled his hair, looked at his fingers, and pulled a confused face as if he was unaware what to do next. "And a shower."

Jack walked out of the bedroom and sat on the top step of the stairs, and placed his head in his hands; he was still half-asleep. Said Jack, "There're those two litre bottles of sparkling water underneath the sink, that'll have to do."

"And a half bottle of diluting juice."

Jack looked at Johnny to see if he was having a joke, but his face told him he was deadly serious. "And how are you going to dilute the juice? You gonna piss in it?"

"No," Johnny snickered. "I'm gonna use ... the ... _oh_."

"You're gonna dilute it with water that we don't have, is that it?"

"I wasn't thinking."

"Don't matter. With the bottles of sparkling water under the sink, and the water left over in their kettle, we could stay here for a couple of days at least."

"And then what?"

"I don't know." Jack lifted his head, his eyes closed. He then began rubbing his temples with his fingers as if he was suffering from a headache.

"Not much of a plan."

Jack stood up and went face-to-face with Johnny; his countenance was full of rage and his fists clenched. "Well, what the fuck do you want, Johnny? Eh?"

Johnny was taken aback by the man he had helped to recover, and didn't understand the meaning of his outburst. "I..."

"When this thing first happened, I had a purpose to stay alive; I had a place I needed to go, but now ... now that I've lost everything and everyone I cared for, I have nowhere to go. I wish I could make this all go away, but the only thing that can do that is death. I tried to kill myself just a day after I lost my son and ex-girlfriend, but it never happened, and I'm glad it didn't. I still don't know why, but something inside of me still wants to live."

"I'm sorry." Johnny cleared his throat and dropped his head like a child that had just been reprimanded by a teacher. "I kind of look at you for answers 'cos you've been out there; you know what you're doing."

"I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm still only alive because of luck."

"Luck?"

Jack stared at Johnny, who could see that Jack Slade's eyes were filling up. Jack added, "Most of us that are alive are probably here out of luck. But is it good luck or bad luck? Are we really lucky to be searching around for drips of water and scraps of food, while the dead are out there wanting to rip you apart. There're also people out there that want to harm you for anything that would benefit _them_ , but weeks ago they could have easily have been your neighbours or your work colleagues. It's all fucked up. This whole thing is fucked up!"

"Again, I'm sorry."

"Just leave me alone."

Johnny did what he was told and went back into the bedroom, leaving Jack to sit on the top step and stare into space.
Chapter Thirty One

It was a beautiful morning once again.

June had been good to the middle of England—weather-wise—and Pickle was the first to wake. He was used to waking early from years of getting up at seven am when he was back at the prison, and he decided to take a stroll out of the grounds and onto the grassy hill.

He opened the tall gate and took a peep over his shoulder, as if what he was doing was wrong, and walked out and shut the gate behind him. He looked at the thick, tall fence that surrounded the area of the cabin and tried to push it with his hands, as if he was stretching his calf muscles. It was solid. Wolf had done a good job, for an old man that could hardly move. Pickle was convinced that he must have had help building it, but it wasn't something that was going to keep him awake at night.

With his feet covered in blisters, a result of days of walking in the woods, Pickle had left his shoes back at the cabin, and walked along the soft grass, barefooted. It was a well-kept hill, considering that in the old world it used to entertain joggers, kids and dog-walkers, and there was hardly a scrap of litter about or canine shit to be seen. Even though it had the nickname Cardboard Hill, it appeared that there wasn't much cardboard around either.

Although he was feeling the strain on his back, he slowly made his way to the very top of the hill, where he and Karen had their falling out, and the moment he arrived at the top, he sat his bum down and pulled his knees into his chest.

He glared up at the wonderful sun that shone down, and a smile emerged on his face. It was one of the few moments that Harry Branston was pleased to be on his own.

It was good to be alive, he reflected. The sun on his face, the greenery around him, and the soup and wine he had the previous night, made him thankful for what he had. The grave of Grace Kindl, ten yards from his left, was the only thing that soured the moment a little.

Harry stood to his feet and began to stretch his worn body; he then hit the ground and began doing press ups. He preferred pull ups, but any kind of exercise would do him. Even though he had had plenty of cardiovascular exercise over the days with the constant walking and the odd running episode from those creatures, it was good to do a bit of exercise on _his_ terms.

After ten minutes, a puffy Pickle wiped his brow with his forearm and decided to take advantage of the cool wind that was around at one of the highest points of Rugeley Town, and allowed the wind to cool his frame down after his short exercise session. Pickle now sat down with his legs crossed and looked up to the beautiful blue sky. He then mumbled, under his breath, a prayer:

"Father, thank you that you sent your son to bring me life. Life in the fullness. Life for eternity. Thank you that I share Christ's resurrection life. That Christ is alive in me. And his spirit dwells deeply in my being. Right now I receive your healing. I receive the same power that raised Christ from the grave. I receive your life. I receive Your strength."

A bird that he could not name, flew above him and had interrupted his spiritual time. Pickle looked with his hand almost covering his eyes from the blinding sun, but the bird had now disappeared. He was pleased to see that life for some animals and birds was going on as normal.

He continued, "Thank you that all things are possible for those who believe. Thank you that you are moving _in_ me right now. May I continue to receive from you. This hour and every hour. Amen."

He puffed out his cheeks and tears fell from Harry's eyes.
Chapter Thirty Two

It had been a mundane few hours for Jack and Johnny, and the two individuals had spent most of the morning sitting in separate bedrooms, thinking.

Johnny had spent most of the time reflecting about Jack's rant and the kind of 'luck' that the survivors had had in order to stay alive. Johnny's saving grace was the factory. It was secure; had food, and was a safe haven, albeit temporarily.

He had no idea the exact amount of time he had spent lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling that desperately needed painting. He was even unsure whether all the time he was in the room had been spent awake. He was certain he'd either had had a power nap or was drifting off when he got a fright. Whatever gave him the fright forced him go to the bedroom window that looked out onto the back gardens, but he couldn't see anything.

Johnny closed his eyes once again, even though he felt that his bladder needed emptying. He began daydreaming about the future, and what on earth was going to happen next. His daydreaming was short-lived however, as he heard the front door being shut.

"Shit."

His eyes opened as wide as they could, and despite the adrenaline coursing through his veins, he was unable to move. He had no idea why the front door of the house had been shut. Had Jack gone for a walk? Was he tired of Johnny and decided to go out there alone? Was it something else? Had one of those things got in? Or had the gang tracked the men down and wanted revenge for the treatment of their colleagues?

Johnny was still unable to move, even when he heard the slow, clumsy footsteps progressing up the stairs. Once the footsteps were heard on the landing, Johnny had found some energy from somewhere and quickly rolled off the bed and crawled underneath it.

He was now lying on his front, and already the sweat was trickling off of his forehead as he waited for whatever was outside the bedroom door to come in.

There was a knock on the door, but Johnny didn't answer. He was too scared to answer. There was a second knock, but straight after the knock, the door swung open, and all Johnny could see from where he was lying, was a pair of shoes.

"Johnny?"

It was Jack's voice.

_Thank fuck_.

Johnny slowly and sheepishly crawled from under the bed, and saw that Jack Slade was confused. Jack never bothered to ask him what he was playing at, and instead decided to speak to him as if his rant from earlier had never happened.

"I was speaking to the old woman next door," Jack began.

Johnny sat on the edge of the bed, wiping his brow. "Oh, so there _are_ some people alive in the street then."

Ignoring his remark, Jack continued, "Apparently the street has hardly seen any action during the outbreak. Mrs Doyle, the woman next door, said that in the three weeks, she had only seen two monsters go by her front window."

"So what are you saying, we should stay where we are?"

"Well, because the street is relatively hidden, and people have chosen to stay indoors, there has been nothing to attract these creatures."

"Did you ask them about those looters?"

Jack nodded. "She said that she has never seen anyone like that. She even said that she pops over the road to her friends for a cup of tea and a chinwag every evening."

"Those idiots are only a matter of streets away," said Johnny. "It may well be rosy in the garden for Mrs Doyle and her other coffin-dodger friend, but it's only a matter of time when their food runs out or those crazies, both dead _and_ that gang, come here and rob them." Johnny then suddenly looked at Jack with befuddlement and scratched his bald head. "And how on earth does she get a cup of tea when the electrics are out?"

Jack shrugged his shoulders. "Camping stove, maybe."

"Is that it?" Johnny stood to his feet and bent over to touch his toes and stretch his back.

"No." Jack sat down on the bed, next to his friend, and added, "She also said that she has a daughter and a granddaughter who, in the first week of the outbreak, had fled to Armitage, but only got so far because some men had blocked the road off. They eventually allowed them to stay. This information was given to her when the mobile phones were still working. Anyway, the blockade is at the Spode Cottage."

"The pub?"

Jack nodded, and then teased, "And what's behind the Spode Cottage?"

It had been years since Johnny had lived in that area, but he answered, "I think I can remember a massive hedge, eight feet in height that no one can get through."

"And what's inbetween the back of the pub and that hedge?"

Johnny thought for a moment and couldn't find an answer.

Jack sighed, "The caravan park, of course."

"Of course," Johnny said in a whisper. "Do you think they'll let us in?"

"Only one way to find out."

"But how are we gonna get there? It's three miles away."

Jack pulled a face that didn't give Johnny too much confidence, and tucked both of his lips in whilst he began to think. Jack reached into his back pocket and pulled out a set of keys and shook them.

Said Johnny with confusion, "They're the jeep's keys."

Jack nodded slowly, slightly mocking Johnny. "Yes they are. And we're gonna get our wheels back this afternoon."

"What if those twats have taken it?"

"Then we come back here."

"I dunno." Johnny stood up, and was all tense again, and began pacing the floor. "Why don't we steal a car from the street?"

"Have you _seen_ the old cars in this street?"

"So what? Give me a sane reason why we should go back for that jeep?"

Jack could see that just the thought of going back had turned Johnny into a bag of nerves. "I'll give you three reasons. Reason one: I don't wanna be stealing a vehicle from some poor soul who's gonna need it in the future. Reason two: Even if I wanted to steal a car from the street, I have no idea how to hotwire a car anyway. Reason three: The jeep's perfect. It's got gas, and it's solid. It's exactly what we need. And ... Reason four: It'll be fun."

"You said _three_ reasons," Johnny sighed, "and that last one wasn't funny, by the way."

"You have two options, Johnny." Jack took on a more serious tone and stared at his companion who was far less enthusiastic than Mr Slade. "You can either come with me and possibly go to a place where it may be secure, and have other people we can be around with plenty of food—"

"You don't know that for sure; there could—"

"No I don't," Jack interjected. "Or, you can stay here for the next few weeks, hiding, drinking your own piss, and eating the leaves and the grass from the back garden, 'cos that'll happen eventually if you decide to stay here. You can't order online for food anymore; those days are gone. You're gonna have to go out there and get it for yourself."

"Yes, I know that," Johnny snapped. "Don't patronise me."

"So what's it to be?"

Johnny held his arms out as if the answer was blatantly obvious. "I'll go with you."

"Good." Jack headed for the bedroom door and opened it to leave. "Be sure to have a piss; we go in ten minutes."
Chapter Thirty Three

"Another trip or so, and we should be okay for a few weeks," Wolf said with excitement coated in his words.

At last, there seemed to be a little light at the end of the tunnel. Before the arrival of Karen and Pickle, Wolfgang Kindl had envisaged his future of getting food by collecting mushrooms and berries from the nearby woods, and putting out traps for any kind of animal that came along.

Karen disappeared into the cabin, leaving the two men in the garden, and grabbed the bags for the next supplies trip.

"There're are a few people living in that street," Pickle said. "I think we should try another street in the future. We shouldn't get too greedy with this street. They'll need supplies themselves, and I don't think they're the type o' people to go out and hunt and loot for stuff."

Wolf cackled and looked at Pickle. "If they have a family to feed and they're starving, trust me, they'll do anything to survive. Once the food runs out, these barricaded folk that have boarded up their doors and windows will eventually come out."

"And the trouble with that," Pickle added, "is if these people eventually come out, more could be attacked—"

"Meaning more of those deadheads will be produced. By the time desperation kicks in, the people will be more dangerous than the creatures out there. There's a good chance that this cabin will be owned by new people in a few weeks. I've always thought that one day people will come up here and kill me, asking no questions, then take over the place. Then a few weeks down the line, the same will happen. This is one of the safest places in the town. No one has ever tried to get in, apart from you and Karen, but they'll come. As soon as the hunger and the dehydration kicks in, they'll leave their homes, kill their neighbours, maybe, then one or two will come up here."

"You seem certain."

Wolf continued, "If you had a young son, and he hadn't eaten for days, and you live in a world where the land is in a lawless state, what would you do to keep your child alive?"

"A lawless state or not, I'd do anything."

"Exactly."

Karen then emerged from the cabin, and threw Pickle his bag. "What are you two talking about?"

Pickle grinned and said, "Oh, Wolf was just cheering me up."

"Just being realistic, Harry." Wolf patted Pickle on the shoulder and with his old, tired legs he walked back into the cabin whilst Karen and Pickle left the premises.

"Make sure you lock the gate," Pickle shouted over to the occupier, and strolled through the grass in the glorious sunshine with his female partner beside him.

They walked in a comfortable silence and went down the decline and through the gap in the tall, surrounding hedge. They both slowly walked along the football field, scanned the spacious area, and enjoyed the warm rays heating up their skin.

"This'll be possibly our last time in this street," Pickle announced to Karen.

She nodded in agreement and said, "We can try the other street behind it, once we run out of supplies in the cabin. If there's anything left."

"That's exactly what I said to Wolf." Pickle smiled and was in agreement with Karen. "Like I said to David Pointer, when he was firing questions at me about survival: Let's just live for today and not worry about tomorrow."

"It would be nice to stay in the same place for a while, without running from those things every other week."

"I think our safest place was the multi-storey car park after what had happened at Stile Cop."

"No, it wasn't," Karen laughed and waggled her head. "Safe from those things, maybe, but not safe from death itself. Another day up at that place and I would have thrown myself off from the boredom."

Pickle stopped walking and looked at his friend. "We've been through some shit, me and you, haven't we?"

"You could say that. This is how it's gonna be from now on."

"I know; after all o' those things we've killed, avoided, and ran from, in a few weeks' time our own death could be something we never would have envisaged, something unjust."

"Like?" asked Karen.

"Well, like being shot for our bags o' food, or the cabin gettin' stormed by some desperados."

"You're a cheery fucker, aren't you?"

"I was talking to Wolf; he had a few things to say, and some o' them made sense."

" _He's_ okay; he's sixty-nine-years-old, he's had his life."

Pickle looked at his female companion with disappointed eyes. "Karen. That ain't nice."

"Aw, come on. He's had a good innings. Do you honestly think _we're_ gonna have the opportunity to reach that age?"

"Probably not, but he _is_ doing us a favour."

"Yep, and we're doing him one as well."
Chapter Thirty Four

Jack, along with the reluctant Johnny, left the house and took the keys that were sitting by the teapot in the kitchen, just in case they needed to come back for whatever reason. The forty-year-old then slipped the keys into his back pocket, whilst the car keys were in his front, and walked along with his companion.

The walk itself looked innocent enough, with the exception of a hammer slipped into Johnny's belt buckle and Jack carrying the crowbar in his right hand. The streets were unusually and eerily quiet, as if it was a typical early Sunday morning, and most people were inside and in their beds, nursing hangovers.

Jack had no idea why there were very few of those things, and thought that they must have been enticed in their droves by something beforehand.

Jack thought back to the day when Gary had set fire to the Porsche, in a desperate attempt to push them back, and it exploded and took Gary and himself off of their feet. It seemed that hundreds were behind them that day. Maybe they kept walking and walking, and a lot of them from the Rugeley area had cleared out because of this. But what about the ones that had reanimated inside their own homes from day one? Were they still indoors?

Johnny, on the other hand, couldn't care less about the reason why the streets were barren with life—and death. Long may it continue, he thought.

One of Jack's questions were answered immediately when he saw to the left of him, two reanimated poor souls, inside their own living room—he presumed—trying to claw and slap their way out at the blood-covered panes of glass. Their excitement intensified once they saw the two males casually walking by.

Focusing on the task in hand, Jack faced forwards and continued to stroll, and as soon as they came to the end of the street, Jack crouched down and waved Johnny back. They looked down the long road of Crabtree, and could see the black jeep sitting at the side of the road where they had left it.

"It hasn't been touched." Jack's posture was a man now brimming with confidence. "All we need to do now is take the jeep and get the fuck out of this town."

"As simple as that?" Johnny was a lot more sceptical than Jack. "What if it's a trap?"

"A trap?" Jack tried to stifle his laughing. "I think these guys have got their hands full with robbing the houses in the area. Anyway, they think we're dead, remember? Don't worry. We'll be fine."

"I hope you're right." Johnny still seemed unsure. "I just hope that they haven't drained the fuel from the jeep and fucked off, otherwise we'll be going nowhere fast."

Ignoring Johnny's remark, Jack ordered, "Follow me."

Jack decided to cut through the back gardens in order to get to Kerry's old place a different way. They jumped over fences and climbed over hedges with little fuss. Then once they were near Kerry's back garden, they stopped. Jack crouched down behind a hedge and could see that the garden was empty of life, just like the ones that they had ran through to get to their destination.

"What do you think?" Jack asked Johnny.

"Does it really matter what _I_ think?" Johnny said, with the sound of self-pity in his voice. Johnny knew that whatever he suggested, Jack would rarely take his advice anyway. He had no idea why his companion asked him for his opinion.

"I suppose not." Jack grinned and patted Johnny on the shoulder, letting him know that he was joking. "Come on."

They climbed the hedge and fell into Kerry's garden. Jack then told Johnny to wait round the back of the house whilst he had a look around the front. Johnny did what he was told, then Jack came back and told him the road was clear.

"No one there at all?" asked Johnny.

"They must have left and picked another street."

"Bastards!" snarled Johnny. "I hope they get what's coming to them."

Jack took out the car keys from his pocket, and beckoned Johnny to go with him. Jack pressed the fob and the jeep unlocked. Both men jumped into the vehicle and quickly drove away with no hassle from other outside forces, both alive and dead.

Johnny quipped, "Well, that was easy."

Jack made a right turn and speeded up down a long road called Green Lane. "Don't be too sure," said Jack, and nodded up ahead where a car was coming the other way.

"Is it one of them?" Johnny asked, as he was unsure, but Jack recognised the vehicle and turned the jeep off the road, into the playing fields. The car followed.

Both men stayed silent whilst the other car gave chase and followed closely behind them. Jack slipped the jeep into fourth and floored the gas pedal. He veered left, throwing him and Johnny to the side as the jeep took the sharp bend, wheels screaming, and straightened the car up. The jeep then drove onto a large play park and they were on the grass once again.

Jack asked stridently, "Johnny, how we doin'?" Jack couldn't see what was going on. The back wheels span and spat up dirt so much that it was hard to see through the back window via the misty rear-view mirror.

"Not a lot." said Johnny, peering out of the back.

"Be a bit more fuckin' specific than that," Jack snapped, smothered in tension. "I mean: Are they close?"

"Pretty fuckin' close."

Jack turned the wheel and the vehicle swerved left back onto the road. "How many in the car?"

"Two."

Johnny could see that Jack was lost in thought, despite the fact that he should be fully concentrating where he was going.

Johnny questioned, "What's up?"

Jack responded, "Maybe we should stop the jeep and take our chances." He then pointed to the crowbar, sitting in the back of the jeep.

Johnny was confused. "And do what? Run?"

"Beat them to death."

Johnny shook his head and slowly dropped it into his hands. "Just keep driving. They'll give up eventually." _Please give up_.

Jack slipped the jeep into a lower gear, and the car behind seemed to be getting closer. He floored the gas pedal once again; the tyres of the jeep screamed out as the vehicle made a sudden sharp turn to the right. They were now along the main road into the town centre, and Jack could see up ahead that there was a crowd of the dead lingering around a roundabout called The Globe Island.

He had no idea why they were hanging around that area. Maybe a kill had taken place.

"Hold on," instructed Jack.

Seeing that he wasn't joking and that Jack Slade was planning on ramming the vehicle through the eighty-strong crowd of the dead, Johnny cried, "Oh Jesus," and braced himself for impact.

Out of habit, both men were wearing seat-belts and jolted forwards as soon as the steel bumper hit the front of the horde. It felt like it had hit a brick wall, and Johnny kept his eyes open and witnessed dark blood and brain matter hit the windscreen with a disgusting splat. Thankfully, the windscreen never cracked, and Jack kept his foot fully-down no matter what.

The jeep had made it through the crowd and they heard the car behind try and replicate what the jeep had done. It should have been easier because the jeep had caused significant damage through the centre of the group, but the car was just a Mazda with very weak protection.

The vehicle was stopped in the middle of the crowd, and the surviving ghouls that hadn't been mowed down by the jeep, surrounded the car. Jack stopped the vehicle, once they were in the clear, and he and Johnny stared out the back, looking at the stationary vehicle from fifty yards away.

Whether it had stalled, or the sheer mass of the bodies had stopped the Mazda from moving, they were unsure.

The two men in the jeep could not see anything because of the horde. Somehow the things had got inside the vehicle, or had pulled the men out, because Jack and Johnny could hear the screams of the two men as they were being eaten alive.

"The sooner we get to that place, the better." Johnny looked at his driver.

Jack never responded to Johnny's comment; he simply used the windscreen washer button to wash the glass in front of him, and then he put on the wipers to move away the debris that had been created by a one and a half tons of metal that had ploughed itself through a group of rotting and diseased beings.
Chapter Thirty Five

Karen and Pickle weren't far away from the back of the estate, and they began to chat as they continued to stroll along the football field.

Asked Pickle, "So what would yer be doing now, if this whole end-o'-the-world thing wasn't happenin'?"

Karen laughed, "You make it sound so trivial."

Pickle never responded to Karen's remark; he continued to glare at her for some kind of answer. She then pulled a confused face and said, "I don't know. I'd probably be getting out of bed after my nightshift. I usually sleep till late afternoon. Then hang about in my pyjamas and watch crap TV. Then Gary would come in from work; I'd make him a meal that dogs wouldn't eat." She laughed to herself after making that remark, but Pickle could see the melancholy in her face. Karen continued, "I would then get ready and kiss him goodnight, and go to work around eight or nine in the evening."

"Shit. That routine sounds worse than the one in prison."

They ambled in a few seconds of silence and Karen took a peep at Pickle's back and scowled in thought.

"What's wrong?" he queried.

"You're right earlier. You _do_ seem to be losing a bit of weight. I'm sure that back was a lot more muscular when I first met you."

"Aw, come on. I ain't lost that much muscle mass."

"You seem to be a little hunched over as well," Karen began to tease. "This whole apocalyptic scenario is ageing you pretty quick."

"Cheeky bitch. I'm only forty-three."

Karen pointed. "Here we are."

They had made the concrete path and had stopped at the end of the familiar street. Karen scanned the area before taking another step, and was satisfied that, once again, it looked reasonably peaceful.

They both entered the street, and Pickle pointed at a house on the left. "Let's try that one. That's the place that has the greenhouse in the back garden. It seems vacant."

"What makes you so sure it's vacant?"

Pickle stopped walking and looked around the small street. "Well, the front door is open, and there's blood smeared all over the front of it. If there's anyone inside, it's o' the dead variety." He pulled out his machete, and Karen copied him. "I'll check upstairs again and yer can start filling yer bag."

They entered the house with careful footsteps, and with paranoid eyes they scanned the place; their eyes were constantly on the move. Once it was apparent that the ground floor looked uninhabited, Karen went into the kitchen and took more tins, whilst Pickle mooched about upstairs.

Pickle reached the landing of the house and could see that all four rooms—three bedrooms and a bathroom, he presumed—had their doors shut. Because there was little light, it felt like night-time in the place.

He reached for the bathroom door and, with his machete at the ready, he pushed it open and had a quick peep inside. The bath was filled to the brim, suggesting to Pickle that there were, or used to be, people inside during the beginning of the outbreak. 'Filling the bath with water' was one of the many tips that had been broadcasted on the radio in the first days of the disaster.

Staring at the three closed bedroom doors, and now thinking that they may be people inside, Pickle closed the bathroom door very quietly, and went to the first door to his left.

He knocked the door with his middle knuckle and awaited a response. He didn't know why he was doing this. He didn't _need_ to do this. If there were people hiding, then they were obviously scared, so it wouldn't make a difference if Karen and Pickle looted the house or not.

Pickle cleared his throat and began to speak, "If there's anyone in here, or yer can hear me from the other rooms, I'm just passing through. I mean no one any harm."

Pickle paused and felt a little foolish. What if there was no one inside?

His presence remained by the frame of the door, as he was aware that if there were people inside, there may not necessarily be hiding in a corner, shivering with fright. They could be aiming a shotgun at the door, waiting for Pickle to go in.

There was no verbal response from behind it, and Pickle was in two minds whether to just go back downstairs and help Karen out. But what if there were children in that room?

"Okay," Pickle said. "I'm coming in. Just remember, I come in peace."

He pushed down the handle and tried to push the door open, but it wouldn't budge. It was locked or barricaded.

Suddenly he heard a male's voice from behind the door. "Leave us alone."

"Who's in there?" Pickle gently questioned. "Yer alone, pal?"

"No, I'm not alone." The man added, "I'm in here with my two daughters. Please, don't hurt us."

Pickle was confused with the man's pleading. "Why would I hurt yer?"

There was silence from behind the door, and the man finally spoke. "I heard from a frightened resident that, a few streets away, four men in a pick-up truck had been raiding houses, regardless whether there were people in there or not."

"Did this ... _resident_ happen to know what they looked like?"

"All she said to me was that there was one of them with greasy black hair, tied in a ponytail, with a horrible grin."

Pickle was convinced it was the same four men that had attacked them a while ago, the same men that had shot dead the middle-aged man and woman that had kindly gave them a ride a few days previously, and the same men that were responsible for the splitting up of his group when he and Karen ran for their lives one way, and Paul and Jade ran the other way to avoid a shotgun cartridge.

Pickle said, "Do me a favour. Open the door."

"I-I can't do that," the man stammered.

"Let me talk to yer, face-to-face. I have a machete, if I wanted to come in and hurt yer, I could anyway."

"You might be one of those men."

"I'm not one o' _them_. I'm with a woman. We're here to get food, but if I'd known there were people in here..."

"Take what you want. We have enough in _here_ ... for now."

Pickle remained by the door and could hear movement coming from the room.

"Okay," the man spoke out. "I'm letting you in."

"Good man. I swear to God I'm not one o' those idiots."

The man began to remove furniture from the door. Pickle then heard speaking and a little girl asked him what he was doing, in a frightened voice. The father appeased his daughter and slowly opened the bedroom door to be greeted by Pickle's warm smile.

"May I come in?" Pickle asked.

The man was in his thirties, dirty-looking, and small in stature with blonde hair. Pickle stepped into the room and saw his girls, sitting in the corner. The place wasn't a mess; it looked like any kind of bedroom with the curtains closed.

Pickle looked at the man, then looked at his scared girls.

"This is ridiculous." Pickle couldn't help himself. "What are yer doing, hiding in here?"

"I'm trying to protect my girls."

Pickle then heard Karen shout up from downstairs, "I'm done!"

Pickle bellowed back, "Be down in a minute! Wait outside for me."

He then turned his attention back to the father. With his forefinger, Pickle beckoned the man to follow him. "Come with me. Yer girls will be fine for a moment."

Both men left the bedroom and Pickle shut the bedroom door. He and the man were now on the landing. Pickle quickly checked the other two bedrooms, that were thankfully vacant, and then stared at the man and shook his head at him.

The man, who never introduced himself, asked nervously, "What is it?"

"This is yer home, right?" Pickle interrogated.

The man nodded, but had no idea where Pickle was going with this little talk of his.

"Then take it back, for fuck's sake, before somebody else takes it."

"What are you talking about?"

Pickle looked exasperated and spoke in a passionate rant. "Those things are out there, and there're looters out there, and yer hide in a bedroom and claim yer protecting yer daughters, seriously? Yer front door was wide open; yer have a greenhouse in yer back garden with all kinds o' vegetables yer could live on—"

"I have no idea where you're going with this—"

"Grow some fucking balls, man! Yer got two daughters to think of. This house should be a fortress."

"I have no weapons, I—"

"Yes, yer have," Pickle growled. "Do you have a set of knives downstairs?"

The man nodded.

"Then yer have weapons. Yer got a hammer?"

The man nodded.

"Then yer got weapons. Yer got a wooden handled brush or mop?"

The man nodded.

"Right," Pickle sniffed. "Tape a screwdriver or a steak knife to the handle o' one o' them, and yer have a spear that could gouge out one of their eyes from five yards away. Think!" Pickle placed his forefinger to his temple and began tapping it.

The man cried, "I was just scared. My wife was killed in the first week—"

"Well, I'm sorry about yer wife, but there're two other girls that need yer now. You've got a bath full o' water in yer bathroom, that's a brilliant start, because I think that the running water is ceasing up now. So whatever yer do, don't drain it."

"Okay." The tears ran down the man's cheeks, and he shivered in fright. Like most people, he wasn't adapting to this new world. Even though he had two little girls that were relying on him, he was falling apart.

Pickle added, "I'm gonna leave now, and I'm gonna shut the door behind me. I expect yer to block off yer doors and downstairs' windows. Then yer can take yer daughters out o' that stuffy bedroom and give 'em a different change o' scenery before they lose their fucking mind." Pickle pointed his finger into the man's chest and added, "This is yer house; keep it that way."

The man wiped his tears away and accepted his reprimand. "You're right."

"Right," Pickle sighed. "I'm gonna go for a piss in yer downstairs' toilet, and then I'll be on ma way."

"Don't flush," the man pleaded. "Apart from number twos, we've been avoiding flushing in case it attracts those things."

"Well, with the lack o' water, I'm not sure that's gonna be possible anymore." Pickle turned and winked at the man. "I hope yer got plenty o' buckets."

Harry Branston then walked down the stairs and began whistling.

"Will I see you again?" the man called out.

The back of Pickle's head nodded and he responded, "I might be back later, just to check on another house or two. You and yer daughters, stay safe, ma friend."

"You too."
Chapter Thirty Six

Thirty-year-old Sharon Bailey awoke from her nap; she could feel a draught as if a window had been left open or had been broken. She could then hear them downstairs. _Fuck!_

She had no idea how they managed to get in, but they were in! She had only killed eight of them since the outbreak, but was certain she'd feel no hesitation in destroying more, if that was the only option she had.

For the last two days she had stayed in the house, fed off the scraps of food that were left, and lived on the two-litre diet coke bottles to put some kind of fluid in her body. It was now time to move on.

Even with those things loitering on the ground floor, she had a couple of options to explore. She could either jump out of the bedroom window to escape, or climb down the drainpipe of the house to reach the clear back garden. The problem with these options were that there was a high risk of injury.

If she damaged her leg, foot, ankle, or anything else, it could result in her spending her days walking through the streets with an injury—a handicap that could be detrimental to her survival.

The other option would be to peer down the stairs, wait until the front door area was ghoul-free and make a run for it, out into the street. The trouble with this option was that it was also a risky one. She had no idea why and how many of those things had crashed through the living room window. There could be just the one, but there could be many more.

She couldn't see from looking down the stairs from the landing, and being spotted was something she was trying to avoid. She had noticed that climbing wasn't their strong point, but if she was spotted and they began to group together at the bottom of the stairs, she'd have to forget about the option of running out of the front door.

She was hungry and thirsty, and didn't want to wait another day longer.

She then paused for breath and crept halfway down the stairs. She could see the curtains blowing out and shattered glass on the carpet, sitting underneath the window, and it appeared that one, or some, had forced their way through the window and had fallen in. Two other creatures were outside trying to get in, but were struggling.

She had been waiting there for long enough now, and knew that her hesitancy could be her downfall. She checked to make sure she was still carrying her cleaver; it was still there.

Seeing there was just the one ghoul in the living room, she galloped down the stairs and made a run for the door, twisted the knob, and pulled it hard. But it wasn't moving. This had alerted the lone ghoul from the living room and the female could see that the thing stumbling towards her was reaching out, and was now only yards away.

She drew her cleaver and smashed the weapon into the front of its cranium. It fell forwards, with the cleaver still embedded, and fell on top of her. She released a shriek as the they both fell together, and her consternation was doubled when she saw another two emerging from the kitchen area that she hadn't seen before.

She had very little time to get the thing off her, as well as remove the weapon from its head. The two things walked towards the panic-stricken woman and she had finally managed to get the fiend off her. As she got to her feet, she was grabbed by the first creature and she swiped at its legs, making it fall and giving her valuable seconds. She went back over to the defunct body and pulled the cleaver out with both hands. She then kicked the second one that was making its way over, and it fell as her sidekick smashed into its knees.

She went back over to the door and realised she had the lock on, which was the reason why she couldn't open it in the first place. She gave the lock a twist and shut the door behind her as she fled the house. The two ghouls in the house began to smack their hands against the door, unhappy that their 'meal' had escaped.

There was another two on the front garden, and they quickly went for her. She knew that a house in the next street was vacant, as she saw the family flee in their car, but she knew that if she didn't remove these two problems, they'd follow her and probably could potentially cause problems for other people in the area.

She pushed one of them over, which gave her time to concentrate on killing them separately. Whilst the fallen creature was now slowly crawling along the floor, she took out a knife from her back pocket and rammed it into the right temple of the other ghoul. It fell to its knees and went face down onto the concrete drive.

The other creature continued crawling towards her, as if getting to its feet was an action too hard for it to perform, and this made it easier for her to kill it. She went around it, grab its hair and pulled its head back with her left hand, and hacked at it with the cleaver until it stopped moving.

She wiped the few specks of its blood from her face and wiped both sides of the cleaver on the lawn. She then tucked it into the belt, that was holding up her green combats, and Sharon Bailey walked out of the front garden and headed for the abandoned house she had her sights set on. She constantly twisted her head from side to side and was pleased, and surprised, that no more dangers lurked around, for now.

She then looked down at the bracelet hanging off her wrist, and released a smile. But there was pain behind that smile.

*

Once the black jeep passed a place called The Ash Tree pub, Jack and Johnny reached an incline in the country road. Jack dropped a gear and was now a matter of minutes of reaching the tiny village of Armitage. The blockade could be seen up ahead, half a mile from Armitage, and Jack began to slow down.

At the left hand side of the road was The Plum Pudding pub, with the canal behind it as well as a few barges. To the right hand side was The Spode Cottage, a pub/restaurant, and further on, behind the area, was the caravan/trailer park.

The road into Armitage was blocked off by a HGV parked across the road, twenty yards in front of the two pubs, and another three cars were parked lengthways in front of the HGV. Standing on top of the HGV, all holding shotguns, were three men, and the same set-up applied fifty yards away so there was a two-way block in case they were attacked on either side.

Once Jack stopped the vehicle and turned the engine off, he slowly got out of his means of transport, but Johnny remained inside. Jack raised his hands and was impressed, but more surprised, that neither men pointed their weapons at this strange man who had appeared from nowhere.

"Hello." Jack's welcome was greeted by silence by all three men. Jack continued, "We were told that this place is pretty much the only safe haven around here. Could I ask you gentleman if you are you taking in more residents, or are you full?"

Still ignoring Jack, one of the men on the left turned to the middle man and told him, in a voice that Jack could hear, to go and get Vince.

Jack lowered his arms, realising the men had no intention of pointing their weapons at him and put his arms behind his back, patiently waiting for this Vince guy to turn up. Jack remained silent, knowing that the men on top of the HGV were not in a talkative mood—unless they were ordered not to talk to outsiders—and fortunately he didn't have to wait long for Vince to show up.

The tall man, known as Vince, stood on the HGV inbetween his three 'soldiers', and flashed Jack a welcoming smile. "Alright, mate?" was the greeting. "How's it going?"

The welcome seemed genuine and warm, and Jack was relaxed immediately. "Not too bad. I was wondering—"

"One of my guys tells me you'd like to stay here, is that correct?" Vince was straight to the point.

"Yes."

"How many of those things have you killed?"

Without pausing, Jack answered, "Too many to count."

"And what about him?" Vince pointed at Johnny, who was still sitting in the passenger seat of the jeep.

Jack sighed, "Well, I'll be honest with you. I don't think he's cut out for this kind of world."

"Who _is_?" Vince began to laugh and then nodded towards the jeep that was covered in many bodies worth of blood and other debris. "Ran into a bit of trouble, I see."

Jack nodded. "It just this minute happened, back in the town centre."

Vince's eyes narrowed with suspicion at Jack's small story. "So are you really here because you want to stay, or are you just running from someone or something, and we happened to be in your way with this road being blocked and all?"

Jack looked over his left shoulder at Johnny, and then looked back up to Vince. "We're sick of running, that's all. We want to live."

Vince climbed down the HGV with protests from one of his men. Vince told him to shut up, and swaggered over to Jack once his feet touched the floor. He stood five yards away from him and began to look him up and down.

Jack also checked out Vince. He was tall, but he had no muscle mass around his body that would worry the average guy. Vince was definitely a few years older than Jack, mid-forties, maybe, and his grey head of hair did nothing for him if he had any aspirations to look younger. His face was also in a bit of a mess, and appeared to be covered in old scars or scratches.

"You don't look much to me." Vince grinned, and looked Jack up and down once more. "You look like you could lose a fight with a three-legged dog."

Jack cackled, "I look meaner when I'm holding a crowbar. Especially the one sitting in the back of that jeep that I've used many times."

Vince liked Jack's response, but he was unsure of taking in outsiders. They had nearly forty people on the caravan site, and the more people they had, the more food and water they needed to keep the large group alive.

Said Vince, "We've turned six people away in the last few days; we don't really need anymore, my friend. Some people come here to get to Armitage, realise the road's blocked and then turn back. Others come here because it's a lot quieter than that other shambles of a blockade at Sandy Lane."

"So what's _your_ story?" asked Jack.

"Most of the people in here, like me, were living here in the first place, in the park."

"So you've accepted no outsiders?"

Vince nodded. "Some. Mainly relatives of the people that live here."

"And how'd you get those guns?"

"Inquisitive little monkey, aren't you?" laughed Vince. "Some of us used to go clay shooting before the shit hit the fan, as our American cousins say."

"Look, even if it's just for one night, can we stay?" There was pleading in Jack's voice.

Vince was lost in thought for a minute and threw his head back and began to breathe heavily. Jack thought that this was bizarre behaviour, but chose not to say anything. Vince lowered his head back down so that he was making eye contact with Jack once again. "If you wanna stay for a while, you need to prove your worth."

"How?"

"You can go on a trip tomorrow morning." Vince looked up to the sky and could see that the evening wasn't far away. "We grab supplies from places and stock them up in the Spode Cottage."

"You can't rely on looting forever."

"Don't you fucking worry, boy," Vince cussed. "We have a well, we have animals round the back, and a massive chicken-pen. But if there's food out there, we may as well take it before some other twat does."

"It seems a bit soon to already be having this kind of set-up after just three weeks, don't you think?"

"Not really. The caravan park was already here. All we did was block the roads off. It's hardly rocket science." Vince then began to titter and shook his head. "Three weeks. It feels like three months, don't you agree?"

Jack did agree. Especially the few days when he spent time in the woods, alone. They were the longest days of his life. Months? It felt like years!

"Stay in one of the caravans for the night. We're going on a run, to get more supplies. And you two look like you need some rest. They'll be a guard outside your door. No offence, but we hardly know you, and you look like the type of men that would steal old ladies' knickers and shag goats," Vince began to cackle loudly, "so I think the guard will be necessary."

"Thank you." Jack reached out to shake Vince's hand.

Vince shook Jack's hand and said, "Some caravans are empty because some folk decided to leave; one family had actually killed themselves. There are eight empty caravans out of the twenty that are here." Vince then pointed at Johnny, and beckoned him out of the jeep; he then turned to Jack. "We'll get your vehicle on the premises later. Right, let's get a drink. My mouth is drier than a nun's crutch."
Chapter Thirty Seven

June 27th

Karen wasn't feeling very well, so Pickle decided to travel on his own. Karen had been sick through the night and had put her sickness down to the water she drank before she went to bed, but she wasn't entirely sure. Pickle thought that it had something to do with the full bottle of wine she had consumed, but decided to keep his mouth shut to avoid an unnecessary argument with the twenty-three-year-old woman.

Pickle told the two worried folk that he was a 'big boy' and that he could handle whatever was thrown at him. There was a lack of medication inside the cabin, and Pickle had convinced Wolf that with cupboards of medication just sitting in abandoned houses, it'd be ridiculous not to make just one more trip.

In a last, stubborn attempt, Karen left with the forty-three-year-old to go back to the street for medical supplies. It didn't work out, as she only managed a few hundred yards before she threw up on the grass whilst they were heading for the gap in the hedge. Pickle frogmarched her back to the cabin and told her jokingly to get some rest or next time she was going to get 'bitch slapped'.

Wolf had managed to get a reluctant Karen to settle down, and the exhausted female had fallen asleep in the bedroom of the cabin.

Pickle had now gone through the hedge and was on the football field. He could see, near the edge of the field, a lone Snatcher, probably making its way to the bottom of the hill to spend the rest of its days crawling to a cabin it could never get to.

Pickle drew the machete from his belt as the thing had spotted him, and the ghoul was now picking up its pace towards the survivor. It was a pointless attempt by the beast; with one swing of Pickle's arm, the creature's head was sliced in half. The cranium from just above its eyebrows was removed and fell to the ground with most of the black diseased brain going with it. Pickle looked at the bloody machete with a little surprise. He had taken Wolf's advice and had sharpened it on a stone that sat in the corner of the garden, but he never realised it was _that_ sharp. The effort it took to remove its head was minimal.

Unruffled by what had just occurred, he entered the same street and knew for a while that this could be the last time he visited. The cabin was well stocked, and it didn't seem fair to strip more supplies from the street, considering there were other families dwelling there. He also didn't want to get too attached to the people. He knew that the more he conversed with the survivors, the more guilt would eat away at him once he left there whilst he went to his secure cabin, with its huge supply of food and water. So this was another positive of not having to go back.

He knew he couldn't save the world, but it wouldn't stop his mind being plagued with shame if he got to know some of the folk, and then had to leave them and make his way back to the comfort of the cabin. But his small group needed medication of some sort for the future, just in case, so this particular trip was vital.

He walked into a house that had its door left ajar and looked around, taking extra care round every corner he approached. This was the second house he had checked. The first house seemed to have no medical supplies at all. Pickle assumed that maybe the family took medical stuff with them before they left— _if_ they had left.

The empty houses confused him slightly. He wasn't sure that families that were missing had fled in their cars to go elsewhere, or had fled on foot at the height of the disaster, when the street was more-than-likely crawling with the ghouls. The lack of human blood on the roads and pavements in this particular street suggested that very little slaughter had took place during the start of the outbreak. People had either hidden, were killed in their homes, or moved elsewhere, either on wheels or on foot.

This time he decided not to check upstairs. He wanted to spend as little time as possible and get the hell out. He managed to find a cupboard that had painkillers, and other medications. He then crouched into the darkened kitchen and took out tins of fruit and tuna to put into his bag.

"Need a hand down there?"

The female voice startled Pickle. He spun around on his heels and stood up straight so he could get a good look at the young woman. She was dressed in green combats, a black T-shirt, and was holding a meat cleaver in her right hand that, judging by the stains on the steel, had seen action not so long ago.

"I'm sorry," Pickle spoke. "I didn't realise this was yer house. I thought it was vacant. The door was left open."

"It is ... vacant, that is. It's not my house; I'm just doing the same as you." She ruffled her short brown hair and Pickle had noticed she had the biggest and most striking blue eyes he had ever seen on a woman. Despite that her clothes had seen better days and her face and fingers were decorated in dirt, possibly some dried in blood from killing those creatures, Pickle could see that in the old world, this woman used to be a very pretty individual.

"Harry Branston," Pickle held out his hand, "but most people—"

"Call you Pickle," she interrupted with a small smile on her features. "My husband's sister was married to a guy called Branston. He had the same nickname."

"Oh. So where is..?" Pickle stopped his question in mid-sentence, but it was obvious what he was going to ask.

"My husband?" The woman sighed, but it wasn't a sigh that was filled with sorrow; it was one of those sighs that suggested impatience, as if she had already told the story a hundred times before, and now had to repeat herself again. "I found that he had turned into one of those monsters, and had eaten my seven-year-old son."

Pickle was stunned by her matter-of-fact statement and she looked cold in her facial expressions, almost as if she had shut down her emotions, or was pretty damn good at hiding them.

Without pestering the woman for any more information, he apologised to her for her loss and asked her if she had come to stay in the house.

"I was thinking about it. I was just upstairs, checking the place out." She smiled and said, "We could share, if you want."

Pickle shook his head. "That's okay. I have somewhere." Pickle then pulled out a small empty bottle and began twisting the tap of the sink to fill it up; the water was trickling out. "Not too sure what's happening at the moment with this damn water."

The woman said, "Water facilities, although automated, still depend heavily on people to operate them. When those people stop going to work or have been attacked, then the water will stop shortly thereafter. In an ideal world people would keep a twelve-volt battery-powered water pump. If the power goes out for long enough, so will your water and water pressure. The pipes in the house alone likely have many gallons. You can get water from water heaters, the chlorine can keep them fresh."

Pickle laughed, "You used to work for the water-board or something?"

"No." She shook her head, her face was blank.

His laughing ceased immediately.

She continued, "You're lucky water has been running this long."

"How do yer mean?"

"If people can't go to work to keep the facility operating, then after three days water quality starts to degrade, as the chemical tanks start to run empty after three or four days. This will not be noticed as there will still be a four or five day supply already in the reservoir. So doing some simple math: after four days the water situation is normal, but should start to degrade. After six days the reservoir is half-full of untreated water, and after eight days the reservoir is _full_ of untreated water. At this point the water will not be safe to drink, but the automatic systems will still be pumping water into the distribution system. At home all you would need to do is boil your water for it to be safe."

"The electricity's gone now, though," Pickle spoke up.

The woman added, "After fourteen days the generator stops and the system shuts down."

Pickle was lost in thought and said, "I suppose the sanitation will be a concern as well."

She nodded in agreement. "We're only in week three, but eventually people will die from unsanitary conditions. Then we'll have all kinds of diseases to look forwards to. Cholera is an excellent example of a waterborne disease that is a direct result of decomposing animal tissues in a water supply. Thirst will drive people to the nearest supply of water, then many will die on the banks and contaminate the lakes and rivers."

"How do you know all this?" Pickle asked.

"Google. I read about it in the first week."

"I never caught yer name."

"That's because I never gave you it."

Pickle cracked her a smile and waited patiently for her to introduce herself, and continued to stare at the mysterious thing.

"Sharon." She held out her hand. "But Shaz'll do."

"Okay, Shaz." Pickle looked around the kitchen and opened his arms. "It's all yours. There's plenty o' food left." He winked at the woman and walked by her with his bag hanging off of his shoulder and said, "I'll see yer around," as he left the premises.

"Maybe."
Chapter Thirty Eight

Vince had only been running the camp for just under three weeks, and already the many residents looked up to the forty-nine-year-old. The place pretty much ran itself. Vince would get his own crew to sort out the minor problems such as caravan fittings, drainage and any problems with the running water. He, on the other hand, would spend most of his time either guarding the blockade or going out on a run and getting supplies.

The residents had given him a medical list, as there were a few people who needed medication such as painkillers, asthma inhalers, and tablets for some or the elderly who had high blood pressure or angina. Vince could only get _some_ medical supplies, and although most chemists had been emptied by the end of the first week, there were still newsagents that would sell medical gear, but nothing too hardcore.

Vince had an idea to go to Stafford Hospital and see what was there. He had a feeling that it may have already been pillaged, and it could also be crawling with the Rotters. But a van full of medical supplies could keep the camp going for months and would also, and more importantly, as far as Vince was concerned, make him look good.

He knew that the longer he waited, the less chance that there would be anything there. They were doing fine at the moment, but the trip to Stafford Hospital could be an experience that would benefit them in the long-term. The only trouble with the journey to Stafford wasn't just the hospital itself, which could be littered with all kinds of dangers, but the place was eight miles there and back. This meant that the actual trip could be littered with hazards even before they got to the hospital, and a lot of petrol was going to be used up for the journey.

It was something worth thinking about, but it wasn't just the paranoia of going to the hospital that bothered Vince. He would have to leave the camp for at least a couple of hours and this meant leaving the people exposed, as it wouldn't be worth the risk going with just two people. He needed all of his blockade people and at least two pick-up vans to make the one-time trip worthwhile.

Vince only had a few people to lean on when it came to some kind of security; only a handful of shotguns were available and they were hardly top-of-the-range equipment. He needed more men; most of the residents were elderly or too scared, and they put their efforts into what they were good at in order to help the place keep running smoothly.

Security was a problem.

Vince was selective in his choice, and although a few others had volunteered, they looked nervous as hell just holding a shotgun. Vince thought it'd be better to have small numbers and people who were able to fight, rather than large numbers with men and women who could be a hindrance and a danger to the rest of the group.

He wanted Jack on board.

Jack was a man, like everyone else, that had been thrown into the deep end and had been managing to tread water so far. The trouble with Jack was that he was a good guy, _too_ good in fact. Vince wanted to see for himself what Jack was capable of.

If he wanted the camp to survive, the people out on a run had to be ruthless. He had never killed another human being to get what he wanted, as Vince tried to raid places that were already empty, but if he had no choice in the matter, he felt he could shoot another person if his back was against the wall.

Rather them than me.

*

Jack had fallen into a deep sleep, and with the comfort of being in the caravan park and having a certain amount of security around the place, he slept soundlessly. The only trouble with Jack was that his dreams were being hijacked and plagued with macabre images.

In the dream, Jack was back in the woods, walking along a dirt path. By his side was Karen, Pickle, Jade and Paul. It was as if the dream had re-written history and he had managed to catch up with the small group once he had escaped from the sports centre. The dream didn't really highlight how he had managed to catch up with them, but in the old world his dreams had always been erratic, vivid, surreal, and sometimes downright weird, and that was put down to Jack's over-indulgence of alcohol.

All five of them had been walking through the greenery for a number of minutes, and Jade had noticed that there were two ghouls to the left of them.

Jack and the rest of the group had decided to run away from this minor danger, and as they ran, Jack could feel himself slipping further and further behind the four of them. He tried to call out, but neither one was dropping back to help him. He continued with the hapless run and took a look over his shoulder to see that the two creatures had now disappeared from his view. Once he turned back round, he could feel the ground beneath him falling from his feet and he fell into a huge, manmade hole.

Filled with panic, he looked up to see that the huge square hole was ten feet in height and was a considerable length that must have taken days to create. Jack had no idea what the hell was going on, and as he looked along the dark ditch, he could see numerous bodies lying on top of one another, as if they had been killed and been dumped on top of one another, like something out of a holocaust picture.

Jack gulped and could feel his heart in his mouth. He glared hypnotically at the bodies at the end of the ditch, and his eyes widened once he saw the first one, the one on top of the pile, beginning to move.

Its limbs twitched and its head rose up, as if it was a drunk individual waking up and not having a clue where they were and how they had got there. Then it slowly and clumsily climbed off the small pile and dropped onto the bottom of the ditch. It got to its feet finally, took a curious look at Jack, and began moving towards him.

Jack squinted in the darkness and could see that it was a man called Robbie Owen moving towards him—the security guard from the Glasgow hotel Jack had woken up in. Jack then heard movement up above him and saw a grinning Pickle, Karen, Paul and Jade standing above him, watching the drama unfold.

Jack tried to call out to them to help him get out of the ditch, but his voice was lost, and this made the four individuals titter amongst themselves.

Pickle then said, "I think yer better off with this, Jackie boy." He threw the crowbar into the ditch and Jack picked it up. This was followed by manic laughter above him from all four of them.

Trying to shrug off the surreal event, he took a swing at Robbie and saw him fall with ease. He could now see a second body getting off the pile, and this one appeared to be Gary. Jack shook his head at what was coming towards him. Gary looked ashen, and his throat was slit, just like it was back in the supermarket. Again, Jack took another swipe and saw Gary's head obliterate into a bloody mess. It fell to the side and never got back up again.

Two more bodies began to stand up from the pile, and at this point, the four people who stood above him were mocking Jack, clapping and calling out his name as if he was being egged on in a boxing match: _"Ja-ckie! Ja-ckie! Ja-ckie!"_

Jack was getting tired and watched as the two things got nearer. He could only see the silhouettes of the ghouls. One was about five-five, and its shape suggested that it was/used to be female. The other was much smaller, just under four-feet in height. Once the penny dropped and Jack knew who they both were, he began to cry.

As the two creatures got nearer, a broken Jack Slade dropped the crowbar onto the floor, fell to his knees, and sobbed uncontrollably. He could feel them getting nearer, but remained on his knees with his hands around the back of his head, refusing to look at the pair of them.

As their groaning grew louder and their footsteps got nearer, Jack took a deep breath in, waiting for the indescribable pain to come once the two ghouls, that used to be Kerry Evans and Thomas Slade, began ripping him apart.

As soon as he felt the cold hands on his head, Jack Slade then woke up in the double bed.

It wasn't like waking up from a nightmare that you would see on TV or in the movies. Jack never shot up and screamed out his son's name. He never cried out and burst into tears. He simply opened his eyes quickly, looked around the caravan he had been sleeping in, and could hear his temporal pulse hammering away inside of him.

He slowly sat up and wiped away the few trickles of perspiration that were present on his forehead. He looked at a clock that sat on a set of drawers. It was a few minutes after eight in the morning. He got out of the bed, wearing just his shorts, and searched around the caravan.

But there was no Johnny. Where was Johnny?

They had both slept in the same caravan, but his saviour from a few days ago had now disappeared. Jack tried not to be too alarmed as he was aware that it could be something trivial.

Maybe he had gone for a walk, a cold wash, or just a general nosey round the place.

There was a rap at the door and Jack went over to open it. He was greeted by a smiling Vince.

"How's tricks?" asked Vince. "How did you sleep?"

"Like a drunk baby."

"Good," laughed Vince. "Get dressed and I'll show you round the place."

Jack looked confused; he turned his back on Vince and looked around the caravan with his sappy, blurry eyes. "Where's Johnny?"

"Don't worry about him. He's taking a shit in one of those portaloos."

Jack rubbed his eyes, still slightly scarred by his dream, and looked around for his clothes.

"Oh, and before you come out with me, take these." Vince handed Jack a small bottle of water, a tooth brush and a small tub of toothpaste. "That friend of yours smelt pretty bad. We don't want you walking around with bad breath as if you've just eaten out a lamb's shitter."

"Charming." Jack shook his head at Vince's choice of words, and took the toothbrush, toothpaste and water off of him. "Be two minutes."
Chapter Thirty Nine

"How you feeling?" asked Wolf.

Karen had slept more than she wanted for her nap, and was now making an appearance for the first time since the morning.

She yawned and looked around the garden. Wolf had made another small fire, and was cooking potatoes, still with their skin on. Wolf nodded towards the potatoes. "I hope Harry comes back with more butter; I have missed a baked potato."

"So have I, but I thought he was going down for medical stuff?"

Wolf nodded. "He has. Anyway, I think we'll be fine for a few weeks now. I assume that it's not so bad down there, right?"

Karen sat down and glared into the fire. She was starving and the potatoes smelt lovely. "There were a few isolated incidents, but nothing we haven't seen before." Karen brushed her greasy brown hair behind her ears and lowered her head to look at the grass by her feet.

"I suppose you're not feeling too strong with all that vomiting." Wolf smacked his lips together and ran his fingers through his grey beard in thought. He adjusted his straw hat and said, "I'm gonna go inside and get you some water; you're probably dehydrated."

Wolf returned quickly and gave her a cup of the clear stuff. Karen took the cup off of Wolf and thanked him. She held it with both hands and shivered.

"You okay?" Wolfgang Kindl looked at Karen with concern on his phizog. "You don't look so good."

"A bit of fuel for my body and I'll be fine." Karen finished the water in one, and slowly stood to her feet.

"Where're you going, young lady?"

Karen sighed, "For a walk. I need the toilet anyway."

"Yeah," Wolf's face looked apologetic, "I'm sorry I don't have any toilet facilities. This cabin was purely designed for an overnight stay at the most. I'd normally just pee in the corner of the garden when I used to come up here. I never even had running water at all until six months ago."

"You don't have to apologise for anything." Karen leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "You've got nothing to apologise for. We're eternally grateful for you taking us in."

Wolf lowered his head and blushed a little. He went inside the cabin and came back out with a kitchen roll in his hand.

Karen smiled at his generosity and thoughtfulness. "Just rip one sheet off that bad boy. I only need a number one."

Wolf did exactly that and told Karen that she could do it in the garden and that he promised he wouldn't look. She refused and told him that she preferred to be out of the grounds altogether. Once she left, he put the rest of the roll back in the kitchen and sat by the fire, attending to the potatoes.

Karen was still baffled that the cabin had no sanitation, and then suddenly cursed herself for being so ungrateful. She was now feeling weak and went a bit light-headed.

She headed for the top of the hill, but it was a hell of a struggle. Once she managed to get to the top, she relieved herself on the grass. Once she had wiped herself with the sheet of kitchen roll, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion as she was unsure what to do with the used sheet; she wasn't used to using a sheet over the last few days of living in the woods.

She threw it on the grass and walked a few yards forwards before sitting down. The day was cloudier than what she had been used to in the last couple of days, but the temperature was still high and the climate was muggy and stifling.

Her thoughts were gloomy and this had been the weakest she had felt in ages. The last time she felt this bad was when she was nursing a hangover after Gary's birthday party. She had no idea what it was. Was it something in the air? Something she ate or drank? She had no idea, but at least the sickness had disappeared.

Just a twenty-four hour bug, she thought.

Whatever it was, she was certain that after plenty of fluid and one of Wolf's meals she'd be right as rain.

She beamed as she saw the frame of Pickle in the distance. He was making his way across the football field, then disappeared temporarily behind the hedge, and then reappeared once he walked through the gap in the hedge. He looked up the ridiculously steep hill and saw Karen sitting at the top. He waved up at her, and she waved back.

He then began walking straight up to her, instead of walking up and slightly veering left towards the cabin. She watched as he struggled to get to where she was, and she was becoming tired just watching him making his way up.

Once he was a matter of yards away, the out-of-breath man slipped off the bag and dumped it on the floor and slumped next to Karen.

"This hill's getting harder and harder to climb," he moaned, then turned his head away from Karen and spat on the grass. "Ma back's killin' me."

"That'll do for now." Karen rubbed her head and was feeling the beginning symptoms of a migraine. "Hopefully, what you've got in that bag should fill that cupboard. What goodies did you get?"

"Medical stuff and some more tins."

Karen looked up at the sky and could see the clouds had grown darker and were looking more hostile. "Looks like it's gonna piss it down."

"Good," said Pickle. "That barrel that's attached to the guttering o' the cabin needs filling anyway. I'll get some buckets out and they should be nice and full for the morning. That'll keep our paranoid host happy. I don't know why the old bugger just doesn't drink from the tap." Pickle peered at Karen, and had noticed that she wasn't listening to him. "How are _yer_ feeling now?"

Karen then stood up and stretched out her arms like someone would, once they had woken up. "Okay now. I'm gonna grab my machete and go for a wash."

"What? Where?"

"There's a stream back into the woods." Karen looked at Pickle for a reaction, but he was struggling for words.

"Don't yer wanna wait a few more days?"

Karen shook her head and said, "Wait for what? Until the flies find me repulsive? I'm starting to smell a bit."

Pickle snickered, "We're all—"

"And I'm starting to make myself sick with it."

"Yer not as bad as Wolf."

"God, have you smelt that man?" Karen placed her hand over her mouth, feeling a little guilt for slating a man that had taken them in. "He actually smells like a sewer."

"Go, by all means. But I'm coming with yer."

"Fine. I better let him know. He thinks I'm just out for a pee."

*

After dropping the bag off and telling Wolf that they were heading for the stream in the woods, Karen and Pickle took the ten-minute walk down the other side of the hill to the wooded area, and wasn't surprised that there was no other entity there. Once they had reached the bottom of the hill, where they had a conversation a few days ago before they came across the cabin, they ventured into the woodland and could hear the running stream almost immediately.

"We should really check this place out now and again for those things." Pickle turned away as Karen began to strip, and decided to talk to dilute any embarrassment that he was feeling.

"What for?" Karen said with bemusement. "When we split from Paul and Jade, we walked through these woods and didn't come across one single Snatcher. And even if the odd one did turn up through the woods and reached the bottom of the hill, they couldn't get up. We've seen them try and get up on the other side, through the gap in the hedge. They're rotting away. The atrophy should make it difficult for these things to walk properly, let alone climb the hill."

"We can barely make it up ourselves." Pickle agreed, and released a small chortle and scratched at his thin beard.

"Exactly; so stop being paranoid."

"I know _they_ probably couldn't make it up the hill, but I'm also thinking about human beings, people that could do us harm."

There was a silence from behind Pickle and all he could hear was the gentle running of the stream. It appeared that Karen had stopped washing herself, but Pickle didn't want to turn around in case he saw Karen naked. She nodded in agreement. "I think you may have a point there. I suppose it wouldn't harm to check it now and again. I mean—Fuck it!"

Pickle asked, "What?"

"I forgot a towel."

Pickle smiled and shook his head. "Bradley, I really do think yer losing yer mind."

*

He took a jug of water and dipped it into the barrel; he then added a spot of bleach and left it at the side of the sink. He knew the remainder of the hill would hurt his back and his knees, but Wolfgang made a decision, now that his guests were out of the way, to go up and visit his wife.

Even though there was no headstone as such, Pickle had made an effort to make a small cross, and even without that, it wouldn't take a genius to know where she was buried.

It was a struggle, but once the sixty-nine-year-old man reached his wife's grave, he took his hat off, wiped his brow, then sat down next to the shallow grave.

"Well, my dear," he said. "I think it's fair to say that you're in the better place, away from this ... nightmare." Wolf patted the earth that covered her and sighed, "What the hell's happening? Why now? Why is this happening now?"

He could feel the bottom of his eyes filling with water, and sniffed, "Thank goodness we don't have grandchildren. That would have made it even more heartbreaking. I hope our kids are okay, though. Even..." Wolf allowed his sentence to trail and cleared his throat.

He looked to the side of him at the grave. He wished he was in there with her. It wasn't as if his kids needed him anymore; they were grown adults. They never really needed him when they were children.

He spent most of his life working, whilst his wife stayed at home. She was always there for the kids when growing up. She took them to school; she picked them up. She sat and helped them with their homework. She made them dinner. She took them to bed, and she read them stories.

He was more of a stranger that they only really saw at the weekends, and even then, he'd be out with his pals, getting drunk.

"Damn," he blasted. "I wished I'd been a better father ... _and_ husband. This shit does really make you think."

He bent his aching legs, brought his knees up to his chest, and looked out at the view. He lowered his head and began to sob. He totally let himself go. His sobbing continued for another two minutes, and once he had managed to gather himself together, he wiped his bloodshot eyes.

Wolfgang Kindl then reached for his hat, struggled to get to his feet, and before walking away, he looked at the grave and blew it a kiss. "I love you, my darling. Always have. Always will."
Chapter Forty

Jack followed behind Vince as the tall man began to give him a tour of the place. Jack had never been to the caravan park when the world was normal, so he was pleased that Vince was showing him round. It was a small place really; there were many caravans and a manmade fence was made in a square shape where they had put three cows, and next to that was a chicken pen. Vince explained that a local farmer had asked for refuge, and Vince allowed it, especially when the widower said he would bring his stock with him.

Vince said, "Since the power went out, things have been a little more difficult, but we have diesel generators to keep things ticking along nicely."

"Did you stay here before it all happened?" asked Jack, unsure whether he had already asked him this question before.

"Yep. I've lived here for three years. Even before the announcement on the Saturday night, I knew something was wrong. With the riots and biting epidemics that were reported, it didn't take a genius to work out something was amiss, but people just chose to ignore it. Unless it's on their doorstep, people don't like facing up to major problems. It's like the guy who finds a lump in his balls and refuses to go to the doctors, hoping the problem will go away. But the problem, and the lump, doesn't go away, it just gets bigger until it's too late."

"What's your arsenal like?"

"My arsehole?" cackled Vince.

Jack shook his head at Vince's attempt at humour.

"Not good." Vince was blunt with his answer to Jack's question. "We have a couple of farmers in here, that's how we got the animals, we never stole them. We have half a dozen shotguns, but that's it. If any gang comes here, loaded to the teeth with top-of-the-range weaponry, then we're all fucked in the arse."

"That's reassuring," Jack responded with sarcasm.

"I can't see it somehow, though," Vince spoke with conviction. "We're not really a country that has an abundance of guns. Unless we get attacked by the army or a gang of ex-drug dealers, I can't really see anyone trying to force their way in."

"Vince!"

Both Vince and Jack turned around to see a young female, her right hand was holding a hunters knife.

"What is it, Claire?" asked Vince.

"We've spotted four Rotters heading towards the truck."

"Rotters?" Jack laughed. "Is that what you call them?"

"What do _you_ call them?" Vince questioned.

Jack shrugged and struggled to answer. "I don't know; a woman I briefly knew called them Snatchers."

Vince's face grimaced. "Aren't they the creatures from Harry Potter?"

"Dunno. I was more of a Lord of the Rings kind of guy."

Vince stepped towards Jack and placed both of his hands on his shoulders and said, with a smirk, "Well, my precious, it's time to prove your worth to the group. Get that Johnny friend of yours back here, and meet me at the blockade."

Vince walked away and ambled alongside Claire. It appeared that they were both heading to the main road, back to the blockade area. "Oh." Vince stopped and turned around and smiled at Jack. "You're gonna be needing that crowbar."

*

Jack and Johnny were taken to the centre of the blockade. On each side of them were vehicles blocking off the main road into Rugeley and to Armitage. The usual way to get on the other side of the barrier was to go through the cab doors of the HGV, that was parked across the road, and out the other side. Vince beckoned both men to follow him, and they climbed on top of the HGV, near where two of Vince's lookout-men stood.

Once this was achieved, Vince beamed and pointed down to the lane. The men were standing on the cab and were about twelve feet high-up from the road. They looked down and could see four of the creatures stumbling about.

Vince began to speak, "Usually when we get some strays, my guys usually take care of them, but now it's your turn, gentleman. You need to prove your worth. We already have enough females in the camp who can cook, clean and some can even fight. We don't need anymore dishwashers."

"You have women who cook and clean?" Jack laughed, and remarked sarcastically, "I applaud your twenty-first century thinking."

"I'm not being sexist, Jack, but every man knows that the best way to get a dishwasher to work is to start kissing the back of her neck." Vince chortled, and his buddies joined in with the hilarity, and he continued to snicker at his own joke.

"That's very funny," Jack said with a huge pinch of mockery. "This is just one big boy's club."

Vince held his hands up. "Seriously, we're working together, using our strengths. It just so happens most of the people that go out on a run, are men. And besides, I hate washing clothes. I'd rather take a shit in my hands and clap."

"Charming." Jack scratched at his stubble and was finding this Vince character a hard person to like.

"Jack," Johnny looked at Jack, pleadingly, "I'm not sure I can do this."

He was overheard by Vince and was told, "Well, Johnny, if you refuse, I'm kicking you both off the camp right now. And from what Jack was telling me earlier, you have a nice little horde waiting for you in the town centre. I don't take too kindly to people wasting my time, and I might even keep the jeep for the overnight sleep you got out of me."

Jack snapped at Vince, "I already told you that I've killed before."

"Then this should be a piece of piss," Vince laughed. "But I need to see for myself." Vince's voice then turned to a more serious tone. "If you bump into any of those things and freeze out there while we're getting supplies, you could cost the whole team."

Jack looked at a petrified Johnny. "It'll be okay."

Johnny grabbed onto Jack's sleeve and whispered, "But I've never killed any of these things before, you know that. We can make a run for it and make a left turn into the woods. I heard about this place on Cardboard Hill—"

"Let's just do it," Jack sighed, and was getting a little tired of Johnny's bellyaching.

Both men had managed to climb down on the other side of the barricade before the four ghouls had reached it. They were seconds away and Jack looked at a petrified Johnny.

"Here," Jack yelled, and passed Johnny his crowbar in return for Johnny's knife. "This'll be easier for you."

Like a boxer, Johnny skipped backwards in order to avoid the things, but Jack wasted no time. Three of the things used to be female and the severely bloated one wearing a dirty yellow dress, held out her arms, only for Jack to grab her left arm out of the way and drive the knife into its left eye socket. Seconds after the disgusting squishing noise, the thing fell as soon as Jack withdrew the knife.

There was no time to spare, and it appeared that Jack had drew the short straw. Not only did he only have a knife, although that was his choice, he also had to contain the other two that were approaching him, whilst the crowbar-wielding Johnny had just the one creature to destroy. _Typical!_

Jack could see Johnny take a half-hearted swing at his only attacker, and although his life could be in danger, Jack felt a little angry with Johnny. He had had it easy so far in the new world, compared to most other people, and now all he had to do was kill one of them, and he was struggling to do that!

Two of them simultaneously went for Jack and he side-stepped out of the way, fooling them both. The two were wearing casual clothes, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with their attire covered in blood—their own, and probably their victims.

Female One went for Jack; it appeared that it used to be a teenager, probably who had a boyfriend, a brother or sister, and a mum and dad. Now here was Jack Slade ramming a knife into the front of her skull.

It took a few vital seconds for Jack to remove the stubborn blade from the penetrated skull, and had to take a step back when Female Two tried to grab him and gnashed its teeth, biting thin air. He ran around the corpse of Female One and could see that Johnny was wrestling with his ghoul, and had dropped the crowbar on the floor and yelled out as they both fell to the ground.

Jack was now face-to-face with Female Two and tried to penetrate his weapon into the front of its head, but the knife practically bounced off the skull as if it were made of steel. He tried again, but this time he threw his arm as if he was throwing a right hook and the knife pierced and buried itself into the right temple of the creature. It staggered a little, like a drunk, and fell to the ground with a thump, the knife going with it.

Jack was exhausted and could hear Johnny scream out as the thing was still on top of him. Jack picked up the crowbar and dragged the monster off of Johnny. The thing was on its back, trying to get up, but Jack rained blows from the crowbar, completely obliterating the skull until its face was unrecognisable.

Out of puff, Jack turned around and could hear Vince sarcastically applauding him. "Bravo, Jack. You're gonna fit in just fine round these parts, but I fear for your friend."

Johnny was still lying on the ground and Jack tried to help him up.

"Leave him!" Vince called out.

Jack looked up at the tall, grey-haired man and shouted, "I'm not leaving him. It's both of us or neither of us."

Vince placed his hand on his heart and mockingly feigned tears. "I'm touched. I really am."

With a shotgun in his hand, he jumped down to meet Jack and began walking towards him. Vince's eyes scanned the bodies and pointed at the almost headless one that Jack had dealt with by crowbar. "That's my favourite." He then glared at Jack seriously and told him to move away from Johnny.

"What?" Jack was perplexed by his command.

"Just do it." Vince's jovial nature had disappeared, and Jack wasn't going to argue with a man carrying a loaded shotgun.

"He'll get used to it." Jack tried to defend Johnny's pathetic attempt at destroying one of those ghouls. "He'll be able to kill one of those things eventually."

"I don't think so."

Johnny was exhausted, and was now kneeling up with his head lowered and his back to Vince and Jack. Without a second of hesitation, Vince brought up the shotgun and unloaded a cartridge into the back of Johnny's head. As bloody debris was thrown forwards from the massive wound, the body of Johnny slumped to the floor, his skull, blood and brains were scattered in front.

"NO!" was all Jack could muster. Jack's eyes widened with disbelief and he kept on looking back and forth from Johnny's body to Vince. Did it really happen? Despite the nightmare rollercoaster of a ride Jack had endured, he was still able to be shocked by the barbarism this new world had to offer.

Vince explained, "Even the women have taken out some of those things, even some of the teenagers. I'm sorry about Johnny, but this is just not his world."

Jack stared at Vince in disbelief and angrily took a step forwards, but Vince reminded him by pointing the smoking gun, that he was in control, not some man holding a crowbar.

Vince then lowered the gun, told Jack to keep well back, and walked over and crouched down to Johnny's body. Vince picked up Johnny's right floppy arm, to reveal that he had been bitten in the bicep. "I'm not an animal, Jack," he explained, and released the arm. "I wouldn't shoot someone for no reason. He was fucked. His hesitation and lack of balls had cost him his life. That's the first time I've ever shot another person before. I'm sure it won't be my last."

Vince then looked up to the sky and could see that the evening was drawing in. "Get some sleep, Jack. You're going out on a run tomorrow morning." Vince then looked up to the individuals standing on top of the HGV and pointed at Johnny's body. "Burn him with the rest."
Chapter Forty One

June 28th

Pickle was the first to wake up. He yawned and stretched and had spent another night sleeping under the stars. Karen had opted for the couch this time—blaming Pickle's snoring, and Wolf was in bed as usual on the first floor. He was just starting to get used to sleeping without the tied-up Snatcher that used to be his wife a few weeks ago.

Pickle looked up to the heavens and could see that the dark clouds were threatening to soak the area. He estimated that the time was around seven am and quickly stood to his feet. He could hear the whistling of the wind as it screamed its way around the perimeter, dying to get in. Pickle's heart increased a little once the tall gate began to rattle. He knew that the area was solid, but it wasn't set in stone that those things couldn't get up the hill.

He took his machete out of the ground where he had driven it before going to sleep, and headed for the gate. He thought about telling the other two of his intentions, but decided to leave them be. Even if they did wake up and were suddenly worried where he had got to, especially Karen, that was _their_ problem. He was an adult, not a prisoner anymore, and could go anywhere he wanted. He didn't need permission.

As he left the premises, he prepared himself for the steep climb. The beginning of the steep walk was already putting a little strain on Pickle's knee joints, and he could understand, at the age of sixty-nine, why Wolf was quite happy to stay where he was, because at forty-three, Pickle could also feel the aches and pains of walking up and down the hill over the last couple of days, and _he_ regarded himself as a fit individual.

Once he reached the top, he turned around to take in the view, but before he could sit down, his eyes were attracted to something from afar. Smoke could be seen across the estate since day one when they had arrived, but this time Pickle could see, quite clearly, a house on fire in the first street, the same street they had been gathering supplies from.

He knew that their looting days were over for now, but twinges of guilt were urging the man to go down to see what was happening. He looked over to the cabin, then looked back at the estate and the street where the burning was coming from.

He thought about the families that were down there, the father and two girls that he had met the other day, and Shaz—although he was pretty certain _she_ could handle herself.

He was lost in deliberation; he tapped his fingers on the handle of the machete that was tucked into his belt, and suddenly came to a decision. He shook his head. _Sod it!_

He knew that he couldn't save the world, and his lack of selfishness could put his own life at risk, but his intrigue was strong and there were children down there. He was certain Karen would give him a lecture about going alone again, but he was pretty sure that he could get to the street, find out what was amiss, and return by the time Karen and Wolf had emerged from their sleep, as it was still early.

Pickle walked down the hill, with his machete already drawn. He then made the trip across the football field before reaching the street. There was no sign of death as such, but he knew that with the house on fire at the end of the street, it wouldn't be long before the Snatchers arrived in their numbers.

He could see a woman on her own with a bucket in her hand. She then poured the bucket down the drain at the side of the street; the metal grid had already been removed. As she poured, what looked like to Pickle, body waste down the drain, Pickle put the machete back into his belt so he didn't look threatening, and walked towards the middle-aged woman.

"How yer doin'?"

Her response was a quick nod of the head. "I've seen you about," she said. "Mainly with that young girl."

"What happened?"

"Someone stuck up for themselves," she quickly nodded over to the burning house, "and paid for it."

She wasn't really making sense to Pickle, and then suddenly he saw something that he hadn't seen in the street before. It was two Ford Focus cars, and it looked like the same vehicles that belonged to the four men, the same men that had blocked the road a few days ago, the same men that killed that poor middle-aged couple that had gave Pickle and co a ride. It was also the same four men that were responsible for Pickle and Karen splitting from Paul and Jade.

His eyes were now sharp and was aware that the men could appear outside from the houses at any time, but the trouble was that he didn't know which house they could be in. Pickle tried to rekindle the conversation with the woman before bolting, because he certainly didn't want to bump into those four men again.

"So where are they now?" he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders, stating that she had no idea.

"Did they kill whoever was inside?"

She shook her head. "They raided the house at six this morning, beat the guy up who put up a fight, and then the man ran off with his son." She then turned to Pickle with evil eyes and snarled, "Haven't you lot taken enough from this street? Isn't there any other streets? We're barely surviving as it is."

"I'm sorry. I only took from the vacant houses; I am nothing to do with these people."

The woman seemed to have no fear in her. She seemed to have adapted quickly to the new world herself, but was still trying to act civilised. She walked away from Pickle and said, "I'm done talking to you. To me, you're all the same."

Pickle turned on his heels, ready to quickly make his way back across the football field, but a faint child's scream made him stop in his tracks. The scream was coming from the same house where the father and two girls were living.

He ran to the football field, out of the street, and decided to go the back way, in case the men left through the front door. He was no coward by any means, but Pickle was aware that he was outnumbered and when he first met these men a few days ago, one of them was carrying a shotgun, albeit an unpredictable one, and didn't want to put his life at risk unnecessarily.

Over the last few weeks he had fought his way through Stile Cop, through villages and the sports centre. He didn't want his life to end by the hands of a bunch of scumbags who he could put down quite easily if it was hand-to-hand fighting.

He was now round the back of the street and on the edge of the football field. He peered over the back garden's wall to the house, but couldn't see anything. He then decided to jump over the wall to get a closer look at what was happening. Once he did this, he passed the greenhouse and sneaked over to the back window. The blinds were closed, but he could hear voices. Another scream could be heard, then the pleading words of the father followed; then a voice of a man could be heard, telling the father to shut the fuck up.

Pickle continued to listen in, but it had suddenly gone all quiet.

Maybe they've left.

Pickle then looked behind him and wondered that if they _had_ left, why hadn't they raided the greenhouse and the vegetables that were in there, as well as the cabbages and leeks that were in the garden.

He crept to the corner of the place and suddenly saw one of the gang walking away from him, as if he had just left the house. Pickle didn't know their names but he had labelled them as Specks, Wiry, Average and Mangy. It was Wiry that seemed to be heading back to one of the cars, with a black bag full of something.

He then saw Wiry open the boot of the car. He could see that there was a gas canister in the boot, along with other equipment. Then the penny dropped. There was a caravan at the end of the street that belonged to the man that had fled, which was where they probably had stolen the canister from. Wiry walked back into the house and this time Pickle realised another member was now outside, and saw Specks walking from the other side of the street with another canister—a lot smaller—in one hand, and a camping stove in the other. Pickle breathed out a sigh; he must have missed these guys by seconds when he was talking to that woman. Specks then placed the items by the side of the car and lit up a cigarette.

The canister and stove would have been perfect for the cabin, Pickle thought. But he never bothered with the caravan on his visits because he knew at the time that the house was occupied. Because of their ruthlessness, he was convinced that these men would probably survive for a long time, and it didn't seem fair that these bastards were living a life of luxury, whilst good people were now living hand to mouth.

"Heads up!"

Pickle was startled and quickly turned around to see the butt of a shotgun hit him straight in the nose. He fell to the ground, blood pouring out, and his eyes blurred with tears of pain.

"I take it you didn't see me hiding in the greenhouse?" Mangy laughed, and spat in Pickle's face. "We saw you talking to that woman in the street, and I said to my pal: _That's that motherfucker who tried to make us look foolish the other day_. Where's the other three?" He ran his fingers through his black, greasy hair and began fixing his ponytail. "Ah, don't say you lot got lost."

"Go fuck yerself."

Mangy snickered, showing the huge gap where his two front teeth should have been, and brought the shotgun up, ready to strike again, making Pickle cower.

"Hey," a voice could be heard from above, from the bedroom window. It was Average. "Bring that piece of shit inside."
Chapter Forty Two

"How did you sleep?"

"Horizontally," was the answer from Jack to Vince's question.

Vince released a chortle and said, "Please don't tell me you're still thinking about that friend of yours."

"Er, well it did cross my mind once or twice last night when I was trying to sleep."

"Look, we've been through this before—"

"I know, I know." Jack held his hands up to stop Vince from repeating himself. "You'd think he'd be nothing but a hindrance anyway, even before he was bitten."

"You saw how he handled himself with just the one of those fuckjobs."

"I also saw his head exploding in front of me, which was a trifle worrying."

"You're a sarcastic fucker, aren't you?" Vince laughed.

"What's the punishment for sarcasm in this mental camp of yours? Castration?"

Vince had initially knocked the door and walked straight in, before engaging in conversation with his new guest. He now made himself comfortable in the caravan and sat next to Jack who was half-naked, lying under a sheet on the couch. Jack sat up and rubbed his eyes. He was still tired from the disturbed sleep he had had. It hadn't been a sleep of the normal kind; it was more like three power naps. He never slept for longer than a two-hour period, and every time he woke up, he thought of Johnny.

Asked Vince, "So are you ready?"

Jack got out of bed and glared at the man. He still had no idea how Vince had all those scratches across his face, but didn't have the energy to ask, and certainly didn't want to listen to another banal story from the forty-nine-year-old.

Jack put his screwed up T-shirt over his head and asked, "So where're we going with this ... _run_ of yours."

"Just up the road," Vince began, and started to scratch his grey hair. "You'll come with me and Claire. We've raided a couple of the pubs up the road, but there's a newsagents that hasn't been touched yet, so we're gonna try that today."

"And what if this newsagents is being occupied?"

Vince laughed, "And what're they gonna do? Beat us with sweets and cigarettes?"

Jack sat down and placed his elbows on his knees; he then rubbed his eyes with the right palm of his hands and released an exasperated sigh.

"What is it now?" Vince was growing impatient, and waited for an answer off of his ungrateful guest. "Every time I look at you, you've got a face like a smacked arse, as if someone has pissed in your porridge."

Jack finally answered, "I'm not harming people, simple as that."

"I don't give a cunt's hair what you think. You play by _my_ rules. It's all about survival of the fittest, Jackie boy. You're either with us or not. Most of the places we've been to have been empty, so stop panicking."

Jack took to his feet again and took a swig from the bottle of water that was sitting on the side of the sink. He stared into nothingness and was testing Vince's patience who was waiting for some kind of response from the new guy.

Jack looked over at Vince. "Give me five minutes."
Chapter Forty Three

"For fuck's sake, Harry!" Karen cussed.

As soon as she woke up, she made her way outside and could see that Pickle was no longer in the garden. His sleeping bag was rolled up, and it looked like there wasn't anywhere else to look, so she knew he wasn't on the grounds. She hoped that he had gone to the side of the hill to relieve himself.

She took her machete and slipped it under her belt. She could then hear the creak of the cabin door opening and saw a dishevelled-looking Wolf, standing and rubbing his hair, confused. "What's going on? Where's Harry?"

"Fuck knows," Karen said.

"Maybe he's just gone out for a pee, or..."

"I'm gonna check."

Wolf never protested and went back inside his cabin, picked his hat from the kitchen sink, went back outside and placed it on his head. He looked to the heavens and a smile broke out onto his face. "It's gonna rain. I better get the buckets ready and place them outside on the grass. Should collect a fair bit today, judging by those clouds."

"Just drink from the tap, you paranoid old fool," Karen muttered under her breath as she walked away.

Wolf continued to prattle on, but Karen wasn't really listening to him; she was more concerned about where her friend had got to. She opened the tall gate and left the premises.

She was now standing in the grass, underneath the threatening clouds that hung above her. It looked like the area was seconds away from torrential rain. She then unexpectedly threw up on the grass, a situation that lasted a minute. _Shit; not again. Where did that come from?_

As soon as she began walking around the hill, she could already feel a few specks of saltwater hitting her face. She looked to the top of the hillside, but couldn't see him. She decided to quickly walk to the peak and see if he was on the other side. She knew he wouldn't have gone back into the woods, as that would be pointless. As soon as she reached the top, she looked down and scanned all around the hill, but there was no sign of him, or any other life for that matter.

"Where the fuck are you, Pickle?"

She looked at the area of Flaxley and knew he wouldn't go in there, as it was a place he didn't know and had no importance. She then turned around and looked at the back of the Pear Tree Estate, and the street that they had acquired supplies from. It looked a little different from the back; there was now a house smouldering and it made Karen gasp.

She shook her head.

He's down there.

*

Another punch was thrown into Pickle's stomach as he remained sitting on the wooden chair in the middle of the living room, and this time he nearly fell off. He was being held by Wiry who stood behind him, holding his arms. Mangy glared at the ex-inmate and rammed his elbow into the side of Pickle's face.

"That's enough," Average snarled, and walked over to a battered and bruised Pickle. "What happened to the rest? There were four of you, and you split into two."

"Yeah," Mangy added, stroking the thick, dark beard that covered half of his face, "what happened to that dark-haired chick you were knocking about with? Give me ten minutes with her and I'd be up to my nuts in guts." He grabbed his crotch and then cleared his throat and spat on the living room carpet.

There was no response, and it appeared that their prisoner had been beaten too much to answer their questions.

Average then looked at Wiry and asked him about the family upstairs.

"It's okay," Wiry responded. "I just went up to see him. The guy promised he wouldn't cause any trouble, and told me that we could take what we want. He just didn't want us to touch his girls."

Specks was outside, filling the boot of both cars. He walked into the living room where a beaten Pickle sat and his other three companions stood, and announced, "I left the smaller gas tank and the stove on the side of the road. There ain't much room for anything else, so one of you lot will have to—"

"Just leave it there," Average snapped. "We have enough anyway. Let the residents have the tank and stove. I don't want them to think that we're _complete_ bastards," he chuckled, and Mangy joined him.

Wiry asked, "So are we ready to go?"

Average nodded.

Mangy's laughing had begun to subside and then looked at Average with a more serious tone. "So what about him?" He nodded towards Pickle.

"I don't know." Average was lost in thought and looked over to Specks. "This man kicked you in the balls," he pointed at Pickle, "and then side-kicked you in the knee, so do you want some fun before we go?"

Specks was unsure and hummed and harred.

"Go on," Mangy teased. "Be a fucking man for a change."

Specks gawped at the man in the chair. His face was bruised; his nose looked broken, and his head was lowered as if he was almost unconscious.

Mangy laughed at Specks' hesitation and shook his head and said to Average, "We're gonna have to dump this one if he doesn't get his act together soon. I've seen bigger balls on a gnat."

Specks tried to defend himself, albeit timidly. "The guy's a mess." Specks pointed at Harry Branston, whose head remained drooping as if he had fallen asleep. "I just don't see the point. The guy's unconscious anyway."

Added Mangy, "This _man_ and his friends made us look like idiots."

"Er ... well, we _did_ try and rob them," came the voice of Wiry who was still holding Pickle's arms back, stopping him from slumping to the floor. "I suppose they were just defending themselves."

"What is wrong with you bunch of pussies?" Mangy looked outraged, but Average looked to be bored of this whole episode and started to pick at his nails. He was ready to leave.

Mangy disappeared into the kitchen and returned a minute later, holding a pruning tool used for gardening. He then looked at Specks and said, "Let's see how unconscious this man _really_ is, shall we?"

He opened the pruning tool and placed the little finger from Pickle's left hand, and took it off with the utensil. Pickle released a yell of pain and began to move in the chair as if he had been given an electric shock. The blood seeped onto the carpet from his wound, and Wiry was feeling queasy at what he had just witnessed.

"What'd you do that for?" Specks looked shocked.

Mangy began to cackle uncontrollably, picked up the severed little finger off the carpet, and began to tease Specks with it by dangling it in front of his face. Wiry was finding it hard to control their 'guest' who continued to writhe in the chair from the excruciating pain, and was also sickened by the unnecessary and sadistic act of violence.

Mangy could see that Wiry was struggling to control Pickle, so he picked up the shotgun that was leaning against the wall and rammed the butt of the gun into his stomach. Pickle bent over in agony and it felt like all the air had been sucked from his lungs.

"There was no need for that," Specks said. "Hasn't he suffered enough?"

"Stop your bellyaching," Average spoke at last. "I've decided that we're gonna kill him anyway before we go." He then turned to Specks and asked, "So is that the cars stacked full?"

Specks nodded.

"Right." Average walked through the living room door and began to trot up the stairs, and yelled, "As soon as I've had this piss, we're going."

Now that Pickle had ceased to struggle, Wiry released his arms and Pickle immediately fell from the chair and slumped onto the carpet in a heap.

Mangy looked at Wiry and a nervous-looking Specks; he then announced, "As soon as he's down from the toilet, this little puppy," he pointed at Pickle with the butt of the weapon, "is gonna get his comeuppance."
Chapter Forty Four

The reluctant Jack Slade made the short journey to the village of Armitage, and was surprised that he hadn't seen a single one of those things during the journey. They had driven in a pick-up truck and he went along with Vince and Claire.

"Well, here we are," Vince announced.

All three stepped out onto the main road where there was the occasional detached house, but overall it had little life even before the shit had hit the fan.

"Hey, Claire," Vince called out from the other side of the van. "What do you say when we've finished up here, you can come back to my trailer and blow me off, release some of that tension I've been feeling."

Jack looked at Claire in surprise, but she immediately shook her head. She said, "He's joking. He knows I wouldn't lower myself to be with a man like him, and that I'd rather blow a horse."

"Charming," Vince joked, and then looked at Jack and gave him a wink. "I'm quite easy to get along with once people worship me."

Jack hung back whilst Vince and Claire tried the main door of the shop. Unbelievably, it was open.

Claire was the first to peer inside and pulled out a large knife from the back of her trousers. She looked back and said to Vince, "I can't believe no one has tried this shop yet."

Vince looked around the main road and sighed, "Yeah, well, I have a feeling the residents in this area are probably too fucking scared to come out. Some of them are probably fathers; should be fucking ashamed of themselves, but I suppose we're all made from different stuff." He looked at a couple of houses, their windows were still covered with drawn blinds and curtains. "If they want supplies, they need to come get them themselves. First come first served; finders keepers, and all that. I'm not Robin Hood. I'm not gonna help them. I look after number one."

Claire nodded in agreement.

Even though Jack didn't know her background, it was clear that Claire looked up to Vince. Maybe he had saved her life a week or so back. He was unsure.

Said Claire, "All this stuff is practically sitting on their doorstep and they're still too scared to come out."

"Maybe they're still inside their houses because they've turned," Jack suddenly blurted out.

Neither one responded and both entered the newsagents, beckoning Jack to follow them. Jack gripped his crowbar and did what he was told.

As soon as they entered the murky shop, Vince pulled out a torch and began searching through the establishment. A lot of the items in the shop appeared to be missing and Jack guessed that the owners of the shop were upstairs, and _had_ been since day one of the outbreak. There was plenty of alcohol and cigarettes in the place, but essential food like fruit was missing, although a few tins still remained on the shelf.

Vince pointed at the shelves and said to Jack, "Get all the tins in your bag."

Jack did what he was advised and went down the aisles and grabbed what he thought would be beneficial. He put tins of fruit, beans, tuna and soup in the bag he was carrying, filling it within minutes. He looked down the aisles and was baffled that Vince appeared to be behind the counter and was emptying the cigarette area. Claire was near a glass cabinet full of medicines and bandages, and was emptying the stuff into her own bag.

Vince turned around and saw Jack staring at him as he was putting the last packets of Benson and Hedges into his bag. He explained, "These are for the residents. We have a few smokers; it's the only pleasure they get these days."

"Seems a bit pointless, that's all," Jack spoke out. "You could've filled your bag full of tins, but you've got cigarettes instead?"

"It keeps 'em sweet. I'm not a smoker myself; I only smoke in bed, ain't that right, Claire?"

"I wouldn't know." Claire was still filling her bag, and as usual, she wasn't reacting to Vince's attempt at humour. "On your own, maybe."

Jack threw the heavy bag over his shoulder and was told by Vince to dump the bag in the back of the truck, grab another empty bag from the back, and return to the shop to steal more tins. Jack had managed to dump the heavy bag, and he quickly returned with an empty one in his right hand. As soon as he entered the shop, Vince told Jack to take the other two bags away that he and Claire had filled. Claire's was heavy, but Vince's was a lot lighter.

Again, Jack went outside to dump the bags and his eyes clocked two creatures shambling in the middle of the street, heading towards the vehicle. He put the bags in the back and looked to the left, down the road where the creatures were. He guessed that another two minutes, and they'd be near, but his consternation of their presence was very low. There was three of them, armed with weapons, so just two of these things didn't pose too much of a threat, but he thought it would be in Vince's best interests that he was still informed that danger, albeit diminutive, wasn't too far away on the outside.

As soon as Jack walked back into the shop, a voice bellowed out from behind a door, near the counter, "Leave my shop, and nobody will get hurt."

Vince and Claire immediately stopped what they were doing, and Vince burst into hysterics. Claire remained still, her face was deficient of emotion.

An Asian man walked from behind the door, holding a sword, and looked very nervous holding the thing. It was obvious it was a weapon he had never used before, and Jack was guessing that it was probably an ornament a minute ago, before the man had heard the noises in his shop.

"We're just going," Vince said casually.

"No!" the shopkeeper yelled. He walked in front of the counter and was now near Claire who refused to move. She was now in striking distance. "I saw you from outside; I want you to bring those bags back in, and leave my shop alone."

Vince nodded his head, and began rubbing his chin in thought. "You know what? You're right. What we're doing is terrible." He then pointed at the man who was shaking with the sword, and told him, "I'll be back in a minute."

Jack hadn't known Vince for long, but already knew that his niceness was fake and had gone out to the truck because he had something up his sleeve. That _something_ was a shotgun.

Vince re-entered the shop and the shopkeeper cried in fright when Vince returned with the gun in his right hand.

The man dropped his sword as a sign of submission and, in tears, tried to explain, "Look; my family are relying on the shop for survival. We haven't had any trouble until you lot showed up. Please, I have a wife and three sons upstairs, all under the age of ten."

Vince laughed, "You have a wife under the age of ten?"

"What?" The shopkeeper was now baffled and didn't understand Vince's dark sense of humour.

"Well," said Vince. "I'm very touched by your story, but—"

"It's okay," Jack interrupted, and could feel Vince's cold glare. "We've got what we wanted. Haven't we?" He looked at Claire, then his eyes went onto Vince, but he wasn't getting a reaction. "We're taking the stuff that's in our bags, but there's still plenty left. As soon as we leave, you better barricade this shop. Your door wasn't even locked."

"Really?" The shopkeeper placed his hands on his forehead, and strangely began hitting himself. He then looked back up at the gang of three and added, "I must have forgot during all the panic. This door's locked anyway, so even if they got into the shop..." He pointed at the door behind the counter that led upstairs to his home.

"Just make sure the shop's locked as well, once we're gone." Jack then pointed around the shop at the remaining food, "And get all of this shit upstairs, into your house, before someone else takes it."

The shopkeeper nodded like an obedient child. "Yes. You're right. Thank you."

Without saying a word, Vince left the shop, clearly agitated by Jack taking over the 'gig', and Claire quickly followed behind.

Jack smiled at the nervous man and raised his hand to say farewell. The man returned the gesture with a grateful nod of his head, and then Jack walked outside to be greeted by a clearly-upset Vince.

"Well, you exceeded my expectations in there, Jackie boy." Vince's words were drenched in sarcasm.

Jack tried to explain, "The man was desperate, and you said yourself, we have plenty back at the camp."

Vince said, "Why don't you put a pair of knickers on my head, because you've just made me look a right cunt."

Claire wasn't getting involved in the bickering and silently went into the passenger side of the truck. Jack looked to his left and saw that the two beings were only ten yards away from the truck. Vince sighed and pointed at them, and said to Jack, "Make yourself useful and get rid of them. They'll only follow the direction of the pick-up truck and end up at the blockade by the end of the day."

"Okay." Jack nodded in agreement and went to the back of the truck to grab his crowbar. He walked up to the two ghouls and noticed one was much quicker than the other as Jack took a step forwards. He put it down with a solitary strike and walked towards the second one, which was no older than fifteen when it was in human form and dressed in football attire. Jack hit the thing and it stumbled back. He shook his head and took another swipe, the hook-end of the crowbar embedding itself into the top of the cranium, and the ghoul dropped like a stone, its cranium spewing out liquid from its damaged head.

It frightened Jack how little it affected him putting these things down, but was convinced that this kind of cold attitude was keeping him alive. He knew these things couldn't be bargained with or felt pity for its victims. It was kill or be killed.

"As much as I would love to stay and admire the view," Vince was in the driver's seat and had his head leaning out of the opened window, "I need to get back to camp to see people, and more importantly, knock one out."

Jack never responded with words, but with the one quick nod. He walked over to the truck and jumped in the back, his crowbar still dripping with blood.
Chapter Forty Five

Karen had finally entered the street, and as soon as she saw the burning house up close, as well as the two Ford Focus cars, she took out her machete. She looked down a street to the left of her and could see seven Snatchers stumbling up the road, making their way to the lane she was now in. Were they attracted to the burning house? She wasn't sure, but they were only a hundred yards away.

She progressed closer to the cars and saw a small gas canister and a camping stove on the pavement. Perfect for the cabin, she thought. She looked around and then ogled inside the well-stocked car, then grabbed the canister and stove and put them behind the wall of a garden so nobody else could claim them.

Her eyes widened, as the sight of the two cars had suddenly brought back memories from days ago. It was the four men! But where was Pickle? With them? Had he been caught?

She knew they were somewhere, but wasn't entirely sure which house they were in.

She guessed that they were on the right hand side of the street, and crept over the other side of the road. She sneaked into a back garden and peered through a living room to find no one in there. She hopped over a fence to get to the next house, and heard a voice above her. It was a woman, and her bedroom window was opened.

"If you're lookin' for ya mate," she whispered, with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, "he's at number eight. Those men 'ave got 'im. I saw everything."

Karen gave the woman a nod of thanks which she hadn't seen, because the window was immediately closed. It was obvious that the remaining residents were concerned by the presence of these men, and the woman was brave in the first instance for talking to Karen.

Karen stuck her head out from behind the house and could see number eight, as it was the house opposite to the one where _she_ was, on the other side of the road. She then saw a tall, skinny guy walking over to one of the Fords and opening the boot. The boot was well-stocked and there was a large gas canister sitting in the back.

The man turned his back on Karen, and she thought that this was the perfect opportunity to take care of one of them. Her mind was now certain that Pickle was inside with the rest of the men who had tried to kill them only a few days earlier.

She was hesitant in what to do. Her hesitancy enraged her and she cursed herself for being a coward, but this move she was planning could also put her friend's life in danger if it went pear-shaped.

Here goes!

She ran over towards the car, only twenty yards away from the man, and tried to make as little noise as possible. As she crossed the street, ready to bring down the machete's handle down on the man's head to knock him out, a shot rang out, and Karen and the tall man both ducked. It appeared that her little run had been spotted from the living room window of number eight, by the shotgun-wielding, Mangy.

He stepped out of the front garden, into the street, and with Karen knowing that there was one cartridge left, she dived to the floor once he unleashed another shot.

Her ears were assaulted by an incredible noise as the car exploded, and an incredible heat burned the back of her neck. She rolled onto her back and looked up to see a huge fireball, only fifteen yards away, touch the sky. She covered her face as light debris fell from the skies that had been catapulted up by the explosion, and she had finally managed to find some energy to move further away from the fire. Her mind was beleaguered by bewilderment and had no idea what was going on.

She looked back up to the murky sky and saw the smoke from the defunct car, almost the same colour as the threatening clouds, billow its way into the atmosphere.

Her ears were ringing and it felt like everything had turned into slow motion, as if she was in a dream. She could see that Mangy was struggling to reload the shotgun with another two cartridges, and it finally dawned on Karen that the second blast from the shotgun had penetrated the gas canister in the opened boot of the car when she dived out of the way.

Not having any time to allow this to sink in, she ran over to Mangy and drew the machete back. He dropped the shotgun in fright and Karen took a swipe at him, slicing the left side of his cheek. He fell to the floor, screaming, and before she could take another swipe, she felt hands on her shoulders. She was thrown to the floor, dropping the machete, and could see that Specks and Wiry had somehow crept up behind her. She put it down to her loss of hearing for their 'surprise' attack, and both started kicking her.

She curled herself into a ball whilst the kicks continued, and she somehow managed to grab the machete and took a few blind swings as her back was taking the unnecessary blows. Both sets of kicks stopped immediately once she heard a high-pitched scream. Her ears had been temporarily damaged from the blast, but there was no escape from hearing such awful cries.

She opened her eyes and could see an unharmed Specks jumping into the remaining Ford and driving away from the street, whereas Wiry was now on the floor, in the middle of the road, with his left arm, three inches from the elbow, hanging off and releasing more blood than Karen thought was possible. It appeared that her blind swiping had created at least one casualty.

She got to her feet and tried to shake off the high-pitched noise in her ears. She looked at Wiry and felt absolutely nothing. She then walked by him, as his screaming continued from the machete wound, and she was now standing next to Mangy who was still clutching his face, blinded by the blood that covered it. She stuck the bloodied machete into her belt and picked up the abandoned shotgun and the two cartridges off of the floor that Mangy had tried to use to reload the gun. She reloaded successfully, and knew that this weapon of choice was the correct one for the remaining assailant inside, as there was no way on earth that the screaming and the explosion hadn't been heard from him.

Karen was aware that three possible scenarios greeted her once she got inside: Pickle could be dead. The remaining assailant could have Pickle as some kind of hostage. Or, the man had already fled.

She opened the door, walked into the house, and pointed the gun in all directions as if she was a member of a SWAT team, albeit with an unreliable and old-style shotgun. She kept her eyes sharp, especially now that the ringing in her ears was still loud enough to drown out any faint noises, and walked into the living room to see a slumped man on the floor.

"Pickle?" she cried, and placed the gun on the floor. She tried to move the man over but he was too heavy. She felt for his carotid pulse, but there wasn't one, and he wasn't breathing anymore. She lowered her head and could feel the tears welling up in her eyes.

With the Snatchers coming up the street, and the explosion, she knew she couldn't hang around for long. She placed her hand on the man's head and released a long, sad exhale of breath. She ran her fingers down his back and then suddenly scowled with confusion. His muscular frame had seemed to have diminished.

The living room door swung open and Harry Branston appeared with a slight limp, and a swollen face. Karen released a gasp and a laugh in unison, and placed her hand over her mouth. She looked at the slumped body, and pulled the head up by the hair to reveal the face of the dead man. It was the remaining assailant, Average.

Pickle said, "I was just checking on the family hiding upstairs. That explosion's gonna bring a bit o' bother. I think we should go; I think we've caused enough shit for the people in the street."

"You okay?" Karen was sickened at his battered and bloodied appearance. "Oh shit. Your finger!"

"I'm fine," Pickle said. "I saw everything from the living room window. As soon as that explosion happened, he," Pickle pointed at the dead body, "turned around. So I just kicked him in the side of the leg and broke his neck. Easy as pie."

Pickle looked uneasy on his feet, and Karen went to help him. Pickle shooed her away and said, "I can just about walk, leave me be." He then patted himself. "Bastards have took my machete."

"Wolf has a few more back at the cabin. Let's not waste any more time."

They both exited the front door and stepped into the pouring rain that was coming from the black, fused clouds from above. Karen had the shotgun in her right hand and Pickle could see that the fire from the car was burning away, but at least the fire from the house was starting to die.

"Fuck," Pickle said, once he saw Mangy screaming and holding his blood-drenched face. He then saw Wiry lying in the middle of the road, now unconscious, blood still pouring from his large wound and minutes away from death.

"They were kicking the shit out of me," Karen tried to explain.

"Oh, I didn't see that bit. I must have been wrestling with the living-room-guy when yer were hacking away. There's one missing."

"He got away in the car, but we've got bigger problems than that." Karen pointed at the top of the road and saw seventeen Snatchers turning into the street. "There was only seven last time I counted."

"That was before the explosion," Pickle chuckled falsely. "Come on. We can get to the football fields o'er the back garden. Just let them get nearer." Pickle looked at the wounded Mangy and the dying Wiry. "These two gentlemen might be perfect distractions for our escape."

Pickle then looked around the street, and immediately felt guilty for the arriving horde. Once he and Karen had escaped, what would happen to the residents in the street? Would these things arrive in their hundreds and end up crashing and forcing their way in through the houses like what happened in Heath Hayes? There were good people living here, children, and elderly people who had no fight in them at all, just fear.

"In fact," Pickle had changed his mind. "Forget it. Let's leave by going _out_ of the street."

"In order to do that, we need to go back to the cabin that way," Karen pointed at the horde. "Right through those cocksuckers."

"Come on, Karen. This is our fault. There's innocent people in this area. If we run through the back garden, we'll attract them to the centre o' the street."

Karen was exasperated with Pickle's charitable behaviour. "We've just saved these people from those bastard men. Isn't that enough?"

"Yeah, and brought a shit load o' Snatchers to replace them."

Karen puffed out her chest and looked at her friend with frustration. "You need to stop this Mother Teresa attitude, Pickle. You mark my words, your kindness is gonna get you killed."

"And yer mark ma words, young lady, with yer attitude yer gonna be going to hell."

"I think I'm already there."

Pickle never responded to Karen and she could see that he even seemed prepared to go this alone if need be.

"How you used to be a drug dealer, I'll never know." She brushed her brown hair behind her ears and said, "Fine. Let's not waste another fucking second."

Karen handed Pickle her machete and she held the shotgun, knowing that after just two cartridges, the butt of the gun was going to have to be the weapon to finally get them out of there.

As they got nearer to the horde, Karen made two blasts with the gun, the kickback taking her by surprise. The blasts from the gun had managed to damage three heads, and the remaining walking dead continued to stumble behind, with some of them decorated in brain debris from the ones that Karen had just killed.

An exhausted and wounded Pickle swiped one in the side of the head, almost severing it, and it fell. Karen then turned the gun around and smashed two in succession, right in the forehead, sending them to the floor. The remaining eleven almost quickened their pace and Pickle's soft and weak swipe slashed the cheek of a ghoul that was once a female.

Noticing that Pickle was weakening, Karen was like a woman possessed and smashed at anything that came near. "Give me the machete; they're circling us."

Pickle did what he was told and Karen threw the shotgun to the floor and used the last of her strength to take them out one-by-one, whilst Pickle remained behind, uneasy on his feet. Brain and skull flew through the air as Karen made swipe after swipe at whatever came near, and with just the four left, she was feeling the adrenaline wearing off and knew that there wasn't much left in her tank to keep her going.

From out of nowhere, a female with short brown hair, came out of a house and rammed a huge knife into the back of one of the heads of the things. She then drew her cleaver and smashed it into the back of the skull of another, giving it six blows as it fell in a bloody mess. The two that were left were still unaware that this new human predator was around, and continued to stumble towards Pickle and Karen.

With almost the last of her strength, Karen brought the machete down with both hands and it travelled to the centre of the skull of one of the fiends. It split the head in half, and blood flowed out as the embedded weapon had made its way down from the top of the cranium to the jaw.

The remaining one had now grabbed Karen, but she was too tired to fight it off and Pickle was in a worse state. The new female grabbed the thing by the back of the hair and threw it to the ground. She took the machete from the Snatcher that Karen had just killed, and rammed it into the skull of the one that she had just thrown to the floor; she then withdrew it once the thing stopped wriggling.

Karen looked at the small massacre around her and staggered as if she was drunk. She then looked at the girl that looked a few years older than her.

An exhausted Pickle slowly walked over to Karen and pointed at the brown-haired woman. "Karen, this is Shaz." He then pointed at Karen. "Shaz; Karen."

Both girls gave each other a single nod of the head, and Karen wondered how they had met, and guessed correctly that it must have been when Pickle had to go it alone the last time. She never asked, though. She was too tired to be standing around, listening to mundane stories that could keep. She needed to rest.

Pickle said, "Good to see yer again."

"You too." Shaz smiled, then clocked the blood on his left hand, noticing his small finger was missing. "Shit."

"It's okay. It stings a little."

"Stings? Is that all?"

"Once it's wrapped up, it'll be fine."

Karen sighed at the small talk and moaned, "Is this really necessary?" She then tugged on Pickle's T-shirt. "Come on, let's go. I need to get that hand of yours seen to, and I'll make sure you get plenty of painkillers down your neck. I don't want Wolf munching on those things like they're sweets because of his bad back."

Pickle then looked at Shaz and asked, "Yer wanna come with us?"

Shaz looked around the street. She saw the smoked-out house at the end; two men lying on the ground with blood pouring out of them, a car on fire, and a pile of dead, infected creatures around the end of the street. "I could do with a change of scenery."

Pickle noticed Shaz glaring at the damage to the street. She had changed her clothes since he had last seen her, and she looked to have had a wash as well. "It's not all our doing, yer know."

Karen nodded to the floor and said, "What about the shotgun?"

"Leave it," Pickle responded. "Too fucking loud, plus, machetes don't need reloading."

Karen walked over to the pavement and leaned over behind the wall and brought out the canister and stove. "We're taking these."

Pickle smiled and looked around the street. "Well, we survive another day, Bradley." He then looked at Shaz. Her emotions were nil; she seemed cold, and almost looked prepared and dressed for this new world that had been forced upon mankind. But every person had a story to tell. Everyone was normal three weeks ago. He even looked at Karen now, and couldn't believe this tough fucker was a soon-to-be-married nurse who used to look after peoples' needs.

The three of them staggered out of the street whilst being attacked from above by the pouring rain, and Shaz gave an injured Pickle a shoulder to lean on whilst Karen struggled with the canister and stove.

The walk across the football field was going to be hard work, but the hill was going to be even more of a struggle, especially for Pickle who had bruising to his body, a severed finger and a broken nose.

Karen took a sniff of her shirt and exclaimed, "We need fresh clothes."

"All in good time, Karen," Pickle said.

But Karen didn't want to wait.
Chapter Forty Six

Jack was sat in the caravan and was cupping his hot cup of coffee in his hand, smelling the wonderful aroma of the beverage.

He looked out of the window and saw that the day looked darker than it should have been in June. The weather was atrocious and the rain lashed down hard. He had left his new watch in the bathroom, given to him by Vince, and guessed that it was about five in the evening, but it seemed a lot later.

He remained sitting alone, cup in hand, dressed in just a blue dressing gown that he had found hanging on the bedroom door. He took a slurp and felt great after a shave and a warm shower.

He wasn't sure of Vince, and he thought the whole caravan set-up seemed a bit weird, and a little quick, considering the virus had only been officially announced just under three weeks ago. It seemed that some people were happy to hide, others had no choice but to be on the move, whilst a small few were totally organised, as if they knew or were aware that this thing was already coming.

But he knew that Vince wasn't a one-off; there were others like him, and that was proved when Jack had passed the Globe Island to see that Sandy Lane had been closed off. It looked that people had decided to block it off themselves and take matters into their own hands, considering there was no help from the government, if there was still one left.

To a lesser degree, the ill-fated stay at the village hall was a kind of sanctuary or a camp for folk, which included small looting from Paul Parker and a trip to the supermarket that ended in disaster, especially for Gary. But back then it was looting places that were already vacant. It was proving with Vince's trip that people were now robbing from one another, and Jack wondered that if he hadn't have been present at the newsagents, Vince could quite easily have gunned down the shopkeeper, whether he had a family upstairs or not. That was going to be the future; Jack was convinced of it. The brutality of man-against-man was going to grow worse as time ticked by.

He was aware that being in such a camp with mercenaries like Vince was a recipe for a good living, but Jack was still uncomfortable about taking from other people on the outside, especially family-people who were still too scared to venture outdoors. It seemed wrong. And Jack wasn't ashamed to admit that.

There was a gentle knock on the door and Jack asked who was it.

"It's Claire," a female voice came from outside.

"Come in."

Claire walked in with a black waterproof jacket on, the hood completely covering her face.

"Raining, is it?" Jack's tiredness made his banter a little below par, but he made an attempt at humour anyway.

"Just a tad." Claire took off the waterproof jacket and hung it over a chair, and sat down, opposite Jack. She gave him a smile, and he immediately responded back.

He had never noticed before, but he thought she was quite attractive. She never turned his head at first, and maybe he thought that it was simply because he hadn't been sexually active for a while. He kind of guessed that not many people _were_ sexually active, as they had had more pressing matters, but this was the first time in a long time that Jack had looked at a member of the opposite sex and generally fancied them.

Claire sighed, "About what happened back at the newsagents."

"Ah," Jack said sceptically. "Has Vince sent you round to try and win me over?"

Claire looked at Jack blankly and shook her head.

He believed her straight away. Said Jack, "Then what is it?"

"I know what you think we're doing is wrong, but in the long-term, if you stay with us, you'll have a good life."

"For how long?"

Claire gaped at Jack as if he had just pissed her off and didn't like his negative tone. "How do you mean?"

"Look, once this thing is another month or so old, this camp isn't gonna last long. There're others out there just like Vince, possibly a lot more brutal. And there will be many other groups getting formed as a means of protection."

"What's your point?"

"I'm just saying, that when supplies run out, camps will start attacking other camps to survive. I know you think Vince is some kind of tough hotshot, but there's tougher out there. And believe me, I've met some of them, briefly. I mean, what did he do before this happened?"

Claire shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. He doesn't really talk about his life."

"I just worry that it's going to be a bad ending for all of us eventually."

"But hasn't that always been the case, even before all this? Whatever success you become during life, the final outcome will always be death."

Jack glared at Claire and managed a smile. "You should do stand-up, you know. You're a cheery cow."

"That's a fact, Jack. You, on the other hand, are the negative one. Stay with us."

Jack gave Claire a confused look.

Continued Claire, "I can see you're having second thoughts being here. I'd like you to stay. Even give it a few months."

Jack was lost in thought and asked, "Why does Vince want me to stay? Is it because of what he saw when I put those things down? You had three men with a couple of shotguns standing by a blockade; I've got a feeling that you're a bit low on numbers in the old soldier department, am I right?"

Claire never answered him; she just glared, waiting for him to get his theory off his chest.

Jack added, "I might have pissed Vince off back at the newsagents, but he can see I have no hesitation in putting those things down."

Claire finally spoke out and cleared her throat before doing so. "So what are you saying? Vince is trying to gather some kind of army together?"

"I'm just saying that Vince may have already thought about my camp-fighting-camp theory, and is preparing himself for something that may or may not happen in the near future." Jack stood up to pour more hot water into his coffee and remained standing in the kitchen. "You see, these ... runs, these trips outdoors that he goes on, are they really for food and gas?"

Claire nodded.

"You seem to have more than the average person, as far as water and animals are concerned, and then there's the huge vegetable patch. I think you lot will do just fine. But maybe he's out there to recruit as well. If that shopkeeper was alone, he could have been recruited and on this camp right now, standing by the blockade, holding that stupid sword of his."

"I don't understand."

"Think about it, the camp's only weeks old. I think Vince is out there in hope to come across a house with a tormented and disgruntled man who has just lost his family, because it's obvious the rest of the residents on this camp don't have it in them. Vince then asks the father to join the camp; the father agrees, as he's attracted to the idea of food and water, and is thrown into a situation that me and Johnny was in, proving to Vince if they would be worthy and useful to him."

Claire shook her head, mocking his theory. "Vince is quite picky who he chooses. He wouldn't just pick _anybody_. Most of the people on here are too old to fight anyway."

"So I'm right?"

She giggled and this was the first time Jack had seen and heard her laugh, and he grinned back at the fact that something as simple as a giggle could enhance one's attractiveness.

Claire stood to her feet, and said with sincerity, "I was checking to see if you were okay, that's all."

Feeling twangs of guilt, Jack walked over and gave her an apologetic look. "I've been through a lot in the last few weeks," Jack confessed, and placed his hand on her shoulder as a way of apologising. "So I'm a little messed up at the moment."

Claire leaned forwards and kissed Jack on the lips, and he responded. He quickly broke away from the passionate embrace and gaped at Claire suspiciously. "Did he tell you to do that as well?"

There was hardly a response from Claire. She should have been insulted, but instead, she kept her emotions in check. "No," she said calmly. "I kissed you because I wanted to." She then put her waterproof jacket back on and left Jack's caravan, leaving the door wide open, signifying to Jack that she wasn't entirely happy with his paranoid outburst.

Jack shut the door to stop more rain getting in and soaking the carpet, and looked around where he was staying. It had been the most comfortable he had been since his stay in the Glasgow hotel, but to remain this comfortable and to have an abundance of food made him feel guilty, especially now that he knew that the leader of this camp was happy to be living in a comfortable way due to the stripping of others.

Overall, Jack didn't like Vince. He thought that he was out for himself, and being a part of the camp was some kind of power-trip for the man.

Jack had made a moral decision.

He wanted nothing to do with the camp.

He wanted to leave.
Chapter Forty Seven

By the time they had reached the cabin it had stopped raining; Pickle had collapsed against the outside of the fence, and Karen wasn't very far away from passing out either. They rattled and shouted over the closed gate for Wolf to open it. Once he did, he helped Karen move Pickle onto the sofa and never asked about the presence of Shaz, he just greeted her with a warm smile.

Wolf was trying to fuss around Pickle, but all he was doing was getting in the way.

"What happened to him?" asked Wolf.

"We ran into a bit of trouble in the street." Karen pointed towards the kitchen. "Fetch me a tea-towel, and get me some of those painkillers in the drawer."

Wolf did what he was told, and also brought in a glass of water for Pickle to swallow the pills. Once Pickle swallowed the painkillers, he winced once Karen ripped the tea-towel and began wrapping it around the stump where his little finger used to be on his left hand. Pickle grimaced again and put his right fist into his mouth and bit on it as she was finishing off.

"This is all I can do," Karen said apologetically. "The loss of blood isn't that great with this kind of injury. You really need microsurgery, but you'll be amazed how the body can repair itself over a period of time."

Pickle managed a joke and said, "You mean the finger will grow back?"

"No, fucktard. But it _will_ heal, eventually." Karen then placed her hands on his body and shook her head. "Possible broken ribs. In the old days they used binding, but it's bollocks. Just don't bang into anything. Your nose is also broken. We'll just keep your blood-flow under control, and your nose should be okay over a period of time."

Feeling useless, Wolf announced to Karen that he was going to check on the new guest. Karen nodded without looking at the elderly man.

Shaz sat on the damp grass and welcomed the rest; Wolf had appeared from inside the cabin and then sat his weary body next to her.

Shaz was unaware of what to do next.

"Wolfgang Kindl." Wolf held out his hand.

Shaz shook it, "But people call you Wolf?"

"Most of the time," he cackled, and shuffled his backside on the grass of the garden to get comfortable. "You?"

"Sharon. I usually get called Shaz." She gawped at the old man and felt a little uncomfortable sitting next to him. She wondered the last time he had washed or even changed his clothes, as the smell coming from him was horrendous. Shaz added, "I hope you don't mind me being here. I won't stay long."

"You're welcome to stay for as long as it takes." He patted her knee affectionately like her Granddad used to before the lung cancer took him.

Wolf released a long sigh and moved his head from side to side. "Harry's in a right state. What kind of barbarians would do that to somebody, to cut his finger off."

"I think they had a run-in a few days before."

"Still, it doesn't excuse it." Wolf was almost in tears, and Shaz took a look at the old man and thought that his nickname was a little misleading.

With a name like Wolf, Shaz was expecting someone with a bit more bite to them, rather than a smelly old man who apparently had an old shotgun hiding in the cabin. Although Shaz was grateful for being allowed to stay, she did harshly think that Wolf having the three of them staying in the cabin area would be good security for the old man.

She thought: Was he taking her in as an act of kindness? Or, was he allowing people to stay as a way of him remaining safe in such a dire world?

"You like tea?" asked Wolf.

Sharon nodded.

"Good." Wolf then slowly stood up and made a moan as his knees cracked. He then bent his back and walked towards the cabin and picked up the stove and canister. "I can make you some whenever I want with this, and not wait until I've got a fire on. Takes ages anyway with a fire."

"How's your water system?"

Wolf nodded. "Not bad. I've also put some buckets out to catch rainwater. And I've got that barrel over there. Put a spot of bleach in and Bob's your uncle."

"Your sink not working?"

"Yeah, but I prefer to use rainwater first for drinking before having to use the tap. I have no idea what state the stream is in. But now we have a stove, I can use the sink to my heart's content, now I can boil the water."

"Probably best to collect as much rain water as you can. If your running water goes tits up..."

"I know."

Wolf disappeared inside and Shaz could hear him asking Karen if she wanted a tea or coffee.

Shaz lay back on the wet grass and placed her hands behind her head to look up to the murky sky. Her mind thought back to the last three weeks of her life.

She could feel her eyes getting heavy and tiredness making its way through her shattered body. Her blue eyes suddenly widened once she felt a little drizzle of saltwater on her face. It was trying to rain again.

She rubbed her face and went back to the position she was in before. The occasional drizzle could be felt on her countenance, but this time the tiredness was too powerful to be ignored.
Chapter Forty Eight

Claire sat in the caravan and put her head into her hands. She then threw her head back and rested it on the couch, her neck completely exposed. She was lost in thought and began thinking about that first weekend when she woke up in her caravan to see the news on the Sunday morning.

She spent most of her time ringing her family members and friends. She found out that some had no idea what was happening, but some mentioned that some of these things were trying to get into their house. She lost contact a few days after, and since then she had never felt so alone.

Claire's ex-boyfriend made contact to see how she was, but never heard from him after she replied back. She was frightened, and spent most of her time stuck in the caravan, hoping that those things didn't appear on the caravan park. As soon as the breaking news was announced on SKY that two members of the Royal Family had been reportedly shot by security, there was a rap at the door.

Claire stood up, petrified. She peered through her window and saw a guy called Vince with two other guys, standing outside her place.

She finally opened the door and was informed by Vince that he was going round each caravan to see how people were, and then they were going to block off the road to stop any 'Rotters' from getting on the camp. The two men behind Vince were carrying shotguns and were local farmers. Vince asked Claire if she wanted to tag along, and for some reason she said yes.

There were many macabre scenes to be witnessed whilst she tagged along with Vince and the boys, when checking on the remaining residents. One caravan had been found with the residents inside, dead. They had committed suicide. Inside the caravan was an elderly couple that had taken an overdose and had died in their sleep, the pair of them were found in their pyjamas, holding hands.

The very last caravan was approached and they could all see that there was blood smeared on the inside of the windows. They advanced towards the caravan with more caution, and as soon as the door was kicked open, three deceased beings stumbled after them, fell down the steps and landed on the grass.

The three were originally a mother and her two teenage boys. All had turned, and no one could fathom how it had happened.

Because of the announcement from the TV, they knew exactly how to deal with the infected, but it was easier said than done.

Both men carrying guns hesitated, but Vince brought his up straight away and put a cartridge into the head of the mother that was already face down on the floor. The head was obliterated and he took out one of the boys with another head shot. Whilst Vince began to reload, he told one of the men to finish off the other boy, but both men hesitated. Claire took one of the shotguns off one of the men and stepped forwards. She aimed, then fired.

This experience had affected Claire and the afternoon was spent burying the deceased, once the infected caravan had been dealt with. When she got back to her own place, she threw up, and had a lie down.

Vince had later knocked her door, told her that he had blocked the road, and that he had an idea to turn the caravan park into a secure camp. He then asked her if she wanted to be involved with runs and guarding the blockade. He must have been impressed with her lack of hesitation, and she said yes to his proposal.

Her reminiscing came to an end once the tears began to form in her eyes. And just like every evening, she cried.

*

In the light rain, Jack had taken a walk around the camp and had bumped into a resident that was walking back. The resident said hello and made a weak attempt at humour, commenting on the rain being good for ducks.

Beaten by the rain, he went back to his temporary accommodation and took the waterproof jacket off. It had been a while since he had heard from Vince and thought that the man was either busy out on another run, or guarding the roadblock that he had created before he had taken complete control of the site.

Jack searched through the cupboards and pulled out a large glass. He then continued with the searching and noticed a bottle of diluting orange juice. He smirked, and welcomed the break from drinking tea and coffee; his tongue was getting coated with the amount of hot beverages he had consumed. He couldn't really complain because when Johnny had found him, outside the factory, he was almost dying from dehydration. Now he had his pick of drinks, but was still adamant on leaving the place.

He stood motionless and thought of Johnny. _Poor bastard_. The trouble with Johnny was that he had no fight in him, and probably would have become a meal for those things eventually. But what Jack didn't like, and still felt anger towards Vince for this, was being forced in that situation where they had to 'prove their worth' by killing those things, like some kind of horror-initiation test. Unfortunately for Johnny, he had failed that test miserably. He had a crowbar and only one of those things to kill, and he still got bitten!

The diluting juice was put on hold once he came across a bottle of South African Shiraz. He pulled out the red wine and, with it being a screw-top, he unscrewed the bottle and poured the delightful red stuff into the glass, almost filling it. He put on the radio and despite only picking up a French station, he left it on and went over to the couch with his glass full of wine.

It had been nearly three weeks since he had touched alcohol. He tried to remember the last time he drank the hard stuff, and his face filled with wretchedness when he realised that it was when he had too much whisky when he was with Gary in Jemma Marlow's house, when he was looking for Kerry and Thomas.

All four of those people that Jack had just thought of had all perished.

His throat had become hard with emotion but his eyes were dry. He took another gulp of wine and noticed that the bottle looked like it was nearly done. It appeared that there was only a third of the bottle left.

"Fuck it!"

Jack took another over-generous gulp as he walked over to the bottle, and poured the rest into the half-full glass, filling it once again. He then made a soused smile and thought about Karen, Pickle, Paul and Jade. He wondered how their woods adventure had panned out, and hoped that they were okay. Members of the people in the village hall also entered his mind, and he mainly thought about the demise of Oliver and Lee at the sports centre. "Poor bastards."

There was a rap at the door that almost made Jack spill his drink. Before he could ask who it was, Vince walked in and immediately made a disapproving look at his guest.

"What are you looking at?" Jack was clearly drunk and Vince walked over to take the glass away from him. There was a little struggle and the red wine went all over Vince's clothes.

Vince grabbed Jack by his shirt and snarled, "I was gonna ask you to go out on a trip as we need diesel for the generators, but you've obviously got other plans."

Jack took an awkward step forwards and slurred, "I'm going on no trip with you, _Vince_."

Vince smiled and looked at Jack. He looked like a broken man. "What's your problem, Jack? We give you a roof over your head and you're still feeling sorry for yourself. We've all lost people we love. I have a sister in Ireland, and a mother somewhere. When the outbreak happened, I went to the house, but my mother and father weren't there."

"Where were they?"

"My father has a little place somewhere; they're probably hiding up there. Or dead."

Jack scowled at Vince and told him, "You winced when you mentioned your father's name."

Vince snickered, "That's because the piece of shit used to beat the crap out of me. I don't give a toss about him."

"Yeah, well. I still don't like you," Jack blurted out, taking Vince by surprise. He remained standing on his unsteady feet; he staggered towards Vince, and poked his forefinger into Vince's chest. "This whole ... camp thing is a power trip for you, ain't it? People are looking up to you, asking: _What do we do now, Vince? Oh great one_. Ain't that right?"

Vince released an impatient sigh. He was convinced that having Jack on board was something the camp would benefit from, but he was proving, in the short time he'd been there, to be a little unpredictable. Vince eventually answered Jack's query and announced, "Someone has to take control."

"I know why you're in charge; it's because you were a nobody in the old world, ain't that right, Vince? It's like bullies. When you're out on the town, having a drink, it's very rare you see a lawyer or a doctor eyeballing people and starting fights, you know why?"

Vince tried to remain patient and humoured his drunken guest, "No, Jack, I don't. But I have a feeling you're going to tell me."

"Because they already have respect in the workplace. People who don't have respect in the workplace are the ones that end up in fights. They can't get respect in the workplace, so they try and get it outside by using another method."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Vince began to laugh. "How many bottles of that wine did you drink?"

"What did you used to do for a living?"

"None of your business," snapped Vince.

"Tell me."

Vince threw his arms in the air, and decided to play Jack's game, although he didn't know where he was going with it. "Okay, I used to drive a forklift truck."

"And now this has all happened, you have a second chance to make something of yourself, rather than just a minimum-wage fork lift driver who used to take orders off of some fat foreman you probably detested."

"You're a cock, Jack."

"Yeah, well, I'm leaving this messed up place."

There was a silence that covered the two men, and although he was trying to hide his disappointment, an exasperated Vince said, "Good. Pack your things and leave."

"Hit a nerve, did I?"

Vince never answered. He just glared.

Laughed Jack, "I'm going anyway."

"But you can leave the jeep." Vince's announcement was delivered with a devilish smirk. "I'm taking the jeep from you for wasting my time."

"Are you now?"

"Yes."

"So you're throwing my arse out of here, with no wheels?"

Vince's smirk remained on his face. Despite no verbal response to Jack's question, or any kind of head gesture, Vince's continuous glaring and smirk suggested that his intention was to leave Jack in limbo.

Jack added, "Then I'll make sure I bring those things back here. All I have to do is get their attention and watch them follow me all the way back to the blockade, possibly in their hundreds. And they'll never go away; you know that. How's a couple of old shotguns gonna cope with that? Eh?"

"You'd be ripped to pieces eventually."

Jack nodded. "And your camp will be constantly surrounded by the dead. And they would never go away; they'd just grow in numbers, like pins to a magnet. I've seen it for myself."

"You hated stealing off of that shopkeeper, yet you're quite happy to put peoples' lives in danger because you were denied your vehicle? You don't realise that I could have you killed in here right now, and nobody would give a fuck."

"So why don't you?"

Vince couldn't give Jack an answer.

"It's because you're bluffing. You like me, don't you? And the whole _I'm taking the jeep_ is to keep me here. Why?"

Again, Vince couldn't give him an answer.

"I'm leaving _with_ the jeep. Don't make me do anything stupid."

Vince looked at Jack's eyes. He was drunk, but he meant every word he said.

Said Vince, "I'm not the arrogant, ego-maniac you think I am, Jack. I'm sorry you're paranoid and you don't like me. And I'm sorry you think I'm only here to feather my own nest and would leave these people in the shit if the going gets tough. I'm here for the long haul. For better or worse."

Vince put his hand in his back pocket, and Jack gulped and sobered a little when he thought that Vince was going to produce a handgun or a knife. Vince pulled out a set of car keys and handed Jack the keys to the jeep. "You can leave in an hour. Get yourself sobered up. Me and Claire are going out." Vince then headed for the door, and then turned back round as if there was something else he needed to say. "Try not to drive over any mines, fuckwit."
Chapter Forty Nine

"Just the two of us?" asked Claire.

Vince nodded and jumped in the pick-up truck. Claire noticed that he was in a foul mood and wondered if it had anything to do with Jack, as she knew he had gone to visit him in one of the spare caravans.

She refrained from asking him what was wrong, and sat in the passenger seat in silence. She didn't even ask him where they were going. She assumed it was the same as ever. There was a pub called The Lodge a mile up the road, and she guessed that that was where they were going. She guessed right.

As soon as Vince pulled up outside the pub, they both stepped out of the vehicle and gazed around the vacant street. One solitary body lay twenty yards away from them on the pavement, and neither one was sure whether it was a person that had been killed, or it was a reanimated being that had been destroyed.

They both took a look at the entrance of the inn and Vince finally spoke. "Just take what we need. You try the kitchens; I'll try the living arrangements upstairs."

"Okay."

Vince tried the door. It opened with ease. This gave them the indication that whoever used to run the establishment, wasn't there anymore.

Claire took out a hunters knife from her back pocket, she wasn't entirely comfortable with a gun, and they both entered the place and skulked around the dark part of the lounge area. It appeared to be vacant. Claire took the sports bag off of her back and went into the kitchen.

Vince opened a door that led upstairs. He thought about calling out, but instead he crept up the carpeted stairs making no noise whatsoever. As soon as he reached the top, he looked across the landing and could see that there were four closed doors. He guessed that two were bedrooms, one led to a kitchen, and the other door led to a living room.

He approached the nearest door and placed his ear against it. Not a sound could be heard. He pulled down the handle and slowly opened it. It was a bedroom, but it looked like it didn't belong to anyone. It had no character to it, and Vince guessed that it was a spare room. The owners of the pub had either kids that had grown up and flown the nest, or, they were a childless couple.

He left the room, still being quiet, and went for the next door. This room appeared to be the main bedroom. It was a typical room with a double bed, a set of drawers, a cupboard, and a dressing table with a mirror.

He checked the cupboards and it seemed that one was only half-empty. It looked like that the male had taken his clothes and fled the place, but the female hadn't. Why?

Vince took out a couple of black bin liners out of his pocket and began filling up the bags with the clothes that were left in the cupboards, as well as male and female underwear from the drawers. Once he filled the two bags, he went to the top of the stairs and threw them down, then went back to check out the other two rooms.

The kitchen was small, poky, and he could smell a repugnant smell coming from the now defunct fridge, as if the food inside was rotting. He couldn't get out of the place quick enough and decided to try the final door before going downstairs and giving Claire a hand.

He placed his ear against the door; he was greeted with complete silence. The whole pub was silent. Even Claire was making little noise downstairs.

He pulled down the handle and slowly pushed the door, allowing it to swing fully open. His nose was greeted with a dreadful smell, and he should have turned on his heels and walked away, but his intrigue was too strong for him to do that. He kept the living room door open. The room was drenched in darkness; the curtains were closed, and the stench grew so bad that he lifted his shirt up over his nose in order not to breathe in any more fumes from whatever was giving off the smell.

Vince stepped further inside and gasped a little when he saw a lone figure, standing in the corner of the room. It reminded him of the end of a scary film from years back called The Blair Witch Project.

It never moved, and Vince peered around the couch to see the carcass of a body of an animal, which clearly used to be a German Shepherd, as the head was still present. Vince should have walked away, but with the ghoul's back towards him, he turned his shotgun round, ran at the creature and smacked the back of its head with the butt of the gun.

Its head squished against the wall and its body dropped like a stone. He looked at its face in the darkness and could just about make out that it used to be a female. The lady of the pub, perhaps.

It explained why only the clothes in the male's cupboard was taken. Maybe she was the wife, became infected, and he then locked her in and decided to leave. But the dead dog didn't make sense. Why didn't the man take the dog with him? A dog would run through fire for its master; surely he could have saved his pet.

Vincent sighed and went downstairs to see how Claire was getting on.

*

Something had stirred the woman, but she had no idea what it was. She rolled over to her side and could see the time on her iPod station telling her that it was 3:14am. She was confused for a few seconds why she wasn't in her bed, and then realised why she was sleeping on the leather sofa.

There was only ever one reason why she slept downstairs on the leather sofa, and that was on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings, without fail. Every time her husband drank beer on a Saturday night, he would snore like a hog with asthma.

Sometimes she would go to bed before him so she could sleep before he made his way upstairs, but his snoring was sometimes so loud, especially if he was lying on his back, it would wake her up anyway once they were sleeping together.

They both worked all week and their treat at the end of the week would be a Chinese takeaway. She would always have the Kung Po Chicken, whereas he would mainly have a Beef Curry. This was then followed by her husband going into the living room to watch the football.

Her husband was a mad Liverpool fan and would watch Match of the Day every Saturday night, right through to midnight. During the ninety minutes of watching his favourite football programme, he would traditionally drink his six bottles of Perlenbacher beers, his favourite. These beers were the result of her sleeping on the couch. He always snored heavily with a few beers inside him. She didn't know why she just didn't stay up, wait for him to go to bed, and then sleep on the couch.

It had been a story she had moaned about for years whenever she used to catch up with her close pals. Her friends would argue that the soused individual should sleep on the couch himself, whilst _she_ remained in her bedroom.

That would happen on the odd occasion, but sometimes he'd be so forgetful with the alcohol that he would automatically stumble upstairs to bed anyway, where only a crane could move him once he was in his soused, comatosed state.

On this particular early morning, she had lasted well. She sometimes usually went downstairs to the couch before one or two am, but had lasted till three.

She sighed as usual, grabbed her dressing gown, and left her partner. She then looked in on her seven-year-old boy who was dead to the world, with his Phineas and Ferb quilt covering most of his body. He was sleeping like an angel as usual, legs wrapped around the quilt, lips puffed out, and snoring slightly with the mild cold he had picked up from primary school.

She then crept downstairs, turned off the fish tank in the kitchen, because the noise from the water filter drove her nuts when she was on the couch, and went into the living room that was situated below her own bedroom. She then pulled out a brown blanket from inside the leather footrest and threw it on the couch.

Then it was time to sleep.

But as soon as she got herself prepared for a night on the sofa, she was disturbed once again. _For fuck's sake!_ This time, in the early hours of the Sunday morning on June 10th, she could hear a stumbling coming from upstairs. She shook her head, thinking that her husband was getting up for a pee, and was still drunk.

Before they were married, he had got so drunk before that he walked into a cupboard, had a pee, then walked out of the cupboard and went back to bed. On another occasion when they visited her mother's, they both went out and she woke up to find her future husband, sitting on her mother's stairs, naked, and peeing all over them. He was completely oblivious to what he was doing, and at two in the morning, she had to use towels to soak up the wetness, use lots of spray, and had to put the towels in the outside bin.

She crept upstairs, and was hoping that she could catch her husband before he made a serious faux pas. But he only had six bottles of beer, she told herself. It wasn't as if he had gone out with the lads on an all-day bender.

She then thought, maybe it was her son, Spencer, that had got out of bed.

She reached the landing and suddenly stopped on the edge of the last step of the stairs. Her body refused to go any further, and she couldn't understand why.

She could hear, coming from her seven-year-old's bedroom, a slopping noise. It was a weird predicament. She was supposed to be his mother, somebody that would do anything for her child, but her legs were refusing to move.

She finally called out, "Spencer. Baby, is that you?"

The slopping had stopped, and she could now hear shuffling noises coming from the room.

"Honey?"

The landing was in complete darkness, and a silhouette of a tall man slowly shambled out of her son's opened bedroom.

"James? What were you doing?"

She received no answer from her husband.

Oh God, you didn't pee in Spencer's room, did you?

She reached for the light switch. Once she had found it, she flicked it to see the landing fill with light. Her eyes were blinded for a few seconds, but once they could see properly, she released a terrifying scream.

Her husband was naked, covered in contusions and was littered with blue veins, as if he was ill, or ... dead. Around his mouth was blood, fresh blood. And whatever he had taken a chunk out of, he was still slowly chewing.

"Spencer!"

*

Shaz woke with a startle, and crouching over her was Karen. Although it had been a dream, what she had dreamt about had really happened just over two weeks ago, and this had been the seventh time she had to re-live the nightmare once again.

"Sorry for waking you. Bad dream?" asked Karen.

Shaz nodded. "You could say that." Shaz slowly sat up and began to rub her eyes. "What is it?"

"I want you to come with me before it gets dark," Karen said. "Pickle's asleep. Wolf's snoozing in the living room."

"Where?"

"Back to the street; we need fresh clothes. We all do."

"I..."

"This is the last time, I swear. Then we stay up here for as long as we can." Karen spoke with conviction.

"But after what happened with those guys—"

"Don't worry. They're gone; we'll be straight in and out. Pickle and Wolf may want to smell like shit, but I need new gear."

Shaz sighed, "Okay. Give me a minute."
Chapter Fifty

The truck slowly reversed back, giving the jeep just about enough room to squeeze through the gap that had been left. Once Jack had drove through the opening, he put his foot down and never looked back. There was no sign of Claire when he left, and he assumed she either wasn't told of his leaving, or she wasn't giving a shit.

Vince had one of his guys to check over the jeep to see if Jack had taken food and water with him before leaving, supplies that belonged to the camp. To Jack's credit, he had never stolen as much as a water bottle, and this impressed and surprised Vince. He wished he stayed, but he knew that Jack had a moral compass that wouldn't allow him to be as ruthless as the rest of them. In a certain way, Vince admired Jack's principles, but was convinced it was going to get him killed one day.

Jack was still a little drunk when he went over the brow of the hill, and looked in his rear-view mirror to see that the blockade and the camp was no longer in sight. He thought about Claire and that kiss.

Was Vince behind it?

Did Vince think that if Jack developed some kind of love interest he'd find it more difficult to leave?

Or was it for real?

Did Claire really like him?

Jack shrugged it off and bypassed The Ash Tree pub to his right and knew, looking at the sky, he was going to have to find a place to stay because the night wasn't far away. He decided that he would try and pull in on a country lane, away from a residential area and also away from the woods. He knew it'd be dangerous whatever he did, but if he left the keys dangling in the ignition and went to sleep and one or more of those things came to the jeep, Jack could get out of the danger area within seconds and drive somewhere else. The jeep was a tough vehicle, Jack had Johnny to thank for that, and could easily ram through many persistent ghouls if need be, which was something that had already been successfully proved.

With his crowbar sitting on the passenger seat, Jack veered left and went through a country lane that led into the small town of Brereton. Knowing that the alcohol could have an effect on his concentration, he drove at a steady twenty and looked at the fuel gauge. _Half a tank. Not bad._

This had been the first time he had been on this main road that led into the town of Rugeley, and the place, eerily, looked reasonably clear. There were no bodies strewn along the streets, no bloody limbs, crashed cars or burning properties.

It was all a little bizarre.

Jack made a decision and turned the jeep another left. The quiet, main road had given him goosebumps, and he wondered if it possessed hiding looters that were ready to strike, and _that_ was the reason for the lack of life.

He was aware of two camps in the one town. There was Vince's and the Sandy Lane area, where the main road had been blocked off, probably to create a small village of their own, like the one Vince was running. It wasn't inconceivable that Jack could be carjacked if he had kept on driving on the Brereton road, and these potential bandits could be members of the Sandy Lane camp.

The whole road could be some kind of trap. Or was he just being paranoid?

Going up a street, of name he had forgot, he came to a three-way road and drove by Ravenhill school and went straight on into an industrial estate where there used to be businesses, before people turned and began to eat one another.

He slowed the vehicle down and could see movement in the windows of a factory. The jeep came to a stop and Jack wondered if there were any kind people left in the world and, if there were, would they put him up for the night? Jack stepped out of the vehicle and walked round.

Apart from the factories to the right, the country road was surrounded by farmland. Jack took a few steps forwards and before crossing the road, he took a gape to the left and right. Some habits were hard to break.

As soon as he reached the other side of the road, Jack heard a voice call out, "Don't fuckin' bother!"

Jack looked up at the factory window that appeared to be a paper recycling place, and saw five figures, some holding baseball bats. "Ye come in 'ere, an' we'll knock fuck out o' ye," the same voice warned.

"Charming," Jack muttered.

He turned on his heels and went back to the jeep. Before he could get in, he heard another voice call out from the window. "It's alright, mate. You can stay if you want. Just bring yourself and tha' beast to the side o' the factory, and we'll let you in."

Why the sudden change of heart, Jack thought.

He ignored the comment and went back into the vehicle. He drove away and smiled to himself. He had no idea if he was being mistrustful and that the second guy was being genuine. Was it the vehicle they were after?

"Fuckers," Jack mumbled. "Seeing the jeep probably had changed the groups' mind. They'd probably beat me half to death and take the vehicle."

Jack moved on and hit thirty as he drove around the windy lanes, and went past a farmhouse. He thought about stopping for a second, but decided to look for accommodation in the morning, when he had all day to do so. The sky was growing darker, and he guessed that in another hour it would be pitch black.

He turned left and the vehicle went up a steep road, and once he reached the top of the hill to a flat part of the road, Jack suddenly realised where he was. If he followed the lane for another two miles, he'd be entering the village of Hazelslade. He decided to head for Hednesford, as he knew of a place that was well hidden and away from the main road.

As he continued to drive along the road, he looked up to the spectacular site of Stile Cop. The huge hill was a beauty spot and one of the highest points in the area. He briefly remembered taking Kerry up there one night for a passion session, but their session was short-lived.

After two minutes, when he and Kerry were making love in the back seat of the car, Jack had realised that eyes were watching him, and saw two men and a woman looking into the vehicle. Their presence frightened the shit out of him and caused a tussle once he got out of the car, half-dressed. Unbeknown to Kerry and Jack, Stile Cop was a hot spot for dogging on an evening, but the naive pair had no idea.

His reminiscing came to a halt as he reached the crossroads. He reduced his speed and wanted to continue ahead to get to his destination, but a speeding car from nowhere came out from the right of the crossroads and smashed straight into the side of the vehicle.

The airbag failed to inflate in front of Jack's face, and the jeep halted once it had swerved to the left and hit a tree.

*

He had no idea where he was going, but knew that in a matter of hours, the Ford Focus would soon run out of petrol. He adjusted his glasses and winced when he pressed his foot down to use the foot pedal. His knee was still smarting from the assault a few days ago by the large man they called Pickle, who was with three others in the back off the pick-up truck. Even though the farm that he and his three colleagues were staying at was only another mile away, it scared him that he was gong to be staying on his own, now that the other three had been attacked.

He knew they were being greedy by going into the street for more supplies; they had enough back at the farm, but Gordon, his greasy, pony-tailed friend, convinced the leader of the small mob that the nearest populated place of Rugeley, the Pear Tree Estate, would be easy picking for them.

It was going perfectly; people hid in their houses and it was a simple task of walking in with little resistance, but it had suddenly gone pear-shaped. Gordon had made suggestions that once that particular street was cleaned out, they should search through the dozen or so more, before finally going back to the farm on a permanent basis.

He was as surprised as any of them when the huge man, that had fucked his knee up, had returned, and even more surprised when he was loading the car and saw that crazy bitch running across the road with a machete and then swiping at Gordon before hacking the arm off of his other friend. Panic had kicked in and he jumped into the Ford Focus and never looked back. He knew if any of this colleagues had survived and eventually found him, especially if it was Gordon, they'd kill him for sure. So was going back to the farm really the wise thing to do?

He went past Slitting Mill, turned left on the Hednesford road and headed for the Stile Cop road. He saw a burnt out Porsche to his left and as his car went up the massively steep road, he could see a few bodies to the side, near the grass bank, opposite the cemetery.

As the car got to the brow of the hill, he could see that down the road was littered with crushed bodies. "What the fuck happened here?"

He slowed down, turned left, and pulled into the Stile Cop beauty spot, and noticed that it wasn't much better there either. He got out off the car, hoping that this place could be a safe haven for one night, and stepped out onto the sandy floor. He was torn whether to go back to the farm or not, but he was in fear from his colleagues—if they were alive—that he had left in the lurch.

He looked around the beauty spot. People had been here. It was obvious.

There was a black patch on the ground where a fire or two had been lit, and he guessed that maybe a small gang had dwelled up here for a few days before moving on. But it wasn't the old fire that made him curious, it was the amount of bodies that were on the floor. He couldn't count how many altogether, but some had been shot in the cranium.

He shook his head and could not fathom what had happened up here. It appeared that nowhere was safe, and thought that maybe he should stay at the farm and stay awake, and just hope that none of his guys would turn up, especially that psycho, Gordon.

He heard a moan from the side of him as if one was still alive; he jumped with fright and jumped into the car once he saw at least three of the fifty-plus bodies, wriggling and trying to move along the sandy surface.

The car screeched out of the place and he closed his eyes when the Ford Focus ran over the deceased bodies lying on the tarmac, and once he had got by the last body, he decided to go straight across the crossroads and head for the farm. He looked over his shoulder to see if there was anything behind him, turned back round and breathed out a sigh of relief.

The last thing he saw was the side of a black jeep that his car then collided with.
Chapter Fifty One

Once both exhausted girls had went by the football field, they walked into the street, both carrying bags. Karen made a joke that the remaining residents of this particular street must have been sick of the sights of her, but Shaz never responded to Karen's chat.

Shaz pointed to a house on the left and said, "I'd been staying in there for a bit. The house was empty when I turned up, and it has a cupboard full of clothes."

"Good." Karen nodded. "It'll be good to get some new clothes while we can. We've got detergent back at the cabin from the looting, but I feel a bit uncomfortable wasting water just to wash clothes. Seems a bit of a waste, especially if Wolf's water system packs up. It's not great as it is, and we'd have to end up using the stream in the woods."

Changing the subject, Shaz looked around and said, "There's always the option of staying in one of these houses, if you get sick of the cabin."

"There is, " Karen agreed, "but to be honest, that cabin is the safest we've been since this shit started to happen. Pickle's also paranoid about people in general. I mean, it's only been three weeks since the outbreak and we've come across _these_ fucks," Karen pointed at the dead body of Wiry. He had eventually bled to death. "So what's it gonna be like in the long-term?"

"About what happened here," Shaz spoke up. "I was napping. If I could see you and your friend were in trouble, I would have helped earlier. It wasn't until the explosion—"

"That's okay." Karen smiled and patted Shaz's shoulder. She was liking this woman already. "You don't have to explain. Why should you have helped? You didn't even know who we were."

Karen scanned the street and noticed that the guy with the black, greasy hair with the cut face, was missing. After she had swiped his face with the machete, she became somewhat distracted with everything else that had been going on. The blood where he once lay was present, but he had disappeared somewhere.

They walked into the house and Karen took a look around the ground floor, the bag was hanging off her left shoulder. "How did you manage?"

Shaz replied, "Like everybody else; I used everything in the cupboards and rationed it."

"Clothes upstairs?" Karen had no idea why she asked such a silly question. Of course the clothes were upstairs.

"Bedroom," Shaz said. "I'll be up in a sec." Sharon took a walk into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of flat vimto from the cupboard and swallowed the whole lot down. She made an exaggerated _ah_ sound, belched softly, and then made a decision to go upstairs and help Karen fill her bag.

Shaz looked around the place she had called 'home' for a few days, and thought about her own house. She had literally been on the run since she witnessed the macabre scene of her husband killing her child, and she had been hopping from one house to the next ever since.

The longevity of her stay always depended on how safe or unsafe she felt.

After the small invasion of the four bandits, as well as a few ghouls, Shaz felt that the stay in the street was unwise, and felt lucky to be offered to stay in such a place like the cabin, and was grateful to Pickle for asking her, even though it wasn't his place. She had remembered the cabin as a child when she used to play on Cardboard Hill, but back then children never went near it. To the kids it was either uninteresting to them, or they were too scared to approach it, because the older children had filled their heads full of horror stories about the place.

Because it had been years since she had been up there, she was unsure the place still existed until Pickle gave her the invite. It had changed somewhat since her childhood, and the huge overgrown greenery and the fence that surrounded the area that prevented anyone from actually noticing the cabin, was never there before.

Shaz heard a thud coming from above her and assumed that Karen had already started picking out clothes. She turned and began to walk upstairs. She walked into the bathroom and had a wee. After wiping herself, she stepped back out of the bathroom and went into the master bedroom.

Her face was devoid of emotion; her eyes glared, but never blinked, and her body never flinched once she saw the cold steel pressing against Karen's throat.

The greasy-looking man had his left arm hooked around Karen's neck, and with his right hand he held the blade.

"Well, well, well," he said in a mocking voice. "I have the pleasure of two bitches for company."

The man had long, greasy hair, tied back. He looked like he needed a good wash, had a terrible smile inbetween all of his facial hair, and a huge cut to his face that now looked like it had stopped bleeding.

"So what did you come back for?" he snarled in Karen's ear. "To finish me off? More food?"

Karen winced once she smelt his breath and he had noticed this, and reacted by squeezing her throat tighter with his left arm as if he was insulted by her reaction. The blade was now pressed harder, drawing a little blood.

He growled down Karen's ear, "If it wasn't for you and your male friend, we'd be okay."

Karen responded, "It's greed that has caused you and your friend's downfall, not me. We just took from empty places, and not from people."

"Proper little girl scout, aren't you?" His anger produced spit to leave his mouth. Some dribbled onto Karen and ran down her ear, but she never flinched. "You and your friend have fucked things up for me, good and proper."

Karen laughed mockingly, which Shaz thought was a brave—or maybe, stupid—thing to do, considering that the man she was mocking had a blade to her throat. "It's called karma. You set up a roadblock and gunned down a middle-aged couple because they didn't give you what you wanted. God knows what else you've done."

"Just trying to survive, darling." He then began to make Karen squirm a little by nibbling her ear. She was certain that this man was getting no sexual buzz from his actions; he was simply trying to press her buttons.

"What do you want?" Shaz asked, her fingers stroking the cleaver tucked in the back of her belt.

"You know what? I don't really know," he cackled, and looked at Shaz. " _You_ can get out of here, darling. But this one is staying here with me. We have some unfinished business to take care of. Go on, leave!"

"I'm afraid I can't do that," announced Shaz.

He then moved the knife from Karen's throat and placed the blade against her cheek. "She's cut _me_ , now it's my turn to cut _her_."

Karen remained motionless; she was scared, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of him knowing this. She could feel his breath on the back of her head and gave Shaz a wide-eyed look as if she was trying to communicate with the thirty-year-old.

Karen dropped her head a few inches, feigning tiredness, then quickly threw her head back and connected with Mangy's nose. He released a painful yelp, and she then stamped on his foot, speedily turned around and tried to prise the knife out of his clutches by grabbing his wrist with both off her hands. It became a struggle, until Shaz ran over and struck his wrist with her cleaver.

Mangy released an awful scream, and his disbelieving eyes grew like saucers once he could see his hand hanging off of his wrist, blood escaping plentifully onto the carpet.

"You stupid bitch!" he screamed, and continued to look at the damage to his hand.

Karen grabbed the bag off of the floor, whilst the injured man fell to his knees in the corner, and she calmly began taking clothing items from the cupboard, whilst the injured man fell onto his back and writhed about.

"Any preference?" she called over to Shaz, over the male screams, but Shaz shook her head and just wanted to get the hell out of there.

Once the bag was filled, Karen threw it over her shoulder and told Shaz to fill hers. Then they were leaving.

Karen walked past her and opened the door. "You coming or not?"

Shaz filled her bag and then pointed at Mangy; he was still on the floor, sobbing with the pain. "What about him?"

"Leave him. He deserves everything he gets."
Chapter Fifty Two

"Where are they? They should be here by now?"

Vince was pacing up and down on top of the HGV that was blocking the Armitage Road, and was waiting on a vehicle that had been sent out over an hour ago after their own pub excursion.

Claire quickly turned her head, making her blonde ponytail swing from side to side, and held her finger out to Vince, telling him politely not to utter another word. "I can hear an engine," she said.

Vince brought up the shotgun, and aimed it at the brow of the hill, ready for whatever was going to emerge over it.

It was one of his own, as he recognised the pick-up truck straight away, and this made Vince breathe some relief and even managed a smile across his face. The vehicle stopped by the HGV and waited for the thing to move so they could go through and into the camp.

Vince climbed down from the truck and sauntered over to the vehicle that had just arrived. Vince looked at the back of the truck and grinned at the faces of the men when they got out of the vehicle. Both men were carrying shotguns, and Vince asked Claire, who had just sat in the HGV, ready to reverse it back and allow the truck in, to hold on for a minute.

He took a look at what they had. "There's a shit load of stuff here." Vince beamed and patted both men on the shoulders, who took the praise and seemed rather smug with themselves.

The driver said, "We had to drive a bit further out, up through the countryside, but we saw an abandoned house and basically everything that was in it is in the back of the truck."

Vince then scowled in confusion, furrowing his brow, and pointed at the two large canisters. "Is that what I think it is?"

Both men from the pick-up truck looked at one another and smiled; they were certainly in Vince's good books on this particular evening. They both nodded, and the driver added, "Two large canisters of fuel; the one on the left is diesel, we've marked them."

Vince looked to see that they had marked, faintly in chalk, _petrol_ and _diesel_ on each canister. "Petrol stations?"

"We tried the two that we had passed," the passenger was speaking now and began to pick his teeth with his forefinger, "but they were completely empty and raided."

To quash Vince's confusion, the driver pointed at the labelled canisters and said, "We siphoned some cars to get those."

"Fuck me," Vince laughed. "You've certainly done well tonight, lads. The diesel will be great for the generators. You can never have enough."

Claire wound the window down of the HGV and asked if they were coming in or not. Vince held his hand up at her, rudely, as if he was gesturing to the impatient woman that he was still talking and she shouldn't interrupt.

The passenger spoke, "We came across the diesel just by chance."

Vince folded his arms. "Oh?"

The driver added, "A couple of miles up the road, there's a bit of a smash. Some sporty car and a black jeep."

Vince turned around and could see that, with her window wound down, Claire could hear every word and knew that there was a good chance that inside that black jeep they were talking about was Jack Slade.

"Did you get a look inside?" asked Vince.

The driver shook his head. "We saw the bodies slumped in their seats, so we just took the gas."

Vince nodded his head and motioned for Claire to reverse the HGV back, and allow the pick-up truck through. She never responded; so he motioned again. Again, the HGV never reversed back, in fact, Claire never even started the engine.

Vince turned around and glared at the twenty-seven-year-old. He looked at the two men and released a sigh. "Give me a minute, will you?"

Both men nodded obediently. The driver asked, "What's going on?"

Ignoring the driver, Vince looked at Claire. "It was _his_ decision to leave."

"I know." Claire bit her lower lip. She liked Vince. He had been good to her, but she felt under all that bravado was a man who had a kind heart. "You can't just leave him there, Vince."

"We don't even know it's definitely him."

Claire stared at Vince with those big, beautiful eyes of hers and nodded. "It is."

"I don't give a shit. He's made his bed. He can lie in it."

"He'd be a good addition to the camp. You know that."

"Yeah, once he gets rid of his soft attitude." Vince smacked the side of the HGV with the palm of his right hand, clicked his fingers and pointed at Claire. "They said that the men were slumped in their seats, so he might be dead."

She huffed, "He might not."

Vince rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. He looked back at the two men who stood patiently for their leader to make some kind of a decision.

"Okay." Vince scratched his head full of grey hair. "Can you gentleman keep guard for half an hour or so? We're gonna have to go out and pick up Claire's _boyfriend_ ," mocked Vince.

Protested Claire, "He's not—"

"Well you seem to like him, don't you?"

Claire never answered.

"Move the lorry back," Vince instructed Claire. "We'll both go out in another truck." He then pointed at the pick-up truck that the two men had returned in. "I'm not looking for him with a pick-up truck full of food and gas. If any looters out there jump us, they'll think their Christmases have all come at once."

Claire started up the engine of the lorry and reversed back with a wry smile on her face.

"Are you sure about this?" one of the men called out.

Vince nodded and joked, "I'm done arguing with her. Besides, we don't wanna be pissing her off too much. I think she might be on the blob. And in my book, anything that can bleed for a week and not die, is pure evil."

Both men began to cackle, but Claire was less than impressed.

"Come on," he looked at her morose face. "Where's your sense of humour?"

"It went weeks ago," she calmly spoke.

"Okay, we're going, lads. We won't be long."

One of the men called out, "But it'll be dark soon, Vince."

"I know, guys," Vince pointed at a determined Claire sitting in the HGV's driver's seat. "But there's two ways to argue with a woman. And let me tell you that neither one works."
Chapter Fifty Three

Both Karen and Shaz strolled through the street and both, in unison, turned around as if it was the last time they would see it. At the end of the street was a road to the right that led into the heart of the estate, and Karen wondered that with the amount of action that this one street had seen, what else was going on in the others, even the whole town.

She remembered how her own street was when the outbreak was first announced, when there were scores of them. But was that still the situation now? Or had some rotted away and fell to the floor in pieces, and the new danger for the town now were individuals willing to kill others for their own survival.

Suddenly, behind the girls around the corner of the street, five beasts emerged and headed for the young women, whilst their backs were turned.

"Karen." Shaz's voice was controlled when she had heard shuffling behind her, and both women faced the five ghouls lumbering towards them, rather quickly.

Karen shrugged, took off her bag, and pulled out her machete, "Jesus, these ones are really quick. Do we run or get rid?"

Shaz, without making any verbal or physical response, dropped her bag and pulled out the cleaver. She stepped forwards, struck the first one and killed it, but she struggled to release the embedded weapon. "Shit!"

The thing fell on top of her, dead. And as she struggled to get the thing off of her, another one, whose left part off the face was hanging off, made its way towards her. Karen ran forwards and took half the cranium away from a once-male that was completely naked, apart from a dirty pair of Kermit the Frog boxer shorts it was wearing. It fell with a large amount of blood gushing out onto the road as it made impact with the concrete.

Karen then set her sights on the female who was dressed in Lycra. It appeared that her trip to the gym had somewhat been rudely interrupted by the apocalypse. Karen took a swipe at the thing who simultaneously reached out to grab her, and the machete took its right hand off.

Unbothered of the loss of a limb, it continued to walk towards Karen, who was now a little distracted that her new friend was struggling to get free and had the dilemma of another one heading towards her. The thing lashed out with its left hand, and Karen side-kicked it into the stomach. It fell backwards, giving her precious seconds of breathing space, and she went over to the struggling Shaz and struck out at the ghoul that was yards away. It fell to the floor, but Karen had no time to help Shaz get up, as the two remaining beasts quickly moved towards them.

Shaz struggled to her feet, whereas Karen quickly walked backwards on the road and fell over onto the pavement. Her heels had hit the kerb, and the back of her head had taken a knock. She dropped the machete onto the floor, and she was sprawled out onto her back.

The back of her head received a little trauma and she could see the disgusting thing getting nearer, and then it fell on top of her. She grabbed the thing by the throat, desperate for its mouth to be away from her flesh, and winced as its smell assaulted her senses. She took a quick second to look at Shaz's predicament, and she seemed to be in a far less dangerous state.

Shaz was trying to avoid her attacker, but had no weapon, as the embedded cleaver remained in her first victim. It appeared that Shaz was trying to entice the thing away from the other body, so she could have a few seconds to make a run for the cleaver and try and prise it out.

With her one hand, Karen tried with all her strength to push her assailant away; her right hand was outstretched, feeling for the machete that was frustratingly only a few yards away.

Because she was holding the thing back with the one hand, she could feel that the Snatcher was winning the battle as she was weakening. She decided to forget about the machete and concentrate more on not getting bitten.

With both hands, she grabbed its neck and pushed it further up. Its mouth opened, and Karen retched when she saw that the thing's mouth was littered with maggots. Some of the things fell out and landed on her shirt, but she tried to not let this affect her, as she had more pressing matters to be concerned about than a few insects. The maggots continued to wriggle excitedly and a couple fell from its left nostril, which told her that its insides were completely infested with the flesh-eating insects.

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a whizzing sound could be heard and the head of the thing exploded. Karen quickly threw her head to the side as blood hit her in the face, and the thing became motionless. She moved the ghoul off of her and stood up immediately, brushing off the few maggots that were aching for flesh. She then realised what had happened and rapidly scanned the area of the street, and then tried to look in the windows of the houses belonging to the next road.

Shaz had finally managed to get the cleaver free whilst her 'admirer' was still trying to catch her up. But before the exhausted woman had chance to strike, the front of her attacker's skull received trauma from 'bullet number two' that had originally entered the back of its head. It fell to the floor with a slump, and the fall to the concrete increased the damage to its head.

Both Karen and Shaz were stunned and out of breath.

They looked at one another, and the two women, who were both sprayed with blood and drenched in sweat, slowly peered around the area that was devoid of human life.

Shaz then became a little distracted when she saw the maggots pouring out of the mouth and onto the road of Karen's, now defunct, attacker that had received a bullet from a mystery gunman. She pulled a face and asked, "How did _that_ happen?"

"Insects are attracted to decomposition," Karen explained robotically, not even eyeing Shaz, and proceeded to look around to see where those damn bullets had come from. "Flies will lay eggs in skin openings and in entrances to the body; nose, ears and mouth. Maggots will hatch and start eating the decomposing flesh. But forget about that. My question is: Where the fuck did those bullets come from?"

"I don't know."

Shaz tried to look at every window—not just the windows in the street they were standing in, but the windows that belonged to houses in other streets, behind. "Are we being watched?"

Karen Bradley shook her head. She was unsure. "Possibly, but whoever shot those things must be friendly and no danger to us, otherwise we'd both be dead by now."

Shaz put the cleaver into her belt and squatted to the floor in the middle of the carnage of the bodies they had just killed, and the bodies from the day before that Karen and Pickle had executed. "This place stinks."

Karen was trying to get her breath back. Once she had given up scanning for the shooter and was reasonably sure his or her action was in the girls' best interests, she looked around at the fresh carnage that had taken place, and wasn't impressed with their 'work'. "For fuck's sake. Five of them, and we needed help with that."

"We were tired before we came down," was Shaz's defensive response.

Karen's facial expression was in agreement with Shaz's comment. "Maybe I should have waited till the morning. Don't tell Pickle. I don't want him knowing about this." Karen giggled, "I'll never live it down."

"I think we should go."

"I think that's a great idea."

An exhausted Karen threw the bag of clothes over her shoulder, Shaz did the same, and both girls strolled their way out of the street and onto the football field. They both looked up at the hill that they had to climb, and both released false laughter, knowing that the cabin was going to be a bitch to get to.

Karen kept on repeating, 'I should've waited till the morning', over and over again, as if she was punishing herself for making the spontaneous decision to go and get clothing.

"Look on the bright side," Shaz tried to appease. "We'll sleep like babies tonight."

"That's for sure," Karen responded; but she _wasn't_ sure.

Karen's mind wandered; it plagued her psyche that she didn't know who the shooter was. She never actually heard the gunshots and wondered if the shooter had had a silencer attached to his/her rifle, or maybe they just couldn't hear the shot over the yelling and groans coming from both the women and the ghouls combined.

Whether the gun had a silencer or not, who was the shooter? Ex-army? A soldier that had escaped and fled his position? Or just a random psychopath with an arsenal of weapons and was now finally putting them to some good use?

She had no idea, and knew that, exhaustion or not, this was going to mentally torture her when she finally settled down to get some shuteye.
Chapter Fifty Four

The smashed and crumpled vehicles had been stationary for the last half an hour, and the Vauxhall Corsa was smoking at the front. The man inside was unconscious, moaning a little, but the dashboard had been pushed and crushed so much, due to the impact, that a lot of debris had been inserted into his stomach and chest. The man was losing blood and was minutes away from death.

The other man, Jack Slade, wasn't wearing a seatbelt when the impact occurred. He had minor whiplash and had hit his head on the dashboard when the Corsa ploughed into the side of the black jeep. He had been unconscious, but was finally coming around.

For a moment, Jack thought he was waking up in his own bed. He looked around the inside off the jeep. His eyes then saw the state of the Vauxhall Corsa, and had noticed that both cars were sitting in the middle of the crossroads. To the right of him was Stile Cop beauty spot, Hazelslade was straight on, and the road to the left led to Longdon.

He then realised what had happened.

He realised that he wasn't at home anymore, and he was probably never going to see his home again. He understood that Thomas was deceased, and that the world had turned into an apocalyptic place.

His realisation had depressed him, but before he had any more time to dwell on this and burst into tears, a mixture of hideous and familiar moans and groans could be heard to the left of him.

A small group of the dead could be seen coming down the Longdon Road, the road to the left, and they clumsily progressed towards the two cars. Jack struggled to get out. He was beginning to think he was cursed every time he got behind the wheel of a vehicle.

When the outbreak first happened, he set off from Glasgow to Rugeley on the M6 and ended up crashing his Vauxhall Meriva when it got a flat. A jeep he was driving from the supermarket, after Gary's death, had been driven into a ditch when he was somewhat distracted by a set of ghouls. And now this!

The sight of the gang of the dead had given him a shot in the arm, and he suddenly perked up and began to try the doors of his vehicle. Neither one was budging, and he had no idea if this was due to the damage the vehicle had taken, or it was some kind of mechanical failure.

He then realised he had locked both doors once he had left the factory, just in case. He unlocked them both and tried the driver's side again. It still wasn't budging, and this time he was convinced that it was damage to the door that was causing this nefarious inconvenience.

He saw two of them go around the back of the Corsa, but the remaining seven surrounded _his_ jeep. He tried to start the car but nothing occurred. It had died on him. He looked above him and could see the sunroof. It seemed the only way: Break through the sunroof; get on top of the jeep, and hopefully jump off without breaking his legs and being grabbed and ripped apart by these mindless, ravenous freaks, but he was too sore to move properly.

As they reached the jeep and began peering and clawing at the thick pane of glass on the driver's side door, Jack stared into the eyes of these things and was certain that the glass in the solid jeep was good enough and strong enough to hold them off. The problem was that they never gave up. It didn't matter how long he stayed in the vehicle, even if he had enough supplies for a week, they'd still be there, waiting for him to come out.

He had to think of a way to get out alive. But he couldn't think.

Suddenly, Jack could hear a roar of an engine from behind, but he couldn't twist his sore neck round to see who it was. He jumped in fright when he heard a thunderous blast, followed by the sight of blood and brain matter decorating the outside of the driver's side window.

What the fuck is going on?

Jack then heard another blast. He peered out of the window and saw a solitary creature to the left, fall, whilst most of its head left its body in a bloody violent way that he had seen before. It fell to the floor, practically headless.

Jack then heard a scuffle, and saw bodies continuing to fall to the left and he recognised the man straight away. He then gaped to the right, through his driver's bloody window, and noticed the blonde ponytail swinging as the female had approached the two creatures that were by the Corsa. She made light work of their demise with her machete and both had taken a blow each, the second ghoul's head had come off completely. He then watched her go over to the decapitated head and rammed the blade of the machete through its skull.

A month ago this scene would have horrified and repulsed Jack, but now he felt nothing. Although he was happy that his macabre episode had a happy ending, thanks to Vince and Claire, he was baffled how they knew where he was, unless this had been some kind of remarkable coincidence.

Once the conflict had finished, Vince leaned the shotgun against the car, opened the passenger door and peered in. He began to cackle, "Well, looks like we saved your life, Jackie boy. That's a blowjob you owe me."

Jack was confused, and began rubbing his sore head. "But how..?"

"One of my men saw the cars on the way back from a run. Claire had a feeling it could be you."

Jack was stunned and couldn't find his voice, although his bottom lip moved a little. "Thank you," Jack said wearily, obviously still a little concussed.

"Don't thank me," Vince sniffed. "It was Claire's idea. I was gonna let you be, considering you seem to think you're too good for us."

Claire walked over to the jeep and took a look inside. "You okay? How you feeling?"

Jack smiled. Despite his reservations of staying in the camp, he had a soft spot for Claire. "I think it's just a bit of bruising; neck's a bit sore though."

Sighed Vince, "Well, you two can play _hide the sausage_ once we're back at the camp. I, for one, don't wanna be hanging about here for a minute longer." Vince's larking around began to cease and his face took on a more serious look. He held out his hand and said to Jack, "You're coming back with us. No arguments."

Jack nodded in agreement, and was beginning to feel like an idiot for leaving in the first place. He had been out on the road for under an hour, and already he had got himself into a life-threatening scenario that he was lucky to be leaving in one piece.

"What about him?" Claire pointed over to the dying man in the Vauxhall Corsa; he was crushed by the inside of his car, and wasn't far away from death itself.

Vince sniggered, " _He's_ not coming back with us."

Claire shook her head at his dark sense of humour and asked, "What are we gonna do with him? We can't just leave him there. The poor man's dying."

Vince bent down and pulled out a blade from his sock. "I'll take care of him. This is only the second human I've killed, but the guy doesn't deserve to die like this."

"You can't do that," Claire protested. "That's sick."

Vince disagreed. "It's not sick. He's already dying. I'm doing him a favour. If you wanna see sick, put your thumb up your arse and one in your mouth, count to five, then switch thumbs. Now _that's_ sick."

Vince walked away from Claire, smashed the driver's window with the butt of his shotgun and leaned in. The guy was a mess. The dashboard had crushed him, and his abdomen had been pierced and there was blood everywhere. The man looked at Vince with pleading eyes. Vince nodded at the man, took a hold of his blade and drew it across the man's throat, leaving him to bleed out.

*

"Where the hell have you two been?" was the first question Wolfgang Kindl threw at an exhausted Karen and Shaz. Wolf could see that they had ran into trouble, the evidence was all over their face and their clothes.

Karen and Shaz held up their bags and Bradley announced, "Got some clothes. Besides, we thought we'd be back by the time you and Pickle woke up. Wanted to surprise you."

Shaz slumped to the grass beside a fire that Wolf had just started. Karen placed the bag by the side of the cabin and did the same, sitting next to Shaz.

"Where's Pickle?" asked Karen.

"I think I heard him just wakening up," Wolf said. He went into the cabin and asked from the kitchen, "You girls hungry?"

They both replied with a 'yes' and Shaz asked what it was going to be.

"Gonna use those rolls you found. They're a bit stale, but a chicken breast and some relish should make it taste nice."

"I'll get up in a minute," Karen called back. "We're exhausted."

"No problem," Wolf said, feeling more relaxed now they had returned, but was still upset that they had walked off without telling anyone. "You can get the tea on with that stove."

Once Wolf began buttering the rolls in the kitchen, Shaz and Karen got to their feet and placed a cup in one of the buckets, and used the water in the cup to wash their face and remove any sprays of blood that were there. They both sat back down and Shaz looked over her shoulder to make sure there was nobody eavesdropping. Shaz leaned over to whisper to Karen. "About this sniper. Who on earth could that be?"

Karen was lost in thought. "Probably some guy who's escaped from the army. He's probably hiding out in one of the houses and saw our predicament, took pity on us, and used two bullets up to help us out." Karen began to snicker, simply because she was finding the 'sniper incident' more bizarre and surreal than the dead in the street trying to eat them. How messed up was that? "Best to keep it to ourselves for now."

Shaz was about to ask another question, but Karen shushed her as footsteps could be heard coming from the kitchen, followed by the main door opening.

A weary-looking Pickle exited the cabin and walked onto the garden. He greeted the girls and noticed the bag straight away. "Been shopping, I see." He shook his head in disappointment. "Wolf told me."

Changing the subject, and trying to avoid a lecture about going to the street without him, Karen questioned, "How's the finger?"

"Still missing."

Karen almost burst out laughing at the stupidity of her question. "I meant, how are you in general?"

"I'll live. My nose's sore as hell, and ma torso feels like it's been hit with a couple o' baseball bats."

"I couldn't imagine how sore that would be," Shaz said, pointing over to his missing finger.

Pickle smiled and spoke, "I think it's fair to say that it may keep me awake for a few nights. The pain comes in waves; at the moment it hurts like a bastard."

"Have a look in the bag." Shaz stood up on her aching feet and showed Pickle what was in it. "You better have a look now before it gets dark."

Pickle ruffled through the bag with his right hand, and eventually pulled out a pair of blue jeans and a black T-shirt.

"Ah, black," he spoke with sarcasm. "It seems to be the only colour I wear these days."

Karen said, "There's plenty of underwear at the bottom of the bag as well."

Pickle looked at the girls and his face was full of emotion. Karen turned around and peered over her shoulder. "For fuck's sake, Harry Branston, you're not gonna cry, are you?"

Pickle cleared his throat. "Course not." The topic was quickly changed and Pickle asked Karen, "Any problems back at the street?"

"No." Karen shook her head and gave Shaz a glance. "No problems at all."

"This is the last time we go for a while, okay?"

Karen laughed and began picking at a bit of dry skin on the end of her nose. "We keep on saying that."

"I'm serious. And I don't want yer going down there on yer own again."

"I wasn't on my own, I was with Shaz."

"Yer know what I mean."

Karen seemed annoyed by Pickle's mollycoddling, and was a little embarrassed with Shaz being present. "Look, you went on your own when I was unwell. Just because I don't have a dick, doesn't mean I can't fight. And you should know that by now."

Shaz felt an unstoppable smirk stretching across her face, and put her hand over it to prevent Pickle from seeing it.

Pickle took it well, and snickered, "I suppose I asked for that."
Chapter Fifty Five

As soon as the girls left him to his own devices, he winced and cried out when his hand was simply hanging off. The blood continued to seep out and was soaked up by the carpet. He picked the hanging limb up with his working hand, and knew that he needed to get his injury wrapped up before he bled to death.

Crying, he walked down the stairs. He noticed that the front door had been left open, and he wondered if those bitches had done this on purpose. He angrily kicked the door shut and went into the kitchen. He knew his hand was fucked, and thought he'd be better off without it with the condition it was in.

He took out a couple of tea-towels from a cupboard, put them on the draining board and reached for the cleaver that sat in a wooden block with the sharp knives. Placing his bloody arm on the sink and his defunct right hand, he raised the cleaver and brought it down hard on the tendons that were stopping the hand from departing from the body indefinitely.

He then took his bloody arm and wrapped the tea-towels around the wound. He cried out every time the bloody stump made contact with any kind of touch, and with three tea-towels wrapped around his wrist, he needed to sit down as his head was spinning. He didn't know whether it was the shock or the loss of blood that was making him dizzy and feeling queasy. He thought that it could be both.

He staggered on the ground floor and went through a cupboard under the TV. He found two bottles of red wine, a half bottle of Southern Comfort and an unopened bottle of Jim Beam. He had seen it in films before, and decided to try it. It would have been a cruel twist if he eventually stopped the blood loss, but then ended up dying of an infection instead.

He took out the Jim Beam, plonked it on the floor and unscrewed it with his only hand. He quickly poured the substance over the blood-soaked, wrapped tea-towels where his hand used to be, and cried out with the stinging. The perspiration poured out from him, and his whole body shot up in temperature.

His three associates had gone and he was left all alone. Two were dead, and the other had fled the street in one of the Ford cars.

He had spent most of his life in and out of prison, and welcomed the new, lawless land that had began to plague Britain nearly three weeks ago, but he never expected this! He had had some scrapes with the dead, and there had been a few near misses, but he never thought he could end up becoming disfigured by a woman, for Christ's sake!

Tears of pain ran down his cheeks, and he then fell onto the couch and lay down. A thud was heard in the house and he immediately sat up. "What the fuck was that?"

He walked out of the living room and saw a door in the hallway. A cellar maybe. With the condition he was in, he avoided investigating if there was anything down there. That would be just suicide.

He walked back to the living room and caught a glimpse of himself in the hall mirror. Even without the severing of his hand his machete-cut across his features made him look hideous, but the overall picture was so horrendous that he felt like screaming.

He glared at the glass; his black hair that was tied in a ponytail hadn't been washed in weeks; his teeth were never his best quality anyway, but the severed hand, his dirty clothes, and the huge cut on his cheek above his thick, dark beard, made him look severely unapproachable.

He looked out of the window, and despite the carnage in the street, it seemed reasonably quiet. He was desperate to get back to the farm before sundown, before someone else decided to claim it for themselves. They'd spent weeks stocking up on gas and food, and he didn't want some idiot walking onto the farm and thinking they had hit the jackpot.

He then began to think about his dead pals, and his other colleague that had decided to leave them in limbo. "If I ever get my hands on him..."

The desperation of going back to the farm and living in a place of luxury for many months forced him to go through the pain barrier; so he walked out into the street, whilst the bottom of his arm was throbbing like hell.

He looked at two cars that were stationary, but he couldn't drive with one working hand! He needed someone to drive him. He went back into the house, grabbed himself a knife, and went back out on the street. He was going to have to flag a car down, more than likely on the main road that was a few streets away. He was hoping his horrendous appearance wouldn't put any motorists off from giving him a ride, but only time would tell.

"To hell with it!"

He ran through the cursed street, turned right, and went into another. He could see two of the things up ahead, but was confident he could outrun them, which he did with ease.

The main road was just up ahead, fifty yards away, and he needed to pass the top of a street to get there. He looked down the road and saw that this particular street was heaving with the dead. He had no idea why. Maybe they had saw something from afar, or someone had been killed and the screams attracted more of them from other streets. Whatever the reason why there were so many, they were there, and fortunately he managed to jog by the top of the street without being noticed.

He winced as his hand continued to throb; the cut on the face never bothered him too much. He had been stabbed on two occasions during his lifetime, so he was used to the violence, and although the cut hurt like hell at first, the mutilated arm seemed to have taken away the attention from his face.

He had now finally reached the main road. His neck twisted left and right whilst he walked along it, paranoid of the dead appearing. For two minutes he came across nothing. Then he suddenly heard it. It was the sound of an engine.

The vehicle was in a rush and it quickly came round the bend, giving him just seconds to react. He stumbled into the road and held his damaged arm up. The pick-up truck had no intention of slowing down for the man, and tried to swerve around him. The tyres squealed as the truck swerved to the side, but the left side of the bumper still hit him and he went flying through the air, eventually hitting the tarmac and throwing his knife yards down the road.

The vehicle was now out of sight, and the injured man groaned in pain with his body gaining extra damage, which included broken ribs, bruising, and a broken tibia in his left leg.

He was struggling to crawl, let alone get up, and he knew that his only hope now was if another motorist came by and stopped for him. But what were the chances of that?

The short crawl to the side of the road was exhausting and painful. The pain was a struggle to cope with, but as soon as he saw two dead beasts stumble onto the main road from the last street of the estate, he wished straight away that he was dead.

They spotted him immediately.

He wondered if the screech of the tyres from the pick-up truck had seduced them to this part of the area, but he didn't think about it for too long as he now had more pressing matters to contend with. The two things weren't far away now, and because of the condition that he was in, it now didn't matter if there was just two of them or if it was the rest of the creatures from the whole estate.

He had already come to the conclusion that he was as good as fucked.

They were only a matter of yards away and he thought that although his death was going to be beyond pain, he was going to go out with a fight.

They stood over his battered body, and the things bent down in unison whilst the potential victim kicked out and swung his arms at them, despite his injuries.

His fight was futile and he was bitten straight away. Whilst releasing screams of anguish, he managed to punch one of them. With the only hand he had left, he tried to rip its bottom jaw off, only for the jaw of his assailant to snap shut and bite into the man's bony hand whilst the other ghoul was now crouching over him, and was taking a large chunk from the side of his neck. As the man screamed, the thing was furiously trying to rip a piece of flesh free, whilst blood pissed furiously out all over the road.

Even though his first attacker was chewing and had a mouthful of skin, tendons and muscle, it greedily went in for another bite and the other being had now started working on the other side of his neck, ripping it open with its dirty teeth, the blood spilling plentifully.

The victim was now dead and they continued munching at the neck, devouring some of his tongue, until the head came away from the body.

The brains were next.
Chapter Fifty Six

Vince claimed he knew a short cut back to the camp, but Jack felt that the country-road way was taking longer and Vince was actually apprehensive driving in populated areas, especially on an evening with darkness creeping up. Jack thought that once Vince was in populated territory, he didn't seem as cool and appeared to be edgy. Any kind of vehicle being driven, especially in residential areas, could be a target for potential thieves to carjack, and everybody was aware of this, which made Jack appreciate them coming for him all the more.

Vince may have been the tough guy when it came to robbing innocent shopkeepers or looting houses with unarmed frightened individuals inside, but Jack hadn't yet seen him in action when it came to a shootout with another individual, or a hand-to-hand combat with someone who knew what they were doing. He knew Vince wasn't afraid of violence, that was proved when he hardly flinched getting rid of Johnny, but Jack thought it'd be interesting to see how Vince would act if ever he met his match. After all, he was only a forklift driver. Was he all talk? Only time could answer that question.

Under the black bellies of fused clouds, the day was rapidly losing its battle with the night, and a hazard appeared up ahead that had made the truck come to a stop. A pick-up truck was lying on its side as if it had lost control and tumbled a few times. Jack, Claire and Vince all looked at one another, wondering what to do next.

"I can give it a nudge with this vehicle and move it somehow." Vince looked at Claire and Jack to see if they agreed. The were both surprised that he even waited for approval, and they both responded with nods and shrugs as if to say, do what you think is best.

A lone creature came from behind the newly-found truck as if it had been hiding. Jack looked at Vince with confusion and Vince responded, "I have no idea what is going on."

Claire decided to shed a little light why the single ghoul was hanging around the crashed vehicle. "Maybe there's still people in there. People that are alive. That's probably why it's hanging about."

Jack narrowed his eyes at the lone ghoul and looked at the clothes it was wearing. It was wearing sports attire and Jack thought he recognised the thing.

Vince got out of the car and the creature began to stagger towards him, past the vehicle. It was now ten yards ahead of the vehicle and getting closer to Vince, who stood waiting for it. Jack and Claire remained sitting and saw Vince grab hold of the thing by the hair and jab his knife straight through the left eye. He then released the hair, pulled out the knife and watched it slump to a dead heap.

Vince walked over to the truck and could see a few items scattered across the road that may have been in the back of the vehicle before its tumble, but it was nothing to get excited about, and nothing that was going to improve the camp. Most food seemed to have been already nibbled at by the woods' creatures, and some of the tins were crushed and dented. A few empty bottles of water were also scattered along the road, suggesting that these bottles had cracked once the crash had happened, and the liquid inside had slowly poured out all over the tarmac.

As soon as Vince got to the bonnet-end, he climbed a little to peer inside the opened window. He saw two people inside.

The driver was a middle-aged man; he was most definitely dead. He had no injuries to his body, but his face highlighted that he had been dead for a day or two now. The woman was still hanging on and was muttering something; her lips were all dry and she was severely dehydrated. She was alive, but barely. None of them seemed to have been bitten, and it appeared that maybe the male had had a stroke or a heart attack, and the woman had been there for days because she couldn't, or was too frightened, to get out, and ended up so dehydrated that she was now pretty close to death.

Why didn't she try and get out once the vehicle crashed? Was she initially surrounded by these things? Even with just the one ghoul, was she too scared to go out? Or had she received broken bones from the crash and couldn't escape, even if she wanted to? Vince had no idea.

He began to walk away from the vehicle and saw Jack get out of the car.

"Get back inside," ordered Vince. "We're going."

Jack ignored Vince and this made him nervous. If Jack peered into the vehicle and saw that the woman was alive, he'd demand that she would have to go back to the camp. Vince wanted the camp to be strong, not to be treated like a hospital and littered with injured, elderly people. The place had too many old people as it was for Vince's liking.

Jack walked with slow steps towards the creature that Vince had just destroyed. She looked different, but he still knew who it was. Her dark hair seemed dirty, but she was still wearing the same clothes when they had left the sports centre. Jack crouched down and sadly placed his hand on her white, cold cheek and whispered, "I'm sorry, Jade."

Asked Vince, "You knew her?"

"It's a long story; I'll tell you about it one day." Jack then stood up and had a quick scan around and said under his breath, "I hope the others made it."

"She looked like she could have been a looker," Vince spoke out; it was a comment that Jack thought was a strange thing to say. Vince, still worried that Jack was going to take a peep inside the vehicle, then urged the man, "Let's go."

"Any passengers in the truck?" Jack queried Vince.

Vince paused for a few seconds and shook his head. "No. Nothing."

Jack followed him back to the vehicle and sat next to Claire in the passenger seat. She could see that Jack looked despondent, and before she could ask him what was the matter, Vince told her that he used to know the girl that he had just killed.

Vince could see there was sadness in Jack's face. "You think that's bad," Vince spoke up and then turned to Claire. "Remember that run we went out on last week?"

Claire nodded sadly, and took over the story. "Vince and I, and a few others, went further out and into this tiny village. We went into about three or four houses, then went back because of the Rotters coming from the farmlands."

Vince interjected with a cackle, "Fuckers had eaten a cow. Can you believe that?"

Claire added, "Anyway, we got to this end house and went into the garage to see if there was a car to siphon from. The whole garage stunk of carbon monoxide. I took a look inside and saw a man in the front and a little girl in the back, windows down. I think he gassed himself and her. It was probably too much for them, well, him especially."

"Never slept for two days, did you, Claire?" Vince spoke, this time with sincerity coated in his words.

Claire continued, "She was such a beautiful thing as well. She had beautiful blonde hair, and was wearing a cute Barbie T-shirt." Claire lowered her head and sniffed, "I've seen heads exploding every day, but this really affected me. I'll never forget it."

Vince started the engine and tried to somehow lift the mood. "And on that light note, I think we should now get back to the camp. You fuckers are depressing the shite out of me."

"I lost my son last week," Jack blurted out.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Jack." Vince spoke with genuine empathy in his voice, although it was Claire that Jack was talking to.

"My God." Claire gazed at the broken man who looked close to tears. "What happened?"

"Again; it's a long story that I will tell you all about one day."

Vince added, "Maybe we should get drunk one night and spill our guts."

"Sounds good to me." Jack then dropped his head and placed each hand on the side and shook it. Claire looked at Vince and was wondering what Jack was doing. He then lifted his head up, teary-eyed and Jack sighed, "Man, I think I'm losing my mind."

"Maybe you have dementia," cackled Vince.

"Not funny, Vince." Claire said. "Both my grandparents had dementia in their care homes. It was horrible to see."

"Still," added Vince. "The good thing about having dementia is that you're always meeting new people."

Vince looked over his right shoulder, checking his blind spot, and pulled the vehicle away, leaving a smirk on the faces of Jack and Claire.

Jack gazed at Vince. _Maybe he's not that bad. He's a bit sick, but the company could be worse._ He then felt his hand being squeezed and smiled at Claire as the truck zoomed through the lane.
Chapter Fifty Seven

After their meal, the group were in good spirits. The fire roared and although Shaz and Karen had gone through a traumatic experience earlier, it was becoming a hazard that they were becoming accustomed to these days, especially Karen.

Wolf had decided to retire to the living room once Pickle cracked open the wine. Karen said that she wasn't in the mood and opted for water instead, leaving Shaz and Pickle with the alcohol. Wolf politely told the group to try and keep the noise down, and Pickle opted for the sofa to sleep on whilst the girls had to make do with the living room floor. The garden was out of bounds because the rain still fell, although it was now just a light drizzle.

Their backsides were soaked with sitting on the wet grass, but this was soon forgotten once Pickle and Karen had begun to tell Shaz about their story and how they had met.

Shaz had only supped on a half-tumbler of wine, but could feel the effects of the stuff already going to her head. "So let's get this clear," the new woman said. "You two met in the woods. Then..." The alcohol made Shaz pause; she had lost her train of thought. "Then you had a group and some were killed. Had another group, and some were killed..." Shaz begun to laugh, and looked around the cabin. "They say things happen in threes; should I be worried?"

Pickle and Karen knew she had a few drinks inside her, but felt a little upset at the way she described their weeks in such a harsh summary.

"Some o' the people we lost," Pickle began, and had to swallow his displeasure, "were good people, lovers, even kids. I know you've had a drink, Shaz, but please don't mock."

Karen tried to lighten the mood. "Anyway, Shaz, where'd you get that daft bracelet from?"

"Which bracelet?" Shaz began to look at her hands. Her soused state took Pickle by surprise as she had hardly had that much wine. But then again, for a lot of individuals, it could have been three weeks since they'd had a drink, and even a glass could go to someone's head, especially for a person who hadn't eaten properly in under a month.

Sharon finally found the bracelet Karen was referring to; it was hanging off her left wrist. It was cheap-looking and the assortment of beads had all the colours of the rainbow around the elastic. Sharon stared at the bracelet and puffed out a breath that was full of despair. She touched the bracelet with the fingers of her right hand, and looked at Karen with her glassy eyes and finally answered, "Spencer made me this two days before he died. He made it at school. I'll never forget it. It was Friday afternoon, June 8th."

Karen tried to explain. "I'm sorry, I di—"

"It's okay."

"Yer told me before, in a brief summary, that yer husband killed yer son. Are yer in any state to tell us what happened?" In a matter of seconds, Pickle had forgiven Shaz for her crass comments about his group. He missed KP like hell, but losing a child was the worst thing that could happen to an adult, and it was something he hadn't and would never experience, thankfully.

"Nothing to tell really." Shaz was trying her utmost to put on a brave face, but she was losing the battle. "I slept on the sofa because of my husband's snoring, and I woke up to hear noises from upstairs. I went up and saw my husband had reanimated."

"Spencer too?" asked Pickle.

Shaz shook her head. "Thanks to my husband, there was hardly anything left _to_ reanimate."

"How did your husband turn?" Karen asked. "Was he bitten, or...?"

Explained Shaz, "You see, this is the thing. He drank in the house and then went to bed. But before he went to bed, he was putting bottles in the recycling bin, and I heard him shouting at someone. Maybe it was one of _them_ , and he had somehow been bitten or scratched. But he never said anything to me when he came back into the house."

"Maybe he didn't wanna worry yer," Pickle spoke up.

"What happened to your husband after you saw he had turned?" queried Karen.

"I don't know." Shaz nodded in Karen's direction. "I did the same as what you did. I left the house and took the car. It was stolen three days later."

Pickle lowered his head inbetween his knees and then looked up again, his neck cracking. "I'm sure yer Spencer is with God now."

Sharon smiled at the thought. "I hope so, Pickle. I really do."

As Shaz and Pickle continued to converse, Karen decided to get herself a drink of water. Wolf kept a few bottles on top of the sink that had been collected, bleached and sieved. She walked into the kitchen from outside and helped herself. She took a large swig, and Wolf came in from the living room and stood next to her. He peered out of the main door whilst in the kitchen, and gawped at Pickle and Shaz who were deep in conversation.

"Well, they seem to be getting on," Wolf said.

Karen nodded and screwed the lid back onto the water bottle. "She seems nice enough. Wasn't too sure at first, but it's amazing how this thing can psychologically fuck you up."

Wolf made a facial expression to suggest that he agreed with Karen, and he looked at the twenty-three-year-old. Karen glared back at him with her head lowered, but she was joking with her stare. "What is it, Wolf?"

Wolf walked over to the main door and slowly shut it properly, as if he was about to tell Karen a secret and he didn't want the other two to know. He finally asked her, "How are _you_ these days?"

Karen sniggered and was baffled by his query. "Er, fine. And you?"

Wolf ran his fingers through his grey beard and took off his straw hat, revealing his damp, grey hair. He placed his hands on both of her shoulders and gazed at her. "I may be a man, my dear, but I know when someone is pregnant."

Karen burst into hysterics and whilst she did this and kept up her pretence, Wolf remained glaring at the former nurse. Her snickering had finally ceased and she said, "What are you talking about?"

" _You_ know."

Karen half-laughed, lowered her head and began rubbing her eyelids. She quickly lifted her head up to reveal her rainy eyes and pleaded, "Please, don't tell anyone else."

"But you had that wine the other day."

"Yeah, and I was sick as a dog. Just don't tell anyone. I don't want sympathy."

"How long gone?"

Karen sighed and seem to take an age to answer Wolf's question. She slowly shrugged her shoulders. "No idea. Maybe just a few weeks, or a month or so. I could still lose it, with a bit of a luck."

Wolf let go of her shoulders and took a step back. For a minute, she thought he was going to slap her, as she saw the venom in his face. But he was never going to strike a pregnant woman. "That's a terrible thing to say, Karen. That baby is the only bit of Gary you have left. It was Gary you was engaged to, wasn't it?"

She nodded sadly. "Yeah, well, I can't have a baby in this fucked up world."

Wolf took a sip from a cup of tea he had made earlier and wetted his lips. "It's not ideal, but it's still a life. You have a son or a daughter, _Gary's_ son or daughter, growing inside of you. Doesn't that mean anything?"

"It means it's gonna slow me down."

Wolf shook his head in exasperation. "You don't mean that."

"Oh, don't I?"

Wolf had sadness in his eyes and looked over both shoulders as if someone could be around, eavesdropping. "Look, children are a gift from God. You see, I..." He paused and lowered his head, as if he was about to say something personal to Karen, but was unsure whether to say it or not. "I was a shitty father, especially to my son. If I could have my time back again..."

Karen could see the hurt and regret on Wolf's face. "You said you had kids before, what were they?"

"I have a daughter _and_ a son."

"And what are their names?"

"Sadie and Vincent." Wolf smiled and gently placed his wrinkly hand affectionately on the left arm of Karen Bradley. "Sadie is forty-one. She lives in Ireland. And the other one is around somewhere. He just lives on the other side of the town. He's the eldest."

"Vincent?"

Wolf nodded. "But we just call him Vince."

Wolf then went back over to the main door and opened it. He looked up to the black sky and called out to Pickle and Shaz. "Better get inside, folks. I think there's going to be a storm soon."

Pickle and Shaz looked up in unison to the depressing clouds, and agreed wholeheartedly with Wolf and told him that as soon as they had finished the rest of their drink, they were going to retire into the cabin. Because of the rain, it was going to be a bit cramped on this particular night, but Mother Nature had forced all four people to stay indoors. Even if the rain had stopped completely, the grass was still soaking wet.

Pickle was the first to get in and walked past Karen in the kitchen. Shaz soon came in and placed her hand on Karen's shoulder and looked out of the window. "That's gonna be some storm tonight."

Karen sighed and looked up at the depressing clouds through the window, "Yep." She nodded her head in agreement. "And I've got a feeling there's gonna be a few more storms to come."
THE END
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