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's 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 and 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, did I."
"You don't give too much away."
"Look who's talking."
They both sat in silence, supping on their hot beverages; George got back up 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, etc, 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 him 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 of them, 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 elsewhere. 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 forward, 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.