Ghostland (Book 3): Ghostland 3 Read online

  He stepped out of the vehicle and went over to the second house from the end. He tried the door but it was closed, and then ran at it with his shoulder, easily forcing it open.

  He rubbed his shoulder and smiled. “Well, that was easy enough.”

  He looked over at the van and waved at Yoler, pointing in the direction of the doorway, telling her that he was going in. He didn’t get a response from the woman and just went in.

  As soon as he walked in, he could see that the stairs to the first floor were in front of him. There was an alcove to his left and he could see it was the living room. It was an open plan ground floor, and he could see that the room was clear before stepping in. He stepped in with his trench knife in his hand and knew that there was a kitchen somewhere. The room smelt fusty and his nose twitched when a small hint of rotten fish could be detected. He was convinced the smell was coming from the kitchen, possibly the fridge, and he made slow careful steps to the dining table that was at the end of the room.

  He popped his head around the right corner of the room and could see a small kitchen and a side door that led outside.

  The smell seemed to have dissipated and Dicko opened the fridge to find nothing inside apart from garnishes like mint sauce, English mustard, and a jar of jalapenos. He shut the door and checked the cupboards. There were tins of peaches, beans, and soup. There were thirteen tins altogether. It wasn’t a lot, but the tins were going in the back of the van on their way back to the camp.

  It was time to check the upstairs.

  The man in his forties made his way back through the living room and reached the first floor in seconds. He looked around the landing and could see that the doors were all closed, making the area very dusky and difficult to see, despite it being during the day. The smell he had detected earlier also seemed to have grown stronger since he arrived on the first floor, and Dicko was sure that it was death that he could smell. It was something he had smelt many times before.

  He opened the furthest door to his left and could see it was a spare room. The bed was still made and there were no personal touches to the room. He only looked around for a minute and then checked the next room. He heard the sound of the buzzing flies before the door was opened and pinched his nose as he stepped inside.

  Just by the wallpaper alone, it was clear that it was a child’s room, and Dicko gasped when he clocked the cot in the far right corner of the wall. A small limb, an arm, was lying in the middle of the carpet and was covered in blue bottles and excited maggots. He took a few steps towards the cot and some flies dispersed at his presence, but most remained on the rest of the little corpse.

  Dicko decided not to look in. He didn’t see the point. He knew that a child had been devoured, and went through possibly a few seconds or even minutes of pain that no child should go through.

  Killed in its own bedroom, Dicko thought.

  He was convinced that the baby had been killed by its own parents, a scene he had seen many times when scavenging for food. He went to the next bedroom with his knife out, convinced that the baby’s murderer or murderers was in there. Back on the landing, Dicko placed his ear against the door of the next room and could hear nothing. He pushed down the handle and pushed the door open. His face twisted as the smell of death hit him, and he looked down to see a dead man on the floor.

  The man was covered in the usual foul insects and appeared to have no eyes, probably eaten away. His head had received some trauma and his cracked skull revealed some brain tissue. He had turned. He was convinced of it. The man had turned and had his head caved in and was put down. By the side of the man was a claw hammer and Dicko was certain that that was what put the man down. But who put him down?

  The bathroom was next. It was the final room on the first floor to check.

  Dicko took in a deep breath, convinced there was going to be something in there that wouldn’t be pleasing on the eye. The child had been killed, the man of the house, he presumed, had probably turned and had his head bashed in, but who killed him? Because he had been in these scenarios before, Dicko guessed that the man had turned, attacked the child and then was executed by his partner, the mother of the child. He opened the door and looked in. It appeared he was right, and it looked like the mother couldn’t live without her little boy.

  Dicko’s eyes began to soak and he released a depressing breath out.

  The woman was in clothes, her face blue, and she lay with her head to the side, in dark brown water that was her own blood once upon a time. There was a Stanley blade on the side of the sink where she had cut herself, and her arms were in the dark water. Dicko didn’t need to check if the woman had lacerations on her wrists. He knew she had cut herself, and was certain that the cuts were deep.

  This woman was in control in her last few minutes. She knew what she was doing, and didn’t want to be in this world anymore. The knife hadn’t been dropped to the floor, it had been carefully placed on the sink which was impossible to reach if sitting in the bath.

  Dicko had an image of the woman, standing up in the hot bath, cutting her wrists and then calmly placing the bloody blade on the side of the sink. She then must have simply lay down and went to sleep, never to wake up again.

  He had seen enough. He closed the door behind him and made his way downstairs. He took his empty rucksack off of his shoulder and put the thirteen tins from the cupboard into his bag, then left the premises.

  He walked over to the van and opened up the driver’s side and placed his bag on the seat.”

  “Well?” Yoler asked.

  “Yes, fine. You?”

  “Har-de-fucking-har.” She smiled and shook her head at her male companion. “Is the place liveable?”

  “No,” Dicko sighed. “There’s a family in there. Been dead for months.”

  “Oh.”

  “There’re thirteen tins in that bag. Gonna try the house at the end and then I’ll let you know if it’s clear.”

  “Well, hurry the piss up,” she spoke with impatience. “I’m bored out of my tits sitting here.”

  “Back in a bit.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  After the house was checked and the food moved into the place once it was established that it was clear, Yoler and Dicko sat on the dusty couch and groaned. Their feet were sore from all the walking and they sat in silence for a while, looking at the dusty fireplace and the mirror that hung above it.

  “I wonder who used to live here,” Yoler said whilst yawning, making the sentence almost unrecognisable to the human ears.

  Dicko understood what she meant and said, “Probably an elderly couple.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Dicko hunched his shoulders. “The mirror has an antique look about it, the couch we’re sitting on isn’t that modern, and who has a working fireplace these days? Also, in the bedrooms there are no toys or posters on the wall—”

  “Alright, alright,” Yoler laughed. “Jesus Christ on a cross, Dicko. You’re boring the piss out of me.”

  “You asked,” he said with a smile.

  Yoler rubbed her eyes and released another yawn. She looked to the side of her, on the floor, where her machete lay, and began to kick her boots off.

  “Did you check the attic?” She asked the man slouched next to her.

  He shook his head. “That’s the only place I didn’t check.”

  “What if there’re bodies up there?”

  “You’d probably be able to smell it. Anyway, even if there are dead bodies up there, it won’t affect us. We’re only here for the night.”

  Yoler leaned to the side and rested her head on Dicko’s shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” he asked her.

  “I’m tired. Thought I’d have a nap. Any objections?”

  “Well...” Dicko began to move, forcing Yoler to sit back up straight. He stood to his feet. “Before we do anything, we need to barricade that front door.”

  “Right, well you do that and I’ll go for a sleep
on one of the beds upstairs, and your handjob will have to wait.”

  “A bit early, ain’t it?”

  Yoler hunched her shoulders and also stood. “Trust me. I’ll sleep right through to the morning. Haven’t slept on a mattress for a while.”

  “You do that.”

  Yoler was on her way to the first floor and left Dicko alone.

  Dicko looked around and decided to move the armchair against the main door. He looked around for something else, but couldn’t see anything worth using. He looked at the armchair and then up at the front door. “Fuck it. That’ll do.”

  He took the short walk to the kitchen and looked in the cupboards to see the tins he had put away. When he first checked the kitchen, the cupboards were bare. He opened a tin of beans, using the ring pull, and checked the drawers for cutlery. He pulled out a spoon and ate the cold beans from the tin. He threw the dirty spoon in the empty sink and put the tin into the pedal bin.

  He began to think about the attic and the dead family he had seen in the other house. Was it the same situation in this place? he thought. Or had the family fled. There were no vehicles present in the street, apart from the van they had arrived in, and guessed, like most streets he had been to over the years, that over the months people had fled and vehicles may have also been stolen. Dicko had done it himself, months back.

  A month after he had been taken away from Colwyn Place in Little Haywood, he spent three weeks on foot, scavenging.

  He wasn’t asked to leave, like he had told the group. The story was a little more complicated than that.

  Dicko, real name Paul Dickson, had been staying at a camp and had become a loose cannon. People were complaining that his behaviour was becoming erratic and that he made most people feel uncomfortable, especially when he just disappeared and went for walks.

  However, he wasn’t asked to leave. He was taken away.

  On one of his walks, Dicko had killed a few men when the street was attacked. One of the men was related to Drake, and when the man and his gang arrived at Colwyn to chat with a man called Pickle, Drake told the street that the street would never be attacked again. But in exchange for the street to be left alone, Drake wanted Paul Dickson. He wanted to take him back and kill him, as revenge for the people he had killed.

  A few people didn’t want to give Paul up, but everybody agreed it was for the best. Paul Dickson was making people uncomfortable and his departure would also make the street safer, so it was decided that Paul had to go away.

  Paul, at the time, understood the decision and thanks to his friend Karen, he managed to escape when Drake and his men whisked him away. Dicko was given a strong laxative by Karen and messed himself in the back of Drake’s car. He went out into the woods, under guard, and managed to free himself with a razor that had also been slipped into his pocket by Karen when they hugged, and managed to run away, to Drake’s annoyance.

  A small smile emerged on Dicko’s lips as he thought about his old friends and suddenly snapped out of his daydreaming when he heard the rare sound of a vehicle approaching. He hoped that the vehicle would pass by, hopefully ignore the van that was parked up. He went over to the window and peered out. The vehicle soon appeared. It was a large white Transit van and it stopped adjacent to the van that Dicko and Yoler had been travelling in.

  “Shit.”

  Dicko continued to watch as two males and a female got out of the van and began to inspect the stationary vehicle. All three walked around the place. Two were carrying knives and one of the males had a shotgun in his hands.

  Dicko wasn’t sure who these people were. Were they individuals that were loyal to Orson, a name they had heard over the past few months, or were they just three people out on their own?

  The three began a discussion in the middle of the road. It was clear on their faces that they thought that the owner of the vehicle was staying in the street.

  The three men began to approach the house that the van was opposite. Dicko wasn’t sure what they wanted. Did they want the keys to the van so they could take it for themselves? He wasn’t sure.

  Dicko didn’t know how long he had been standing at the window. He continued to watch and could see the three leaving the premises. They went to the next house and it appeared they were slowly making their way down to where he and Yoler were staying. He guessed, judging by the time it had taken them to check the first house, that they were around ten minutes away. Three more houses and they’d be under the same roof as him and Yoler.

  A scream was heard and Dicko looked on with his heart beating faster and could see one of the men dragging out a woman. She tried to fight back, but was given a kick in her stomach for her troubles. Then the other male picked up her legs and instructed their female colleague to open up the back. She did as she was told and the female was thrown into the back like a piece of meat, and the doors were quickly closed and locked.

  “Why the fuck are they taking her?” Dicko couldn’t understand it. “Where are they taking her?”

  The penny had dropped and Dicko shook his head. It was a meat wagon. It must be.

  “Oh, fuck. This is not Orson’s men. It’s a meat wagon.”

  Dicko removed the armchair from the door. If they tried the house and the chair was in the way, then that would highlight that people were inside. He then ran upstairs and went to alert Yoler. In a few minutes, they were going to have visitors, whether they liked it or not.

  Dicko crept upstairs and began to check the bedrooms. The first one he checked had Yoler in it and she was about to get her head down for some shuteye. Dicko had startled her. She was about to scold the man for frightening her, but he held up his hand, stopping her from speaking.

  “Before you say Jesus Christ on a cross, you scared the piss out of me,” he said in a hushed tone, “you better come with me. We need to hide somewhere.”

  “Hide?” Yoler rubbed her eyes and was perplexed by Dicko’s ramblings. “What the piss are you talking about?”

  “There are people outside,” he began to explain, “that are minutes away from getting inside.”

  “Who?” She swung her legs to the side of the bed and looked for her boots. She remembered she had kicked them off downstairs. “Orson’s men? That Hando guy?”

  “I think it might be worse than that.”

  “Worse? How?”

  “I think it might be one of those meat wagons we keep hearing about.”

  “I thought they came out on a night?”

  “It’s the evening now, and I saw them throw a woman into the back of the van. Why would they do that?”

  “Shit. Okay.” Yoler stood up and told her male companion to wait whilst she ran downstairs to get her boots.

  When she returned, she had them on, but the laces were untied. She bent down to tie the laces and asked him what the plan was.

  “To hide.” He hunched his shoulders. “There’s three of them, but one has a shotgun. It’s not worth risking our necks.”

  “But what about the woman in the back of their van? Was she alive when they threw her in?”

  Dicko nodded.

  “We can’t just leave her there.”

  “We can and we will,” Dicko said. “We’re going into the attic.”

  Yoler seemed to be taking forever to tie her laces, prompting Dicko to whistle sharply at her, telling her to hurry up.

  “Don’t you fucking whistle at me,” she snapped. “I’m not a fucking sheepdog.”

  Yoler followed Dicko onto the landing and watched as he pulled the cord that was hanging down. It was pulled and the hatch opened. Dicko turned and could see Yoler shaking her head.

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  “If we go in there,” she pointed up into the attic, “we’re kind of trapped.”

  Dicko sighed. She was right. “Don’t know what else to do.”

  “What’s the first thing you do when you search a house?” she asked him.

  “Um...”

  Yoler decided to answer he
r own question. “You go to the kitchen and check the cupboards. We’ve put those tins in the cupboards. As soon as those guys check the downstairs out, they’re gonna know that people are here.”

  They both gasped when they heard the door being tried.

  Dicko quickly put the ladders back in the attic and both agreed to hide. Yoler went into the walk-in cupboard, in the very same bedroom she was about to have a nap in, and Dicko went into one of the spare rooms.

  He spotted a clothes cupboard in the corner of the room. He went over to the cupboard and dragged it out of the corner. He could hear individuals on the ground floor and went into the corner, behind the cupboard, and grabbed the sides and ‘walked it’ backwards, almost back to its original position.

  Dicko took in a deep breath. He had been in dangerous situations before, but he was still nervous.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dicko tried to control his breathing as the sound of feet began to make their way to the first floor. He heard voices and it sounded like all three were in the house.

  “Fucking hell,” he murmured.

  If action had to be taken, the ideal scenario would be to disarm the gun bearer first, but it was hard to see who that was when stuck behind a cupboard. More voices were heard and he could hear the female telling the two males that she was going to check the bedrooms. It sounded like one male was having a piss and the other had pulled down the steps to the attic. Dicko could hear a presence in the room and held his breath. A few seconds later, it sounded like the presence had left.

  A minute had passed and Dicko could hear more scuffling on the first floor, and hoped that Yoler was well hidden.

  “Hey, you two, come here!” the female yelled at her colleagues.

  As soon as those words were heard by Dicko’s ears, he knew Yoler had been found.

  “Oh, shit.”

  A couple of bangs were heard and Dicko gasped, wondering if they were roughing her up.

  “Get off me!” Yoler screamed out. “Why have you got me pinned to the floor? I was doing no harm.”