Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel (33 page)

‘Shit!’ she gasped, her fingers blindly fighting to release the latch as she stared into the savage face of a Dead teenage girl. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ she continued, watching as the girl’s corpse drew back her arm once more to punch at the glass.

The Dead girl’s hand was but a hair’s breadth from striking the glass when Jane finally broke eye contact just long enough to look across at her hand and at last unhook the latch. Then, with the sound of shattering glass and a terrified cry escaping Jane, the Dead girl’s hand shot through the already cracked window pane; a shard of glass slicing deep into her forearm as she forced her arm through to get to Jane.

‘Christ!’ yelled Jane, banging the shutter again and again against the limb that frantically tried to make a grab for her.

Suddenly there was an inexplicable dull ‘thud’ sound from outside and the Dead girl’s arm was momentarily pulled back just enough for Jane to slam the shutter in place and slide a thick looking bolt into a groove in the windowsill. Realising it wouldn’t take long for the Dead creature to smash her way through one of the other panes of glass, Jane spared no time in unhooking the latch of the second shutter and slamming it closed.

‘The bar!’ grunted Rod, the door behind him suddenly jolting. ‘Put the bar across too!’

‘Bar?’ said Jane, desperately looking about for what she presumed was a length of timber to slot across the back of the two closed shutters.

‘Hurry!’ Rod continued, pressing all of his weight against the rattling door.

‘Where!’ shrieked Jane, at a loss as to where the bar Rod spoke of could be.

‘It’s on the fucking… Oh, fuck!’ he snapped in reply, only then noticing the thick plank of timber that was supposed to stop the shutters being forced inwards was not where it was supposed to be. ‘Here,’ he continued, awkwardly chucking the crowbar in Jane’s direction, ‘use this!’

With a ‘clang’ the crowbar clattered across the tiled floor, coming to rest under a small kitchen table, just beyond Jane’s reach.

‘Oh, give me a break!’ spat Jane, reluctant to remove her shaking hands from the shutters in case the Dead girl managed to somehow force them open.

‘Get it,’ urged Rod, nodding to the crowbar, ‘before they notice the other window!’

Despite her fear, Jane knew she had no choice; for as single-minded as the Dead were, it was inevitable that one of them would notice the other window sooner or later.

‘Oh, Shit!’ she muttered, relinquishing her hold on the closed shutters at the last possible moment and even then her left hand still hovered behind her as she reached for the crowbar, as if to hold the rattling shutter in place by sheer willpower alone.

No sooner had her fist closed about the cold metal of the crowbar, its end still bloody and covered in bits of torn skin, than Jane was darting back to ram it through the brackets on each shutter, effectively barring them from being pushed inward. With one window now secure she ran over to Rod to deal with the one on other side of the door. She was just stepping over his legs when the sound of shattering glass suddenly filled the room and two grasping bloody hands forced their way through the small window.

‘Fuck!’ shouted Rod, still fighting his own battle with the Dead man pounding to get in through the door. ‘Get that fucker out of here!’

But even as Jane stepped closer, the intruding Dead hands, which appeared to have belonged to a man, flailed wildly about, sending crockery and small ornaments crashing to the floor as they forced their way up to the elbow past the broken glass and into the room. Larger than the previous Dead teenager, this cadaver’s reach encroached far deeper into the room and despite the shards of broken glass cutting deep into his cold flesh, Jane knew closing the shutters here would be no easy task. Yet try she must and even as she ducked under an arm, its flesh bloody and almost flayed from wrist to elbow, she was forced to bat away the hand as it brushed against her shoulder.

‘Rod!’ she cried, trying to force one of the shutters while the Dead man fought to reach around it to grab her.

With his face pressed against what remained of the broken window pane, the snarling Dead man glared at Jane, his mouth and slobbering tongue roaming across the glass as if in anticipation of tasting her flesh.

‘I can’t,’ she continued, trying to pry the corpse’s finger from the edged of the shutter. ‘I can’t get it closed, he’s too strong!’

‘Keep trying!’ he shouted over the guttural moans of the Dead outside. ‘If it manages to get a hand hold…’

Just then there was the sound of splintering wood from just above Rod’s head and in that instant he knew the old cottage door was going to lose its battle against the Dead man’s onslaught.

‘Shit!’ he hissed, pushing himself up from the floor and painfully hobbling away from the door. ‘We can’t win this fight, not here. Jane, get upstairs!’

‘But?’ she started to protest, knowing that to give ground, any ground, to the Dead until they really needed to was stupid.

‘Forget it!’ he replied, already pulling on Jane’s arm. ‘That door’s not going to last more than another few minutes. We’ve got to move. Now!’

‘We can’t just…’ she started to argue, until, as if to prove Rod right, another alarming splintering sound came from the door and a set of bloodied fingers began to force their way through, eagerly widening the jagged crack.

‘Move!’ Rod bellowed, pulling her away from the window to shove her towards the staircase.

Knowing now was not the time to argue, Jane bounded up the stairs with Rod following up behind her; his painful ankle making it hard to ascend the stairs with any great speed. She was almost at the top of the staircase when her reluctance to relinquish the ground floor to the Dead finally got the better of her and she glanced back over Rod’s shoulder to the room below. In her absence the Dead man had doubled his efforts to pull himself through the window and even now was using the one shutter still latched open as leverage to pull himself further in to the room. It also appeared that whatever had attacked the door had now been joined by the corpse of the young girl, for now two sets of hands tore at the wood with savage abandon; their thick lifeless blood turning the inside of the door a deep red.

‘Just get the boy! Get Riley!’ urged Rod, knowing there was no need to look behind him to know the fate that awaited them there. ‘Hurry!’

At the mention of Riley’s name, Jane took the last two steps in one bound, the banister cracking as she pulled herself round onto the landing a little too fast. With seemingly only two rooms on this floor, Jane could see through an open doorway to the front bedroom where Riley was presently throwing everything he could get his hands on out of a small window down onto the Dead below them. Realising in a flash that she had only managed to close the shutters on the Dead teenager thanks to Riley’s aerial attack, she wished his valiant efforts had been able to buy them more time.

‘Riley!’ she called, fearful they had just painted themselves into a proverbial corner; and a lethal one at that.

‘Mum?’ said Riley, pausing in his attack as he looked to his mother for words of comfort.

But knowing she had nothing for him, no words to calm his panic and fear, she simply ran forward, pulling him into a fierce hug; while below them the sound of wood splintering further ominously rose up to greet them.

‘This way,’ winced Rod, leaning against the doorframe for support. ‘Come on, we don’t have much time.’

With a wave, he pushed himself away from the doorway and disappeared back out into the hallway.

‘Shit! Should’ve opened the back door,’ Jane heard Rod grumble to himself as she and Riley hurried to catch up, ‘they might have gone straight through. No time now,’ he continued, his words seemingly more directed to her this time than himself as he came to a stop by a tall bookcase just left of the stairs.

‘Rod,’ she replied, glancing nervously back down the staircase, ‘please tell me you’ve got a plan?’

‘The others here may think it’s God that saves them,’ he started to say, pulling and tossing aside some of the books from one of the shelves, ‘but I think sometimes He needs a helping hand.’

With the last word, his hand encircled a door knob that had been hidden behind the books and with a click the whole bookshelf sprung away from the wall on one side.

‘Get in,’ he continued, pulling the heavy but well disguised door towards him.

With the sound of rusty casters rolling against wooden floorboards, the door started to open. Pushing Riley though first and following him as soon as the gap was wide enough, Jane was relieved to see a small hidden room awaited them. Once a small box room, Rod had converted it in a well-stocked bolt-hole. On one side were a set of three bunk beds, the uppermost bed somewhat uncomfortably close to the ceiling, while opposite them shelves were lined with plastic bottles of water, jars of preserved fruits and vegetables and even some presumably rare tins of pre-apocalypse canned food.

Behind her Rod had entered the room and was slowly pulling the door with a wide handle attached to the inside when he suddenly stopped.

‘Crap,’ he mumbled, quickly reaching back out to the hallway side of the door to pull out a few more of the books. ‘Not much point in having a spyhole if it’s covered up by the last book Stephen King is likely to write.’

Once he was satisfied he could see through the spyhole, his view unrestricted, he started to pull the door closed again. The door was just shy of closing when from below them there was suddenly a loud splintering and crashing sound; the old cottage door finally succumbing to its attackers.

‘They’re in!’ hissed Rod, glancing back to Jane and Riley.

Pulling Riley to her, Jane instinctively backed as far away from the door as she could.

‘Oh, thank God!’ she whispered, noticing the rope ladder attached to the wall under the room’s single window;  no matter what happened here, at least she knew Riley had another chance to escape the Dead.

‘God had nothing to do with it,’ Rod whispered in reply, the door clicking shut, blocking out the sound of something starting to run up the stairs.

***

Even through her blind panic and pain, Beth’s mind still registered her surprise that Kasey’s frail body could hold such strength within it. The girl had hardly been athletic in life, her near fatal crossover from the mainland and the subsequent bloody collision with the rocky cliffs had proven that, yet in death her form seemed to have gained something, something wild and savage, something quite alien and unholy; and whatever it was, it had claimed poor Kasey for its own, totally.

‘No!’ Beth managed to scream just as Kasey’s bottom teeth scraped painfully across the bone of her shoulder blade, hungrily ripping free a chunk of bloody flesh and skin.

She fought desperately to wriggle out from under Kasey’s corrupt shell, yet with each movement the creature seemed to reposition itself, shifting its weight this way and that as if to be sure it’s meal could not escape. And then all of a sudden the weight was gone and the thing that had once been Kasey Henson was being thrown violently against the wall, crashing into it in a tangle of bloodied limbs.

‘Please… please, help me!’ sobbed Beth, the shadow of a man falling over her as she looked over at Kasey’s corpse; the savage hunger burning in its glare now directed at the figure standing behind her. ‘Please…’ Beth continued, pushing herself up onto an elbow just as the man stepped past her to deal with the hungry cadaver that even now was clawing its way across the floor to meet him.

It was one of the new arrivals, Tom, she thought his name was but then as her body started to go into shock her thoughts became muddled, drifting and confused; no, perhaps his name was Peter after all.

‘
No… not Peter,
’ she thought to herself, ‘
Peter was my baby, my baby boy… and he went to… he went to Australia
.’

‘Yes, he went to Australia,’ she said out loud, hardly noticing the flash of blood covered silver as Tom’s blades whistled through the air. ‘Scott stayed here and Peter went to Australia... and he gave me this,’ she continued, wincing as she pulled free the locket still hanging about her neck. ‘My, Peter, he gave me this.’

Tom slowly turned from the now headless and lifeless shell of the young woman and looked down at Beth.

‘My beautiful boy, he… he went to Australia with his wife… yes, that’s right… and…and they… they gave me this...’ Beth started to ramble, tears filling her eyes as she looked up at Tom, oblivious to everything around her but her own memories. ‘Do you think he’s safe?’ she asked, shakily lifting the locket to her lips as if kissing it was akin to kissing her own child. ‘Do you think he’s safe? Do you?’

But Tom did not answer her and any words he happened to speak were certainly not for her.

‘She’s one of them, Daddy,’ his daughter whispered, the blade in his right hand rising high behind him, ‘finish her. Kill her, kill her for me!’

‘Yes, my darling,’ he whispered in reply, his blade falling fast and true to appease the ghostly demands of his youngest daughter.

With the briefest of gasps, Beth cruelly became aware of what was happening around her just at the last moment and then it was over; her headless body slumping to one side as her life blood sprayed violently out across the floor and walls. Tom looked down at the old woman’s crumpled body, the locket held tightly in her hand now drenched in deep red blood, and knew his job here was done. Yet even as he stepped over her lifeless body, he glanced down at her head, her eyes momentarily as still as her body. But he knew they would not stay this way, opening again within minutes, filmy and white, only to roam ceaselessly yet impotently in their search for the living; just as even now the head of the younger woman hungrily watched him. For a split second the thought to truly finish them flashed through his mind, only to be quickly quashed by the incessant spectral demands of his lost wife and daughters; so with their voices pushing out all other thoughts he moved on again. For surely there were always more Dead to find and as always, he would make them pay for the destruction of his family.