Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel (34 page)

***

Brother Gregory slowly blinked and cautiously moved his eye away from the keyhole. Sitting back on his heels, he looked down at one of Kevin’s bloody footprints and at last let go of the shaky breath he had been holding. He had seen the way Tom had neutralised the threat from Kasey’s corrupt shell, cleanly removing its head with one stroke of his blades, and of this he took no umbrage but it was the way he dispatched Beth Keys that truly gave him concern. Oblivious to the rambling woman’s need for reassurance in her final moments, Tom had shown himself for the man he truly was, cold, dangerous and more importantly, clearly under the control of forces not of this realm; and with this last point Brother Gregory knew who had caused all of this mayhem, who had brought death and the Corruption among them and ultimately who would be made to pay for this transgression.

***

Fran pressed herself against the wall and held out her open hand behind her, gesturing for Kai to stay back. With only the single knife that she had strapped to her ankle for protection, she knew they were wilfully under-equipped and unless they could reverse this situation very shortly their chances were slim at best. It had been a short and easy discussion between herself and Kai as to what they needed to do first; the need for weapons to defend themselves clearly outweighed any desire to help others or engage the Dead, for if they could  not protect themselves what chance did they have protecting anyone else. So it was decided, they would first make their way to the cart to equip themselves, hopefully find Tom and only then would they see what help they could be to those residents of St Michael’s Mount still alive.

‘
Shit!
’ Fran thought to herself, steeling a quick glance around the corner of the building only to see the back of a woman hunched over something; with part of the woman’s bloody scalp torn away, she was clearly one of the Dead and only one thing held the attention of the Dead like this, she was feasting on the living.

‘Stay here,’ she mouthed back at Kai, realising their plan had just gone out the window; for if she didn’t deal with the Dead woman now, and quickly, they wouldn’t have a chance of getting past her undetected.

‘
Don’t go,
’ said the look in Kai’s eyes, his fingers gently wrapping about her elbow as if to hold her back.

For a second she lost herself to the love that bloomed in his eyes as she looked back at him, but it was a love tinged with fear, fear for her safety and fear of losing her.

‘It’s the only way,’ she whispered, leaning in close, her lips just shy of touching his.

And then, as their lips briefly met, she pulled away and stepped around the corner, his hold on her elbow dropping away at the last moment.

She knew Kai hated that it was down to her to protect them but at least he let sense break through any pointless machismo he felt; he simply hadn’t been among the Dead long enough to develop even a fraction of the skills that she had been gifted by her martial arts loving father. As much as she hated to admit it, it seemed she had inadvertently been built to survive an apocalypse and with each day she stayed alive her resolve to continue doing so in her father’s memory grew. So as she moved one slow and soundless footstep after another toward the Dead woman, she hoped he was watching over his little girl just one more time and that the knife in her hand would strike deep and true.

‘
Don’t turn round, don’t turn round…
’ she silently begged the back of the Dead woman’s bloody head, while a handful of still steaming flesh was stuffed greedily into her welcoming mouth.

She was two paces behind the gorging cadaver when Fran’s gaze flicked to a small pale arm snaking around the Dead woman’s body, its fingers forming a small shaking fist that gripped tightly to the fabric of her blood splattered skirt. It was then that Fran realised that the Dead woman was sating her unnatural hunger on the flesh of a child and that by some cruel twist of fate this child was somehow still alive and suffering unimaginably.

‘No!’ cried Fran, instinctively darting forward, the blade in her hand already arching to meet the Dead woman’s exposed skull.

At the sound of her cry, the Dead woman’s head spun to greet her; her face a patchwork of torn and ragged flesh that created a bloody and savage visage if ever there was one. But the film covered eyes of this feasting corpse had little time to register Fran’s righteous approach and even as they widened in welcome surprise, the wickedly sharp blade tore through the cranium to destroy the brain within.

‘Fucking bitch!’ Fran spat, yanking free her blade from the cadaver’s skull, allowing the body to slump to one side.

Yet even as she said the words she knew this woman had no say in what atrocities had taken place after she had been conscripted into the army of the Dead and in fact Fran had almost been about to apologise to the lifeless corpse when she saw the brutalised and twitching body of the child beneath the woman; with sickening dread she realised it was the apple eating boy they had encountered earlier.

‘Fuck!’ she hissed, pulling the weight of the woman’s corpse off of the boy.

Behind her she heard Kai slowly approach, his sharp intake of breath showing his horror that the poor child should still be alive after such trauma.

‘Dear G…God, Fran!’ he whispered, laying his hand on her shoulder.

‘You’ll be alright, you’ll be okay,’ she soothed, slowly tilting a pale but blood splattered face towards her. ‘I’m going to take care of you… you’re going to be okay… you understand me? You’re going to be okay.’

The young boy’s glazed eyes met hers but he simply opened and closed his mouth, any final words denied him as his mind finally embraced the state of shock his body enforced upon it.

‘Just… just close your eyes,’ she whispered, a heavy tear running down her nose as she gently stroked the boy’s cheek. ‘Just close your eyes and I’ll make it all go away, I’ll make it stop.’

If her words had managed to truly penetrate the boy’s traumatic state, Fran would never know but as his lids thankfully began to droop, she choked back a sob and with almost a mother’s tenderness placed the tip of her blade in the centre of his forehead.

‘I’m sorry… I’m so sorry,’ she murmured, closing her eyes as she thrust the knife sharply down.

With a ‘crack’ the blade ripped through the boy’s skull and with little more than a slight gagging death rattle coming from deep in his throat he was still, his suffering finally at an end.

‘Shit!’ she whispered, her shoulders slumping as she sat there, reluctant to open her eyes again.

‘Fran,’ said Kai softly, his fingers gently squeezing her shoulder. ‘We n…need to go.’

‘I… I know,’ she replied with a sigh, at last opening her eyes to bear witness to her handiwork.

Looking down at the mauled body lying broken and abused in front of her, Fran almost wanted to shut her eyes and to never open them again. This child, who only a few hours before had been so confident in his own chosen reality and ensured existence, did not deserve the horror that had befallen him; none of them did. She forced herself to look past the handle of her knife, the skin puckering about its blade and into the boy’s pale gaunt face, his blood flecked lips left forever open in a state of perpetual exhalation, and for Fran it was almost more than she could bear. But this was the true reality of their lives now. Good people, bad, the innocent and guilty like, old and young, they all fell to the hunger of the Dead and none were spared the horror of their touch. To simply live seemed a privilege now, endured with horror and sufferance but a privilege none-the-less; and it was not a privilege she was about to waste.

‘Fran!’ Kai urged, anxiously aware they had spent a dangerous amount of time out in the open.

‘I know,’ she repeated, true acceptance that she had bestowed a mercy upon the tortured child finally creeping into her words. ‘Come on,’ she continued, at last yanking the blade free before pushing herself up from her knees, ‘we need to get to the cart.’

So with hardly a backwards glance at the two motionless bodies left in their wake, Fran and Kai continued edging along a row of eerily quiet cottages, silently making their way towards the flapping Purity Archway and the spot they knew Star, the cart and their precious weapons supply awaited them.

‘Wait!’ she hissed ten agonisingly tense minutes later, abruptly pulling Kai down into a crouch one side of the ribbon festooned scaffold Archway.

‘W…what is it?’ asked Kai, nervously looking around for the Dead.

‘Looks like we’ve got company,’ she whispered, nodding further down the road in the direction of the two small buildings that had been their quarantine, come prison, for the night. ‘The cart,’ she clarified, seeing the confused look on Kai’s face. ‘You can just see the back of it sticking out from behind the furthest building.’

‘Yeah, so?’ he asked in a hushed voice, scrunching his eyes up as if to see better and still oblivious to what had alerted Fran to someone else’s presence.

‘The back hatch is open,’ she whispered, somewhat confused that he hadn’t noticed already.  ‘Tom wouldn’t have left it like that, so…’

‘So s…someone else did,’ he completed, at last understanding her point.

‘That’s right, Einstein,’ she smiled, returning her attention back to the cart while consciously trying to ignore the presence of Kai’s warm hand resting at the base of her back.

‘Do you th…think they’re still there?’ he whispered, his breath against her neck sending an involuntary shiver through her.

‘I… I don’t know… I don’t think so,’ she replied, intently watching the cart for any sign of movement, ‘but we can’t just sit waiting to get our arse eaten… we need those weapons… come on.’

With the decision made, Fran slowly stood and with single glance back at Kai she moved onward, his hand instinctively still keeping contact with her, silently assuring her she was not alone, nor would she be again.

They were ten or so metres from the cart, their approach still cautious yet tinged with urgency, when Fran noticed it was rocking slightly back and forth, indicating someone was moving about inside. Without even noticing she had done it, she stepped in front of Kai protectively, the grip on the knife held by her side tightening. Whether Kai resented this move she didn’t even take into consideration, for in her mind it was more important that they both survive this day unharmed and as she was the only one that had any real self-defence training, it just seemed natural to her that she should take the lead.

Suddenly the back of a shadowy figure appeared in the open hatchway, a figure that was clearly helping themselves to the rack of weapons attached to the inside of the cart’s walls. It was only when the figure began to turn, the light at last striking his features as he tossed a sturdy section of scaffolding pipe to the ground that Fran let go of the breath she had been holding. With a startled look of guilty surprise on his face, Dave visibly jumped as he noticed Fran and Kai watching him.

‘Jesus!’ he gasped, looking visibly shaken. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’

‘You know the Dead are on the island,’ said Fran, matter-of-factly as she and Kai closed the gap between them and the cart.

‘Why do you think I’m here,’ Dave replied, reaching briefly back into the cart to retrieve a knife he had chosen, by chance it was same sharp letter opener Tom had used to send Sharon to her oblivion. ‘Oh, I hope you don’t mind?’ he added, embarrassingly gesturing with the knife as he realised he had been caught helping himself to their belongings. ‘It was the closest place I could think of where I could get some sort of weapon.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Fran, waving away his apology, ‘the sooner they’re all dealt with the better. They can’t be…’ Fran stopped what she was saying, her attention drawn to the splatter of deep red across much of his once clean shirt. ‘Your arm, Dave,’ she continued, nodding to where the wet fabric clinging to his skin, ‘what happened?’

‘What?’ he asked, confused to what she was referring. ‘Oh, wait, no, the blood’s not mine,’ he finally continued giving his arm a cursory glance before jumping down from the cart. ‘I had to deal with one them to get here. I’m fine, Fran… I’ve not been bitten, honest. Look, I need to find Jane and Riley.’

‘Take off your shirt, Dave,’ said Fran, subtly changing the position of her feet in case she need to defend herself.

‘Fran, I…’ Dave began to protest until Kai cut him off.

‘She said t…take it off,’ he said, his imposing physique adding weight to his command.

‘Okay, okay, calm down,’ replied Dave, holding up his hands defensively, one of which still held the letter opener.

‘We have to be sure, Dave.’ added Fran, nodding for him to lower his hands. ‘If you’ve already been bitten, well…’

With none of the outcomes ending well should it turn out he had indeed been bitten, Fran knew she couldn’t take any chances with Dave, not until she was sure; for nothing was more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose.

‘I don’t have time for this crap… Jane and Riley are out there somewhere,’ grumbled Dave, slipping the knife into the waistband of his jeans before purposefully unbuttoning his shirt. ‘I need to find them.’

With the last word he slipped his arm free of the bloody sleeve and made a show of moving his arm left and right so Fran and Kai could see it from all angles.

‘See… I told you, no bite,’ he continued, waiting for the pair to give him the ‘all clear’.