Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel (35 page)

‘We had to be sure,’ replied Fran, bending down to pick up the length of piping Dave had chosen for a weapon. ‘So I don’t suppose you have any idea how things have gone to shit around here in the space of just a few hours?’

‘Beats me,’ said Dave, removing his bloody shirt entirely, leaving him stood in a new white vest now partially marked under one arm where a little blood had seeped through. ‘I was taking Peter to the kitchens to see if they had more scraps we could use for bait when the screaming started.’

‘And where is Peter?’ asked Fran, hoping the sweet and fragile man-boy hadn’t been the hungry cadaver Dave had been forced to ‘put down’.

‘I stuck him in a hall cupboard with Bella and told him not to move until I came back for him,’ said Dave, taking the length of pipe from Fran.

‘Oh,’ she replied, chewing her lip as she stepped past Dave to get to the open hatch, ‘I don’t like to think of him alone while all this is going on though. Will you show us where you put him so we can…’

‘No,’ Dave interrupted, his refusal causing Fran to stop halfway through climbing through the hatchway.

‘Sorry?’ she asked, looking back at him, shocked and confused by his reply.

‘I’m sorry, Fran, but my family are out there and they’re my top priority,’ he continued, shaking his head, as he already started to back away. ‘I need to find them, Fran, before...’

‘But we’re stronger if we stay together,’ Fran argued, her words breaking into his excuse. ‘We can help each other… and that way nobody else gets hurt,’ she continued, knowing sometimes survival against the Dead was basically a numbers game.

‘No, no, I’m sorry,’ he replied, his worry blinding him to the sense of her words, ‘I can’t. I’ve got to make sure Jane and Riley are safe… I need them to be safe.’

With that, before anything more could be said, he turned on his heels and started to run in the direction of the Purity Arch.

‘I’m sorry!’ he cried back to them as he ran.

‘But, Dave, where did you leave Peter?’ she called back as loudly as she dared.

‘Ground floor, near the refectory… opposite a picture of some bloke in gold armour,’ he hollered over his shoulder, his haste to find his family stupidly overriding the need for stealth. ‘I’m sorry!’

‘Th…that bloke’s going to get himself k…killed,’ mused Kai, watching Dave until he finally disappeared out of sight along the side of the cottages.

‘I hope not,’ Fran replied, prodding Kai with the end of a crowbar, urging him to take it from her. ‘If only for Riley’s sake, I hope he finds them in time.’

Kai looked at the young woman he had fallen in love with, his fingers wrapping about the cold metal of the crowbar and in that moment he understood Dave just that bit better. For he knew that he too would throw aside all sense and caution if it meant he could keep her safe. Of course in reality there was more likelihood that he would be the one getting himself killed in the process; his own lack of experience in dealing with the Dead adding a fatal flaw to his honest and heartfelt ‘knight in shining armour’ routine.

‘Kai!’ Fran urged again, snapping him from his thoughts. ‘Don’t just stand there shaking hands with it, take it for God’s sake… and don’t leave it lying around this time.’

‘Sorry,’ he smiled, knowing there was no true malice to her words as she referred to the incident in the orchard the previous day.

‘Christ, I wish I still had my own clothes,’ Fran continued to grumble, knowing her comfortable yet loosely fitting new outfit was woefully inadequate with regards to any realistic encounter with one of the Dead; lose sleeves and stretchy cotton jersey did not fare well against claw-like fingers eager to get a hand hold on an escaping meal, not to mention anything with a hood now being a deadly anathema.

‘Might as well ditch this here,’ she sighed, stripping herself of her zip-fronted hooded top, only for a sudden blast of cold coastal wind to send a shiver coursing through her while overhead gulls riding the buffeting air currents screeched ominously.

Within a few minutes Fran had made herself and Kai as prepared for battled as they could be. With a selection of wickedly sharp knives strapped to her both her calf and thighs, she also wielded a length of pipe, its weight just heavy enough to inflict the required damaged yet not too cumbersome for her to handle easily. In contrast she had given Kai just one other blade to go with his crowbar, secretly hoping he wouldn’t need to be involved in any fighting while she was around and even then his size and brute strength would more likely be his most effective weapon.

‘Ready?’ she asked, giving the inside of the cart one final glance just in case she had forgotten something.

‘I g…guess so,’ he replied, with a nod. ‘W…what’s the plan?’

‘Well if there had been many more of the Dead out here I would’ve expected them to turn up by now, especially after Dave shouting his mouth off like he did,’ she began, at last jumping down and closing the hatch behind her. ‘So I’m guessing the castle is our best bet for where they’re more likely to be now… hopefully we can pick up other survivors on the way, get them holed up somewhere out of the way and secure while we deal with the Dead… we need to stop this before the whole island is wiped out.’

‘S...sounds easy when you s…say it like that,’ said Kai, forcing a nervous smile to his lips.

‘Look, just stay close to me,’ she replied, stepping forward to take his hand in hers. ‘I know you want to help, you really do… but this has been my life for the last five years, so just trust me to handle it and we’ll get through this, okay?’

‘My f…father would have really liked you,’ he said seemingly at random, as he gently took her face in his free hand and softly kissed her. ‘Okay,’ he sighed wearily, finally returning to the topic at hand, ‘I’ll try not to g…get in your way.’

‘I… I love you,’ she quickly whispered, the very words suddenly more terrifying to her than any unliving creature that presently stalked the island. ‘Just in case something happens I wanted…’

Tilting her face until their eyes met, Kai smiled down at her.

‘N...nothing’s going to happen,’ he interrupted, his fingers gently trailing the line of the cheek. ‘You’re m...my kick-arse-n…ninja…’

He was about to say more when they both suddenly heard the approaching sound of a pair of boots running over cobbles. Surprised that she would have to deal with the Dead sooner than she had hoped, Fran span, the length of pipe in her hand at the ready.

‘Get ready,’ she whispered, feeling Kai’s body tense slightly behind her.

But as the rumpled figure appeared from around the side of the furthest cottage, Fran was relieved to see it was only a red faced Roy panting furiously as he forced his old limbs to move at an uncharacteristically fast pace.

‘Kai,’ said Fran, darting forward to meet Roy before he dropped dead from heart failure.

By the time they actually collided with Roy, his shaking hands clinging to them as he fell to his knees gulping for air, the poor man really did look on the point of collapse.

‘Calm down, Roy. Just breathe…breathe... you’re okay, you’re okay,’ she repeated, prying off the older man’s tight grip on her arm to take his hand in her own; all the while keeping an eye out for whatever he had clearly been fleeing from.

‘Jesus!’ gulped Roy, trying to get his breathing back under control. ‘The Corrupt, the Dead whatever... they’re… they’re on the island… they’ve got on the island!’

‘We know,’ replied Fran solemnly. ‘Have you seen any other survivors? Where’s Tom? Roy, what’s happened to Tom?’

‘Kathy and her dad… I’ve known that girl all her life and they were ripping into him, just ripping into him like animals,’ Roy continued, oblivious to Fran’s questions, his words tripping over themselves, as if desperate to be said. ‘Right there on the road, tearing shreds of flesh from him while he screamed, Jesus, that poor bastard…they ripped right into him… but there was nothing I could do… He was as good as dead already…I couldn’t help him, good as one of them by the time I got there... there was nothing I could do!’

‘Roy, where’s Tom?’ she repeated, trying to break through the mania overwhelming him but fearful he may tell her the worst. ‘Roy!’

With the last word she pinched the skin on the back his hand between two of her fingernails, the unexpected pain jolting him to silence.

‘Ouch!’ he gasped, snatching his hand quickly away from Fran to give her a dirty look.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ignoring his glare as she nodded to Kai to help her get Roy back up from his knees. ‘Roy, where’s Tom?’

‘Something… wrong… in the head… with that one,’ he replied, still panting while he pointedly rubbed the back of his hand. ‘We need to get out of sight… find somewhere safe,’ he continued, suddenly changing tack as he glanced nervously over his shoulder, remembering the horrific scenes he had just witnessed. ‘They were too busy eating the poor bastard to see me, I think... but we need to hole up somewhere… we need to move.’

‘Who?’ asked Fran, fearful Roy was about to lapse into a stake of panic again but more fearful she was about to be told of her friends demise. ‘Who were they eating, Roy? Was… was it Tom?’

‘What?’ he replied, his brow creasing in confusion. ‘No, not him. It was poor Harry Frith, Harry’s the one they were…’

‘Oh, thank god,’ Fran interrupted, relief flooding through her.

‘And T...Tom?’ prompted Kai.

‘Tom? Oh, you want to watch that one, he’s got a screw loose, if you ask me,’ Roy began, the fact he was with no longer alone and running for his life helping him calm his breathing and regain some of his usual composure. ‘We’d only found one of the Corrupt at the base of the cliffs over on the north of the island, a right sorry looking creature it was too, no legs and only one arm and… anyway, we were about the kill the thing, you know finish it off properly, when your man goes all crazy, fair rips the thing to pieces with his bare hands and then starts talking to himself like a crazy person.’

At the mention of Tom’s sometimes not so inner dialogue, Fran and Kai exchanged a worried glance, both of them fearful that Tom may have in fact been the catalyst that brought the hungry Dead to St Michael’s Mount.

‘And then what?’ said Fran, almost afraid to ask.

‘Well, then he just buggers off back up the cliff, rabbiting something about justice,’ said Roy, still nervously looking over his shoulder, ‘and by the time I get back up, there’s no sign of him and then I find all hell’s bloody broken loose.’

‘Look,’ started Fran, hoping Roy wasn’t about to jump from one train of thought to another and blame Tom for the horror that befallen the island, even though it had instantly occurred to her too, ‘I think you should wait in our cart until this is all over. There’s blankets, boiled water and some food to tide you over until morning. The Dead will be slow by then and not so much of a problem.’

‘And what about you two?’ asked Roy, ashamed that he was about to let a young girl fight the savage corpses in his stead. ‘Something tells me you’re not planning on doing that yourself or you’d already be in there?’

‘We need to find Tom,’ she simply replied, a brief glance at Kai silently telling him it needed to be done before a scapegoat to blame was found; a scapegoat that spoke to the ghosts of his dead family and lost himself in a dreamlike world of destruction and the Dead.

‘Oh, okay,’ said Roy, his eyes narrowing as he watched the silent exchange between the young couple.

‘Just stay in the cart and keep quiet,’ Fran continued, her hand subtly reaching out to Kia to encourage him to move away. ‘We’ll come back if we can… I promise.’

‘If you can,’ Roy solemnly echoed, sadly knowing her promise meant nothing and in fact it was more than probable the pair wouldn’t survive the day.

‘
What a waste,
’ he thought, looking at the couple so young and with their lives ahead of them, unlike himself. ‘
They’re going to die, both of them… and I’ll be here, hiding away while it happens.
’

Fran could see Roy wanted to say something else, the words almost visibly forming themselves on his lips but before he could speak again she turned her back on him, urging Kai along with her.

‘Just stay in the cart and you’ll be safe until morning,’ she repeated, risking one final glance over her shoulder back at him.

‘
Don’t go you stupid girl… don’t throw your lives away,
’ thought Roy, only to simply nod in sad reply.

For a second their eyes locked and in that instant everything was said. She knew he wanted them stay, he wanted her to live, to be the daughter he had lost so many years ago, to be the one to forgive his fear and shame, to forgive him for running; and likewise he instinctively knew it was not in her to remain.

‘Good luck!’ he finally called after them as loudly as he dared, his hand rising to bid farewell only for his fingers to then slowly close over his fist as if already accepting the pair were beyond all hope.

Unable to look back again, to see the fear, sadness and reluctant acceptance in Roy’s eyes, Fran urged herself onward; Kai’s very presence next to her giving her more courage, comfort and strength than she thought possible.

‘
We’ll find Tom and get off this bloody island,
’ she thought as they cautiously jogged back through the Purity Arch and made their way to the castle. ‘
Everything’s going to be alright, we’re going to find Tom and get off the island
…
everything’s going to be alright.
’