Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel (38 page)

‘Stop it!’ he screamed, banging his clenched fists against his temples; the curved blades still in his hands sending bloody droplets flying. ‘I’m trying! Daddy’s trying! Daddy’s…’

It was then that the guttural growling of the Dead wafted down the corridor to meet him. He had found his quarry and he would make them pay for what they did to his family; he would make them all pay.

‘Cut them up! Cut them up!’ giggled his two daughters in unison; their ghostly voices dancing somewhere in the back of Tom’s brain.

Breaking into a run, Tom sprinted along the hallway, barely even registering the open doorways he passed, many of which could have hidden countless horrors ready to jump out at him. All he could focus on was the Dead he could hear ahead of him, just around the corner, and from the agitated moans that escaped their cold lifeless lips, he was not the only one to have found what he was looking for. He had heard this sound countless times over the last five years, the eerie groans of the Dead as the advanced upon the living; the anticipation that they would soon feel warm bloody flesh in their mouths whipping them up into an excited and unholy frenzy. These Dead knew they had found what they sought and nothing would stop them from claiming what was theirs. They had all the time in the world to wait. The very flesh would fall from their bones and still they would wait; their patience was eternal.

Tom tore round the final corner, the tip of one of his curved blades gouging a chunk of plaster free in the process and at last his quarry stood before him once again.

‘Two Daddy! You’ve found two for us!’ cried his youngest daughter, the image of her ghostly hands joyfully clapping together suddenly flashing through Tom’s mind.

‘Yes, darling,’ he mumbled, knowing no matter how quietly he spoke they always heard him.

At the sound of his voice, a bloody fist that had been pounding against a door froze mid-movement. It knew the flesh it craved lie just beyond this barrier but something else had piqued its interest; something new, something near and something more immediate had reached its Dead ears. Slowly it turned its face, bloody, torn and abused, seeking the source. Almost instantly its milky gaze fell upon the man standing behind it; the life force radiating from this living being calling out to it, almost demanding it be consumed.

‘Cut him to shreds!’ hissed Tom’s wife, as thick bloody spittle dripped slowly from the mouth of Brother Christopher’s corpse. ‘Do it! Do it now!’

With almost an animalistic grunt, the Dead man suddenly threw itself away from the door, its bloody hands outstretched and eager to rip into Tom’s flesh. However no sooner had the Dead Brother left Kevin’s slower moving corpse behind him, than Tom was darting forward to greet him. With a flash of blood-smeared silver, his blades whistled through the air, severing Dead flesh and bone; removing first hand from wrist and then arm from shoulder. But this did not deter the ravenous cadaver and if the loss of his limbs had even registered within the decaying brain it showed little sign of it, preferring to continue its ferocious yet doomed attack. Spinning, Tom deftly ducked under the reach of the Dead man’s remaining arm and lashed out at his legs, severing the vital tendons in its ankles to send it crashing to the floor. Disorientated by it abrupt change in perspective, the Dead man twisted his head left and right, desperate to relocate the living flesh that had only moments ago been so tantalisingly close.

‘Kill it!’ screamed his wife, her shrieking voice filled with manic glee.

Happy to oblige, Tom stamped down onto the cadaver’s back with as much force as he could muster; the cracking of vertebrae beneath his foot giving him some sick satisfaction. Then after swiftly slipping the sickle from his left hand back into its holster, he grabbed a fist-full of the Dead Brother’s blood splattered ginger hair. With his fingers tightening about the thick red curls in his grasp, he pulled the head sharply back to expose what was left of the Dead man’s savaged neck. Yet no sooner had the corpse become aware of Tom’s grip than it fought in vain to steal a tasty chunk out of his hand and wrist, all the while desperately trying to claw back at him with his one remaining arm. But Tom knew the time left to the unnatural existence forced upon Brother Christopher could be counted in mere seconds and even as he felt the Dead man’s scalp tearing beneath his grasp his second blade was falling through the air again; finishing the job he had started.      

***

Fran felt the soft click of the mechanism turning in her hand and as the lock finally sprung open, revealing a thin sliver of shadowy darkness, she hoped the uncomfortable gnawing in the pit of her stomach was nothing more than a misplaced worry. She glanced briefly over to Kai, receiving a sharp nod in unspoken reply, letting her know that he too was ready and then, after taking a quick steadying intake of breath, she forcibly yanked open the door. Instinctively Fran jumped back as the door flew open and banged loudly against the opposite wall; the contents of the cupboard finally revealed to them.

‘Thank God!’ she sighed, letting go of her breath in one relief fuelled puff.

Sat hunched on the floor of the cupboard with is eyes scrunched firmly shut, his face wet with tears and his arms wrapped tightly round Bella for comfort, was Peter. Fran could only imagine what the poor man-child had gone through in the last few hours but as she knelt down, placing her hand gently on his shoulder he opened his eyes and she felt the tension leave him. In his mind an adult was with him now, a friend had found him and they would keep him and Bella safe once again.

‘I was very quiet,’ he whispered, a shaky smile on his lips as he used the back of his sleeve to wipe away his tears, ‘and a stayed hidden like Mr Dave told me to…Bella was a bit scared but I wasn’t… I was brave wasn’t I?’

‘Oh dear, poor old Bella,’ smiled Fran, giving the Alsatian’s head a friendly pat and receiving an equally friendly lick of her hand for her troubles. ‘And, yes Peter, you were very brave.’

‘Where’s Mr Dave?’ asked Peter, nigh on falling out of the cupboard as he awkwardly unravelled himself from Bella. ‘Mr Dave said he was coming back for me… did the bad people hurt him?’

‘Oh, no… at least, I don’t think so,’ she replied, helping Peter to his feet while Bella gave the thick blood splattered across the floor and walls a suspicious and disapproving sniff. ‘He went to make sure Riley and Jane were safe.’

‘I like Riley,’ Peter said matter-of-factly, his previous fear seemingly already forgotten.

‘Fran,’ urged Kai, nervously looking back along the corridor the way they had come.

‘That’s nice,’ continued Fran, discretely waving away Kai’s concern so not to alarm Peter. ‘But I think we need to get you somewhere safe… just while we deal with the bad people. Is that okay?’

For a while Peter looked at Fran, his mind and thought processes a mystery to her as he chewed his lip and tugged nervously at his ear.

‘Okay,’ he eventually said with a nod, his free hand instinctively reaching down to reassure himself of Bella’s presence. 

‘Good,’ said Fran, positioning Peter between Kai and herself. ‘Now, we need to move quickly but as quietly as we can… can you do that?’

‘Like mice,’ beamed Peter, grinning at his own inspiration.

‘Yes, Peter,’ she replied, smiling back at him, ‘just like mice.’

It was only as they started walking again that Fran realised that neither Brother Mark nor Graham had doubled back to see why they had stopped. If this hadn’t irked her enough, when they turned the corner and saw that the pair hadn’t exactly waited for them either, she felt her anger start to rise.

‘
Fucking
idiots!
’ she thought, surprised that Brother Mark had been so stupid as to go ahead without them.

But then she saw Graham standing on his own at the far end of the hallway, his attention nervously torn between them and whatever lay just round the next turning.

‘Crap! What now?’ she said, knowing something was wrong. ‘Peter, stay close to Kai,’ she continued, just before she broke into a sprint leaving the pair behind her.

***

Barely a minute earlier and Tom’s curved blade had been slicing through what was left of the tendons, cartilage, clogged arteries and the veins that had made up Brother Christopher’s neck. Using his grasp on the Dead man’s scalp, he ripped free the final ligaments and bits of sinewy flesh holding the head in place; the small vertebrae of the neck audibly popping as they separated, decapitating Brother Christopher at last.

‘And the other one, Daddy,’ reminded his oldest daughter. ‘Cut him up too.’

Tossing Brother Christopher’s head aside, its film covered eyes still following his every movement when it came to land under a small hall table, Tom turned his attention to the second cadaver.

With his slightly more stilted movements, Kevin’s corpse pushed itself awkwardly away from the door and took an unsteady step toward Tom. Clearly oblivious to the fate that had befallen its more spritely comrade, Kevin’s cadaver advanced; it’s mouth already opening and closing as if in anticipation of the bloody flesh it was surely about to feast upon. But as Tom looked at the blood-drenched thing in front of him he knew there was only one way this was going to end. So, spurring himself into action before his wife could berate him again, he darted forward to duck under the Dead man’s out-stretched arms. Just as before, Tom twisted and slashed out with his blade, this time catching the cadaver across the back of its knees to send him collapsing to the floor.

‘Look at him, Tom,’ his wife hissed, her hatred and disgust palpable. ‘This is what killed our babies, this is what took us from you… Never forget that, never!’

‘Never,’ he whispered, watching as the cadaver in front of him pathetically struggled to push itself back to its feet and only just about managing a clumsy kneeling position.

Tom looked down at the creature kneeling before him and he hated it. He loathed its very existence and in that instant the moaning corpse, looking hungrily back up at him, was no longer poor departed Kevin Harrison, the fifty year old ex-social worker who loved to play chess and had married a young woman in his twenties called Sarah with dark raven hair and sparkling mischievous eyes; no, who he had once been was gone forever, his death transforming him into yet another ‘poster boy’ for the Dead.

‘Never,’ Tom repeated, his lips barely moving as his blade slashed through the air.

Feeling only the slightest of resistance when the razor-sharp edge first struck the cadaver’s neck, Tom knew his attack was to be forceful and absolute. This cadaver’s ‘life’ was at an end, his grief demanded it and as the sickle continued its journey through the neck, ripping cleanly out through the other side, he delivered on his promise; the severed head momentarily spinning mid-air before landing with a bounce back by the base of the chapel door.

‘Jesus!’ gasped a voice behind him, causing Tom to spin.

‘Kevin and… Oh, no… Brother Christopher,’ Brother Mark continued, looking from the two headless corpses, first to one monstrous severed head and then over to the other; crossing himself as he met their intensely hungry gaze. ‘Lost to God forever… but…but at least they’re beyond causing others more pain. They would thank you for that, Tom.’

Tom heard the words the man said, saw his chest rise and fall as he spoke and watched the sorrow as it etched its way across his face but none of this mattered; all Tom saw was the red smeared across the man’s face and matted within his beard

‘Blood,’ his wife whispered. ‘The blood, Tom. You can see the blood on him. He’s one of them now… you know what you have to do… you know what needs to be done.’

Slowly he accepted her truth, knowing there was nothing to be done for this man; ‘
No,
creature,
’ he corrected, nodding to himself as he stepped over Kevin’s headless body and reached his left hand back to retrieve the second sickle from his back.

‘Tom? Tom can you hear me?’ asked Brother Mark, his eyes flicking nervously to the bloody twin blades he now held in each fist. ‘Tom, it’s Brother Mark, I’m still Brother Mark… Tom can you hear me? Tom!’

Yet none of the man’s words could change what Tom now saw before him. For all he saw was a corpse, unaware of its own true state and unaware that it was already doomed; still clinging to its life, a life already forfeit.

Tom took another step closer and instantly Brother Mark knew none of his pleading or words would stop this man. He wondered just how far he could get if he turned and made a run for it but with Graham only a few paces behind him he knew even this option was to be denied him; he at least only hoped the boy had the sense to run this time. So with this hand tightening about the handle of his woefully inadequate knife, Brother Mark waited for Tom to attack.

Tom advanced, idly letting his blades slide back and forth across each other, the singing of the metal an aria of impending death to his ears. And then the moment had come to truly let them sing but suddenly there was another voice weaving about his song, a woman’s voice; a woman screaming at him, screaming his name.

‘Tom!’ cried Fran, knowing at any moment the blades he held aloft would fall and she would be forced to do something terrible to protect Brother Mark and Graham. ‘Snap out of it, Tom! For fuck’s sake, wake up!’

And then something was flying past her shoulder, something small and oddly shaped. It was only as it struck Tom’s chest and fell to the floor, shattering, that Fran could see it had been a small porcelain figurine. Tom instinctively glanced down at the object that had struck him, a hint of confusion suddenly dancing ghost-like across his eyes and in that moment Fran saw her chance.