Star Drawn Saga (Book 2): Lost Among The Dead (35 page)

‘B…but w…why would she care?’ said Kai, reaching across to gently take Fran’s hand away from her mouth. ‘I m…mean she has D…Dennis in her pocket, why sh…should she give a damn w…what the others think?’

‘I don’t know… I guess Jimmy had been with them a while,’ she mused, standing again as if moving helped her to think things through. ‘Perhaps… perhaps if the others knew it was her they could get to thinking that they may be next… after all you keep the troops in line, not give them a reason to mutiny.’

‘How did Emma r…react when she f…found out?’ asked Kai, still unsure whether the young woman was truly to blame for Jimmy’s death.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied nervously picking at a loose chip of paint on the windowsill, ‘I only told Dennis,’ she continued, glancing back at Kai. ‘He said he’d spread the word.’

‘Oh… and how did D…Dennis take the n…news?’ enquired Kai, watching as Fran’s gaze kept returning to the window and the slowly darkening forest beyond. ‘S…surprised? Upset?’’

‘Hmm… I’d say more irritated than anything,’ she replied, picturing the look on the large man’s face. ‘Like Jimmy got himself killed just to piss him off.’

‘Ch…charming…’ said Kai, moving from the bed to take her in his arms. ‘So,’ he continued, gently kissing the top of her head, ‘so, how are we going to do this?’

For a moment Fran simply stood silently in his embrace, allowing herself the tiniest respite from the world and its troubles; wishing the peace she felt within the warmth of this arms could be with her always.

‘Fran?’ Kai prompted, tilting back slightly to look down at her.

‘We should have gone the moment we realised Mike and Sam had risked Poppy’s safety to get away from this place,’ she mumbled into his chest before looking back up at him. ‘We’ve got to go, Kai… we got to leave here tonight.’

‘Okay,’ he simply replied, slowly nodding his agreement. ‘And what about…’

‘I have to give him one last chance,’ Fran interrupted, knowing Kai was about to ask about Tom. ‘I… I can’t leave him here, not without trying to get through him just one more time.’

‘He’s n…not the m…man he was, Fran,’ said Kai, knowing as hard as it would be for him to leave Tom behind, it would be ten times worse for Fran. ‘His m…mind it’s… it’s b…broken and matter how you w…want it to be different… it’s not.’

‘But he’s in there somewhere,’ she replied, the pain of his loss already building in her chest, ‘he has to be.’

‘Okay,’ said Kai, smiling sadly as his fingers gently stroked Fran’s hair, ‘you can try… b…but I w…wouldn’t say w...we’re leaving tonight,’ he went on to add, his tone suddenly full of warning. ‘P…promise me, Fran. Ask him to come b…but don’t say w…when.’

‘You think he’ll try to stop us?’ she asked, already knowing his reply.

‘We p…plan on taking S…star and the cart. D…don’t you?’ Kai chuckled somewhat bitterly while on the floor by his feet Bob opened his jaws wide, yawned and with a lick of his nose settled down for a nap; quite disinterested in the concerns of his human travelling companions.

Although Fran hated to think that Tom would side with White Oak Park against them, she knew Wendy had clawed her way into his mind, using his own psychosis against him to trample over his past loyalties and friendships until little remained.

‘If I can’t get through to him, yes,’ she finally replied with a sigh, burying her head forlornly in Kai’s chest once more. ‘Yes, I do.’

***

Chapter 7:

With the memory of Kai’s lips brushing tenderly against her own and his whispered warning of ‘Be careful’ still running through her mind, Fran slipped from their tree house cabin and out into the cold moonlit night.

‘
Oh,
great…
’ she thought to herself, her breath briefly pluming in front of her before being wisped away by an icy blast. ‘
It’s freezing
.’

Above her the cloudless sky, so dark it had taken on almost a deep bruised purple hue, was awash with a million stars; dominating this heavenly spectacle was a low hanging full moon that washed the forest in ghostly palette of silver and grey.

‘
And you’re not much help either,
’ she thought, tossing a disapproving scowl to the silent celestial body above her, seemingly determined to illuminate her furtive movements for all to see. ‘Well… here goes nothing,’ she softly muttered to herself, slowly edging her way along the railing towards the first of suspended walkways; all the while making sure she kept to the darkest of shadows that the moon overhead allowed.

The plan, despite the obvious dangers, had seemed so simple when they had talked it through back in the safety of the cabin but already, bathed in the bright moonlight Fran, could see it starting to unravel about the edges.

‘
Get to the cart, prepare Star, then try and talk some sense into Tom
,’ Fran thought to herself over and over; running through the three point plan in her head like a mantra to keep her growing nerves in check.

It was the last of her three tasks that filled Fran with the most trepidation. What happened during that one conversation would be a crossroads for them all. The paths they could take would be altered irrevocably, futures determined and perhaps their very lives could hang in the balance; and all of it rested on Tom. Just how his fractured mind would to react to her misgivings, what spin his mania would give on the news that they intended to leave; she could only guess. Yet whatever happened Fran prayed there was still enough of the man she knew, hidden deep within the convoluted maze of his mind, that he wouldn’t immediately alert the others of their intentions.

‘
Oh, okay…
we’ll give it a few more days,
’ she was preparing herself to say, hoping that if he was indeed too far lost in the world he had created then at least her lies could buy them some time, at least until dawn, before their absence was noticed.

Reaching the rope-bridge, Fran ducked down and peered across to the dark cabin some twenty metres away. She knew walking across the suspended walkways, past occupied cabins and then on to the Hub would be tricky at best, what with each creak of the boards beneath her feet potentially giving her presence away, but she knew the alternative was even more dangerous. Initially she had suggested she would have more chance of getting to the cart unobserved if she dispensed with the walkways altogether and instead travelled via the forest floor but as Kai had pointed out; in an unknown terrain, in the dark and with the Dead wandering about, it would be tantamount to suicide; and after thinking it though, she had to agree with him

As if to give credence to Kai’s warning, Fran suddenly heard the snapping of twigs and the soft tinkling of alarm bells echoing from somewhere in the darkness beneath her.

‘Great,’ she muttered under her breath, her hand instinctively moving to rest on the handle of the machete as she started her way across. ‘This just gets better and better.’

Cautiously placing one foot in front of the other Fran slowly made her made across the bridge; cringing at each creak and groan of the wooden boards underfoot. But the twenty metre gap soon became ten and then it became five; and still no alarm was raised. Then, before she knew it, she was she was stepping off the walkway and greeting the decking surrounding the next tree house with a deep sigh of relief.

‘
One down
,’ she thought to herself, glancing briefly over at the cabin in front of her with its dark foreboding windows; the cabin that Sam and Mike had all too briefly made their home. ‘
Why didn’t you tell us?
’ she found herself thinking, her mind conjuring up images of the young couple and their child fleeing into the night and onto the traitorous dark churning waters of the river Fal. ‘
You could’ve trusted us, you know.’

But it was pointless to dwell on the past; and Fran knew it. Mike and Sam, for reasons known only to themselves, had felt unable to take Fran and Kai into their confidence; to trust them with their plan to flee. Yes, it saddened Fran to accept this but she truly hoped Dennis had been wrong about their watery deaths and wished them safe passage to wherever they thought they were going.

‘
Just a pity you couldn’t have waited one more day…
’ she added, darting to the shadow drenched corner of the cabin where she knew the next suspended walkway awaited her. ‘We’d have come with you,’ she softly mumbled, edging to the corner to fix the next tree house in her sights. ‘Shit!’ she suddenly cursed, noticing the soft beam of light breaking through the cabin’s partly closed curtains. ‘Why aren’t you asleep?’

Getting this far has been easy, after all with Sam and Mike gone, the nearest tree house was unoccupied; but it was the next cabin and the residents she knew that lived there that would be her first real challenge. Fran knew the Nash brothers would do more than ask a few friendly questions if they found her wandering the walkways in the dark; especially after Jimmy’s untimely and unobserved demise. Even from her limited contact with the young men, it was obvious how that encounter would go down if they caught her; smarmy innuendo and sexual intimidation would quickly be followed by misguided threats, all inevitably culminating in no doubt a violent encounter. She’d be lucky to escape the incident without more blood being spilled, possibly some of it her own, and no matter how it played out, their chance to escape White Oak Park unnoticed that night would be in tatters.

Chewing nervously on her lip and with her focus locked on the sliver of light ahead of her piercing the darkness, Fran wondered if she should rethink talking the forest route after all; that was until the sound of mumbled conversation and the laughter of woman drifted across the darkness towards her.

‘
Norma,
’ thought Fran, recognising the woman’s voice as it was joined by the deeper and more guttural laugh of a man. ‘Well at least that’s one of them busy,’ she muttered, slipping quietly forward across the decking towards the suspended walkway, pausing momentarily when the voice of the first laughing man was suddenly joined by another. ‘
Or perhaps both of them
,’ She silently continued, trying not to picture just what the late-middle aged woman felt she had to do to ensure her continued safety at White Oak Park.

Realising she probably wasn’t about to get a better chance to get past the Nash cabin unnoticed than right now, Fran crouched down and began to creep forward; doing her best to time her footsteps with the rise and fall of mumbled conversations ahead of her.

‘
Yep, definitely both of them
,’ she confirmed, when she got close enough to hear the rhythmic slapping of flesh on flesh while a male voice, one that she thought was Brett’s, called out crude encouragement and commentary from the side-lines. ‘
Pig!
’ she added, crossing onto the decking that surrounded the Nash tree house, the sounds and comments being made by the brothers sickening her; almost as much as the brittle and clearly forced sounds of enjoyment coming from Norma. ‘
I bet they don’t even know she’s faking it,
’ she thought, with a shake of her head; eyeing the window one more time before edging along the railing, round the corner and onto the next walkway.

With her breath pluming in front of her, Fran crossed briskly but silently over the suspended bridge to the next tree house; this one she knew, thanks to poor Jimmy’s untimely death, had also recently become a vacant property.

‘
And no one home at house number three
,’ she noted, glancing at Jimmy’s old home before darting across the moonlit decking to bury herself in the deepest shadows she could find.

As well as the walkway she had just used, Jimmy’s tree house had a further two suspended bridges connecting it to other cabins. On the opposite side of the building and off to the left, Fran knew the rope-bridge there would take her on to Natalie’s home and then via another walkway over to Sid’s cabin; while alternatively the bridge that she could just see to her right led to Ben’s tree house and then by one more bridge, onto the Hub. It was this rope-bridge Fran needed to take if she wanted to get to the drawbridge style ramp that led down to the brick pathways cutting though the dark forest floor.

‘Right…’ she muttered, shooting a final wary glance back the way she had come before abandoning the welcoming shadows around her for the walkway bathed in the cold exposing moonlight. ‘Here goes nothing.’

But she had barely gone four metres across the walkway when she once again heard the snapping of branches and the ringing of tiny brass bells; this time coming from alarmingly close nearby.

‘
Damn... that sounds
close,
’ she thought to herself, stopping mid step to cautiously steal a look over the rope handrail, ‘
too close… could be right beneath me,
’ she continued, fearful that one of the wandering Dead should notice her and inadvertently raise the alarm.

And then as she peered down at the forest floor some seven metres below her, her warm breath clouding in the chill of the night air, she saw movement. Fleeting at first, she caught shadowy glimpses of a moving shoulder, flashes of an angular frame, exposed limbs thin and emaciated, and then finally as the cadaver stumbled into a pool of silver moonlight breaking through the autumnal canopy overhead, she saw the creature in all its decaying splendour. In life the poor soul had been a woman; not that you would know it now. For death and the Dead had not been kind to her; they had taken everything, stripping her of personality, age and even race in their obsession to conscript her into the army of the hungry Dead. With their teeth and claw like hands the Dead had taken the very essence of the women until nothing remain but a shell; a shell no longer fit to even hold the title of ‘she’. Reduced to a nameless ‘it’ the creature’s skin, ripped and covered with bite marks, clung desperately to its decaying frame; while over much of its thin body and hairless torn scalp, a dark creeping mould bloomed, claiming what was left as its own.

‘
Yeah… way too close!
’ exclaimed Fran silently to herself, as the Dead woman slipped from the pool of light and back into the darkness; oblivious that the thing it craved stood motionless just a few metres above it.

With the ringing of bells and the sound of snapping twigs slowly fading, the Dead woman disappeared into the night; her unending hunt for sustenance continuing.

‘
Don’t worry, Luv,
’ thought Fran, at last tearing her eyes away from the spot where shadows had swallowed up the woman’s corpse. ‘
I doubt you’re alone out there tonight.
’

As if to prove her point, Fran noticed the soft ringing of bells coming far off in the wood to her right.

‘I
wonder why they enter the forest,
’ she silently asked herself, as she slowly continued her way across the walkway again. ‘
I doubt they can see or hear anything all the way over there… I would have thought they’d stick to the road… unless of course they...
’

She was about to continue her internal rambling when the cries of an unseen pair of foxes mating somewhere in the deep shadows ripped alarmingly through the darkness; making her jump while at the same time giving her a possible answer to her question.

‘Jesus!’ she couldn’t help but gasp aloud, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest as the all too human screeching continued. ‘
Well, guess now I know why they’re attracted off the road,
’ she thought, realising that if White Oak Park had a healthy population of resident foxes it would certainly attract the Dead; after all, with only a few exceptions, to the Dead living flesh was living flesh and as such was there to be consumed.

She was just approaching the end of the rope-bridge, hunched over and as silent as the boards underfoot would allow, when she heard another sound coming from somewhere nearby. It was only when she reached the decking surrounding Ben’s tree house that she realised what it was.

‘
Well at least someone’s asleep
,’ she thought, a smile of relief creeping across her lips as she recognised the low rhythmic rumbling noise for what it was; Ben’s snoring. ‘Sweet dreams,’ she muttered, darting across the decking to the dark tree house.

With her back to the wall, Fran edged herself along the building. Crouching down to where the shadows were darkest she stole a quick glance round the corner.

‘
There’s the Hub
,’ she thought to herself with a confirming nod, looking across a moonlit walkway to the shadow dappled tree house and the ramp mechanism she would use to exit the elevated warren of homes.

The Hub had two other walkways attached to it, each connecting it to yet more treetop cabins, and from where Fran knelt she could just about see the end of one of them appearing out of the darkness. She was just readying herself to break cover and make her way over the final walkway when a shadow slowly separated itself from the darkness beyond, furtively walked across the decking and began to awkwardly untie the rope keeping the ramp aloft.