Killing The Dead (Book 18): Sacrifice

by Murray, Richard

  “Your turn.” He jerked his head to the left, towards the window overlooking the river. “She’s not slept.”

  I shrugged off my blankets and rose to my feet, stretching and wincing at the chill in the air. As Gregg settled down to try and get some sleep of his own, I wandered across to the same window that Briony stared so thoughtfully through and nodded a polite greeting.

  “We do not need to sleep much these days,” she said, almost wistfully. “We miss it. No, I miss it.”

  That was interesting. She could refer to herself in the singular then.

  “I bet you miss many things.”

  “Yes.”

  She held out her hand towards me and I cocked one eyebrow, bringing a faint smile to her face. She gestured for me to take it and with a shrug of my shoulders, I did so. Her skin was dry and colder even than the air around us.

  “Human touch,” she said. “I do not feel your hand in mine. My nerve endings have been severed by the parasite. There is no need for them, and they are merely a distraction when the body takes damage.”

  “Interesting,” I said as I let her hand drop. “Your eyesight?”

  “Is fine, though I suspect in time that too will fade as it does with… my cousins, the other undead.”

  “Taste? Sense of smell?”

  “I can smell the dried fish on your breath, the sweat on your skin, the blood rushing through your veins.” She smiled. “I can hear your heart beating even from where I stand.”

  “But you can’t taste anything, can you?”

  “No. There is no need. Flesh is fuel for the body and nothing more. I have no need to taste it, nor the desire.”

  “How can you live like this?” I asked. “Most would be horrified by what they become.”

  “But not you?” She grinned at that. “No, not you. If we infected you, the world would tremble. Which is why we won’t. You would be too much of a threat to us.”

  Good to know that she had no intention of trying to turn me. Not that I trusted her word, but something about it rang true. She clearly saw me as a threat. Enough so that she was willing to risk a truce of sorts. If I had her strength, her ability to heal, I would be unstoppable indeed.

  It was an intriguing thought and if not for the need to share my head with another entity, it might actually have been an appealing one. As it was, I would share my mind with no one.

  Not that it mattered. She was the Queen of her kind. Any she infected would bow to her or be destroyed, I was sure of that. She was far too smart to allow another to rise up to challenge her mastery of her kind.

  “The other undead, their reactions to you..?”

  “Yes.”

  “Care to explain it?”

  “Reapers.” Her voice was a hiss as she said the name. “They are threatened by us. We smell as wrong to them as they do to us. The others, they fear us for what we are, but they can smell our… humanity.”

  Interesting.

  “You do not fear the water like them either.”

  “No.”

  “Any other differences you would care to share?”

  “No.”

  Alright then.

  “You should get some rest, we’ve a long walk tomorrow.”

  “Then you should sleep. We shall keep watch.”

  She smiled then and turned away from the window not really expecting a response. I might understand her need for our alliance more than the others did, but it didn’t mean that I trusted her.

  “You know that we will kill you once our need for you is done, yes?”

  “I wouldn’t have expected you not to try,” I said with a grin. “Though you won’t succeed.”

  “So long as we understand one another.”

  Oh, we did.

  I watched her head over to a corner, far from the rest of us and settle down, pulling the tattered and torn hood of her coat up over her hairless head. She sat so still that she soon became indistinguishable from the shadows around her.

  War made strange bedfellows it seemed, and I could trust her all the way up until we had accomplished our task. Unfortunately, I couldn’t kill her before then and neither could she try to kill me, which would make it interesting at the very least.

  I put her from my mind, knowing that there was nothing I could do right then anyway. Instead, I thought of Lily and my children. I actually missed them and in between the bouts of adrenaline filled violence, I found myself thinking of them more often.

  When we made our way to London we would find our way to the deployment zone for the military force she would be sending and together, we would destroy the threat to my family, and I would go home to them.

  I might even be able to find some measure of peace. A way to control this need within me for death and murder. I had changed once, turning that need into a way to protect people. I could do it again. I was sure of that.

  Or maybe I was just lying to myself.

  Chapter 8

  The rocky coast of the Isle of Man meant that the raiders would be limited in where they could come ashore. Not that there weren’t ample places for them to land anyway, but it did mean that we could locate the majority of our forces in the various villages and towns that dotted the coastline.

  By our best estimate, there were around six hundred or so of the raiders. We, on the other hand, had several thousand of our people trained and wearing the uniform of the CDF. So, on numbers alone, we had more people and that didn’t even include the Dead.

  Our problem was weaponry. The majority of our people used the poignard that had been crafted in large quantities for use against the zombies. We had few guns and even less ammunition for them.

  Judging by the images we were being shown, the raiders had plenty of guns and the ammunition to go with them.

  A trio of soldiers were threading razor wire along the front of a wooden barricade. It was one of many that were being created and placed in the areas where the Raiders might try to come ashore.

  “You really think it will be here?” Cass asked, shivering a little in the cold wind that pulled at our coats.

  “This is the largest town,” I replied with a shrug of my shoulders. “It would make sense.”

  “No,” Shepherd interjected. “It would make sense for them to hit a smaller village first.”

  I wasn’t so sure of that. The images we had seen, the videos of their savagery and their sheer joy in the carnage they wrought. It left me feeling that they would want to put on a show of force.

  “Do they even know we’re here?” Cass asked.

  “We’ve been broadcasting our location to survivor groups for months,” Shepherd said when I didn’t reply. “They reach out to others, who then reach out to yet more groups further and further out. Word has spread.”

  The two women looked at me and while I noticed them, I ignored their concerned gazes and kept staring out to sea. The dark waters were rough, the waves crashing against the docks with considerable force.

  I suspected another storm was building and we would have yet more snow falling. I was ready for the winter to be over, for the clouds to clear and for the sun to finally shine down on my face once more. It had been so long since I’d seen the sun.

  All around me, the people of the island were preparing for a long siege. They would hide away and rely on the soldiers to protect them, on me to lead them. Only I couldn’t. There was no way to get them all through this safely.

  No matter how many times I tried to form a plan of defence, I was left with the unpalatable truth that people would die. A lot of them. The approaching fleet was armed to the teeth and full of violent men ready to rape and murder anyone they came across.

  They would blow a hole in our defensive barricades with those military ships that lead their fleet and then they would spill through the gap. Armed with guns, they would slaughter our defenders and take what they wanted from the town, leaving death and chaos in their wake.

  Once they were done, the bodies of those they killed would rise up an
d feast on any living that remained. With our defenders slaughtered, we would have no hope of containing that new danger and the town would fall completely and after that, the island.

  We couldn’t win, and even if we did, there was that threat of nuclear annihilation from Genpact or the newest zombies they had created.

  There was no hope for us. Not really. My children would not live long enough to see the sun in the sky or to play out in the open without fear of zombies, homicidal scientists or raiders.

  “Lily?” Cass said, voice filled with concern as she stared at me.

  I forced a smile to my face and turned to her. “Sorry, a lot on my mind.”

  “No doubt. We’ll get through this, won’t we? You said we would.”

  “We will,” I lied, knowing that she needed to hear it.

  “I wonder what Gregg and Ryan are doing,” Cass said, with another shiver. “I wish they’d radio in so we could tell them to get their asses back here.”

  She hadn’t picked up on the image of the downed helicopter and connected the dots as I had, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her.

  “Aye, he’s a prick but we could use him,” Shepherd agreed.

  “Gregg?”

  “No, Ryan.” The older woman tugged on her coat and adjusted her scarf so that more of her face was protected from the cold. “His cultists have all retreated into their building since we lost that other leader of theirs.”

  “Samuel,” I said, quietly.

  “Yeah, him. At least with Ryan here they’d get off their arses and help with the defence.”

  “No,” Cass said, shaking her head and grinning. “He’d have them getting ready to attack. There’s no way he’d sit around waiting for them to come to him.”

  I stared at her for a moment, a thought occurring to me. She was right. He wouldn’t wait around, at all. He’d do something incredibly dangerous and almost get himself killed doing it, but he’d win because he did that.

  All I had to do was figure out what he’d do and then do it myself. I turned to where my bodyguards waited, just a short distance from where we stood watching the work on the docks.

  “Lisa?”

  “My Lady?”

  The tall woman without a hood, looked up as I called her name. There was a darkness around her eyes that spoke of little sleep. She rose to her feet and approached, eyebrow cocked in query.

  “How can I serve you?”

  “By telling me what your people are doing.”

  “My Lady?”

  “Don’t hide behind formality,” I snapped. “Ryan is… away, and Samuel is lost to us. What are the rest of you doing?”

  “We are without a leader. Until My Lord Death returns, we wait.”

  “What about when the raiders attack?” Shepherd asked.

  “Then we will fight them. It is our duty to protect the living and we will do that.”

  “By waiting?” I asked, eagerness creeping into my voice. The other women heard it and leant in, listening.

  “Yes, My Lady.”

  “Can you not choose a new leader?”

  “It is for, My Lord Death, to appoint one.”

  Of course, it was. Far be it for Ryan to give up the slightest bit of control. The man was infuriating at times. He wouldn’t have a plan in place for what would happen should he die.

  I swallowed past the lump in my throat at that thought but pressed on. He wouldn’t have made plans for it because he didn’t care what the cultists did once he was gone. Or, he hadn’t…

  “What did he say so you?”

  “My Lady?”

  “Before he left on his last mission, or maybe Samuel said something. One of them, at some point, must have given you instructions for what to do should they not be around.”

  Ryan loved me, I knew that. But something changed in him when he became a father and I had seen that urge to protect his children. I very much doubted that he would die for them, he didn’t change that much, but he would kill for them and he would have done something to make sure they were kept safe.

  “He commanded us to watch over you and your children. To protect you all with our lives, to obey you-“

  There it was! I thought excitedly.

  “Obey me! You have to do as I say, yes?”

  Cass and Shepherd shared confused looks, unsure where I was going with that and even Lisa looked unsure as she nodded.

  “Yes, My Lady. As we do now.”

  “He said this to all of you?”

  “Yes, My Lady.”

  It could be enough. If they took him literally, then perhaps it would be enough to allow me to do something wild and reckless, and totally Ryan-like.

  “So, what would happen if I appointed someone to lead the Dead until Ryan returns?”

  If he returns.

  Lisa licked her chapped lips and looked back at the other cultists, standing close by and clearly listening. One of them moved his hands rapidly, fingers dancing as they used the bastardised version of sign language Samuel had made them learn.

  “W-we would obey your orders, My Lady.”

  “Good,” I said with a widening smile. “Then gather the Dead for it’s time for me to speak with them.”

  “As you command.”

  Lisa rose and pressed fist to her breast in salute, a gesture used mainly when Ryan gave them a command. It was strange to see her use it for me.

  “Lily, what are you doing?” Cass asked.

  “Something stupid and risky,” I replied with a low laugh.

  My plan was only half-formed, and it was unlikely that I would survive it. I wasn’t Ryan, and while he would make it work and come back alive and well, he was unique. But, with each day that passed, I became ever surer that he was lost to me.

  I tried not to think about it, but that image of the helicopter, broken and shattered with the undead gathered around, it haunted me. I couldn’t shake the thought that it was the helicopter he’d been on and Genpact was gloating because he’d died.

  Without him, I felt lost and alone. I was scared for my children and for me. These raiders that threatened us, that threatened my children, were something that I needed to deal with. I needed to be like Ryan because he wasn’t with me to do it himself. I had to do something profoundly stupid and Ryan-like.

  I had to attack them before they attacked us.

  Chapter 9

  Clacton-on-Sea had been a nice looking resort town at one point. Of course, when the zombies started to rise and feed on the living, that changed pretty quickly. However, since the summer had essentially been over when everything went to hell, many of the town’s holidaymakers had returned home.

  That just left the fifty-odd thousand residents. Not a small number by any means and since we had the majority of the town between us and the pier, it was a small cause for concern.

  I crouched atop a bulldozer, peering over the mound of dirt that had been piled up beside the large hole that had been dug. Judging by the heavy equipment and the piled body bags in the back of a nearby truck, I guessed it to be a mass grave.

  Things had been dire at the end and the usual strange ideas of respecting the dead had been put on hold for the much more pragmatic ideal of getting rid of them before they caused problems.

  “You see anything, mate?”

  “A lot of snow.”

  “Yeah, no shit. Anything else?”

  I glanced down at Gregg and grinned in a way that would annoy him.

  “Pretty much what you’d expect. A lot of houses, abandoned vehicles and snow covering everything. There could be zombies sitting under the snow but there aren’t any on the nearest streets.”

  Which made sense, since the mound we were behind was only one of many such mounds that dotted the fields surrounding the town. It seemed that the residents had managed to hold out for some time against the rising numbers of undead.

  Long enough to start burying the bodies at least.

  “Looks like military barricades,” I said as I caught sight of wha
t I could only guess to be a mounted machine gun behind a snow-covered wall of sandbags. “No soldiers though.”

  “This close to the capitol,” Isaac mused, scratching at his bearded chin. “I bet most of the surrounding towns had soldiers stationed there.”

  Back when everything had kicked off, the south had been hit the hardest as they had a great many more people concentrated in smaller areas. As a result, they also received the majority of the help from the government forces.

  The refugee centre that I’d found myself in hadn’t had much in the way of protection considering the size of my home town and the number of people gathered there. When the inevitable had happened and the zombies had come calling, the defence didn’t last long.

  I climbed down off the rusting bulldozer and adjusted the pack I wore. It had grown lighter over the last day and a half of uneventful walking through the snow-shrouded countryside. There’d been little in the way of excitement and even less in the way of food we could scavenge.

  “We gonna do this then?” Gregg asked, perhaps a little grumpily.

  He’d not been his usual chatty self since we’d crashed the helicopter and the way he kept a good distance between himself and Briony, I suspected that she was the reason. She made him uncomfortable and I could almost understand that.

  I clapped him on the shoulder and flashed a grin which he didn’t return. Grumpy bugger.

  “What’s the plan if there’s no boat?” Isaac asked.

  He too kept glancing at Briony, who for the most part, ignored both men. I suspected that he was less uncomfortable and more looking to be prepared for her inevitable attack upon us.

  They were both wasting time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere. She had no reason to attack us until we had accomplished our tasks. She knew as well as any that we needed each other.

  “We follow the coast south,” I replied to the burly mercenary. “Either we’ll find a boat or we’ll reach the Thames river and then we follow that to the city.”

  “Where is the base?”

  I glanced at Briony and smiled. There was no way I would tell her where the entrances were to it, not until I had to.