After the Fall (Book 8): Faith of the Dead

by Stephen Cross

Eventually a house, she didn’t need to break in, most doors where open. Ran to the attic room, her old familiar haunt. The front windows, the back windows, back and front. For a few hours.

  Then she needed to rest. She’d had enough.

  So she lay down, but she didn’t sleep, and now she was getting up again.

  Her fear and sadness were slowly mutating, as all emotions do given time, to more useful ones. She felt them rising; anger, vengeance, fury. Incandescent at the lack of justice .Who’s justice? That was a question she wouldn’t ask anymore. Her justice was enough. Her justice was right. She was right.

  She was righteous.

  No food, no supplies, all back at the Church, including her laptop. The laptop from the lab that may contain the key to the virus.

  She went downstairs and searched the kitchen. Another nice kitchen, new units. Would have been a lovely family home. A child’s pictures stuck on the fridge with cartoon animal magnets. If she stopped again to think on these things, she would go mad, truly. No more thinking, just do. Just survive.

  She searched the drawers and found a reasonably sized knife, solid with not too much give in the blade.

  Grace stepped out into the darkness, through the door at the back of the house into the thin alleyway, bathed in dark blue moonlight. Half way down the alley was movement. A fox stared at her for a second, then dashed into the night, suddenly gone.

  She retraced her path, winding through the streets, avoiding undead when she saw them, turning back once or twice when the group was too big. She could take her time. If she didn’t make it tonight, then tomorrow would do. Or the next day. She had all the time in the world.

  One step after another in the dark. Another call of an owl. The spire of the church ahead of her, beyond the next row of terrace houses.

  She circled round to approach from the woods behind the church. It was a dangerous route, easier for the zombies to surprise her. Everything was dangerous though, she was past caring about danger. She wasn’t thinking, she was doing. What needed to be done. Survive.

  The fence was a collection of horizontal wooden slats. She peered through. Lights of the church a hundred feet away, and the truck next to the door suggested they were at home. Did they have a watch? Not normally, but maybe tonight, she would have to be careful.

  She sat for twenty minutes, still, staring into the dark, before she climbed up and over the fence. She moved slowly, silently, placing her feet carefully, crouching and shuffling towards a bush, where she sat, still, waiting and watching.

  Grace’s patience paid off when a figure emerged from the dark, walking the perimeter of the church across the brush of the overgrown graveyard. It looked like Stanley. He circled away. Grace ran to a large statue in the middle of the graveyard, half the distance from the fence to the Church, and she crouched behind the towering stone angel, and waited.

  Five minutes and Stanley appeared again, the same route, the same circle.

  She waited until he was safely round the corner of the church, and she ran to the truck, crouching down behind its wheels.

  Her heart raced. Her mind shouted to her, telling her to run. Her palms were sweaty.

  She ignored it all.

  The crunch of gravel as Stanley approached. She watched his feet under the truck. He passed. Grace darted from her hiding place.

  Stanley turned, and she managed to catch the surprise in his eyes as he tried to raise the hand holding the gun. She stuck the knife into his face. It slipped off his forehead and embedded in his eye socket. The knife sank deep into his skull and brain. Blood squirted over her face, warm and thick as it dripped down her cheek, the taste of iron on her lips.

  Stanley’s body shook, then went limp and dropped to the floor.

  She picked up his gun.

  Chapter 12

  Grace pushed the door of the Church open slowly. It creaked, she paused, she listened. Nothing. She edged into the dark corridors, rooms leading to the left and right. She guessed they would be sleeping in the rectory.

  She moved quickly through the church, seeing no one, hearing nothing but her own footsteps, impossibly loud in the dark of the night.

  In the rectory.

  She searched through the downstairs first. In the kitchen was her and Harry’s backpacks. She quickly checked through hers; the laptop was there. She only glanced at Harry’s. She didn’t want to see his clothes, his things, his photos.

  She shouldered her backpack and moved back into the church, and paused.

  She could just walk now, leave, forget about this place, forget about Father Dave and Harry. Move on, find other people maybe, somewhere to settle where she could build a life.

  Grace closed her eyes and wiped away a tear. She had no idea she had been crying. She felt she was crying for a loss, but she isn’t sure if it was for one already experienced, or for one to come.

  She made her way towards the bedrooms and slowly climbed the stairs. She entered the first doorway.

  Beth and Gary were sleeping. Beth had her arms curled around Gary’s naked chest. They looked peaceful, in love, happy.

  She raised the gun and fired, twice. The sound of the gun was like a crack in the sky. One flash in the dark. Two flashes in the dark. The bedsheets and wall now splattered in black. Gary moved, a gurgling sound coming from his mouth. She fired again.

  Silence like the silence after a thunderstorm.

  She ran out of the door and into the next room. She was met by a scream as Brenda’s huge frame, replete in flowery dressing gown, terrifying in her curlers, charged towards her. Grace raised the gun, but was unable to get a shot off before she was flung back against the wall, the weight of Brenda winding her. She managed to keep a tight hold on the gun.

  “Bitch!” shouted Brenda. She pushed her weight against Grace, her thick forearm pressing against her neck. Grace struggled for breath. Her windpipe was being crushed. She brought up the hand with the gun and thumped the back of Brenda’s head. A sickening thud and Brenda’s eyes opened wide, but her arm stayed in place. Grace hit her with the gun again, and again. Her hand was suddenly warm and sticky. She struck Brenda again and her hand sunk into the back of her skull, surrounded by warm flesh, like a jar of liver.

  Brenda’s hulk fell to the side, and Grace yanked back her hand. Brain matter clung to her gun hand.

  She ran out into the hallway. A figure was there. A flash of light and the door to her left exploded. She felt something sharp in her right arm and shoulder.

  Grace dived back into the room as Father Dave took a second shot, plaster and chipped wood exploding around her.

  She heard a click, he was reloading.

  She ducked back out of the room and fired. Father Dave fell, dropping the shotgun. He hit the wall and slid down, a thick red line trailing on the wall. He wasn’t dead. He gripped his shoulder and stared at Grace, his eyes full of venom.

  “You Godless cow! Don’t you understand I’m doing the work of the Lord!” He tried to lift his shotgun.

  Grace walked up to him, raised her gun level with his head and fired.

  A flash, a damp thud. The wall was covered in fragments of bone and brain.

  She turned, left the rectory, not looking back. Crossing the church towards the exit, she paused. Scratching and scrambling from the back of the church.

  She walked down the aisle to the door with the lock, the door the zombie had been taken from. A thick lock and chain was wrapped around it. She went outside, found Stanley’s body, still warm, searched his pockets and found a key ring. Returning to the church, she found a key to fit and unlock the door.

  She pulled it open and stood back, gun raised.

  A figure lurched from the darkness, its feet dragging on the floor.

  Torn neck, fresh blood splattered down a new shirt. Eyes dark and empty. Hands raised. Teeth clicking like a broken machine.

  Harry.

  Grace raised the run and fired once. The bullet burst through the zombie’s head - not Harry’s head - an
d it fell to the ground, motionless.

  Grace realised she was crying again. She wiped the tears away, just enough to see where she was going, and ran out of the church.

  As the sun rose Grace was leaving the city.

  She walked up the feeder road off the motorway, where the empty hulks of cars sat crashed and melded together like the remains of a blown up machine factory. The undead thumped on windows with rotten hands, broken hands, stumps. Hissing and moaning and clicking. Faces pushed up against glass unaware of their prison, happy in their eternal and unattainable desire.

  Reaching the top of the slip road she crossed the roundabout and climbed the embankment into a field. She’d had enough of roads and tarmac, of houses and cities, of cars, or anything to do with people. Those she loved had been killed by people, not by the undead. She needed to be away from people for now. How could she trust them anymore? Those she loved were killed, and those who she didn’t love, she killed. She looked at her hands. They were still covered in blood. Pink and dry globules of brain still on the backs of her hands. She hadn’t washed. What was the point of washing? There was no way to clean what was inside her and that’s all that mattered, wasn’t it?

  She had walked all night, and her limbs fizzed with pain and tiredness, but she kept going. She would sleep when she dropped. Would she eat? Would she drink? She didn’t know, she didn’t care.

  Grace would head south, try to keep to the fields and country paths. Maybe find an old farmhouse or barn to settle in for the winter - she didn’t want to be wandering when winter came.

  THE END

  You find out how Grace Survived the Fall, along with seven other zombie novelettes in…

  SURVIVING THE FALL

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KBPYRFM

  How England died. The story of the first few days of the zombie apocalypse, of those who lived, and those who died.

  Surviving the Fall collects eight non-stop terror tales in one action packed volume, which together tell of the panic filled dawn of a new, undead world.

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KBPYRFM

  Thank you for reading Faith of the Dead – I hope you enjoyed it.

  There’s plenty more to come – if you want to find out what happens to the characters in this book, and all about new and upcoming works, then please head along to my blog and sign up for email updates. There’s a Follow button in the sidebar:

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