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

by Stephen Charlick

  ‘Sorry, are we late?’ asked Fran as they stepped off the rope-bridge onto the decking surrounding the Hub tree house. ‘You said first thing… the sun’s not been up that long, surely?’

  ‘Let’s just get going, shall we,’ Dennis replied, leaving her question hanging unanswered, ‘I have better things to do than baby sit you lot… Grant! Jimmy!’ he suddenly bellowed, calling for the two men that would be working with Kai and Mike respectively.

  ‘That mutt going to behave itself?’ he went on to ask, nodding at Bob.

  ‘Bob will be fine,’ said Fran, emphasizing the dog’s name.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m not mad on dogs,’ muttered Dennis, openly glaring at the Bob who simply looked up at him, his head tilted questioningly to one side, ‘far too needy for my liking.’

  Behind him, Grant Nash suddenly appeared in the open doorway, a large apple lodged in his mouth.

  ‘Morning,’ he mumbled around his mouthful, before taking a noisy bite of the apple and wiping the resulting juice that ran down his chin on the back of his sleeve.

  ‘Right…Kai, Grant will show you ropes…’ said Dennis, ignoring Grant’s half-hearted attempt at pleasantries. ‘It’s not rocket science. Just work your way round the park dealing with any of the Dead you come across. Listen out for the bells, it’s usually a good indication the direction to go… Oh, and either of you gets bitten, the other one deals with it then and there... got that? I don’t want any Dumb-arse adding to our problems by hanging about so he can come back as a runner.’

  ‘U…understood,’ stammered Kai with a nod, receiving only a look of bored distain from Dennis for his troubles.

  ‘Jimmy, you…’ Dennis went to say, only then noticing the young man was still absent. ‘Where the fuck is that waste of space? Jimmy! Jimmy, get your head out of your arse and get out here!’

  ‘He’s taking a crap,’ offered Grant, taking another bite from the apple.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ mumbled Dennis, as if the man’s bodily functions were dreamt up just to annoy him personally. ‘Right, you stay here,’ he went on to say, pointing to Mike, ‘I’ve told Jimmy what you need. I thought he could take you down to the lake…start with the reeds there… that’s the sort of thing you need, right?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s a start,’ Mike replied, slightly excited to be embarking on such a useful project that would benefit the whole group, ‘and I noticed there’s a lot of Japanese knot weed round here too… that’ll be useful and it regrows really quickly.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ said Dennis, already bored with talking to the artisan, ‘just try not to get yourself killed.’

  ‘Where’s Tom?’ asked Fran, before Dennis could bark any more orders at them.

  ‘With Brett, he’s getting that horse of yours ready for our trip,’ smirked Dennis in reply, clearly looking forward to exacting his revenge on Ray and the others currently holed up at Trelissick House.

  ‘Tom’s mind… it’s… it’s all mixed up…whatever problem you have with this Ray bloke, you don’t need to involve him,’ said Fran, worried that Tom’s mania had blinded him to what he was really being asked to do. ‘This isn’t Tom’s fight.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Dennis simply replied, staring at the young woman in front of him. ‘You listen up, lady, there’s something you’d better learn about this place and learn it quick. You stay here, you fucking fight when we’re threatened… And before you go wining on about it’s not fair or you don’t want to, this isn’t no democracy, we’re not going to be holding no elections any time soon and I don’t want a debate every time I want to wipe my arse... I’m in charge and you do the fuck I say or you can fuck off… simple as that! Understand?’

  Fran could almost feel the force of Kai’s thoughts beside her, willing her not to react. So, fighting the urge to reduce the orbs between Dennis’s legs to a mashed pulp, Fran simply nodded that she understood and decided to hold her tongue; for now.

  ***

  ‘Just keep walking, follow the path round… Natalie knows the way,’ said Dennis, strolling nonchalantly behind them, a length of heavy pipe resting on his shoulder as they walked through the mist enshrouded forest to what used to be the park’s leisure centre. ‘Keep an eye out for those corpses, Nat,’ he called ahead, ‘hot little thing like you, they won’t be able to resist.’

  Fran was sure she heard a desperate whimper of response escape the clearly terrified woman’s lips.

  ‘Natalie… Natalie, it’s okay,’ she started to say, noticing that in her need to reach the safety of the Dome, she had increased her walking pace and was now in fact a few metres ahead of them.

  It was then, with an ominous growl of warning from Bob, that a shadow solidified from the mist on the path in front of them, a shadow in the shape of a man; a man no longer in the realms of the living. Dressed in the rancid remains of a sports tracksuit which hung to his withered and mould covered frame, the Dead man’s skin was alive with crawling insects and burrowing larvae; and as the mist finally cleared about it, at last exposing the truth of its degradation for them all to see, it locked his hungry glare onto the woman just before it.

  ‘Natalie!’ Fran hissed, instinctively putting herself in front of Sam and Poppy.

  If Natalie had heard Fran’s warning she gave no indication of it, for she simply stood frozen to the spot watching as the Dead man took a step closer; the sound of her sharp rapid breathing and the shaking of her shoulders punctuating each of its tortured movements.

  ‘Natalie, move!’ Fran repeated, unhooking the machete from her belt; ready to grant the walking corpse a taste of true death.

  ‘Wait,’ Dennis simply said, the tone of his voice causing her to pause as much as the thick meaty hand that suddenly clamped on her shoulder.

  ‘What the fuck!’ she spat, turning to look at him; incredulous that he was holding her back from helping Natalie.

  ‘I said wait,’ growled Dennis, glaring at Fran; his words dripping with warning and threat.

  ‘Screw you!’ she barked in reply, yanking her shoulder roughly from his grasp while behind her a pitiful sob had managed to escape Natalie’s frozen lips.

  ‘Don’t cross me, girl,’ warned Dennis, even as Fran ignored him and leapt forward, her free hand outstretched ready to shove Natalie out of harm’s way.

  With a terrified cry, Natalie found herself falling to the ground as Fran barged past her; the heavy machete blade in her hand already arcing through the air towards the Dead man’s neck. Almost instantly Fran felt the brief yet familiar resistance of bone against blade as her weapon struck home, but this time instead of passing through cleanly it simply sliced a deep gouge into the rotting flesh of the cadaver’s shoulder.

  ‘Shit!’ she hissed, realising she had missed her mark by the smallest fraction and the creature’s head was still attached to its body.

  Knowing she had but seconds before the Dead man lunged at her, Fran released her hold on the machete handle and with a twist of her body, kicked out as hard as she could at the corpse’s chest; knocking it away from her. With the sound of cracking bones filling the air, the cadaver flew backwards; landing in a tangle of limbs on its back. Then, almost without thinking, Fran slipped the hunting knife from a sheath about her ankle and in a movement that had become more instinct than conscious action, she threw herself at the prone Dead man; straddling it with her knees to lodge the knife deep in the cadaver’s forehead.

  ‘You want to explain what the fuck that…’ she started to say, her rage at Dennis’s inaction boiling through her.

  But as she turned to look back at him she was surprised to see he had moved and was now standing directly behind her; yet even more than this, she was surprised to see a large open palm flashing towards her face. With a ‘crack’ his hand connected with her cheek, knocking her face to one side.

  ‘I told you to wait!’ he snarled, his voice cold and harsh.

  As the shock of what had just happened registered in Fran’s brain, she found her fingers in
stinctively tightening about the handle of the hunting knife once more; her hand pulling it free from the Dead man’s ruined brain.

  ‘Dennis!’ a female voice barked unexpectedly from just behind Sam, causing her to visibly jump.

  ‘Emma,’ Dennis started to explain until the look on the young woman’s face caused the words to die in his mouth; yet the smirk from her sister standing beside her revealed that not all of them held the same view on what they had unexpectedly witnessed. ‘She…’

  ‘Apologise,’ Emma simply said, the single word a demand that could not be ignored. ‘Dennis… Fran… Fran is new here…’ she almost immediately continued, realising that on second thoughts she needed to give Dennis a way out of this situation without him losing too much face. ‘I’m sure she didn’t know that you were trying to help Natalie. Help her build up the courage she needs to defend herself… That is what you were doing, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah… that’s right,’ he replied after a heartbeat, turning to look back at Fran; his blank expression doing little to hide his obvious lie. ‘If she doesn’t learn how to deal with the Dead, she’s no good to nobody… she’s a drain… just a walking corpse waiting to happen,’ he went on to say, as if this was had been his intention from the start. ‘Natalie needs to learn.’

  ‘Dennis,’ prompted Emma, the fact that he hadn’t yet apologised not going unnoticed.

  ‘Yeah… I’m… sorry,’ he reluctantly added, the word clearly like ash upon his tongue.

  ‘Good…well, clearly Fran has proven she wasn’t overselling her talent for dispatching the Dead,’ said Emma, aware that the air was still thick with tension, ‘I think perhaps having her work in the Dome is a bit of a waste after all. What do you think, Dennis?’

  ‘Hmm…’ he replied, his eyes briefly flicking to Emma as Fran slowly climbed off the lifeless Dead man’s corpse; the knife in her hand dripping in rancid gore. ‘Well, it’s too late for today… but yeah, you can handle yourself alright,’ he continued, looking back at Fran, either unable to see or choosing to discount the fire that raged within her eyes. ‘You’ll help clear the Dead from tomorrow and then only work in the Dome after that.’

  ‘You may be in charge here,’ spat Fran, completely ignoring what the larger man had just said; her tone as cold and as emotionless as stone, ‘but if you ever raise your hand to me again…’

  ‘Fran…’ warned Sam, fearful that she might be about to say something that she would likely regret.

  ‘Fran,’ echoed Emma, ‘he has apologised… and you did get the wrong end of the stick after all… let’s not go any further down that path you’re on…it… it always ends… badly.’

  There was something in the younger woman’s matter-of-fact tone or perhaps it was her turn of phrase, but whatever it was, Fran could read the thinly veiled threat hidden within her words and it made her pause.

  ‘Okay,’ Fran forced herself to say through gritted teeth, ‘I’ll let it go… this time,’ she muttered, her final words spoken just loud enough for only Dennis to hear.

  For a split second her goading words had the desired effect and she briefly saw the anger flare in the depths of Dennis’s eyes again, only this time she simply turned away from him; knowing allowing him to stew would cause him more discomfort than any words she could possibly say.

  ‘No, Bob… leave it,’ she went on to say, gently pushing the curious dog away from the motionless body as she bent down to clean her blade on a scrap of the Dead man’s clothes.

  ‘Good, that’s that then,’ said Emma, her eyes pointedly meeting Dennis’s as Fran crouched with her back to them, working free the abandoned machete from the corpse’s shoulder.

  ‘Would you like me to look after Poppy?’ asked Wendy, suddenly speaking for the first time as she excitedly approached Sam and started to lift the infant from the carrier before the woman had a chance to reply. ‘It’s no trouble…’

  ‘No, I… she’s alright… honestly, Wendy, I…’ Sam started to protest, a little flustered by the young girl’s unwanted and intrusive attentions as she fought to keep her child close to her. ‘Please, Wendy… Poppy, she’s fine with me… she’ll be fine.’

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ Wendy repeated, seemingly oblivious to Sam’s objections. ‘I can take care of her while you’re working in the Dome, I don’t mind. I…’

  ‘Wendy,’ said Emma, her calm voice cutting through the girl’s excitable actions; pausing the girl’s fingers wrapped about a small arm. ‘Wendy… Sam said no… perhaps you can help with the baby later.’

  ‘But I want…’ Wendy started to protest, until she glanced back at her older sister and was met with a look that told her this was not a topic open for discussion. ‘Fine!’ she abruptly snapped, releasing her hold on Poppy’s small arm to stomp off back in the direction of the Hub; making sure to shoot a final ‘Fucking bitch!’ back at them before she was out of earshot; yet just to whom it was directed, Emma or Sam, those she left behind could only guess.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Emma, flicking her head in the direction Wendy had gone. ‘She means well but…’

  ‘No, no, it’s no trouble,’ began Sam, feeling slightly embarrassed by her overreaction; after all if they were staying at White Oak Park then these people would soon become part of Poppy’s extended family. ‘I’m… I’m just used to keeping her with me, that’s all… it’s going to take some getting used to… you know, being somewhere safe where I don’t have to worry all the time.’

  Unfortunately her point was ironically belittled by the sound of the cadaver’s shoulder blade loudly cracking as Fran finally worked the machete free.

  ‘About time,’ Fran muttered to herself, giving the blade a cursory check to make sure it was still viable.

  ‘Well, safer,’ Emma pointed out, with a smile. ‘Anyway, perhaps we should be getting to the Dome… work to be done... boring work, yes… but necessary… It’s quite something though, the Dome,’ she continued, subtly taking Sam by the elbow to guide her onward, ‘Sid really has worked wonders with the place.’

  ‘Alright, come on then,’ mumbled Dennis, idly waving Natalie in front of him before he looked back at Fran. ‘You too … come on, shift it, we haven’t got all day.’

  Almost to prove a point Fran, rose slowly to her feet to stare mutely back at him.

  ‘Whatever!’ he sneered, before turning away from her.

  ‘You’d better learn to meet him halfway,’ said Emma, as she walked past Fran; her words light yet laden with truth. ‘Otherwise it’s not going to be much fun round here.’

  And with that Emma stepped past her and strode off down the path. For a moment Fran watched her, the mist swirling and parting before her as if it too knew who truly ruled over those at White Oak Park and in that moment, Fran wondered if all those left at the park had fallen into line behind Dennis and subsequently, Emma, just what had happened to those who hadn’t.

  ***

  ‘Wow!’ gaped Sam, staring at the scene before her with open admiration while Natalie, in her eagerness to leave the outside behind her, pushed past her. ‘You certainly weren’t joking when you said we’d be impressed. Emma… this is… this is amazing!’ she went on to say, watching as Natalie disappeared into the warren of raised vegetable beds overflowing with growing life.

  ‘Yes, Sidney has had some really cool ideas,’ she replied, holding one of the wide double doors open for Fran to pass by.

  ‘And it’s so warm compared to outside,’ Sam continued, stepping further into the vast dome made up of countless clear hexagonal panels; the row lowest to the ground having at some point been painted a mismatch of colours, presumably to hide those inside from any of the Dead that happened to shamble by.

  ‘Right, I’m off,’ said Dennis, dismissing Sam’s comment as unimportant. ‘I’ll be back as soon as Ray’s been dealt with.’

  ‘Dennis,’ said Emma, making a grab for his arm to stop him; her small hand appearing even daintier clasping onto his thick forearm, ‘be careful.’r />
  Watching the oddly tender moment between the large brutish man and the young woman hardly out of her teenage years Fran felt uncomfortable; but surprisingly not for the reason she would’ve expected. Yes, Dennis looked to be at least thirty years older than his younger companion but it was not this age difference that made Fran look away, offended by what she saw; it was rather the look on Emma’s face as she spoke to Dennis that really sickened her. For despite all Dennis’s thuggish behaviour, it was clear that he had become besotted by the young girl, willingly entrapped in the spell she had cast over him and just as clear, to anyone with eyes to see it, Emma knew this and callously abused the power the man’s emotions gave her. So as she bid him farewell, urging him to take care and return unharmed, Fran couldn’t help but wonder just what she was more concerned about; Dennis getting hurt or her potential loss of power should he not return at all.

  ‘And make sure you don’t take any unnecessary risks,’ she went on to say, reaching up on tiptoes to gently kiss him. The purposeful way she stressed the word ‘you’ confirming what Fran had already gathered; as far as Emma was concerned, Dennis was to come back alive no matter the cost, even if that meant forfeiting the lives of Grant and Tom for him to do so.

  ‘Dennis,’ said Fran, hating herself for having to ask a man such as Dennis for help, ‘if Tom… if he has to fight the Dead, you’ll need to watch out for him… Tom, he… he loses himself… he thinks he…’

  ‘Oh, I know what that crazy bastard thinks, Darling,’ Dennis replied, the corner of his mouth twitching as if laughing at an unshared joke. ‘And anyway, from what I hear, that man doesn’t need any help from me… or you for that matter,’ he said as an afterthought just as he turned away from her; his final parting words meant to leave her with a sting, ‘not anymore.’

  ‘Fran,’ said Emma, breaking her from the sickening realisation that Dennis may actually be right; her time as Tom’s trusted right hand may have finally come to an end. ‘Fran, we’re letting the cold in.’

  ‘What? Oh… sorry,’ she mumbled, stepping by Emma and almost coming to a stop again as she stood marvelling at the alterations the group had made to the vast swimming pool complex. ‘And you’ve done all this?’ she continued, turning to look back at Emma who was impatiently waiting for Bob who had chosen this moment to cock his leg against the side of the building.