Killing the Dead (Book 12): Fear the Reaper

by Murray, Richard

  “I think that’s enough, Samuel,” said a voice that I knew far too well.

  Jinx’s tail began to wag in earnest as I spun around.

  “Hello, Lily,” Ryan said as he pulled off his black hood.

  Chapter 8 - Ryan

  Well, it certainly seemed like my little deception was well and truly, up. I’d been foolish to think that I could deceive her for very long but the moment I’d seen her, walking into an ambush with the rest of her uniformed friends, I had been compelled to act.

  She stared at me with red-rimmed eyes, her blonde hair tied up in a ponytail and an interesting looking weapon sheathed on her belt. I was more than a little curious about that and could already see some uses for it.

  I had no real idea what to say, so just stood, staring at her as she took a hesitant step towards me. A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth as her next step was more purposeful and I opened my mouth to utter something glib and hopefully charming.

  Her right hook caught me a little by surprise and I stepped back, raising one hand in the air to ward off the impressive number of knives that had just been unsheathed as my ever so loyal minions took offence at seeing me attacked. My other hand rubbed at the spot on my jaw where her fist had connected.

  “Hold now,” I said to the gathered men and women. “I’m sure that I did something to deserve that.”

  I had no idea what though and a snicker from Gregg suggested that he understood and was taking far too much entertainment from our reunion.

  “Nice to see you too, Gregg,” I said sourly and he replied with another burst of laughter.

  “You too, mate. Glad to see you’re alive.”

  “Did you ever doubt it?” I asked and had to duck as Lily took another swing at me. “Why do you persist in attacking me!”

  “You let me think you were dead!” she snapped and I stared at her, more than a little confused.

  “I did? When?”

  “We met Lou! He told us you died!”

  “That’s hardly my fault then, is it?” I asked and ignored the mirth coming from my friend.

  “Who is this man, Morgan?” one of the soldiers asked, an officer judging by his tone.

  “This is the leader of these people,” she said as she stepped back, folding her arms tightly across her chest as though afraid she might try to hit me again. “He’s called Ryan.”

  “The Ryan you’ve been trying to find, lass?” Ray asked.

  “Aye, that’s the one,” Gregg replied with another burst of laughter while Lily just glared my way.

  “Then perhaps we need to talk,” the officer said to me. “I have been tasked with…”

  “Samuel,” I said, interrupting the already irritating man. “Take our… guests, to somewhere they can have a bite to eat and some rest if you please.”

  The black-garbed figure of my second in command bowed low before gathering a handful of other men and women from the front rank with a gesture. The officer protested as they advanced and I simply looked his way and smiled.

  “You can allow the somewhat angry young lady to stay,” I said and glanced down at the canine that hadn’t stopped staring at me while it wagged its tail. “The dog and Gregg too.”

  “I’m good, mate,” he said with another laugh. “You two have some things to work out and I think I need to explain some other things to the Captain here.”

  “As you wish.”

  Samuel herded the soldiers through a door set into the far wall that would take them into a photo development shop and from there, up to the second floor where we had some quarters. I had no doubt that they would be well tended, as well as watched and held until I decided what to do with them.

  When they had left, Lily still seemed unwilling to speak and I knelt down to scratch the dog behind the ears. She, at least, seemed pleased to see me. I had been expecting a little less violence from Lily to be honest, even if we had left things a little awkwardly.

  “The rest of you can go about your tasks,” I said loud enough to be heard by everyone still remaining in the room even above the quiet moans of the undead hanging above us. “Jones, take a fist and ensure that law firm on Chapel Street is still secure.”

  A black-garbed figure bowed low and led a group of four similarly garbed figures away with him. I watched the rest of them disperse and considered once again the need to mark them in some way so I could actually tell who was who beneath the black hoods. It did get quite tiresome at times. Still, rules were rules.

  “So, you thought I was dead, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  Ouch! A single word reply, and a tone so cold it could freeze water into ice. Jinx cocked her head and watched me, her tongue hanging out of one side of her mouth as though she were laughing.

  “I’m clearly not.”

  “No.”

  “Are you angry that I’m not dead or that you thought that I was?” I asked. “Clearly I had no way of knowing you’d been told that.”

  Her lips formed a tight line and her eyes narrowed as she looked at me. I wasn’t great at reading expressions or emotions on other people, but I’d long since become accustomed to that particular look from her. She wore it whenever I did or said something particularly foolish.

  “Did you not, for one minute, think that we would be worried about you?” she snapped and glared at me as I opened my mouth to reply. “Don’t you dare talk just yet! I haven’t bloody finished.”

  I held back a sigh and glanced at the black cloth hood I held in one hand. It would be easy to slip it on and head outside. She wouldn’t find me if I mingled with all the others and they weren’t exactly going to be talking to her.

  “It’s been five months!” she continued. “Nearly six since you left and I know you heard at least one of my messages because Lou told me you had!”

  Her angry words were echoing around the open space and the zombies above us were raising their own voices in response.

  “Not only did you not try to reach out to me, but he told me you’d sacrificed yourself to save him and his people. As far as I knew, you were dead and yet here you are! With a small army of people who call themselves ‘the Dead’ and zombies hanging from your bloody ceiling. What the hell is going on!”

  “Ah…” I looked up at the hanging undead and couldn’t help my smile. Killing each and every one of them had been so much fun after all. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Her reply was pointed and I felt the sting of her words a little in a way that I shouldn’t have. There’d been a good reason for me to leave and there was no way I could have stayed with her and killed my brother and those other fools.

  My real concern was why I should bother telling her anything. She was clearly annoyed and some of the things I’d done would likely be unpalatable to her. Not that I had any real belief that we could go back to how things were. After all, the one promise she’d insisted I keep when we first joined up together to survive nearly a year ago, had been broken.

  But, I was the source of her current anger and while I didn’t quite believe that I owed her an explanation since she had been quite firm that breaking that promise would sever all ties between us, I didn’t think she would be going anywhere until I satisfied her.

  “I was ready to die,” I said without preamble as I scratched idly behind Jinx’s ears. “In fact, when I’d sent Lou and his people on his way, my only concern was ensuring enough of the raiders and zombies were inside the walls he’d built before I detonated the explosives.”

  “You wanted to die?”

  There was something in her voice as she said that, a catch perhaps. A faint hesitation before she said the word as though it pained her. That was a curious development and I couldn’t help but wonder why.

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  “Why?”

  I glanced at her and met her eyes, staring back at me. Her anger was fading, replaced by something else. Confusion? No, perhaps concern.

  “Does it m
atter?” For some reason I couldn’t quite fathom, I was hesitant about going into too much detail about that particular time. “I clearly survived and have prospered.”

  “How?” she asked, seemingly content not to press the issue. For the moment, at least. “You were standing on a building full of explosives. How the hell did you survive that?”

  “You can blame Georgia for that,” I said and watched her face darken. What did I say?

  “Did she survive?” Lily asked. “Is she here, with you still?”

  I wasn’t imagining it. There was definite emphasis when she referred to Georgia. Weird, but undoubtedly due to something I wouldn’t understand anyway, so I wasn’t going to waste my time questioning it.

  “No. When she realised my intentions, she stabbed me,” I said and reached up to touch my shoulder where that damned awful Hori Hori of hers had sunk into my flesh. “Of course, I responded by throwing us both off the roof. The last I saw of her, she was being torn apart by zombies.”

  “Then how did you survive?” she asked and I was familiar enough with her to notice a slight warming of the ice in her tones.

  “You can thank a Feral for that,” I said with a grin that she didn’t respond to. “There I was, standing atop this thirty-foot high wall made of train carriages and steel containers. Wounded, my blood flowing freely and my strength fading fast. When a Feral jumped on me.”

  “It was running right at me and I was so intent on watching the zombies drop inside the walls that I didn’t even notice it,” I continued. “The force of its’ strike carried us over the wall and I had just enough time to press the button on the detonator.”

  “But that doesn’t explain how you survived,” she said.

  There was something in her eyes that I thought might perhaps be concern, but could easily have been irritation. She’d been the one who could tell what people were feeling just by looking at them. I was the first to admit that I was a little lost when it came to that sort of thing.

  “It wasn’t intentional,” I said. “There was a river below the wall and we were already headed towards it as I pressed the button. The explosion was… impressive, from the little I remember.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Everything’s a little jumbled,” I admitted. “The wall took the full force of the blast as the water cushioned my fall. I was in no real condition to fight off the Feral that was tearing at my clothing trying to reach my flesh and then the walls came tumbling down.”

  “Like I said, I don’t remember too much of what happened. One minute I had a zombie trying to rip me to shreds, the next, the water became rough as a lot of heavy items crashed down into it. Next thing I remember, I was about a mile downstream, blood mingling with the mud I was lying in and a ringing in my ears that didn’t go away for days.”

  “You always were luckier than anyone had a right to be,” she said with a shake of her head. “So, you survived. How did you end up in charge of this bunch?”

  “Oh, that was easy,” I said with a laugh. “All I had to do was die.”

  Chapter 9 – Lily

  I was very tempted to go over and hit him again. The man was beyond infuriating and his nonchalant attitude about his near death was galling. He had no regard for how upsetting it was for his friends. For me!

  But then of course, why would he? He was an amoral killer with less ability to understand his emotions than a toddler would have. I’d begun to suspect that they were there, buried deep. Okay, buried really deeply, but they were there. He just had no real way to understand them.

  That wasn’t his fault, but even so, it was infuriating at times. He’d just explained in a glib manner his near death and survival. Any other person would have understood immediately the effect it would have on the one you were telling that too. Especially if that one was your ex-girlfriend – of sorts – who still had way too many conflicting feelings for you.

  I held back the sigh and swallowed back the question I really wanted to ask. The bitch might be dead but they’d had a couple of months alone out in the world. We hadn’t been together and I had no reason to expect I deserved to know what they did together, but dammit, I wanted to know.

  “You. Had. To. Die.” Each word was bitten off as I clamped down on my anger and I doubted he even noticed.

  “Yeah, I did what repairs I could to myself,” he said as though speaking of patching up a machine as though he had no real connection to the body he wore. Like it was just something he needed to get about. “But there were limits to the small first aid kit I carried.”

  “Since I had no weapon and far too many injuries, I had no intention of sticking around that area,” he continued. “Fortunately, I was on the opposite side of the river to the horde of zombies and so I picked a direction that would lead away from them and started walking.”

  Wounded and alone without supplies or weapons in an area overrun by zombies. Anyone else would have given up or gone into full-blown panic mode. Hiding away, terrified that the scent of the blood leaking from their wounds would draw the undead to them.

  Worried that their pain would be too much to allow them to get far and being caught in the open would be a death sentence. They would hide and then infection would set in. They wouldn’t be able to scavenge for food and would die alone and miserable.

  Not him though. Nope, he just pushed himself up and went a-bloody-wandering around the countryside without a care in the goddamned world.

  I was fairly sure the grinding of my teeth was audible even above the sounds of the undead hanging from the ceiling and I forced myself to stillness as I listened to his story.

  “My biggest concern was my wounds. My clothes were shredded and soaked through with water and blood and while the claws of the Feral had done some damage, I didn’t see any immediate signs of infection.”

  “It took nearly two hours of walking before I found a house and then, typically, there was little in the way of food or medical supplies. There were some clothes at least and an open fireplace. I spent the night wrapped in a blanket in front of a roaring fire.”

  “You didn’t worry about it being noticed?”

  “Not really. In the darkness, they would maybe smell the smoke, but not be able to pinpoint it and besides the smoke from the burning zombies back at Lou’s place had blanketed the area for miles around.”

  “Nice.”

  “Yeah. Burning zombies don’t smell like burning people. It was decidedly unpleasant.”

  “You clearly survived the night. What then?”

  “I couldn’t stay in that house so grabbed a sharp carving knife from the kitchen and set off again. By that point, infection had set in and I was running a fever.”

  “Zombie infection? Does that mean you’re immune like Cass?”

  “No idea. I figured it for a standard infection from open wounds soaked in river water and whatever nasty stuff was on the Feral’s claws. Either way, my strength was fading and I was in no mood to fight anything, let alone a group of zombies.”

  “To be honest,” he continued, his gaze distant as he absently stroked a happy Jinx. “The next few days are a bit of a blur. I have vague recollections. Finding some water in a pot after a heavy downpour and gulping it down. Eating some soft, beetle holed biscuits I found in the cupboard of an abandoned farmhouse.“

  He let out a soft sigh and I very much wanted to go over and embrace him. It must have been horrendous for him. Out there, all alone, suffering from fever and infection. I knew for a fact that I wouldn’t have survived it.

  “At some point, I found myself in a small forest. No idea how I got there, but I found a group of zombies. If it had been Ferals, I would have died for sure.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched at the thought and I shook my head as any compassion I’d been feeling was burned away by anger. He truly didn’t give a damn if he lived or died and he didn’t seem to care how his death would affect the people who loved… cared for him.

  “It was a short and fairl
y brutal fight and as the last one fell, so did I,” he said. “No idea how long I was out, but when I came to, there were people around me.”

  “People?”

  “Just some survivors. They’d heard the radio messages about the navy coming to Glasgow and were making their way there.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, they thought I was dead. Guess I looked pretty bad by that point and lying unmoving in the middle of a group of dead zombies just had them thinking I was one of them too. Scared the crap out of them when I opened my eyes as they were going through my pockets.”

  “Shit… I can imagine.”

  “They responded as you would expect,” he said with a small laugh. “The one rooting through my pockets tried to stab me through the eye with a screwdriver. I broke two of his fingers and had my knife at his throat before he could scream.”

  “Bet they didn’t like that,” I said. Anyone else would be dead a dozen times over if they had tried to survive as he had. It was scary at times, just how capable he was at violence, even when he was at his weakest.

  “As I understand, there was some discussion about leaving me when I passed out but fortunately for me, they were more like you.”

  He smiled as he said it and I took that to be a ham-fisted compliment of sorts.

  “They dragged me with them and found a place on the edge of the city to hole up. None of them was anything useful, like a doctor or nurse, but they did the best they could.”

  Of course they did. They kept him alive and likely at some risk to themselves. The fact that he wasn’t immensely grateful for their help was galling.

  “My fever broke and they fed me what scraps of food they had while I recovered. It was foolish of them to share their limited resources with someone who would likely die but they insisted and I wasn’t going to argue.”

  I shook my head and bit my tongue. I should have expected that sort of attitude since he’d had the same when we’d been together. I was well aware that the people he’d saved had been to please me and not because he gave a damn.