Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel

by Charlick, Stephen

  Death among the Dead

  By

  Stephen Charlick

  cover artwork by: bryon@keyarts.co.uk

  © copyright: Stephen Charlick 2015

  www.stephencharlick.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

  Reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

  Electronic or mechanical means, including

  photocopying, recording or by any information and

  retrieval system, without the written permission of

  the publisher and author, except where permitted by law.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names,

  Characters, places and incidents are the product of

  The author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons,

  living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Prologue:

  ‘They’re not going to make it!’ shrieked Greg, the howling wind almost stealing away his desperate cries as his shaking hands gripped fiercely onto the wet sleeve of the man stood next to him. ‘We’ve… we’ve got to close the gate before it’s too late!’

  Matthew glanced briefly at Greg, his own fist clutching the small silver crucifix hanging about his neck; its cold metal offering some small solace as it dug painfully into the palm of his hand.

  ‘Just… just a bit longer!’ he shouted, raising his free hand to shield his eyes from the torrential rain as he turned back to watch the painfully slow but panic filled approach of the crowd through the buffeting waist high waves. ‘A few more… just a few more!’

  Already the incoming tide had sunk the cobbled causeway connecting the island of St Michael’s Mount to the mainland beneath a metre of cold churning seawater, but for the surviving residents of the small town of Marazion this was the least of their concerns. It was the bloody figures splashing wildly through the waves behind them that forced an icy horror to tighten about their hearts. These torn and ravaged creatures that until recently had been their neighbours living peacefully alongside them, some even their friends and family, were now transformed through violence and bloodshed into living corpses tortured with an unnatural hunger to feast upon the living.

  Just like everyone else Matthew had watched in horror as scenes born from the darkest of nightmares had played themselves out across his television screen. He had watched dumbstruck as corpses, some torn and savaged to the point of being almost unrecognisable as once human, had fallen upon their living counterparts; only to spread their unending torment with but a single bite. He had been transfixed by the bloody Armageddon that raged across the globe until he could simply take no more. No longer could he witness the tragic fall of Man, so with shaking fingers he had turned off his TV, plunging himself into a silent darkness, and fallen to his knees in desperate prayer. He prayed to his God to look upon His flawed creation with a loving mercy and forgiveness. He prayed that Man be given a chance to change his ways and he prayed that the small town of Marazion be spared this unholy plague engulfing the world. But even as his whispered pleas fell from his lips the distant screams began to echo through his home town and he knew that his God had chosen not to hear him.

  It was in that instant, just when his fear and despair threatened to overwhelm him, that Matthew made a decision; he decided to survive. Just where he could go to escape the horrors that stalked the darkness beyond his walls, was so blindingly obvious to him that it almost let free the bubble of hysterical laughter that threatened to erupt from him. To save himself he would simply go to the same place he had done every working day of his life, he would go to the island. Set over three hundred metres off the Cornish coastline and only accessible via boat or a causeway which was only exposed during low tide; the small island of St Michael’s mount was perfect. There he would start again, he would build a new Eden, free of the sin that had surely brought this blight upon humanity and through his works he would prove himself and anyone else lucky enough to be there with him worthy in the eyes of his God. Glancing at the clock on his fireplace, Matthew knew if he wanted to survive the night untouched by these Dead creatures he could wait no longer, for as harbour master of St Michael’s mount he knew the tide was already on the rise.

  ‘Hurry!’ Matthew shouted to a young woman that suddenly stumbled to her knees still some ten metres away from the safety that the solid causeway gate offered.

  For a second her head disappeared beneath the rolling surface of the dark water, only to abruptly reappear again moments later; a cry of sheer determination to live giving her the strength to fight against the fast moving currents and her own exhaustion. Even though he recognised the woman from the local supermarket her name eluded him but he knew he would need women like her, women with spirit; after all, humanity would need to be rebuilt one child at a time.

  ‘Help her!’ he shouted to Greg, yanking his sleeve from the younger but shorter man’s tight grasp.

  ‘But…’ Greg started to say, terrified of finding himself the wrong side of the high gate once again.

  ‘Do it!’ Matthew growled, thrusting the protesting man through the gap in the gate and out into deeper water.

  For a moment Greg seemed torn, his head spinning back and forth between Matthew, the young woman and the splashing corpses he could see over her shoulder. Already two Dead men and a woman, who appeared to be missing an arm, had swarmed onto a woman at the tale-end of the approaching survivors, pulling her roughly into their cold and lethal embrace. For a second her panic filled eyes seemed to lock with Greg’s and despite the distance between them he saw the terror that flashed across her face as one of the Dead men bit down hard on the back of her neck, eager to tear free a chunk of her bloody flesh.

  ‘Greg!’ Matthew shouted, breaking him from his wide eyed torpor.

  Blinking away the rain from his eyes, Greg began to wade out deeper into the water as fast as his short legs would allow. Luckily the young woman had already managed to get herself back on her feet and with cold seawater splashing up about her waist with each hurried step, she was soon within reach of Greg’s rather ineffectual helping hand.

  ‘Hurry! You’ve got to hurry!’ he panted, his words filling with dread as he looked past her to the group of approaching town’s folk.

  Already more and more of the fleeing survivors were being brought down by the hungry Dead horde behind them; their terror filled screams fighting to be heard over the guttural growls of the Dead and the howling winds. He noticed a man holding his infant child aloft in a desperate effort to save it from the savage attack, only for them both to disappear beneath a tangle of bloody grasping limbs and snapping jaws. He saw a group of three young men trying their best to keep the wave of hungry cadavers at bay, hoping to buy some precious time for their wives and children to make their escape. But the Dead would not be denied their living flesh and the few blows the young men managed to land upon the corpses had little or no effect and within seconds they too were overwhelmed; their doomed families following them moments later to their own bloody deaths.

  Grabbing the young woman tightly by her upper arm, Greg urged her onward.

  ‘Almost there! We’re almost there!’ he cried, although whether for his own assurances or hers, he didn’t know.

  Behind him, two tall men, their longer legs making it easier for them to move through the churning waves, had managed to close the gap between the young women and the other besieged survivors. Glancing over his shoulder and fearing the worst, Greg was relieved to see the two men were both still living and even recognised one them as one of th
e gardeners that tended the castle grounds on the island.

  ‘Roy!’ he called to the older of the two men. ‘Help me with her!’

  Despite the woman’s initial determination to regain her footing, she was clearly flagging and seemed to Greg to be almost on the point of collapse.

  ‘I’ve got you, Miss,’ said Roy, deftly slipping the limp woman’s arm over his shoulder without breaking his stride to take her weight from Greg, who immediately released her to make his own escape back to the solid gate.

  Within four sloshing strides, the sea water fell back to knee level and Greg was once again back by Matthew’s side, his hands itching to roll the heavy causeway gate shut.

  ‘Get her out of the water, Roy,’ called Matthew, gesturing behind him to where the cobbled causeway finally rose above the sea level and became a path leading up onto the island.

  ‘There’s more behind us…’ huffed Roy, shifting his grip on the woman as he quickly led her past Matthew. ‘But those things… they’re ripping them to shreds…’

  ‘They… they haven’t a hope…’ panted the second man, who Matthew suddenly realised he only vaguely recognised by sight.

  Turning away from the man he didn’t know the name of, Matthew looked back to the scenes of unbelievable bloody carnage playing out in the water barely forty metres away from him. Whoever the man was, he was correct. Of the original fifty strong group of survivors that had been crossing from Marazion only twenty of them still remained on their feet and of those more and more were falling to the Dead with each second that passed. Matthew looked from one recognisable face in the crowd to the next. He knew these people. He knew their names, they were his friends, his neighbours, people he had known his whole life. Yet each face he looked into was contorted with overwhelming fear or pain and in that instant he knew he could not save them.

  ‘Your hand... you’re bleeding…’ said the nameless man, taking a cautious step away from Matthew. ‘Have you been bitten? Did one of those things get you?’

  ‘What?’ replied Matthew, the man’s words barley registering.

  ‘Your hand…,’ the man repeated, taking another step back. ‘Were you bitten?’

  Tearing his gaze from the horrific scene, Matthew looked down at his clenched hand and the trickle of blood dripping from it. Slowly, almost as if of its own accord, his fist began to open to reveal the silver crucifix. In his fear he had held so tightly onto the symbol of his God that it had pierced the very flesh of his hand, drawing blood. Looking down at the tiny face of Jesus on the cross, its forlorn features slick with his own blood, something within Matthew awoke, something righteous and something that scared him; scared him more than the hungry cadavers devouring the people of Marazion.

  Slowly closing his fingers about the crucifix again, he relished the pain as the sharp edges of the cross dug deep into his flesh once again.

  ‘I have to close the gate,’ he muttered to himself, wrapping his other hand around the metal bar on the internal side of the gate.

  ‘Wait!’ interrupted the nameless man, reaching out to stop Matthew. ‘A few of them have broken away… they can still make it…’

  ‘No,’ Matthew calmly replied, already using all his weight to move the heavy gate on the casters set in the track that ran across the causeway.

  ‘But,’ the man continued, trying to pull Matthew away from the gate.

  ‘No!’ Matthew screamed, lashing out with his bleeding fist, causing the man to fall backwards into the knee deep water.

  ‘You… you can’t just leave them,’ the man said, shaking his head in disbelief as he watched Matthew moving the heavy gate closer and closer to the connecting wall.

  Quicker than he thought possible the nameless man heard a dull ‘click’ as the gate’s mechanism locked into place and no sooner had Matthew slid the thick rusting bolts across than the pounding began.

  ‘Help! Help us!’ screamed the small group of survivors as they pleaded and drummed their hands against the solid sheet of metal blocking their escape from the Dead.

  The man Matthew didn’t know covered his ears with his shaking hands, desperate to block out the terrified cries of the people that had been left to their bloody and terrifying fate.

  ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ the man muttered over and over again, unable to bare the cries as they descended into screams of pure terror.

  ‘You… you let them die! You fucking killed them!’ he finally screamed at Matthew through his tears.

  Matthew looked silently down at the weeping man still on his knees. Then, letting his gaze roam, he looked from Roy to Greg and then to the shivering young woman standing at the top of the causeway. Finally his eyes drifted back down to his own bloody hand, slowly opening again.

  ‘No… I didn’t kill them,’ he said, his words almost a whisper as the sculptured face of Jesus looked back at him, ‘I saved us… I saved us all.’

  Five years later.

  Chapter 1: Another day of the usual.

  ‘Hurt them, Daddy,’ begged the girl, her voice full of gleeful menace. ‘Hurt them for me.’

  ‘Yes, Daddy. Cut them, cut them up,’ her younger sister giggled. ‘Cut them all up…’

  Tom smiled to himself and allowed his daughter’s voices to fuel his rage against the Dead creatures before him. His wickedly sharp sickles, already slick with the dark blood and gore of previous kills, flashed through the air with alarming precision, severing decaying limbs with every swing of his arms.

  ‘Their heads!’ spat his wife, each word dripping with a dark urgency. ‘Remove their heads… end their existence… end it!’

  ‘For you,’ Tom muttered, easily slashing one of his blades through the grey skin of a Dead child’s neck.

  For a moment the small ruined body stood there, rocking back and forth on its bare and blackened feet. Then, as gravity finally took control of its now lifeless body, it crumpled into the long grass; at last just a collection of rotting flesh. The decapitated head that rolled away only to eventually come to rest at the base of a large apple tree, was unfortunately another matter altogether. With the putrid brain within the Dead child’s skull still intact, a pair of milky film covered eyes continued to watch Tom’s every movement, forever eager for a taste of his living flesh. But Tom no longer concerned himself with this unfortunate creature, it was the other three lumbering corpses making their slow but determined approach that now drew his attention. And anyway, even as he allowed his killing frenzy to wrap about him like the smothering embrace of a strange but welcome friend, he knew in the back of his mind that he could not risk breaking his fragile blades by using them to puncture skulls.

  ‘Kill her,’ whispered his wife, while the cadaver of a young woman took a stumbling step towards him. ‘Cut her to pieces, Tom.’

  Tom barely had time to take in the grey tinged skin stretched taught over the Dead woman’s emaciated face or the fact that one of her arms ended at the elbow in a tattering of torn and blackened curling skin. He simply stepped forward to greet her; a greeting he knew would end with the Dead woman falling to the rage that burned within him. No sooner had the Dead woman reached beseechingly for him with the stump of her ruined arm than Tom’s own arms were crossing, turning the blades of his sickle in a monstrous pair of deadly scissors.

  ‘Kill her!’ his wife hissed again, as Tom calmly closed the gap between himself and the ruined young woman.

  With a yell of pure hatred escaping him, Tom swiftly uncrossed his arms, the curved blades in his hands slicing across each other and viciously ripping through the fragile skin of the Dead woman’s neck. Again, a head with hungry eyes came to rest somewhere amongst the heavily laden fruit trees and again it was instantly dismissed from his thoughts.

  ‘More, Daddy. More!’ giggled his youngest daughter.

  Keen to oblige his daughter in her morbid request, Tom moved to engage the next approaching corpse. This time the creature had been a middle aged man in life and just what had transformed him into the walking abomin
ation that now presented itself, desperate to quench its compelling hunger, Tom could only guess. Unlike his cadaverous travelling companions his body seemed to be intact and Tom couldn’t see any obvious bite marks on the exposed sallow skin of his arms and chest.

  ‘Unlucky sod,’ Tom muttered to himself, realising the poor fellow must have died of something far more natural than the hungry savagery of the Dead.

  To have survived for so long only to then die of something as pedestrian as an infection or an appendicitis seemed to Tom just another example of God’s unrelenting and cruel sense of humour. But Tom would not let the tiny spark of pity for the Dead thing deter him from bringing a swift and vicious end to its unnatural existence. For this decaying shell of a man, still clothed in the stinking and tattered remains of a filthy business suit, was but one of billions of other such shambling cadavers spread across the globe, each consuming Humanity piece by piece like a strange demonic cancer; and as long as Tom still had breath in his body he would not rest until he had removed each and every one of them; limb by limb if necessary.

  Just like all of his kind, the Dead man raised his arms imploringly to Tom; somehow hoping the living flesh he craved would readily sacrifice itself to the hunger that consumed him. Yet no such sacrifice had ever willingly been made and even as the Dead man’s jacket and tattered skirt fluttered open to reveal an emaciated torso already being consumed by a dark and creeping mould, Tom raised his sickles ready to strike.

  ‘Tom! Behind you!’ came a woman’s voice he recognised but couldn’t place; her words full of panic and urgency.

  Ignoring the Dead business man for a second, Tom spun just in time to knock aside the blackened claw like hands of another Dead man which had appeared from behind a tree, drawn to sounds of the living.

  ‘Kill them both, Daddy! Kill them, kill them, kill them,’ his eldest daughter chanted over and over, keen to see lifeless limbs fall to her father’s blades.