Torn between the Dead man in the suit and this new arrival, Tom looked back and forth between the two hungry corpses. From the charred state of one side of the second man’s body, he had clearly been the victim of a raging fire at some point; though whether this had been the actual cause of his death Tom would never know for sure but the bite size chunk missing from his left wrist hinted to a different cause of his demise.
‘You win, Crispy!’ Tom growled, choosing the burnt man who just at that moment happened to let forth a deep haunting moan through his cracked and twisted lips.
With the morning sunlight flashing across what little of the curved blade was still free of gore, the sickle in Tom’s right fist sliced through the air, effortlessly removing a burnt hand in its silent passing. Of course the loss of the appendage did nothing to deter the burnt corpse in its compulsion to latch onto the flesh so tantalisingly close to it and even before the severed hand had dropped to the ground it started to lean forward, its gaping jaws a deadly chasm of broken teeth and pus filled gums.
‘Tom…’ his wife warned with a sharp hiss. ‘Too close!’
Nodding, Tom managed to swiftly bring his left arm up, lodging it hard against the Dead man’s burnt chest. With just enough space to keep the snapping mouth shy of reaching its bloody goal, he gave the corpse a sharp and angry shove. Landing on its back with an all too human like grunt escaping its lifeless lungs, Tom saw his chance and stepped forward to bare down on the pitiful but deadly creature. Before the corpse had had a chance to right itself Tom’s heavy boot was crashing down on its head, obliterating what little of its features it had left and quickly turning its face into a dark stinking pulp.
‘Cut him… cut him up!’ his two daughters chanted, their voices little more squeals of delight.
‘Kill it, Tom!’ screeched his wife. ‘Kill it for us!’
Again and again Tom slammed his foot down of the creature’s head and even when he heard the sickening crack of the skull cracking beneath his onslaught he continued his attack.
‘Destroy it, Tom!’ his wife barked menacingly.
‘Tom!’ came the voice of the unfamiliar woman again. ‘Tom!’
‘Yes, crush him, Daddy!’ his girls encouraged.
‘Tom!’ the woman yelled again, her words barely registering. ‘Tom, look out!’
Suddenly, despite his grunts, Tom managed to hear the sound of someone landing heavily beside him in the tall grass.
‘Kill her!’ screeched his wife, causing Tom to spin to meet his new attacker.
‘No!’ Fran screamed, jumping back just in time to avoid Tom’s blades as they sliced towards her. ‘Tom! Tom, it’s me… it’s Fran!’
Blinking, Tom took in the attractive young woman stood before him, her hazel eyes full of fear and concern for him. Slowly shaking his head to clear his confusion, Tom took a staggering step away from her.
‘Fran?’ Tom whispered, the stark reality of the orchard and how he had found himself there, slowly drifting back to him like wafts of smoke.
‘Yes!’ she replied with a grunt, already spinning to kick out at the Dead man in the suit, who had closed the gap between herself and Tom.
‘Are you back with us?’ she asked, darting forward to the suited man to stab a wickedly sharp looking knife through his eye socket and into his brain. ‘Tom, are you with us?’ she repeated, looking back at the man who had momentarily lost himself to his rage.
Tom looked about the small apple orchard, the heavily laden branches drooping under the weight of their ripe harvest and waited for his rapidly beating heart to return to normal. With each lung full of air he gulped down he could feel his breathing slowly return to normal and the adrenalin surging through his body begin to dissipate. More importantly though was that the voices of his wife and two daughters returned to the usual ghostly murmur that permanently itched somewhere in the back of his mind. Ever since he had returned to the small cottage, that he and his family had made their home, to find spilt blood and empty despair awaiting him he had carried their voices with him. They pleaded for retribution, they begged him for justice and they demanded revenge; and each time he willingly gave into their requests, if only to make himself feel better. Of course Tom knew his wife and two daughters were gone, transformed into monstrous creatures of decaying flesh that now roamed the countryside with but one thought consuming them; the need to feed on the living. But despite this he welcomed their voices when they came to him. He pulled them close and let their words wrap about his heart and all the while he begged for their forgiveness for having not been there when they had needed him most.
‘Err…Yeah,’ Tom whispered, using the crook of his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
Fran wiped her blade clean on the least unsavoury part of the now lifeless man’s jacket and push herself up from her knees.
‘You’re sure?’ she asked, slipping the knife back into the sheath tied onto her belt.
‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ Tom replied, his embarrassment tinged with a niggling but real concern that one day he may never be able to pull himself from the ghostly embrace of his lost family, ‘I got a little carried away there.’
‘Just a little,’ said Fran, moving over to the decapitated head of the child to grant it the eternal darkness it had been so cruelly denied.
‘You can come down now, Kai!’ she shouted up to a young man perched among the high branches of one of the apple trees.
With a wave of acknowledgement, Kai began to slowly make his way down through the branches to his two travelling companions. For a moment Fran watched his descent, idly taking in the movement of his solid arms, the curve of his broad shoulders and then with a little rush of embarrassment suddenly flushing blood to her cheeks, the way his jeans clung attractively to his backside.
Kai had spent the last five years safely hidden from the Dead behind the high walls of his boarding school, which with its vast grounds producing enough food for the students that had remained, his body had not yet taken on the lean look that was common among other survivors. But of course the high walls had not kept the Dead out forever and as always, it had ended badly; it had ended in blood. Few had escaped the Dead that day as they swept through the school like a wave of savage death and in fact both Tom and Fran themselves would have been torn to pieces if not for Kai’s quick thinking. But they had escaped, they had survived and more importantly they had formulated a plan. For Tom and Fran had not arrived at the school alone and although they had lost some of their number to the hungry Dead, others they had simply misplaced. But at least they had an idea of where their friends had fled to and although they had not come across them just yet they hoped to find them when they reached their goal, the island of St Michael’s mount.
‘Are yo… yo… you alright?’ Kai stammered, dropping from the lowest branch to land beside Fran in the tall grass.
‘He can’t help himself,’ she replied, her words soft enough that only Kai could hear. ‘And you’ve got to hand it to him, he’s bloody good with those blades.’
‘Yeah, b…b…but F... F...’ Kai began, suddenly cutting himself off with a bark like cough from deep in his throat as if to reset the link between his mind and his mouth. ‘Fran you could have b… been seriously h…hurt.’
‘But I wasn’t,’ said Fran matter-of-factly, giving a brief shrug of her shoulders as she knelt down to finally deal with the child’s head.
Ignoring Kai’s disapproving grunt behind her, Fran gingerly manoeuvred the child’s head with her fingertips, trying her best to avoid touching it any more than necessary. Even without a body to feed, the child’s jaws still moved back and forth, snapping at Fran in their compulsion to rip into the living flesh that was now so tantalisingly close.
‘Sorry, little one,’ Fran mumbled, tilting the head back slightly while the blade of her knife hovered over its film covered right eye.
Fran looked briefly into the eyes of the Dead child and saw nothing of whom or what it had once been; nothing re
mained, nothing but a perverse shell of its former self. Just how this horror had befallen humanity Fran could not comprehend but as she looked into the face of the Dead child looking back at her with a pure animalistic hunger contorting its decaying features she feared Man as a species had finally run its course.
As she watched the child opened its mouth, its blackened slug-like tongue stretched towards her as if begging for the merest taste of flesh and in that instant Fran knew enough was enough. This child had been conscripted into the army of the Dead though violence, terror and bloodshed but now it was her job to gift it the eternal peace it deserved. Without further hesitation she thrust the blade sharply into the eye socket. With a ‘crunch’ she could both hear and feel the tip of her knife sliding through the orbit, thin shards of bone scraping sickeningly against the blade as it continued into the brain.
Once the job was done Fran sat back on her heels, used the long grass to wipe the worst of the gore from the blade of her knife and then slipped it back into its sheath.
‘I wonder where they all came from?’ Fran said aloud, looking at the half dozen corpses scattered about the small orchard, most of them in pieces. ‘I mean, we’re not that close to a town are we?’
But neither of the men chose to answer her. Tom was trying to make himself look busy by carefully plucking ripe apples from a nearby tree while Kai just watched him, arms folded and a scowl scrunching up his otherwise attractive features. Fran knew what each of her travelling companions must be thinking and in some ways she felt a little sympathy for both of them. Tom understandably was feeling ashamed and probably a little scared that he had lost control of himself so totally that he had almost attacked her, while Kai was feeling equally scared but for quite a different reason.
Tom and his ghostly voices were an unknown factor to Kai and he didn’t like it; after all, the unknown could easily get you killed out here among the Dead. Admittedly he had almost got used to the man’s occasional mumbled conversations with his deceased family, tuning out his incoherent muttering as they travelled in the cart. But it was when Tom gave himself over to the demands conjured from the darkest recesses of his mind that Kai felt he became too unhinged and dangerous.
‘Well?’ said Fran, looking from Kai to Tom, both of whom were still lost in their own conflicting thoughts about what had just happened. ‘Is one of you going to answer me? Kai?’ she asked, looking up at the young man with his exotic mix of Thai and European features.
But Kai only glanced down at her, the mix of anger, frustration and worry clearly evident in his eyes.
‘Tom?’ she continued, turning her attention to the clearly troubled older man.
‘I…’ he began to say, giving a specific apple a much closer inspection than it really warranted before falling silent once again.
‘Fine!’ grunted Fran, pushing herself up from the ground as her sympathy quickly turned into annoyance. ‘For fuck’s sake, life’s too short right now for moody silences. No-one got hurt, no-one died and got bitten, that’s the main thing and… we… we all need each other right now, so you two had better find a way to deal with your shit… Okay!’
With that, Fran angrily ripped an apple from a nearby branch, the action causing a few of its more riper counterparts to break free and land with a series of soft thuds in the tall grass.
‘I’m going to check on Star… make sure she’s alright,’ she grumbled, taking an equally angry bite from the apple. ‘You two can finish up here.’
As Fran stomped off through the small orchard, confident in her own ability to protect herself, Tom looked silently over at Kai.
‘W…W…What’s her problem?’ Kai eventually said, offering Tom a typically macho olive branch of peace.
‘Beats me?’ Tom replied, his lips twitching in a grateful smile of acceptance as he shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Women!’
***
Walking away, Fran could hear that the two men behind her had finally started talking to each other again, causing a small but slightly smug smile to spread across her face before she took another bite of the juicy apple. Of course she knew Tom and Kai were only papering over the cracks of their problems but if it meant they could all get along, at least until they joined up with the others of their lost group, she would accept that.
Following the path of trampled down grass that they had made upon entering the orchard, Fran soon found herself stepping out onto the weed-choked gravel track that led back to the road. Normally they wouldn’t have wandered so far from their precious horse and cart but with the locked metal gate blocking any closer access they hadn’t been given much choice; not unless they were willing to pass up the chance to replenish some of their much depleted food stores, which they weren’t.
Above her the clear blue autumn sky was a flurry of winged activity. Small birds darted and swooped effortlessly though the air, gorging themselves on the glut of winged insects in preparation for the harder times that the oncoming change of season promised. With her unhurried footsteps crunching on the loose gravel beneath her feet, Fran watched a small flock of merrily coloured Finches flitting above her and realised she was slightly envious of their carefree and simple existence. She paused briefly, following a particular bird flashing from one side of the track to the next, snatching a beak-full of unsuspecting insects with every passing. With her eyes darting back and forth tracing the birds progress she raised the half eaten apple to her mouth and was about to take another bite when she heard something; something that made her freeze. Ahead of her, just beyond the high blackberry bushes which obscured her view, something was obviously distressing their usually calm mare, Star. Whatever it was it that caused her to snort and anxiously stamp her hooves in irritation Fran knew she’d better prepare herself for the worst. So, tossing aside the half eaten apple, she pulled free her knife once again and began to move towards the gate as silently as the gravel underfoot would allow.
By the time Fran had made it as far as the high bushes the thunder of Star’s hooves had become an almost constant drumming against the cracked road surface beyond. She knew if she wanted to avoid the poor beast succumbing to this panic and bolting, she had to act fast to calm her down; for if she failed they could lose their only means of transport and with the Dead forever with them, this could simply prove fatal. But even with her necessity for haste pushing her forward, Fran knew better than to just charge out into the road to confront whatever was worrying Star. So she forcibly held herself back and tried her best to push aside her ever mounting concern. Fran could think of three possible causes for Star’s agitation; the Dead, dogs or raiders, all of which were equally as deadly. She instantly dismissed a pack of once domestic dogs gone wild being to blame, the savage growls and barking of the pack would have been clearly evident. So that just left the Dead or a raiding group of other unfamiliar survivors. Fran couldn’t decide which sickened her more, the Dead with their insatiable hunger or the living who had banded together to form cruel merciless gangs preying on the weak and defenceless. They had come across the unsavoury handiwork of such raiders many times over the last five years; meagre food stores and crops had been pillaged, once-safe havens overrun and left open to the Dead and worst of all, men, women and children both raped and beaten so badly that death had been a mercy to them. Fran needed to know what she was dealing with and in that instant she knew it was one of the rare occasions that she hoped only the Dead awaited her; at least their pointless violence she could understand.
Pushing aside some of the twisting tendrils of the blackberry bush, its thorny branches heavy with a jewel-like harvest, Fran tried to see through to the road on the other side. Ignoring the spikey thorns as they scratched and dug into her hands, she was eventually rewarded for her effects with a small but unrestricted side view of the cart.
‘Thank Fuck!’ she mumbled to herself, finally releasing a breath that up until that moment she had been unaware of holding.
Letting the thicker tendrils spring back into place, Fran jogged
to the wide metal bar gate.
‘Lucky this time… just another of the Dead,’ she thought, the statement almost making her steps falter.
To think that she could treat the living corpses that had torn humanity apart limb by limb in such a dismissive manner suddenly seemed crazy to her. That they had all become so used to this unbelievable horror in their lives, that their very presence could be greeted with relief or thought of as the lesser of two evils was astounding. For five years now they had been living a nightmare, a nightmare that had somehow drifted into reality and become the norm without them even realising. This was their life now and Fran knew they had to just get on with it; as Darwin said ‘adapt or die’, it was as simple as that.
‘Alright, girl… alright, I’m coming,’ she cooed softly, while the mare stamped furiously to remove the clawing corpse from her front right leg.
Somehow, while they had been in the orchard, Star had been trying to deal with her own uninvited guest. Just how the mare had managed to lodge her hoof through the creature’s mangled rib cage she could only guess but as Fran clambered over the gate, knife in hand, she was grateful this time there was only one of them to deal with.
‘Now what have you been up to?’ she muttered, moving to the other side of Star and out of the Dead man’s reach.
‘Shhh…. Shhh… Shhh,’ she continued, gently stoking Star’s soft velvety mussel as she looked down at the pathetic creature that had suddenly noticed her presence.
Just why the Dead saw certain animals as food and not others was just another of those mysteries that had become part of their everyday lives; yet in this instance it was a mystery that gave man the tiniest spark of hope. That the Dead somehow couldn’t comprehend horses in the same way that they did cows, sheep, pigs and of course man, enabled the survivors to have a means of transport independent of the now almost non-existent petrol. Just who had realised horses were the new ‘must have’ in this world of the Dead, Fran had no idea but whoever it was, what was left of humanity certainly owed them their thanks. For these beasts of a bygone era, together with the box covered carts that hid the living passengers from hungry Dead eyes, gave them a way to move about the countryside in relative safety in search of food, resources and even as with Fran, Tom and Kai’s situation, a new home.
Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel Page 2