Sensing her young master’s growing delight, Bella decided she wasn’t about to be left out and deftly made her way to the front of the cart to see just what all the fuss was about. With her tail thumping hard against Kai’s legs in enthusiastic anticipation she wriggled her head under Peter’s arm and with her nose and lolling tongue next to Tom’s ear, tried to fathom what had entranced him so.
‘Urghh… Bella,’ Tom muttered, giving the animal’s dribbling snout a gentle shove away from his ear.
He was about to tell Peter to go back to his seat when he caught a glimpse of the childish fascination dancing in the young man’s eyes and considering the way his world had so drastically altered within the space of a day, who was Tom to deny him this small piece of happiness he’d managed to find for himself.
‘Perhaps when we get to the island someone will teach you to sail?’ whispered Tom, placing a fatherly hand on Peter’s shoulders. ‘Would you like that?’
Again a muffled squeal was only just held in check by Peter as he vigorously nodded his reply, unable to tear his eyes away from the two boats merrily darting through the surf far from shore.
‘Well, how about you go back to your seat so we can get there even quicker, okay?’ suggested Tom, gently patting Peter’s back to make sure he was listening.
‘Yeah, come on Pete,’ agreed Riley, after some subtle prompting from his mother. ‘Sit next to me.’
Reluctantly Peter moved back to his seat, his gaze only relinquishing its hold on the boats at the very last moment. For a few seconds Bella remained by Tom’s side, still unsure just what had caused such excitement in her master but when it was clear whatever it was hadn’t involved something to eat or a threat, she curled up on what little free floor space was left and contented herself with keeping a watchful eye over her human travelling companions.
‘We’ll be there really soon,’ Jane whispered, smiling as she gave Peter’s knee a reassuring pat. ‘We… we will be able to get to the island, won’t we?’ she continued, suddenly turning her attention to Fran. ‘I mean, what if the tide’s already in.’
‘Crap!’ spat Fran in reply, turning to Tom. ‘We didn’t think of that… have we enough time to get across?’
‘This may surprise you, Fran, but I’ve not memorised high and low tide times along the Cornish coast…’ Tom began, glancing back at her.
‘It changes anyway,’ Dave cut in with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘It depends on the position of the moon and sun relative with the earth.’
‘Yeah… and what he said,’ smirked Tom, nodding in Dave’s direction. ‘But considering the level of the water on the beach, I’d say it’s either on its way in or on its way out... can’t be sure really, I think this is going to have to be one of those wait and see type moments.’
‘Now, that sounds reassuring,’ mumbled Max, sarcastically.
Refusing to take the bait, Tom merely let his gaze slide slowly over to Max as if daring him to comment again.
‘And anyway, let’s get to get to the causeway first,’ he finally said, letting his attention return to others in the cart. ‘No point in worrying about it just yet… and if we have to wait a bit in here for the tide to turn... it’s no great hardship.’
Turning his back on them, Tom gave Star’s reins a sharp flick, urging her onward again. With a gentle ‘creaking’, the cart’s wheels began to turn and Star was soon relaxing back into her slow steady rhythm, taking them closer to their goal one cautious step at a time.
Travelling along the seafront, they passed row after row of dilapidated hotels, ransacked shops and derelict arcades; while on the opposite side of the road, one after another sad looking abandoned souvenir stands nestled forlornly against the low sea wall. Unlike the section of coast where they had previously stopped, here a rocky man-made cliff, some four or five metres high, separated the road and the debris strewn shingle of the beach below. Presumably built as some sort of defence against coastal flooding the huge dark boulders were mottled with patches of drying seaweed and clustering communities of tightly shut mussels, all awaiting the welcome return of the tide. Because of this abrupt drop to the beach from the road, it was nigh on impossible for those within the cart to get a clear view of the base of these cliffs but more importantly there was also no way for them to know just how far or fast the tide was rising to greet them.
Despite his words Tom couldn’t help but think about the point Jane had made and even as he guided Star around the burnt out shell of an ambulance he let his gaze wander back to the castle-topped island and the swathe of white crested waves crashing along at least two thirds of its base.
The reliable mare was just pulling the front of the cart beyond the wrecked ambulance when Bella suddenly sprang to her feet, her posture an exercise in tense alertness as a low growl began to build in her throat. Almost immediately Dave sprang to his feet, his arm reaching out to touch Bella but this time Tom had beaten him to it and already two of his fingers rested gently on the bitch’s nose, instantly silencing her warning growl.
‘Tom?’ hissed Fran, resting her hand on his shoulder as she looked past him through the front viewing slit.
‘Damn, I was afraid of this,’ he muttered, nodding toward the Dead crowd pawing at the walls of a small building built further along the sea wall.
‘What… what is it?’ asked Jane nervously, her arm subconsciously pulling Riley just that bit closer to her.
‘Well, it looks like we now know what made the Dead go walkabout,’ he said, nodding to the horde ahead of them and the large pool of congealed blood splattered across the road. ‘Looks like they ambushed a small group.’
‘And just how can you tell it was a group?’ asked Max, keen to score even the smallest points against Tom, while Kai silently reached past him to pull a battered looking pair of binoculars from a hook.
‘From the bloody mess on the road, clearly at least one person met their maker today,’ Tom whispered in reply, scratching at the stubble on his chin, ‘and then at least one managed to get away, causing some of the Dead to go on the march.’
‘So, just two then,’ interrupted Max, with a snort.
‘Max!’ warned his brother, noticing the muscles on Tom’s jaw tensing as he ground his teeth in annoyance.
‘And just what do you think got their attention, smartarse?’ growled Tom, jabbing a finger in the direction of the group of corpses huddled around the base of the single story building. ‘You think they’re just desperate to buy some candyfloss or something?’
With his face suddenly flushing with anger, Max’s eyes narrowed with barely concealed contempt.
‘Hmmm, I suppose a third person could have…’ he began through gritted teeth.
‘Suppose, my arse!’ laughed Tom, knowing he was right. ‘Only one thing whips corpses up like that and that’s the sight of a bit of living flesh. My guess is whoever’s there, they’ve managed to get up onto the flat roof somehow.’
‘Do… do you think they’re still there?’ asked Dave, his genuine concern for a stranger clearly fighting with his fear for the safety of his own family.
‘Even if they are, we can’t risk stopping to find out?’ hissed Max, glaring at his brother, almost daring him to contradict him. ‘There’s far too many of the Dead for us to handle. We’ll have to send a larger party back once we get on the island.’
‘N…N… No choice,’ stammered Kai, lowering the binoculars and slowly handing them over to Tom. ‘We’ll h…have to d…deal with them ourselves... look.’
‘Where?’ asked Tom, raising the binoculars to his eyes.
‘R…right,’ Kai replied. ‘The… the sign.’
‘Sign… sign… sign,’ Tom mumbled to himself, adjusting the focus slightly. ‘Oh, there it is… Crap!’ he tutted, suddenly looking back at Fran and the others. ‘Kai’s right, I don’t think we have a choice this time, we’ll have to clear some of those corpses… somehow.’
‘Why?’ whispered Fran, taking the binoculars from Tom to look for herself.
/> ‘There’s an old sign saying something about crossing times,’ Tom continued. ‘It looks like the opening to the causeway is on the other side of that building.’
‘But the Dead, they could be just on this side… couldn’t they?’ suggested Jane, hoping they could slip past the Dead unnoticed to get onto the causeway.
‘It’s… possible,’ muttered Tom, seeming to momentarily drift off somewhere as other unheard voices suddenly claimed his attention.
‘I guess we won’t know for sure until we get closer,’ said Fran, jabbing Tom’s shoulder with the binoculars to draw him back from his ghostly world. ‘We’ll just have to wait till then to see what we’re dealing with.’
‘Hmmm,’ replied Tom, quickly blinking his way back to reality. ‘Yeah… well… well, there’s no point sitting here scratching our arses… and remember to keep that hand over your mouth Pete, there’s a good boy,’ he continued, glancing briefly back at his passengers before turning away from them to snap Star’s reins again.
It was only for a split second, but as Tom turned away from her Fran was sure she caught a glimpse of something a little disconcerting in his eyes, something she could only describe as excitement. Looking over at Kai, she noticed the worried look he was currently giving the back of Tom’s head; clearly he too had caught the strange glint in Tom’s eye. As if feeling her gaze upon him Kai’s eyes flicked to meet hers, a look of joint concern passing between them and in that instant an unspoken pact to keep a wary eye on Tom was made.
With each turn of the cart’s wheels the almost pitiful moaning of the Dead horde rose in volume. Their desperate pleas called out for the warm, bloody flesh that had eluded them as if to encourage it to simply offer itself up as penance for the life it held; a fee for trespassing among them. Yet no willing offering appeared before them and as they raised their arms aloft no unholy sacrament of flesh and blood rained down upon them. For these were the Dead and if he existed, their God had abandoned them long ago and their hunger would be eternal.
‘Not looking good,’ Fran whispered, her mouth close to Tom’s ear.
‘Not by a long shot,’ he replied, using the reins to guide Star around the pathetically broken remains of a man that even now dragged itself across their path to join its Dead brethren pawing at the wall of the small building.
Any hope that the throng of hungry corpses had congregated only on one side of the building soon evaporated the closer they got to it. But it wasn’t until Star finally pulled them to the turning on the other side that they realised just how dire their situation had suddenly become.
‘Shit!’ Tom hissed under his breath, glaring at the metal gate across the concrete slip that led down to the cobbled causeway.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Dave nervously, as he looked from the closed gate to the decaying rabble only a few metres away. ‘How are we going to get across… we can’t just wait here for them to get bored and leave… we all know that’ll never happen.’
Tom and the others all knew this to be true, the Dead were single-minded in their determination. They would never forget and would never lose interest. That terrified spark of life that had caught their attention would become their whole world and nothing would deter them from claiming their mouthful of flesh; nothing that is except one thing, the sight of another life.
‘Well, there’s nothing for it,’ Tom began, turning to look at his travelling companions, ‘at least one of us has got to go out there to unlatch that fucking gate.’
‘Tom…’ Fran started to say, knowing just what the older man was about to suggest and hoping he wasn’t choosing this moment to wilfully give himself over the demands of his lost family.
‘You know I’m right, Fran,’ he interrupted, instantly waving away her concerns. ‘And anyway, I did say at least one of us… I could do with someone covering my back… from the looks of it, I’m going to need it.’
Fran absentmindedly patted Bella as she looked at the scene just beyond the safety of the cart’s walls.
‘Kai, swop places with Tom,’ she finally said, reaching past Dave to pull free a crowbar secured to the wall behind him. ‘You’re driving.’
‘Fran, I didn’t mean…’ Tom started to say.
‘If not me, who else?’ she simply replied, raising her eyebrows questioningly.
With her words, Tom’s gaze surreptitiously moved from one face in the cart to the next. Peter and Riley were instantly dismissed, as was Jane and even Kai, which left Dave and his brother, Max, as the only other viable options. Despite Tom having a good feeling about Dave as a man, he knew Dave’s place was with his small family and anyway, if Tom could help keep this family together, a tiny piece of old world normality in a new world full of insanity, then he would do whatever he could to protect it.
‘For fuck’s sake, just make sure you stay close,’ he finally whispered, realising as much as he hated Fran being in danger, he didn’t fancy trusting his life in Max’s hands. ‘I’ll shift the gate and when I’m done we’ll both make a quick sprint down the causeway. If we’re lucky we’ll be done before too many of them notice we’re even there… you just stop them from biting my arse off in the meantime… Deal?’
‘Deal,’ she agreed with a sharp nod, a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.
‘And at least we’ll be giving whoever’s up on the roof a chance,’ whispered Dave, his anxious stare drifting to the flat roof and the unseen survivor who had somehow escaped the Dead and their savage hunger.
‘Let’s hope they take it,’ muttered Jane, nervously taking her husband’s hand in her own for comfort.
After a few minutes of preparation, Fran found herself sat closely behind Tom, her fingers flexing and un-flexing about the cool metal of the crowbar in her grasp.
‘Ready?’ Tom whispered, glancing back at her.
‘Let’s do this,’ she replied, her fingers tightening one last time.
Without waiting for anything more to be said, Tom slowly slid aside the internal bolt of the hatch, pushed it open and silently dropped to a road below. No sooner was he free of the confines of the cart than his hands began to itch to feel the weight of his sickles once again.
‘Tom,’ his wife called playfully from beyond the grave, her words drifting to him as if on a breeze, ‘you want to make us happy, don’t you, Tom?’
Tom was about open his mouth to reply when Fran dropped down next to him, breaking the ghostly spell being cast over him by his own tortured mind. Knowing now was not the time to lose himself he tightly clenched his fists, the sharp stab of pain of his fingernails digging into his palms forcing him to concentrate as he began to slowly edge toward the front of the cart. For the moment their luck seemed to be holding and as Tom stole a cautious glance at the cadaverous crowd currently trying to claw their way up the sheer face of the building, which he noticed had once been offices for the harbour master, he realised there may just be a slim chance that he could actually get to the gate unnoticed after all.
Not wanting to miss the slim window of opportunity presented to him, Tom suddenly darted forward, leaving both the safety of the cart and a slightly startled Fran, behind him.
‘Christ!’ Fran inadvertently cursed under her breath, breaking cover to stealthily follow Tom the four or so metres past Star to the closed gate.
Slowly sidestepping her way, Fran nervously watched the Dead crowd, knowing that at any moment one could turn its head and she would find herself fighting for her very life. She couldn’t help but look from one decaying cadaver to the next, each seemingly more pathetic and rancid than its neighbour and wondered just which of them would be the first to realise that the very thing they desired stood open and exposed behind them. Beside her she heard Tom trying to silently unhook the latch securing the gate, the eventual gentle ‘clink’ of metal on metal the only sign he had succeeded. Praying that whoever lived on St Michael’s mount kept the gate hinges well-oiled, Fran took a few tentative steps backwards to allow Tom to pull the gate open.
<
br /> With her shallow breathing and the loud hammering of her heart thumping in her ears the only sounds to compete with the mournful cries of the Dead, Fran continued to move backwards as quietly as she could, mirroring Tom’s movements as he silently swung towards her. It was almost half way open when she allowed her gaze to flick momentarily away from the Dead and over to Tom. Catching her eye, he winked back at her while, his mouth briefly twitching with a somewhat strained smile. It was at that precise moment that a long metal bolt that Tom thought had been secured in an ‘up’ position decided to fall. With a loud ‘clang’ the bolt hit the road surface, swiftly followed by a seemingly louder ‘squeal’ as the movement of the gate caused it to scrape a few centimetres across the concrete.
Instantly Fran’s gaze darted back to the Dead and the inevitable turning of film covered eyes to greet her.
‘Tom!’ she hissed, her own eyes widening in horror.
‘I know,’ he said without even looking back while he struggled to pull the bolt back into place.
‘Tom!’ she repeated, instinctively changing the position of her feet to put her in a more defensive stance.
‘I know!’ he growled again, unsure why the bolt was refusing to budge.
‘Hurry!’ she continued, watching as a Dead woman, her chest a riot of creeping mould, was the first to take shaky step away from the wall.
‘What the fuck!’ spat Tom, giving the gate a hard shove, only for his efforts to be rewarded with another high pitched squeal. ‘Why won’t you budge, you bastard thing!’
Tearing her eyes from the Dead woman who had been joined in her advancement by many of her decaying comrades, Fran glanced down at the bolt and instantly saw what the problem was; wedged tightly under the metal tip of the bolt was a small triangular chip of stone.
‘Step back!’ she warned, barely giving Tom a second’s notice before landing a hard kick at the base of the gate.
With a ‘screech’ and a juddering ringing of metal, the bolt was abruptly dislodged sending the gate slamming back into Tom’s grasp.
‘Come on!’ said Fran, grabbing hold of the top rung of the gate while making sure to kick aside the small stone.
Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel Page 8