But Fran needn’t have worried, for before the Dead had even had time to react to the living man so fortunately appearing among them, Tom was up and running; a littering of severed limbs left in his wake.
‘Come on, you Dead bastards!’ he yelled, twisting as he ran to encourage the hungry corpses to follow.
Sure enough, one by one the cadavers pushed themselves away from the shattered hull of the boat while behind them their decaying brothers and sisters forced one stumbling foot in front of another as they made their way through the open gate and down onto the beach causeway to join them.
‘We need to move,’ whispered Fran, stepping slowly away from the roof’s edge. ‘He needs to be their only focus if we want any chance of clearing any of the Dead below us.’
Still a little confused, Rod gave Tom one last bemused look before following Fran back to the toppled over satellite dish to sit down.
‘So, how long do we wait?’ he asked, grunting slightly as he lowered himself down.
‘Are you going to be able to run?’ she asked, more concerned with his limp than his question.
‘You’d be surprised how effective having twenty hungry corpses coming after you makes you forget a twisted ankle,’ he replied with a throaty chuckle that threatened to turn into another coughing fit while he subconsciously reached down to rub his left leg. ‘How’d you think I got up here in the first place?’
‘Point taken,’ she nodded, realising she had gotten too used to looking out for Kai and had mistakenly assumed Rod was equally ill-equipped to look after himself. ‘Sorry.’
Waving away her apology as unnecessary, Rod glanced at the dial of the blood smeared watch on his wrist.
‘We’re cutting it a bit fine though,’ he muttered, using his thumb to brush some of the flaking blood off of the cracked glass cover. ‘Tide’s coming in pretty fast,’ he continued. ‘Won’t be long before most of the causeway’s three metres under water.’
Chewing nervously on her lip, Fran looked back out at the white topped waves, their spray crashing wildly almost all of the way round the base of the island.
‘How long have we got?’ she asked, realising Tom’s shouts and rousing calls had faded slightly while he led his excited Dead groupies presumably further down the beach.
Looking from his watch back at the causeway, Rod narrowed his eyes in concentration. Forty-five years of living and working in Marazion gave him the knowledge he needed to give Fran a reliably accurate answer, even if it wasn’t the one she wanted to hear.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ he finally replied, scratching at the stubble under his chin. ‘Twenty-five, tops.’
‘Crap!’ she said, pushing herself back up onto her knees. ‘That doesn’t give Tom long… or us.’
***
Tom span, kicking out at the legs of a Dead man, its chest a mass of maggot-ridden flesh.
‘Too slow!’ laughed Tom, a dark hysteria dancing menacingly along the edge of his self-control as he slashed down at the Dead man’s neck.
Almost as if welcoming his attack, the rotting flesh parted, giving way to the metal of Tom’s blade as it sliced through it.
‘I can’t!’ Tom hissed, almost irritated as he tried to placate the goading voices in his head.
‘Not now,’ he continued, darting under the lunging outstretched arms of the Dead horde around him. ‘Later, I promise…’
It had seemed like such a simple plan when he first jumped from his perch on the wrecked boat; become the Pied Piper, lead the Dead away, give Fran a chance to get to the causeway so she could follow Kai and the cart over to the island and then somehow double back himself or skirt round the decaying crowd so he could follow close on her heels. But now as he tried to make his way along the beach, the ravenous throng seemingly forever closing in on him, Tom had the niggling suspicion that he may just have made a terrible and possibly fatal mistake.
‘Oh, cut this one, Daddy. Cut him!’ giggled his youngest daughter when the corpse of a young man dressed in filthy tattered pyjama bottoms stumbled directly in front of him.
‘Yes, take his head off, Daddy,’ his other daughter demanded.
‘Kill him, Tom,’ his wife added, her voice joining the ghostly chorus of pleas from his daughters. ‘Kill him for us.’
‘Please!’ Tom desperately begged, knocking aside the corpse of a short woman as she made a grab for his shoulder. ‘Please, not now, I…’
But his deceased family would not be silenced.
‘We don’t want your excuses!’ his wife interrupted.
‘They hurt me, Daddy,’ his youngest daughter added, her voice tearing at his heart. ‘They hurt me so much.’
With a snapshot of her smiling face flashing through his mind, the sickle in his right hand flashed out before him, almost as if by its own accord, and raked across the Dead young man’s exposed and emaciated chest. Screaming with anguish and frustration, Tom struck out again and again, his movements savage yet instinctive. The young man’s corpse soon fell, swiftly followed by another and then another; their bodies quickly reduced to mounds of lifeless flesh while their forever hungry eyes roamed beseechingly in decapitated heads. Tom lost himself to the darkness of his grief, he gave himself over to his pain and relinquished his actions to the retribution his family demanded. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the steep slope of boulders that led back up to the promenade appeared before him; and with a grin spreading across his gore covered face, Tom knew the Dead would not beat him, not yet, not this time.
***
As the minutes ticked by, Fran and Rod couldn’t help but watch the lapping waves creeping their way up the shore, reclaiming the causeway one cobblestone at a time while Tom’s calls and cries faded more and more into the distance.
‘How long has it been now?’ asked Fran, tilting Rod’s wrist towards her to see his watch.
Below them a few of the Dead still pawed stubbornly at the walls, undeterred and un-enticed by Tom’s display; the image of Fran evading their clutches somehow lingering in the dark recesses of their decaying minds.
‘Long enough,’ Rod finally replied, wincing slightly as he pushed himself up from his perch on the satellite dish. ‘If we want to get across tonight, we’d better make our move now.’
‘But we’ve still got company,’ said Fran, nodding to the four hungry corpses below them. ‘I don’t know about you but I don’t fancy trying to climb down without giving the welcome committee something to chew on.’
‘Hmm,’ Rod mused, once again scratching at the stubble under his chin.
‘Got it!’ he finally said, a triumphant glint in his eye.
Limping over to the edge of the roof, Rod took hold of the thick cable and began to pull it up.
‘Check the front,’ he said, coiling the cable back and forth in his hands as he gestured to one of the other low walls. ‘The Dead saw both of us come up this side, so chances are it’ll likely be free now that your mate has led most of them off.’
‘What about the back of the building?’ asked Fran, walking to look down at the front of the Harbour Master’s building. ‘Wouldn’t that be better? I mean, we’d be lowering ourselves directly down onto the beach.’
‘No good,’ Rod replied, shaking his head just as the end of the cable rose above the roof’s low surrounding wall. ‘There’s a bigger drop that side, the cable won’t be long enough… and anyway, truth be told, I doubt I could cope with landing badly on this ankle again.’
‘Oh,’ said Fran, wondering for the second time if it came to it would Rod be able to outrun the Dead and if not was she willing to risk her own life to effectively carry him.
‘It’s just the drop I’m worried about,’ he added, noticing the way her eyes discreetly flicked to his injured ankle. ‘I told you. If I’ve got to move, I’ll move, okay?’
‘Okay. If you say so,’ she replied, hoping he was more convinced of his words than she was.
Despite Rod’s desperation to get off the roof and back to his family, she could
tell he was a proud man and wouldn’t want her to think him as weak. But she just hoped this pride wouldn’t come before the proverbial ‘fall’, for she knew when you were running for your life, situations could change within seconds and with the Dead on your heels these were seconds you simply couldn’t spare.
‘So, is it clear?’ he asked again, dragging the looped cable after him.
Shaking the mages of Rod falling beneath a wave of grasping Dead hands from her mind, Fran gingerly peered down to the front of the building.
‘All clear,’ she whispered back, giving him the ‘thumbs up’.
With a ‘grunt’ Rod tossed the cable over the roof’s edge, the sound of it slapping against the filthy brickwork and smeared windows barely audible over the cries of the four corpses still just around the corner from them.
‘I’d better go first,’ said Fran, looking from the pavement below, back to Rod. ‘Just in case.’
‘Sure… just in case,’ he repeated with a sharp nod, wondering if the young woman would bolt as soon as her feet touched the ground.
With a brief look of confusion flitting across her face at his tone, Fran sat down and swung her legs over the edge.
‘We’ll have to be quiet… and quick, if we want any chance of sneaking past the Dead on the other side,’ she whispered, just as she started to lower herself over the surrounding wall.
‘Well more climbing, less talking, wouldn’t hurt,’ hissed Rod, his gaze flitting to the row of ruined hotels and shops on the opposite side of the road. ‘We won’t be on our own for long.’
‘Sorry,’ muttered Fran, letting her arms take the strain of her weight as she began to ease herself down the cable.
She had barely lowered herself a metre when the wall in front of her abruptly became a window, its darkly smeared glass hiding a multitude of imagined horrors in the shadowy interior. Peering past the grime and filth as she continued her way down to the ground, Fran thought she briefly saw movement in the gloomy ransacked office. But when nothing came charging at the window desperate to get to her, she put it down to simply her frayed nerves getting the better of her, and before she knew it she was crouched down on the weed choked pavement with her back to wall, looking back up at Rod.
‘Come on, come on, come on,’ she thought anxiously to herself, as she watched Rod beginning his slow descent, willing him to move faster.
Coming level with the dirty window, Rod also paused, sure he too saw something moving within abandoned Harbour Master’s office.
‘Hurry up!’ Fran hissed from below him, nervously eying movement amid the shadows of a collapsed souvenir shop across the road from them.
Rod, glanced down at her, his eyebrows creased together in annoyance.
‘I’m…’ he started to say just as a small pair of skeletal hands, their flesh lose and covered in mould, slammed against the glass in front of him.
‘Jesus!’ he gasped, startled by the sudden appearance of a Dead child.
Just how long the pathetic creature had been shut within the room, he had no idea but from the state of it, he guessed a long time. The child’s corpse blindly and slowly slapped its way across the glass just in front of him. Both of its eyes and much of the soft flesh from its skull and chest had at some point provided countless flies and their maggot offspring a tasty harvest and the sightless cadaver ambled past him, totally unaware of his presence. As it continued to move further around the Harbour Master’s office, he realised this child, that had been loved in life and its loss mourned for, would shamble within the room forever in a never ceasing search for its escape.
‘Christ,’ he muttered, finally tearing his eyes from the haunting figure of the trapped corpse.
‘Bad?’ whispered Fran, seeing the look in his eyes as Rod ducked down onto the pavement beside her.
‘Bad enough,’ he solemnly replied, using the wall to push himself upright again. ‘Come on, let’s get this over with.’
Despite his assurances, Fran instinctively stepped out in front of Rod to take the lead. Edging along the wall, she stole a quick glance when she reached the corner and was relieved to see that there were still only the four stubborn hungry corpses for them to get past. Looking back at Rod to make sure he was ready, she forced herself to take a calming breath and then with a prayer on her lips, she stepped out away from the wall.
***
Tom frantically clambered over the rocks, barely feeling the sharp scrape of broken mussel shells beneath his palms as he moved. He knew only a few metres above him, sanctuary, if only for a very brief while, awaited him; while to his back and below him there was only death and the Dead to greet him. Already the ravenous horde were following him up the steep incline, only their lack of agility preventing them from catching up with him. Yet even as the wall above him came within reaching distance he glanced back to see the hungry corpses had made deadly progress. Clawing their way over their Dead brethren in their desperation to get to him, the corpses were now also almost within grasping distance of their prize; namely him.
‘Shit!’ spat Tom, the sight of the Dead horde so close behind him giving much needed speed to his already aching arms and legs.
With his fingers curling about the iron railing running atop of promenade seawall, Tom pushed aside the pain from his protesting muscles and with a shout of determination escaping his lips, he pulled himself up and over the wall. Behind him, the decaying fingers brushed tantalisingly close to his fleeing legs, their deadly grasp closing about nothing but air and disappointment.
‘Too slow, you fuckers!’ Tom cried, whooping with glee as he spared a brief glance at the Dead, their decaying brains trying to understand how their fleshy prize had eluded them.
Yet even now Tom knew he had only momentarily escaped them. To his right glass shattered and lose doors creaked on rusted hinges as yet more of the Dead, drawn by Tom’s voice and the excited calls of their hungry comrades, began to slowly drag themselves from the abandoned shops and hotels on his right.
‘Daddy!’ Tom heard one of his daughters calling out to him, the word coming to him in a rise and falling sing-song way.
‘Not now sweet-pea,’ he mumbled in reply to the voice only he could hear. ‘Daddy’s got to…’
‘Tom,’ his wife called, her interrupting plea joining that of her deceased child.
‘Save his arse,’ he continued, swiftly pulling the sickles from the straps on his back to slash out at the figure of a Dead woman that had just managed to pull her head up above the level of the railing.
With a wet gurgle, the Dead woman’s head suddenly tilted back, the slice across her withered throat gaping as the weight of her own skull tore the gash further open. But Tom did not have time to enjoy his handiwork upon the woman’s corpse, for already more of the Dead horde about her had begun to claw their way up onto the promenade wall.
‘Time to go,’ Tom managed to coherently think to himself, fighting against the cacophony of ghostly voices in his head.
Breaking into a jog, Tom deftly wove in and out of the wrecked cars and scattered detritus that littered the road ahead of him, but with the Harbour Master’s office still a good two hundred metres further down the road he knew another life threatening encounter with the Dead was unavoidable. With each footstep he took and with each second that passed, more and more of the rotting cadavers appeared along the pavement, eager to locate the source of life that had enticed their Dead brothers and sisters so. And as was their way, as each rotting corpse moved its head desperately back and forth in its search, one more set of film-covered eyes locked hungrily on Tom’s form.
Despite the stitch pinching at his side with every step, Tom knew he had no time to waste. Already, ahead of him, some of the shambling figures had reached his side of the road and with as much speed as their atrophied bodies could provide them, they advance towards him. Yet he could not turn back or change his path, the only way for Tom was onward. This was his only option, he had to meet them head on, get past them, hopefully alive
and unscathed, and join Fran and her newly found acquaintance in their trip across the causeway to the island and the safety it promised.
‘Fuck off!’ he barked, his blade cleanly removing an out-stretched arm when he encountered the first of the hungry residents of Marazion.
‘And you, buddy!’ Tom growled when the now armless man seemed to almost moan in protest at the sudden loss of his limb.
But Tom instantly dismissed the Dead man from his thoughts, reducing him from a specific opponent back to just one of many rotting corpses he needed to get past. But others were all too eager to claim their moment in the spotlight of Tom’s fury. One by one they stepped forward, each determined to be the one to feel his flesh between their teeth and the warm splash of his coppery blood upon their withered tongues, but by some miracle, one by one Tom evaded them all. Some he simply sidestepped or their arms were ducked under, while others felt, or rather didn’t feel, the cold razor edge of his blood smeared sickles slicing through their Dead flesh. With each step he took to get closer to his goal, he gladly gave himself over to the appeasement of his murdered family. He fed on their pain, he allowed their righteous anger wash over him and he quenched their demands for revenge, one fallen corpse at a time.
Yet still the corpses came. They clambered through broken windows, crawled out from dark shadowy shop-fronts and pushed their way through wild overgrown gardens. At one point a large ‘crashing’ sound briefly caught Tom’s attention amid the melee and in the split second it took to locate its source, he took in every horrendous detail of the Dead woman as she pulled herself through the shattered window of a hotel lobby. Such was her compulsion to get to Tom, that nothing would stop her, not even the physical restriction of her own decaying shell. So when one of her rotting arms became caught on a large shard of glass she simply moved onward regardless, letting the putrid flesh and cartilage tear and split at the shoulder until she ultimately continued on without the limb at all.
What happened next to the woman, Tom had no idea. Her moment of recognition had passed and he was once again willingly drowning himself in the clotted blood of his Dead foes. And then all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly, the Harbour Master’s office loomed in front of him, the cable Fran had used to descend from the roof still swinging slightly back and forth, tapping rhythmically against the filthy smeared glass of a window.
Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel Page 10