At one point the thumb of her right hand was bent painfully back as it caught on something deep in the gaping wound on Brandon’s neck. Crying out at the unexpected jolt, her other arm involuntarily slipped, giving Brandon’s cadaver just what it wanted, an opening. Darting forward, mouth agape dripping bloody saliva, the savage corpse latched itself onto her left shoulder.
‘No!’ Kasey hysterically screamed, her eyes wild with panic as she felt the pressure against her shoulder building as the creature’s teeth bore down on her, surely bringing with it her damnation.
‘Kasey!’ a voice suddenly boomed out of the blue, a mix of furious anger and concern somehow battling for the word.
And then a shadow loomed over Kasey, tall and imposing; a shadow reaching out to grab the back of Brandon’s cadaver, a shadow promising her salvation. Yet even as Father Matthew’s fists tightening about Brandon’s blood caked jumper preparing to pull him back, Kasey felt the sharp pain in her shoulder.
‘No!’ she cried again, her terror-filled eyes briefly locking with Father Matthew’s just before the unholy creature’s savage face appeared in front of her own blocking her view.
And then it was gone, thrown violently against the wall as Father Matthew bellowed in rage. With her hand automatically reaching to support her shoulder, Kasey watched Father Matthew grab hold of Brandon’s corpse again only to then toss it angrily to the floor like some unwanted doll.
‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’ Father Matthew roared, as he stamped down hard on the skull of the creature now lying at his feet. ‘I will fear no evil.’
Unable to tear her eyes away from the violence before her, Kasey watched in stunned horror as Father Michael’s attack rendered the face of Brandon’s cadaver to a fleshly pulp. Yet even now the beast could not give up its battle to tear and render the living nearby flesh and with seemingly renewed efforts it clawed desperately at Father Matthew’s legs.
‘For thou art with me,’ Father Matthew continued, stamping down again and again on the head of the thing that until recently had been a friend, while within his fist he tightly held the silver crucifix hanging about his neck, ‘thy rod and thy staff… they… comfort…’
With a stomach-churning snapping sound, something at last gave way beneath the torrent of Father Matthew’s blows and after a brief choking sound escaping its throat, the Corrupt shell of Brandon was at last still.
‘Me,’ finished Father Matthew, panting for breath.
Taking no triumph in his win, he looked down at the broken figure of Brandon beneath him.
‘May God have mercy upon your soul,’ he continued, sucking in air as he pried one of Brandon’s lifeless hands from its grip on his trouser leg.
With a ‘slap’ the limb fell to the floor, the sound at last pulling Kasey’s gaze from the sight of Brandon’s now misshapen skull. Her mouth agape in shock, Kasey simply shook her head back and forth as if to deny what she had seen; yet there was no denying it, not for Father Matthew and not for her.
‘Kasey?’ Father Matthew started to ask, noticing the way her right hand cradled her left shoulder. ‘Kasey… you’re hurt.’
‘Father, I,’ she whimpered, her wide eyes once again flitting to the pulpy mass that had been Brandon’s head. ‘I’m fine, Father… My soul is… it is still pure, Father, still pure… I still walk with God by my side. I still feel his grace within me... I still feel him, Father!’
‘Oh, my dear child,’ Father Matthew simply replied, the red spot a blooming between the fingers of her hand telling him another story entirely.
‘No, Father,’ she managed to say, her eyes welling up with heavy tears, ‘please, I… I still feel God’s grace is with me… please, Father.’
‘Kasey,’ said Father Matthew solemnly, knowing she was already lost to the God she so longed to cling to.
‘No!’ she snapped back, her fear adding force to the word as she awkwardly used the wall behind her to push herself to her feet. ‘God is still with me, my soul has not fallen. I will not become one of the Corrupt, He will save me. God will save me!’
‘You know that can’t be, Kasey,’ said Father Matthew, at last stepping away from Brandon’s body. ‘Once the taint of Corruption is upon you, you… you are no longer of His creation.’
‘No, no, no,’ Kasey continued to say, shaking her head as she spoke over his words; as if to not hear them denied the very truth they held.
‘Yes, Kasey,’ he calmly continued, stepping gingerly towards her. ‘I’m sorry but you know I’m right.’
‘How do you know! You know nothing!’ she suddenly screamed back at him, shocked by the ferocity and heresy of her own words.
‘Kasey…’ Father Matthew started to say, taking another step closer to the distraught young woman whose mortal existence could, at best, be counted in days.
‘No!’ she cried, taking a shaky step back. ‘Stay away from me. You stay away from me!’
But Father Matthew knew he could not let this Corrupt vessel wander the halls of the castle, no matter how much it pleaded or how pitiful a face it wore. This creature before him was damned and put simply, all that was truly Kasey had died the moment the Corruption entered her body; from then she had been lost to him and forever lost to God.
‘Stay back!’ Kasey screeched, her blood covered hand impotently reaching out in front of her, hopeful to keep some distance between herself and Father Matthew.
‘Kasey, child, I…’ he began, his words of consolation suddenly halted as Kasey unexpectedly bolted down the corridor away from him.
‘Damn!’ he barked, admonishing himself for not making a grab for her when he had the chance.
Kasey ran, she ran for her life and she ran for her soul. In her wild panic she dashed around corners, crashing into walls and barrelling through doorways, not caring who or what was alerted by her passing presence. She had to find a way off St Michael’s Mount before Father Matthew caught up with her again; that was all that mattered now. She was nothing to him now, she knew that for certain. In his eyes she was just a sentient shell awaiting its destruction, already damned and already a rotting corpse with the stench of death upon her lips. But she knew her God had not judged her; and she had not been found wanting and cursed with a living death. She could still feel Him with her, His love and His grace lighting her soul like a beacon of hope; a hope she would cling to.
Father Michael had been so wrong about the Corrupt, she saw that now. He had fooled them all. With his words and charisma he had spun his tale, reworking the truth to fit his own ends. He had written off so many that came to their door as tainted or unworthy of God’s grace, turning them back to surely face their deaths among the Corrupt.
‘No,’ Kasey thought to herself as she ran, angrily correcting her own words, ‘not the Corrupt, the Dead.’
Racing down a corridor, her hammering heart seemingly determined to break free of her chest as she gulped down air to feed her burning lungs, Kasey made up her mind nothing would stop her now, not Father Matthew and certainly not his divine proclamations. But as she threw herself round a corner, her bloody fingers tracing a path on the wall as she turned, she noticed just too late the stunned figure of Odelia stood right before her. With a cry, both women tumbled to the floor, bringing with them a framed oil painting of some long-gone rural idyll crashing off the wall.
‘You stupid girl!’ spat Odelia, separating herself from the tangle of limbs she unexpectedly found herself in. ‘Haven’t you heard the screams? The Corrupt are in the castle, they’ve…’
But Odelia could not finish her chastising sentence and instead stared transfixed at the bloody mark on Kasey’s shoulder.
‘Odelia, I…’ Kasey started to say unaware of the look of horror and disgust spreading across the woman’s face as she glanced briefly back along the corridor, expecting to see the imposing form of Father Matthew charging after her at any moment.
‘Get away from me!’ Odelia almost growled, swiftly grabbing for part of
the picture frame that had broken when it had been knocked to the floor.
‘Odelia, please!’ Kasey begged, self-consciously covering her wound with her hand as if ashamed by it.
‘I said get away!’ hissed Odelia, waving the pitiful length of carved wood in front of her to keep Kasey at bay. ‘You’re one of them now, unclean in the eyes of God. You’re one of the Corrupt… you’re one of the damned.’
‘Bullshit, Odelia!’ Kasey snapped back, taking a step forward as anger blazed in her eyes, ‘You think we don’t see that you only pay lip service to Father Matthew’s crap about the Fall and the Corrupt? You never believed, not really, not like some of the others or like me. You just said whatever you thought wanted to be heard. You’re a fraud Odelia Weaver and so is Father Matthew… damn him for it. There is no Corruption, no curse or eternal damnation from God... because I believe, Odelia. I believe God is still with me and no matter what happens. He always will be. He…’
Out of the blue a man suddenly appeared from around the corner, throwing himself violently onto Kasey’s back and sending them both sprawling back to the floor. With a panicked scream, Kasey briefly saw a flash of red fabric and thought for a moment Father Matthew had finally caught up with her. But unfortunately she was wrong, so very wrong, and as she twisted in the man’s grasp the bruised but strangely drawn face of Brother Alex appeared before her eyes.
‘No!’ Kasey managed to cry out just before Brother Alex lunged toward her neck open mouthed.
With the terrified screams from Odelia mingling with her own, Kasey felt the skin of her throat pinch and then begin to break off her under the pressure of Brother Alex’s teeth. She watched impotently as he slowly drew his head back, the skin and flesh of her neck still held firmly between his teeth. Until, with more pain than she thought physically possible exploding through her brain, her blood erupted, splashing across the face of the thing that had previously been Brother Alex.
‘Dear God!’ wailed Odelia, rooted in place by her fear as she watched Brother Alex’s corpse chew hungrily on his strip of stolen flesh.
Trapped beneath the savage cadaver and despite the taste of her own blood in her mouth, Kasey still fought for her life; what was left of it. With her body starting to go into shock from the attack, her pathetic blows did little to deter the creature and as it eagerly returned to claim more of her flesh she found herself praying her death would be a swift one. But Kasey was not to be given even this small blessing and as frenzied bloody fingers tore wildly at her clothes to expose more of her milk pale skin, she suffered the tortuous pain of bite after bite after bite. At some point Alex’s corpse returned to the bloody wound at her neck. Only this time, purely by chance, something vital and pumping snagged between its teeth.
‘Please!’ Kasey screamed silently through her shock induced haze, begging her God to finally let her suffering end.
And then with a tugging ‘pop’ her prayers were answered and the blackness swiftly claimed her.
Odelia watched frozen in place as the blood drenched shell of Brother Alex gorged itself on Kasey’s flesh, yet even in the maelstrom of her paralysing horror she still managed to think it a blessing when Kasey’s carotid artery was finally ripped out, at last ending the girl’s torture. But it was only when a pair of milky eyes happened to glance from its bloody prize in her direction, that Odelia’s self-preservation at last overwhelmed her terror. She knew Kasey’s flesh would not hold the interest of Brother Alex’s cadaver for long and when whatever it was that drew it to the living finally dispersed she would quickly become the next focal point of its cannibalistic desire.
Tentatively at first, she moved one foot backwards and then, when nothing happened, another. Step by step, she backed her way along the hallway away from the bloody beast still consuming poor Kasey’s brutalised body; at any moment expecting it to abandon its fallen quarry in favour of the warmer flesh escaping it. Odelia was four metres from the scene of carnage when she at last decided to turn and run. Darting along the corridor as fast as her late-middle-aged legs could carry her, she took the first turning presented to her; hoping or rather praying that now she was out of sight she was also out of mind.
Back at the bloody banquet, Brother Alex’s corpse paused in it enthusiastic chewing, its mouth suddenly opening to allow the red sinewy contents to fall unwanted to the floor. Something had changed within the warm wet flesh that it had so eagerly stuffed in its mouth only moments before and even as it pushed itself slowly back up to its feet, Brother Alex’s corpse dismissed the now twitching body at his feet that had once captivated him so.
Standing in the shadows Father Matthew watched in silent rage as the thing that had been Brother Alex rose to his feet and then Kasey’s corpse sat up seconds later. He knew even with God guarding his soul, his body stood no chance against these two newly Corrupt creatures, especially if they attacked him together. So, realising that there was nothing more he could do for the already damned Brother Alex and Kasey, he quietly backed away, turned and made his way to the chapel; praying all the while that the two unholy fiends separated so whoever encountered them next at least stood some chance to survive.
***
Brother Gregory pressed his back against the bookshelf, desperate to make himself as small and as unnoticeable as he could. He knew something else was in the library with him, he could hear it and whatever it was, it brought with it the smell of blood and shit.
When he had first heard the screams Brother Gregory’s hand had frozen mid-turn of a page, the thin sheet of paper suddenly quivering in his grasp as the fear took hold of him. Sat on the far side of the library where the shelves were still used to house their collection of books rather than just more potted seedlings, he had spent the afternoon enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and a soft breeze coming through a single set of shutters that had been left open. Yet as the cries echoed through the castle his blood ran cold and all of a sudden this little golden patch of heaven was little more than a death trap highlighting his very presence.
‘Safety in numbers or better on my own?’ he had debated, weighing up the pros and cons of each decision, deciding one minute only to then change his mind the next.
Ten minutes later and he still hadn’t moved from his spot or even completed the action of turning the page of his book, but it was when he heard the strange sound of what could only be described as wet footsteps coming from somewhere else in the room that he realised he may have left it too late. Cursing himself for not at least closing the heavy library door when he had a chance, Brother Gregory at last relinquished his grasp on his book, placing it silently down on the table in front of him and slowly moved to stand. It was only when he was half up, his knees shaking from the controlled effort, that he remembered to place a hand on the back of the chair to carefully ease it out; after all, the sound of chair legs scraping across a floor would do little to ensure his continued existence, far from it.
Once free of his chair, Brother Gregory cautiously stepped away from the table, leaving behind the once comforting pool of sunlight for the safety of the shadows around him. Silently he made his way along dim book-lined aisles, each footfall slow and precise, until, for no particular reason he stopped. There was nothing to rationally merit this specific point in the library. The shadows here were no darker than anywhere else in the room. Nor was it really any closer to, or further away from, the door to make a difference one way or the other but with each fleeting movement of shadow caught in the corner of his eye or the sound of a soft wet step reaching his ears, Gregory knew his time and luck were running out, fast.
Suddenly the coppery scent of blood mixed with the stench of recently soiled underwear became stronger, filling the air around him and alerting Brother Gregory that his potential death was dangerously nearby. Sure enough, as he peered through one bookshelf to the next aisle he saw the dark figure of a man pass by. Even in the dim twilight of the library, Gregory could see it was or rather it had been, Kevin Harrison. The swathe of b
lood drenching his front, turning his blue shirt and trousers almost a wet glossy black, told Gregory all he needed to know about the physical state of the man walking past him. Kevin Harrison was very much dead, that was clear, and with each unholy step he took, his blood filled shoes would squelch, nauseatingly; leaving in their wake a bloody trail a testament to his passing.
Holding his breath, less the very action of his breathing itself alert Kevin’s corpse to his presence, Brother Gregory moved back deeper in to the shadows and willed the creature to move on, praying it leave him undetected. Then, as luck would have it somewhere in the castle a woman began screaming for her life, the impending and inevitable loss of which Brother Gregory selfishly hoped would draw the hungry cadaver out of the library and away from him.
‘Come on! Come on!’ he thought, wishing Kevin’s corrupt shell would respond to the screams and be enticed away. ‘It’s dinner time…can’t you hear her? Go and stuff your face!’
But Brother Gregory needn’t have worried, for in this one thing the response of the Dead or the Corrupt as he called them, was assured. No sooner had the first terrified scream reached its ears than the cadaver’s head spun, eager to locate its source. Tilting its head to one side, the deep wound at its throat gaped sickeningly with each movement while its pale milky eyes burned with an unquenchable need. For a second Kevin’s hungry gaze seemed to rest on Brother Gregory hidden deep amongst the twilight shadows, turning his blood to ice and causing the control of his bladder to instinctively fail him. But onward roamed the cadaver’s searching stare, until, with squelching footsteps, it abruptly turned and darted along the aisle away from him.
For what seemed like an eternity but was in fact just five short minutes, Brother Gregory waited, standing in a pool of his own urine while he strained his ears to hear any other movement in the library. Only when he was quite sure he was alone, did he tentatively make his way along the maze-like rows of bookshelves determined to ensure his own ongoing survival.
Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel Page 24