Reaching the end of the shelves, Gregory paused, making sure once again that he was still alone before making his move. Reassured that he was indeed the sole occupant of the library, living or otherwise, he quickly stole a glance from behind the bookshelf to inspect the rest of the room and more importantly the object of his goal, the open door. Apart from a set of bloody footprints leading in and out of the library, some stray splattered droplets on the floor and a smeary handprint on one of the glass fronted bookcases that house the seedlings, the library was all as it should be.
‘Shit, now’s the tricky part!’ Gregory thought to himself, knowing there was no way to know if anything lay in wait beyond the open doorway until he finally committed himself and moved away from the safety of his hiding place.
‘Come on, Gregory. Fucking, come on!’ he continued, his own thoughts chiding himself for his lack of action. ‘On three… one, two…’
But Gregory’s own body prevented the need for him to reach three, for as someone’s desperate wails echoed along the corridors beyond the library, his legs seemingly made the independent decision for him to move. Darting forward, Brother Gregory found himself sidestepping the bloody footprints smeared across the wooden floor and instinctively making a reach for the handle of the large heavy door.
Leaving it to the last moment, lest his worst fears be confirmed, Gregory finally allowed himself to glance up from the bloody trial left by Kevin’s passing to see what, if anything, stood watching him from the hallway. For a split moment, his breath caught in his throat as the image of a figure rushing toward him stamped its way across in his panic filled brain. But as the details of what he was actually seeing finally rearranged themselves and became clear, he realised it was in fact only Beth Keys approaching and thankfully she was still very much alive.
‘Brother Gregory!’ she cried, desperately waving at him as if afraid he hadn’t seen her.
‘Hurry!’ Gregory hissed, glancing left and right fearful Kevin’s corrupt corpse would return at any moment.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ Beth sobbed as she ran. ‘The Corrupt, Brother Gregory, they’re on the island. How could they…’
Whatever Beth had intended to say suddenly faded from her thoughts when she saw the look on Brother Gregory’s face inexplicably change, his eyes suddenly widening in shock. He was now looking at something behind her, something fearful and terrifying; and whatever it was, it was sprinting along the corridor behind her.
‘No!’ she managed to whimper, still a good five metres from the safety of the open library door.
Gregory’s mind fought to reconcile the bloody and savage creature even now closing in on Beth with the quiet and almost annoyingly apologetic image of Kasey that still lurked in his head. The two were at such great contrast that if it hadn’t been for the corpse’s thick red hair, now matted and dripping with her own blood, he would have denied the reality of what he saw entirely. But there was no denying the claw-like hands reaching for Beth Keys and there was no denying the woman was simply not going to make it. So as his eyes flicked back to briefly lock with Beth’s terrified gaze, Gregory made up his mind. He could not risk, or rather he would not risk, Kasey’s corpse getting into the library and worse, getting to him, so he began to close the door.
‘Brother Gr…’ Beth started to say, unable to understand just what she was seeing; her words abruptly turning to a shriek as a bloody hand grabbed a fist full of her hair.
‘Arrgghh!’ she screamed, her panic causing a chunk of her hair to be painfully ripped from her scalp as she fought to reach the already closing door.
But Kasey’s cadaver would not let its victim escape so easily and even as Beth stretched out her hand imploringly to the disappearing image of Brother Gregory, it threw itself onto her back; clawing and tearing at her clothes, its hungry mouth agape and awaiting its first taste of warm bloody flesh.
‘No!’ cried Beth, falling to the floor under the weight of Kasey’s cadaver; the sound of the door finally closing on her barely registering as a set of teeth bit deep and hard into the flesh of her shoulder.
***
‘Move!’ shouted Rod, his cry at last snapping Jane from her frozen terror.
Tearing her eyes from the three bloody figures charging towards them, Jane thrust Riley away from her and in the direction of the open cottage doorway. She didn’t need to see the look of fear on Rod’s eye to know it would be a close call as to whether they would all manage to get inside and secure themselves in time but no matter what happened, even if she had to sacrifice herself, she was determined Riley would be saved. Glancing down at the heavy frying pan, now just beyond her reach, she debated for a split second the merits of stopping to retrieve it but with the first of the hungry cadavers now only ten or so metres away, and getting closer, she knew she simply didn’t have the time to spare.
‘Hurry, woman!’ shouted Rod, gabbing her sleeve to push her onward just as she had done with Riley.
With her eyes set on the gaping doorway just a few meters ahead of Riley, she at least knew he was going to reach it. Yet even if he did get inside in time she knew this hardly guaranteed his survival; for many a survivor had still been torn to pieces as the Dead smashed their way through non-barricaded windows or doors hardly meant to withstand a foe that feels no pain.
‘Upstairs!’ Rod bellowed from behind, just as Riley crossed the threshold of the cottage.
For a moment the boy’s head darted blindly back and forth until he locked onto the small shadowy staircase to his left, leading to an unpromising and flimsy looking door at its top.
With Riley disappearing into the cottage ahead of her, Jane risked a glance at the nearest corpse and instantly regretted it. The closest Dead man, his face little more than a monstrous patchwork of bloody bite marks surrounding a ragged gaping hole where his nose once was, held such wild hunger and demonic intent within his milky glare that Jane almost stumbled. Luckily at that moment her fingers brushed against the wooden surround of the door and with an unceremonious shove from Rod behind her, she found herself falling inside.
‘The windows!’ shouted Rod, slamming the door behind him just a body collided with the other side of it. ‘The shutters! Close the shutters!’
Landing heavily on all fours, Jane knew she had no time to acknowledge the sudden shooting pain in her knees. So with tears in her eyes and a determination to survive moving her onward, she pushed herself up from the tiled floor and thankful to hear Riley bounding up the stairs, taking them two at a time, darted over to the first set of windows.
‘The latch!’ called Rod, noticing Jane’s frantic attempt to move the first shutter only for it to stay locked in place. ‘Un-hook the latch holding it back!’
Looking over at Rod, his crow bar still clutched in his fist as he braced the jolting door with his back, Jane wondered if the noseless Dead man had already been joined by his bloody compatriots and if so, should she be helping to hold the door in place instead. As if to answer her question a hand suddenly slammed against one of the small panes of glass in front of her, sending a worrisome crack shooting across it.
‘Shit!’ she gasped, her fingers blindly fighting to release the latch as she stared into the savage face of a Dead teenage girl. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ she continued, watching as the girl’s corpse drew back her arm once more to punch at the glass.
The Dead girl’s hand was but a hair’s breadth from striking the glass when Jane finally broke eye contact just long enough to look across at her hand and at last unhook the latch. Then, with the sound of shattering glass and a terrified cry escaping Jane, the Dead girl’s hand shot through the already cracked window pane; a shard of glass slicing deep into her forearm as she forced her arm through to get to Jane.
‘Christ!’ yelled Jane, banging the shutter again and again against the limb that frantically tried to make a grab for her.
Suddenly there was an inexplicable dull ‘thud’ sound from outside and the Dead girl’s arm was momentarily pulled back
just enough for Jane to slam the shutter in place and slide a thick looking bolt into a groove in the windowsill. Realising it wouldn’t take long for the Dead creature to smash her way through one of the other panes of glass, Jane spared no time in unhooking the latch of the second shutter and slamming it closed.
‘The bar!’ grunted Rod, the door behind him suddenly jolting. ‘Put the bar across too!’
‘Bar?’ said Jane, desperately looking about for what she presumed was a length of timber to slot across the back of the two closed shutters.
‘Hurry!’ Rod continued, pressing all of his weight against the rattling door.
‘Where!’ shrieked Jane, at a loss as to where the bar Rod spoke of could be.
‘It’s on the fucking… Oh, fuck!’ he snapped in reply, only then noticing the thick plank of timber that was supposed to stop the shutters being forced inwards was not where it was supposed to be. ‘Here,’ he continued, awkwardly chucking the crowbar in Jane’s direction, ‘use this!’
With a ‘clang’ the crowbar clattered across the tiled floor, coming to rest under a small kitchen table, just beyond Jane’s reach.
‘Oh, give me a break!’ spat Jane, reluctant to remove her shaking hands from the shutters in case the Dead girl managed to somehow force them open.
‘Get it,’ urged Rod, nodding to the crowbar, ‘before they notice the other window!’
Despite her fear, Jane knew she had no choice; for as single-minded as the Dead were, it was inevitable that one of them would notice the other window sooner or later.
‘Oh, Shit!’ she muttered, relinquishing her hold on the closed shutters at the last possible moment and even then her left hand still hovered behind her as she reached for the crowbar, as if to hold the rattling shutter in place by sheer willpower alone.
No sooner had her fist closed about the cold metal of the crowbar, its end still bloody and covered in bits of torn skin, than Jane was darting back to ram it through the brackets on each shutter, effectively barring them from being pushed inward. With one window now secure she ran over to Rod to deal with the one on other side of the door. She was just stepping over his legs when the sound of shattering glass suddenly filled the room and two grasping bloody hands forced their way through the small window.
‘Fuck!’ shouted Rod, still fighting his own battle with the Dead man pounding to get in through the door. ‘Get that fucker out of here!’
But even as Jane stepped closer, the intruding Dead hands, which appeared to have belonged to a man, flailed wildly about, sending crockery and small ornaments crashing to the floor as they forced their way up to the elbow past the broken glass and into the room. Larger than the previous Dead teenager, this cadaver’s reach encroached far deeper into the room and despite the shards of broken glass cutting deep into his cold flesh, Jane knew closing the shutters here would be no easy task. Yet try she must and even as she ducked under an arm, its flesh bloody and almost flayed from wrist to elbow, she was forced to bat away the hand as it brushed against her shoulder.
‘Rod!’ she cried, trying to force one of the shutters while the Dead man fought to reach around it to grab her.
With his face pressed against what remained of the broken window pane, the snarling Dead man glared at Jane, his mouth and slobbering tongue roaming across the glass as if in anticipation of tasting her flesh.
‘I can’t,’ she continued, trying to pry the corpse’s finger from the edged of the shutter. ‘I can’t get it closed, he’s too strong!’
‘Keep trying!’ he shouted over the guttural moans of the Dead outside. ‘If it manages to get a hand hold…’
Just then there was the sound of splintering wood from just above Rod’s head and in that instant he knew the old cottage door was going to lose its battle against the Dead man’s onslaught.
‘Shit!’ he hissed, pushing himself up from the floor and painfully hobbling away from the door. ‘We can’t win this fight, not here. Jane, get upstairs!’
‘But?’ she started to protest, knowing that to give ground, any ground, to the Dead until they really needed to was stupid.
‘Forget it!’ he replied, already pulling on Jane’s arm. ‘That door’s not going to last more than another few minutes. We’ve got to move. Now!’
‘We can’t just…’ she started to argue, until, as if to prove Rod right, another alarming splintering sound came from the door and a set of bloodied fingers began to force their way through, eagerly widening the jagged crack.
‘Move!’ Rod bellowed, pulling her away from the window to shove her towards the staircase.
Knowing now was not the time to argue, Jane bounded up the stairs with Rod following up behind her; his painful ankle making it hard to ascend the stairs with any great speed. She was almost at the top of the staircase when her reluctance to relinquish the ground floor to the Dead finally got the better of her and she glanced back over Rod’s shoulder to the room below. In her absence the Dead man had doubled his efforts to pull himself through the window and even now was using the one shutter still latched open as leverage to pull himself further in to the room. It also appeared that whatever had attacked the door had now been joined by the corpse of the young girl, for now two sets of hands tore at the wood with savage abandon; their thick lifeless blood turning the inside of the door a deep red.
‘Just get the boy! Get Riley!’ urged Rod, knowing there was no need to look behind him to know the fate that awaited them there. ‘Hurry!’
At the mention of Riley’s name, Jane took the last two steps in one bound, the banister cracking as she pulled herself round onto the landing a little too fast. With seemingly only two rooms on this floor, Jane could see through an open doorway to the front bedroom where Riley was presently throwing everything he could get his hands on out of a small window down onto the Dead below them. Realising in a flash that she had only managed to close the shutters on the Dead teenager thanks to Riley’s aerial attack, she wished his valiant efforts had been able to buy them more time.
‘Riley!’ she called, fearful they had just painted themselves into a proverbial corner; and a lethal one at that.
‘Mum?’ said Riley, pausing in his attack as he looked to his mother for words of comfort.
But knowing she had nothing for him, no words to calm his panic and fear, she simply ran forward, pulling him into a fierce hug; while below them the sound of wood splintering further ominously rose up to greet them.
‘This way,’ winced Rod, leaning against the doorframe for support. ‘Come on, we don’t have much time.’
With a wave, he pushed himself away from the doorway and disappeared back out into the hallway.
‘Shit! Should’ve opened the back door,’ Jane heard Rod grumble to himself as she and Riley hurried to catch up, ‘they might have gone straight through. No time now,’ he continued, his words seemingly more directed to her this time than himself as he came to a stop by a tall bookcase just left of the stairs.
‘Rod,’ she replied, glancing nervously back down the staircase, ‘please tell me you’ve got a plan?’
‘The others here may think it’s God that saves them,’ he started to say, pulling and tossing aside some of the books from one of the shelves, ‘but I think sometimes He needs a helping hand.’
With the last word, his hand encircled a door knob that had been hidden behind the books and with a click the whole bookshelf sprung away from the wall on one side.
‘Get in,’ he continued, pulling the heavy but well disguised door towards him.
With the sound of rusty casters rolling against wooden floorboards, the door started to open. Pushing Riley though first and following him as soon as the gap was wide enough, Jane was relieved to see a small hidden room awaited them. Once a small box room, Rod had converted it in a well-stocked bolt-hole. On one side were a set of three bunk beds, the uppermost bed somewhat uncomfortably close to the ceiling, while opposite them shelves were lined with plastic bottles of water, jars of preserved fruits and ve
getables and even some presumably rare tins of pre-apocalypse canned food.
Behind her Rod had entered the room and was slowly pulling the door with a wide handle attached to the inside when he suddenly stopped.
‘Crap,’ he mumbled, quickly reaching back out to the hallway side of the door to pull out a few more of the books. ‘Not much point in having a spyhole if it’s covered up by the last book Stephen King is likely to write.’
Once he was satisfied he could see through the spyhole, his view unrestricted, he started to pull the door closed again. The door was just shy of closing when from below them there was suddenly a loud splintering and crashing sound; the old cottage door finally succumbing to its attackers.
‘They’re in!’ hissed Rod, glancing back to Jane and Riley.
Pulling Riley to her, Jane instinctively backed as far away from the door as she could.
‘Oh, thank God!’ she whispered, noticing the rope ladder attached to the wall under the room’s single window; no matter what happened here, at least she knew Riley had another chance to escape the Dead.
‘God had nothing to do with it,’ Rod whispered in reply, the door clicking shut, blocking out the sound of something starting to run up the stairs.
***
Even through her blind panic and pain, Beth’s mind still registered her surprise that Kasey’s frail body could hold such strength within it. The girl had hardly been athletic in life, her near fatal crossover from the mainland and the subsequent bloody collision with the rocky cliffs had proven that, yet in death her form seemed to have gained something, something wild and savage, something quite alien and unholy; and whatever it was, it had claimed poor Kasey for its own, totally.
‘No!’ Beth managed to scream just as Kasey’s bottom teeth scraped painfully across the bone of her shoulder blade, hungrily ripping free a chunk of bloody flesh and skin.
She fought desperately to wriggle out from under Kasey’s corrupt shell, yet with each movement the creature seemed to reposition itself, shifting its weight this way and that as if to be sure it’s meal could not escape. And then all of a sudden the weight was gone and the thing that had once been Kasey Henson was being thrown violently against the wall, crashing into it in a tangle of bloodied limbs.
Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel Page 25