‘But we’re stronger if we stay together,’ Fran argued, her words breaking into his excuse. ‘We can help each other… and that way nobody else gets hurt,’ she continued, knowing sometimes survival against the Dead was basically a numbers game.
‘No, no, I’m sorry,’ he replied, his worry blinding him to the sense of her words, ‘I can’t. I’ve got to make sure Jane and Riley are safe… I need them to be safe.’
With that, before anything more could be said, he turned on his heels and started to run in the direction of the Purity Arch.
‘I’m sorry!’ he cried back to them as he ran.
‘But, Dave, where did you leave Peter?’ she called back as loudly as she dared.
‘Ground floor, near the refectory… opposite a picture of some bloke in gold armour,’ he hollered over his shoulder, his haste to find his family stupidly overriding the need for stealth. ‘I’m sorry!’
‘Th…that bloke’s going to get himself k…killed,’ mused Kai, watching Dave until he finally disappeared out of sight along the side of the cottages.
‘I hope not,’ Fran replied, prodding Kai with the end of a crowbar, urging him to take it from her. ‘If only for Riley’s sake, I hope he finds them in time.’
Kai looked at the young woman he had fallen in love with, his fingers wrapping about the cold metal of the crowbar and in that moment he understood Dave just that bit better. For he knew that he too would throw aside all sense and caution if it meant he could keep her safe. Of course in reality there was more likelihood that he would be the one getting himself killed in the process; his own lack of experience in dealing with the Dead adding a fatal flaw to his honest and heartfelt ‘knight in shining armour’ routine.
‘Kai!’ Fran urged again, snapping him from his thoughts. ‘Don’t just stand there shaking hands with it, take it for God’s sake… and don’t leave it lying around this time.’
‘Sorry,’ he smiled, knowing there was no true malice to her words as she referred to the incident in the orchard the previous day.
‘Christ, I wish I still had my own clothes,’ Fran continued to grumble, knowing her comfortable yet loosely fitting new outfit was woefully inadequate with regards to any realistic encounter with one of the Dead; lose sleeves and stretchy cotton jersey did not fare well against claw-like fingers eager to get a hand hold on an escaping meal, not to mention anything with a hood now being a deadly anathema.
‘Might as well ditch this here,’ she sighed, stripping herself of her zip-fronted hooded top, only for a sudden blast of cold coastal wind to send a shiver coursing through her while overhead gulls riding the buffeting air currents screeched ominously.
Within a few minutes Fran had made herself and Kai as prepared for battled as they could be. With a selection of wickedly sharp knives strapped to her both her calf and thighs, she also wielded a length of pipe, its weight just heavy enough to inflict the required damaged yet not too cumbersome for her to handle easily. In contrast she had given Kai just one other blade to go with his crowbar, secretly hoping he wouldn’t need to be involved in any fighting while she was around and even then his size and brute strength would more likely be his most effective weapon.
‘Ready?’ she asked, giving the inside of the cart one final glance just in case she had forgotten something.
‘I g…guess so,’ he replied, with a nod. ‘W…what’s the plan?’
‘Well if there had been many more of the Dead out here I would’ve expected them to turn up by now, especially after Dave shouting his mouth off like he did,’ she began, at last jumping down and closing the hatch behind her. ‘So I’m guessing the castle is our best bet for where they’re more likely to be now… hopefully we can pick up other survivors on the way, get them holed up somewhere out of the way and secure while we deal with the Dead… we need to stop this before the whole island is wiped out.’
‘S...sounds easy when you s…say it like that,’ said Kai, forcing a nervous smile to his lips.
‘Look, just stay close to me,’ she replied, stepping forward to take his hand in hers. ‘I know you want to help, you really do… but this has been my life for the last five years, so just trust me to handle it and we’ll get through this, okay?’
‘My f…father would have really liked you,’ he said seemingly at random, as he gently took her face in his free hand and softly kissed her. ‘Okay,’ he sighed wearily, finally returning to the topic at hand, ‘I’ll try not to g…get in your way.’
‘I… I love you,’ she quickly whispered, the very words suddenly more terrifying to her than any unliving creature that presently stalked the island. ‘Just in case something happens I wanted…’
Tilting her face until their eyes met, Kai smiled down at her.
‘N...nothing’s going to happen,’ he interrupted, his fingers gently trailing the line of the cheek. ‘You’re m...my kick-arse-n…ninja…’
He was about to say more when they both suddenly heard the approaching sound of a pair of boots running over cobbles. Surprised that she would have to deal with the Dead sooner than she had hoped, Fran span, the length of pipe in her hand at the ready.
‘Get ready,’ she whispered, feeling Kai’s body tense slightly behind her.
But as the rumpled figure appeared from around the side of the furthest cottage, Fran was relieved to see it was only a red faced Roy panting furiously as he forced his old limbs to move at an uncharacteristically fast pace.
‘Kai,’ said Fran, darting forward to meet Roy before he dropped dead from heart failure.
By the time they actually collided with Roy, his shaking hands clinging to them as he fell to his knees gulping for air, the poor man really did look on the point of collapse.
‘Calm down, Roy. Just breathe…breathe... you’re okay, you’re okay,’ she repeated, prying off the older man’s tight grip on her arm to take his hand in her own; all the while keeping an eye out for whatever he had clearly been fleeing from.
‘Jesus!’ gulped Roy, trying to get his breathing back under control. ‘The Corrupt, the Dead whatever... they’re… they’re on the island… they’ve got on the island!’
‘We know,’ replied Fran solemnly. ‘Have you seen any other survivors? Where’s Tom? Roy, what’s happened to Tom?’
‘Kathy and her dad… I’ve known that girl all her life and they were ripping into him, just ripping into him like animals,’ Roy continued, oblivious to Fran’s questions, his words tripping over themselves, as if desperate to be said. ‘Right there on the road, tearing shreds of flesh from him while he screamed, Jesus, that poor bastard…they ripped right into him… but there was nothing I could do… He was as good as dead already…I couldn’t help him, good as one of them by the time I got there... there was nothing I could do!’
‘Roy, where’s Tom?’ she repeated, trying to break through the mania overwhelming him but fearful he may tell her the worst. ‘Roy!’
With the last word she pinched the skin on the back his hand between two of her fingernails, the unexpected pain jolting him to silence.
‘Ouch!’ he gasped, snatching his hand quickly away from Fran to give her a dirty look.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ignoring his glare as she nodded to Kai to help her get Roy back up from his knees. ‘Roy, where’s Tom?’
‘Something… wrong… in the head… with that one,’ he replied, still panting while he pointedly rubbed the back of his hand. ‘We need to get out of sight… find somewhere safe,’ he continued, suddenly changing tack as he glanced nervously over his shoulder, remembering the horrific scenes he had just witnessed. ‘They were too busy eating the poor bastard to see me, I think... but we need to hole up somewhere… we need to move.’
‘Who?’ asked Fran, fearful Roy was about to lapse into a stake of panic again but more fearful she was about to be told of her friends demise. ‘Who were they eating, Roy? Was… was it Tom?’
‘What?’ he replied, his brow creasing in confusion. ‘No, not him. It was poor Harry F
rith, Harry’s the one they were…’
‘Oh, thank god,’ Fran interrupted, relief flooding through her.
‘And T...Tom?’ prompted Kai.
‘Tom? Oh, you want to watch that one, he’s got a screw loose, if you ask me,’ Roy began, the fact he was with no longer alone and running for his life helping him calm his breathing and regain some of his usual composure. ‘We’d only found one of the Corrupt at the base of the cliffs over on the north of the island, a right sorry looking creature it was too, no legs and only one arm and… anyway, we were about the kill the thing, you know finish it off properly, when your man goes all crazy, fair rips the thing to pieces with his bare hands and then starts talking to himself like a crazy person.’
At the mention of Tom’s sometimes not so inner dialogue, Fran and Kai exchanged a worried glance, both of them fearful that Tom may have in fact been the catalyst that brought the hungry Dead to St Michael’s Mount.
‘And then what?’ said Fran, almost afraid to ask.
‘Well, then he just buggers off back up the cliff, rabbiting something about justice,’ said Roy, still nervously looking over his shoulder, ‘and by the time I get back up, there’s no sign of him and then I find all hell’s bloody broken loose.’
‘Look,’ started Fran, hoping Roy wasn’t about to jump from one train of thought to another and blame Tom for the horror that befallen the island, even though it had instantly occurred to her too, ‘I think you should wait in our cart until this is all over. There’s blankets, boiled water and some food to tide you over until morning. The Dead will be slow by then and not so much of a problem.’
‘And what about you two?’ asked Roy, ashamed that he was about to let a young girl fight the savage corpses in his stead. ‘Something tells me you’re not planning on doing that yourself or you’d already be in there?’
‘We need to find Tom,’ she simply replied, a brief glance at Kai silently telling him it needed to be done before a scapegoat to blame was found; a scapegoat that spoke to the ghosts of his dead family and lost himself in a dreamlike world of destruction and the Dead.
‘Oh, okay,’ said Roy, his eyes narrowing as he watched the silent exchange between the young couple.
‘Just stay in the cart and keep quiet,’ Fran continued, her hand subtly reaching out to Kia to encourage him to move away. ‘We’ll come back if we can… I promise.’
‘If you can,’ Roy solemnly echoed, sadly knowing her promise meant nothing and in fact it was more than probable the pair wouldn’t survive the day.
‘What a waste,’ he thought, looking at the couple so young and with their lives ahead of them, unlike himself. ‘They’re going to die, both of them… and I’ll be here, hiding away while it happens. ’
Fran could see Roy wanted to say something else, the words almost visibly forming themselves on his lips but before he could speak again she turned her back on him, urging Kai along with her.
‘Just stay in the cart and you’ll be safe until morning,’ she repeated, risking one final glance over her shoulder back at him.
‘Don’t go you stupid girl… don’t throw your lives away,’ thought Roy, only to simply nod in sad reply.
For a second their eyes locked and in that instant everything was said. She knew he wanted them stay, he wanted her to live, to be the daughter he had lost so many years ago, to be the one to forgive his fear and shame, to forgive him for running; and likewise he instinctively knew it was not in her to remain.
‘Good luck!’ he finally called after them as loudly as he dared, his hand rising to bid farewell only for his fingers to then slowly close over his fist as if already accepting the pair were beyond all hope.
Unable to look back again, to see the fear, sadness and reluctant acceptance in Roy’s eyes, Fran urged herself onward; Kai’s very presence next to her giving her more courage, comfort and strength than she thought possible.
‘We’ll find Tom and get off this bloody island,’ she thought as they cautiously jogged back through the Purity Arch and made their way to the castle. ‘Everything’s going to be alright, we’re going to find Tom and get off the island… everything’s going to be alright.’
But with each corner they turned there were more and more signs that the Dead had passed this way and with each step she found her hope dwindling.
***
Clutching the pitifully inadequate fire poker he had found in his shaking fists, Graham slowly forced his feet to move, one slow and tentative step after another. He had been returning the empty bowls to the kitchens when he first heard the screams echoing about the castle and with knowing his father was safely resting at home keeping the weight of his twisted ankle, only one word raced through his terrified thoughts, ‘mum’. He knew she too was somewhere within the castle, its hallways now splattered in places with blood and unrecognisable bits of gore, and he knew he had to find her. Whether through the desire to protect her or simply his own need to be with his mother, Graham could neither tell nor wished to examine the question too closely but as he walked the bloody halls he tried to convince himself he was man enough to do what needed to be done when the time arose.
Graham had only been a child of ten when the Dead came to tear the world asunder. But he had been lucky, standing on the deck of his father’s fishing boat, the Dead or the Corrupt as he later learnt to call them, soon became something little more than strange moving shapes, barely visible from their anchored spot offshore and with his small family intact, this monumental horror had somehow passed him by, becoming a nightmare that only others were forced to bear. Of course when at last they were forced to take refuge in the small harbour of St Michael’s Mount that all soon changed; for with each turning of the tide, a fresh wave of hopeful survivors brought with them the true horror of the Corrupt following in their wake.
Of course, just like everyone else on the island, as soon as Father Matthew had thought him old enough, Graham had helped Roy clear the surrounding cliffs of the Corrupt; those sorry and soulless creatures that had managed to find purchase on the steep jagged rocks, desperate to claw their way up to the flesh they knew awaited them. But these corpses had been strangers, nameless and without attachment to him, so who they had once been or what lives they had once lived was an abstract concept to him; their simple destruction the only relevance. So just how it would feel to fight for his life against someone he had known, someone he had lived with for the last five years, Graham did not know and wholeheartedly wished he did not have to find out. Yet with each smeared handprint or spray of thick red blood he was forced to pass the likelihood of him seeing this day out without discovering this unwelcome fact seemed increasingly unlikely.
Edging round a turn in the corridor, the end of the poker shaking as he held it protectively out before him, Graham suddenly froze. There, some twenty metres ahead of him, standing with his back to him, was the figure of man; the red tunic he wore telling him it was one of the Brothers. As if sensing his presence, the man’s head began to turn.
‘Please be alive, please be alive…’ he repeated in his head as the Brother slowly turned to look at him.
‘Oh, thank God!’ rushed Graham, expelling his held in breath with a puff of relief. ‘Brother Mark, you’re not one of them, you’re alive.’
‘Graham…’ Brother Mark started to say, his hand held out as if in urgent warning, just as a second figure, also dressed in red, stepped through a doorway and out into the hallway half way between them.
‘Jesus!’ gasped Graham, his stomach plummeting at the sight of the unholy horror appearing between them.
Alerted by the startled sound, a blood splattered face slowly began to turn; its milky eyes widening in almost gleeful anticipation as the corpse of Brother Alex finally locked its sights on Graham.
‘No!’ shouted Brother Mark, unwilling to stand by while the teenager was sacrificed to sate the creature’s hunger. ‘Hey! Over here! Here I am, choose me! Come on, Alex, you bastard! Choose me!’
Years
of active policing told Brother Mark the cadaver was about to pounce. From the building tension in the muscles about the corpse’s neck, to the almost unnoticeable repositioning of its feet, to the subtle way its fingers started to flex, eager to be ripping into flesh, it all told him what he needed to know.
‘Come on!’ he bellowed again as loudly as he could, desperate to draw the corpse’s attention away from Graham.
And then the creature was moving, its head suddenly jerking violently to look at him as its body twisted mid-step. His plan had worked, Graham was safe for now but as the corpse of Brother Alex ran toward him, thick bloody drool and a wet guttural growl escaping its lips, Brother Mark immediately wished it hadn’t.
***
Father Matthew strode purposefully along the corridor, his hands still wet with Brandon’s blood.
‘God, give me strength and guide me…’ he silently prayed, his thumbs subconsciously rubbing back and forth over the cold blood smeared across his knuckles. ‘Protect your chosen servant as I endeavour to protect…’
He was about to continue when he saw the figure of a woman just ahead of him. Standing with her back to him, she was leaning heavily against the wall for support. It was only as he cautiously moved closer that he finally saw the deep rise and fall of the woman’s shoulders, she was clearly alive and desperately trying to catch her breath. Father Matthew took another tentative step towards her, in case the taint of Corruption was already upon her, and as his shoe came down on some tiny unseen piece of grit or dirt, it caused a barely audible scraping sound.
‘No!’ wailed Odelia, throwing herself away from the wall, her hands covering her face to blot out the horror that surely had found her again.
In her desperation to save herself from her imagined pursuer, she stumbled, falling to land heavily on one knee with a shriek.
‘Odelia!’ said Father Matthew, wanting to calm the woman without getting too close; still unsure if she was already a lost cause or not.
‘Dear God! Matthew!’ she gasped in a mix of relief, anger and embarrassment, her turmoil of emotions causing the mask of appropriate devotion she normally wore to momentarily slip. ‘I mean, Father Matthew… Thank heavens, it’s only you!’ she continued, hoping he hadn’t noticed the irritated tone in her voice before. ‘The Corrupt, Father, they…’
Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel Page 27