‘Okay,’ she murmured, her hand slipping slowly from his back as he took a step away from her.
With achingly slow progress, Scott made his way to the Purity Arch; the length of ribbon in his hand snapping and dancing in the wind while behind him Father Matthew moved deliberately amongst the crowd. As he came upon a chosen individual he would pause, giving each of them their own strip of fluttering red cloth and then, with it clutched tightly in their hands, they would follow Scott’s lead and approach the Arch that had become a symbol for the lost.
‘As we tie the names to the Arch, we tie the fallen to our past,’ boomed Father Matthew, his hands finally empty as the last ribbon was taken from him.
Turning he watched as Scott shakily knotted one end of his ribbon to the scaffolding Archway, the multitude of ribbons already there seeming to caressing him as they were caught by the buffeting wind.
‘Mum,’ Fran heard Scott say, the word choking and heavy with emotion as the end of his ribbon trickled from his grasp to join the hundreds of other flapping markers.
For a moment he stood motionless, his slumped shoulders shaking as a fresh wave of grief overwhelmed him but then as Father Matthew spoke again he turned and returned to Lucy’s comforting embrace.
‘Elizabeth Keys,’ stated Father Matthew, consigning the woman and memories of her to their past. ‘Kasey Henson,’ he continued after a pause as Roy, mirroring Scott’s actions, tied a ribbon bearing the young woman’s name to the Archway.
And so it continued, someone approached the Purity Arch, their red ribbons bearing witness to those that had been taken from them, and then Father Matthew would call out the name, identifying those who had fallen to those that still remained.
‘And finally… Brother Alex Winks,’ said Father Matthew, as Brother Sam tied the last of the markers to the Archway.
With the last name pronounced to them, an eerie silence descended upon those present; a silence that whispered of words yet to be said and truths left unspoken. The very air around them was pregnant with the need to understand how this had happened, how the Corrupt had breached their defences, both spiritual and physical, and as Father Matthew turned his gaze upon her, Fran knew that her time had come.
‘Children!’ began Father Matthew, his booming voice drowning out the cry of gulls riding the currents overhead. ‘Our faith has been tested this day and we have each come through to the other side still bathed in the grace of the Almighty; but remember this, it is not our place to question why the Corruption took those that it did, only He,’ he continued, stabbing to the heavens once again, ‘can know this... but each and every one of you has the right to ask how. How did this putrid stain creep upon our shores and who welcomed death to walk among us… and who is to be blamed.’
‘Who! Yes, tell us, who did this!’ various people called out from the crowd, almost revelling in the undercurrent of hysteria bubbling through this words. ‘Who!’
‘It is not I that will tell you this,’ he replied, beaconing Fran to step forward. ‘This young woman… it is she that will route out this evil. One way or another she will find out who caused this and who is to be blamed… a life depends on it. And you will allow her to go where she wishes, to see what she wants… and you will answer her questions, all of you,’ he continued, looking about the gathered crowd, his eyes blazing, challenging anyone to defy him, ‘for it is God’s will and my commandment that the guilty be brought to brook for what they have done here today.’
Realising from the mournful silence that had suddenly settled on them again that Father Matthew was done speaking and now expected her speak up, Fran cleared her throat and tried to think of what to say.
‘Hi,’ she began and instantly kicked herself for saying something so inane. ‘Erm… some of you don’t know me yet but my name’s Fran, I arrived yesterday with my friends… one of whom at the moment is being blamed for all this. Look,’ she continued, ignoring the gasps and angry mutterings that rippled through the throng, ‘enough innocent people have died because of all this, I… I just don’t want there to be one more.’ Even as she said this she knew she had just contradicted Father Matthew’s teachings, after all in his eyes the dead were far from innocent; this was not going well, not at all. ‘So anyway, even though I’ll be talking to all of you at some point, please, if any of you know anything or even if you think you do, then please come to me and tell me… anything, even the smallest detail could be the key we’re looking for, so please, don’t hold back, a man’s life is at stake… thank you.’
With that, she hurried back to Kai, a knot tightening in her stomach that she may have just made matters worse.
‘Well done,’ he whispered, pulling her close to him to kiss the top of her head. ‘I g…guess now we w…wait?’
‘Yeah, I guess so,’ she mumbled into his chest, allowing the comforting warmth of his body to chase away her unease. ‘Christ! What a nightmare,’ she continued, tilting her head to the side to watch as the crowd began to slowly disperse. ‘Tom’s only got two days. How the hell am I going to prove he didn’t cause all this in two fucking days? Shit! What if I can’t even get these people to talk?’
‘I d…don’t think that’ll be a p…problem,’ he replied, squeezing her arm as he nodded to a figure making a beeline through the thinning crowd right for them; it was Ryanne.
***
‘Well it doesn’t sit right with me,’ said Fran the next day sitting on the quarantine-cum-morgue, floor next to Kai. ‘I just don’t think Rod could’ve done it, I don’t care what Ryanne says.’
When the mousy woman had hurried up to them the previous evening she had been all too willing to tell them about the sordid affair Emily Adams had been having with Brother Christopher. Of course she had painted that horrific day’s events were the result of divine retribution but with one of the fallen being Brother Christopher she subtly suggested perhaps someone on the island had been a willing extension of God’s hand; namely Rod.
‘Even if Rod had found out about Emily and Christopher,’ Fran began again, pushing herself up and away from the wall to walk around the room, weaving in and out of the covered corpses, ‘and let’s say for the sake of argument that he had somehow managed to get in and out of the castle, knock off Brother Christopher and then get back to his cottage… all this, unseen and on a badly twisted ankle… wouldn’t he have made sure Graham had been safely out of the way before it all kicked off?’
‘Hmm,’ offered Kai noncommittally, his eyes following her as she paced back and forth. ‘P... perhaps it wasn’t R…Rod at all. From what Jane t…told me he was p…pretty desperate to f…find Emily and Graham. Could it have been Graham?’ Kai continued, noticing the way Fran paused in her walkabout, as if contemplating the suggestion. ‘P…perhaps he knew and wasn’t keen on Brother Christopher breaking up the happy home?’
‘Seems a little drastic,’ she replied, absentmindedly chewing a finger nail as she turned to look at him. ‘The way things work around here, surely he would’ve just gone to Father Matthew and had a word.’
‘And potentially p…put his mother to the flames?’ Kai pointed out, shaking his head, ‘I doubt it.’
‘Yeah, I get your point,’ Fran agreed, forcibly pushing her hands in her pockets to stop her biting her nails, ‘and anyway from what I saw yesterday, I don’t think he has it in him.’
‘What about R…Ryanne?’ Kai suggested, with a shrug.
‘What, you think she pointed the finger at Rod to divert attention from herself?’ said Fran, seeing there could be some merit to it; she knew the woman was certainly committed to her faith enough to become the proverbial ‘hand of God’. ‘Well, we’ll have to ask her where she was earlier during the day… but I know she ended up in the Chapel with Brother Sam, Brother John, Max… and Oh, and Emily… Ah!’
‘What?’ asked Kai.
‘Well, firstly I seriously doubt Ryanne could have overpowered Brother Christopher to kill him,’ she began, ‘and secondly from the way she was t
alking yesterday, I think Emily would’ve been her victim of choice, especially if she was going to reap out some good old fashion Godly retribution… you know, the harlot paying for tempting the holy man type of thing.’
‘So, not Ryanne then?’ said Kai,
‘Yeah, I doubt it…’ mumbled Fran, her hand slipping free of her pocket to subconsciously place a fingernail between her teeth again. ‘Look,’ she continued, tutting at her own lack of willpower as she purposefully folded her arms, ‘I think we’re just clutching at straws here, if we say it’s not Rod, Graham or Ryanne then perhaps Brother Christopher wasn’t the intended victim at all… No, we need to work out who killed who, if we can… hopefully that will lead us back the original victim…’
‘And then we just have to w…work out who k...killed them and why,’ sighed Kai, shaking his head as he realised it may prove to be a hopeless task, ‘and all by t…tomorrow evening.’
Fran looked at Kai and knew he was right, they had a monumental task ahead of them and with the high tide only thirty-six hours away; it didn’t look good for Tom, not by a long shot.
‘So we better get cracking then,’ she replied, forcibly shaking herself free of her doubts.
‘Where?’ asked Kai, standing up, ready to do whatever he was commanded.
‘Well, we can start with the only hard evidence we have,’ she said, nodding towards the corpses laid out in rows on the floor, ‘let’s see what they can tell us.’
Bending down, Fran moved to the obvious ‘head’ end of the nearest body and slowly pulled back the blanket to reveal Kevin’s blood drenched corpse. Her gaze flitted briefly over the ragged wounds that had separated head from torso and then with a sorrowful yet resigned sigh escaping her lips, she moved onto the next and then the next; pulling back sheets and blankets as she went. Approaching the final covered body, its shape slightly disjointed and malformed, she knew simply by elimination what she would find beneath the blood soaked blanket but this did little to lessen the shock as she pulled back the sheet to reveal the bloodlessly pale and pieced together shell of Kasey.
‘Christ,’ muttered Kai, taking in the poor young woman’s brutalised form, ‘T…tom really did a number on her.’
‘Yeah,’ Fran slowly replied, noticing the young girl’s severed hands had foolishly been placed next to the wrong wrists. ‘But… I know Father Matthew witnessed her initial attack, it was from Brandon, so I think we can count her out… And the same goes for… Henry Frith,’ she continued, moving to another of the corpses, ‘because Roy said he saw the teenage girl, Kathy? Yes that’s it, Kathy and her dad, Bill, eating him, so he’s out too.’
‘And F…Frank White,’ Kai suggested, knowing Fran thought he had actually died of a heart attack, possibly brought on by the overwhelming panic.
‘Yes, I think we can cross him off the list too,’ she agreed. ‘And if we’re to believe Brother Gregory, Tom killed Beth Keys but look, see…’ she paused, pointing a bloody bite mark on Beth’s shoulder. ‘She had already been bitten at some point… probably by Kasey, as their bodies were found together, so that’s her off the hook too.’
‘And him,’ said Kai, nodding to the young ‘apple’ boy that Fran shamefully realised she didn’t even know the name of.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, walking over to cover his face with the sheet again. ‘Yes, he’s clear too.’
After a brief pause, her gaze transfixed by a spreading red stain in one of the few clean areas of the sheet that had newly come into contact with the boy’s congealed blood, Fran heard Kai move to stand behind her.
‘You couldn’t have saved him,’ he whispered, wrapping his arms gently around her, ‘you know that d…don’t you?’
With his arms encircling her, she leant back, drawing comfort from the feeling of his solid body behind her.
‘Yeah… yeah, I know,’ she replied with a sigh, her head tilting back to rest against him while she closed her eyes, ‘but... well, you know.’
‘Yeah,’ he replied, softly kissing the side of her head. ‘I know.’
For a few minutes they ignored the horrors of the world around them, allowing the comfort they found in each other’s arms to banish the childhood monsters back to shadows once more; but reality would not be ignored and no sooner had Fran opened her eyes again than it all came flooding back again with a vengeance.
‘Right,’ said Fran, gently tapping Kai’s hand to signal him to finally let go. ‘Come on, this isn’t going to save Tom from a watery grave… So, any ideas?’
‘I g…guess we could start going through their s…stuff,’ suggested Kai. ‘We might find a clue or something?’
‘A clue!’ snorted Fran, the absurdity of the whole situation suddenly striking her as funny. ‘Fuck, I feel like Velma out of Scooby-Doo… let’s save some time and just say it was old Mr Johnson the janitor. It usually was.’
‘Nah, you’re much m…more of a Daphne,’ smiled Kai, waggling his eyebrows jokingly. ‘And anyway, the person who used to be the janitor here was F…Father Matthew, remember?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ she replied, returning Kai’s smile, theatrically snapping her fingers in an exasperated ‘drat’-like movement. ‘I guess it wasn’t him after all… back to the drawing board, Freddy.’
‘Clues?’ Kai suggested again.
‘Yeah, okay, okay,’ she relented with a smile, ‘come on then, Sherlock, let’s go routing through peoples underwear drawers looking for your clues…. and after that we’ll start talking to everyone one on one… perhaps something will come up, you never know.’
As Fran made her way to the door, exposed corpses all around her, she happened to glance down at the last body in the line; it had been Brother Alex. As her eyes flitted across his blood splattered tabard and up to his face, something made her pause; stopping her in her tracks.
‘What?’ asked Kai, as he wondered what had caught her eye. ‘What is it, Fran?’
‘Look at him,’ she replied, nodding to Bother Alex’s body, ‘what do you see?’
‘A c…corpse?’ he suggested, with a shrug.
‘Yeah, we can all see that, smart arse,’ she said, giving Kai a somewhat disapproving sideways glance, ‘No, what I mean is, look at his face.’
‘What about it?’ Kai continued, still a little bemused as he crouched down to get a closer look.
‘Well,’ began Fran, bobbing down to join him, ‘look, here and here… and here,’ she continued, pointing to different parts of Brother Alex’s face. ‘I know it’s hard to tell but to me that looks all swollen and bruised… so.’
‘So he w…was in a fight with someone yesterday before he died,’ concluded Kai, at last nodding in understanding. ‘B…but with who? One of the D…dead? His killer?’
‘Would bruising have time to develop if it was done while he was fighting off one of the Dead?’ asked Fran, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Does your heart even need to be pumping for that sort of thing to show… I’ve no idea, have you? Or perhaps,’ she continued, pushing herself back up, ‘he was beaten so badly by somebody that he was the first one that died and then his death caused all this.’
‘No,’ said Kai, lifting one of the dead man’s arms and pushing back part of his blood caked sleeve to expose his wrist and forearm, it was missing large bite sized chunks of flesh, ‘I n…noticed this when I was carrying him in with B…Brother Mark… I think he b…bled to death.’
‘Okay, so…’ mused Fran, an idea slowly forming. ‘He has a fight with someone, and let’s face it, from what we saw of Brother Alex here he wasn’t exactly a charmer, so it could’ve been with anyone… anyway, so he has this punch up while at the same time the Dead just happen to be traipsing about the island or just about to. So the question is, was he conscious or unconscious when he was bitten?’
‘W…what does it matter?’ asked Kai, letting Brother Alex’s arm drop.
‘Because it may mean he had been left that way on purpose,’ she replied, looking down at Brother Alex’s bruised face and wondering
if the man she suspected of doing this could’ve left him to be eaten alive. ‘Come on,’ she at last continued, shaking herself of her thoughts, ‘let’s go get these clues of yours… and then I want to find Scott and Lucy.’
‘Scott and Lucy, why them?’ asked Kai, following Fran out of the quarantine room.
‘Because he lied about not coming back to shore yesterday,’ she replied, waiting for Kai to close the barred door behind him, ‘and I think Brother Alex’s corpse just told us why.’
***
‘Well I don’t know if I’d risk my life for a bottle of vodka and a bit of out of date chocolate,’ said Fran, dropping the small bar of milk chocolate back into one of the boxes they had found under Brother Alex’s bed.
Purely by chance, when they had arrived at the castle they had bumped into Odelia and the first bedroom she had shown them to had just happened to have been Brother Alex’s. It was only when Kai thought to abandon the meagrely stocked wardrobe and chest of drawers to look under the bed that they had found anything of interest at all. There were bottles of alcohol to suit any and every palette, confectionary, a jumble of tins containing everything from Irish stew to lobster bisque as well as other items; items which Fran was more than tempted to help herself to; sanitary towels, packets of the contraceptive pill and boxes of condoms being the most interesting to her. Fran thought the last two items in particular were probably considered illegal contraband in Father Matthew’s eyes, what with all the God fearing babies that needed to be born, but a child was the last thing she needed right now, so she slipped a few packets in her jacket pocket and then after a moment’s hesitation, tossed a few in Kai’s direction as well.
‘Here,’ she whispered, glancing towards the doorway to make sure Odelia had actually moved on. ‘I wonder if Father Matthew knew about Brother Sam’s little black market enterprise?’
‘Ouch!’ said Kai, when one of the small boxes Fran had thrown ricocheted of his forehead and skittered under the bed. ‘How do you know it’s b…black market, anyway?’
‘I doubt he had much use for these,’ she replied holding up a hand full of tampons. ‘My guess is that he creamed off what he wanted from foraging trips on the mainland and then sold it on for whatever he wanted.’
Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel Page 33