Killing The Dead | Book 23 | Come The End

by Murray, Richard

  An indicator in the corner of the screen showed the battery power levels at less than six per cent and I knew there would be little time left before it fell down into the streets of Douglas, the town we had made our home.

  It had been years since I had walked those streets, annoyed at the cacophony of sounds that filled every space, refusing any chance of peace and quiet. I had hated being around so many people, thousands of them, all looking to be protected and guided.

  Another failure, I thought, as I looked at those silent streets that were host only to the undead.

  Death had come to the town of Douglas and we knew why we had received no response to our calls. The town had been overrun, the dead filling the streets and slaughtering the living wherever they found them.

  “They’re all gone,” Cass whispered as Evelyn shook, tears falling uncontrollably.

  “What do we do now?” Gregg asked, eye fixed to that screen. “There might be survivors?”

  “We have no way of getting there, lad,” Isaac said, voice full of barely controlled anger. “Christ! How do we tell everyone?”

  There was no answer to that, which surprised me. I had assumed they would have a plan in place for just such an occurrence. If not, then they would need one. The last thing we wanted was a lot of panicky people, not with what was about to descend upon us.

  “Wait!” I said to Charlie. “Go back, to your left. No! Left!”

  “Alright, dude. Calm for fucks sake.” Her fingers tapped on the controls and the camera spun, the power level reading two per cent. “What?”

  “There!”

  The others looked at me with eyes full of tears and pain, confusion in each and every one of them. I had been with Lily long enough to know that rolling my eyes at their lack of understanding was probably not the best idea then, not with so little power remaining with the drone.

  “At the harbour,” I said, through teeth that were clenched with the strain of remaining civil. “The fishing boats are missing.”

  Lily gasped as they all spun back to the screen and Charlie’s fingers moved faster than I would have believed possible as she gave commands to the drone. The camera spun once more and we had a clear view of the harbour.

  The boats were clearly absent.

  “Someone survived,” Cass said, breathlessly. “They must have!”

  “Where are they then?” Isaac asked. “Why have they not come here?”

  Blank looks were all the response he had and it was Lily who tightened her grip on my hand, squeezing so hard that it actually hurt, as she said, “there’s a reason. All we have to do is find it.”

  “How?”

  Another question with no answer and while they looked at each other, all hoping that someone else would have an answer for them, it was my turn to speak.

  “While you consider that, you might want to know what the prisoner just told me?”

  “What?” Lily asked, brow furrowed and fear in her gaze.

  Normally I would enjoy giving bad news. It was usually amusing and informative seeing the reaction of the person who received it. Just then, I took no pleasure in the growing fear in her eyes as I told her exactly what the prisoner had told me.

  When I was done, there was only silence, and in that silence, the monitor went dark as the drone finally died.

  Chapter 25

  “Keep going,” I said, hating how much strain could be heard in my voice. “Just keep going.”

  Charlie bit down on her tongue and hunched further forward over her keyboard. She didn’t need to repeat the same thing she had already told me a dozen times. I could see the battery level was becoming critical and I was more than aware of how few drones we had left, but we had to go as far out as we could.

  I rubbed at my eyes with the back of one hand and tried to stifle a yawn. I badly needed sleep but the chances of getting any had vanished as soon as we got a view of the damned island.

  Evie had collapsed into an exhausted sleep barely an hour before dawn, and Cass had sat with her, holding her as she wept for her mother and son. Gregg had headed off on some errand of Ryan’s, while Isaac was frantically trying to secure the defences and prepare for something we had no hope of defending against.

  With the sea the anvil and the raiders the hammer, we were caught in the middle with nowhere to go and nothing for it but to get flattened between the two. Hammered into paste by the raiders against the sea that held nothing but a slow death should we try to swim its frigid waters.

  “We need a miracle,” I muttered, and waved Charlie back as she looked around at me. I’d not meant to say that out loud.

  The screen before me showed only the empty sea, the foaming waves and nothing more. The fleet of fishing boats had disappeared. If they had survived, they would have been able to access their radios to let us know or they would have crossed the relatively short distance to bring us the news.

  With every passing minute, my hope of finding them was slowly disappearing and I could feel the dark pit of despair gaping wide at my feet, ready for me to be sucked down into black oblivion from which I wouldn’t return.

  Even through the apocalypse, I had never felt as helpless as I did right then. It would have been the perfect time to talk to someone about it, maybe work through to a solution, but my options were my emotionally stunted lover or his sister, a trained psychiatrist who was dealing with her own loss and trauma.

  I heaved a soft sigh as the screen went dark, the drone losing power and falling into the sea. I ran my hand through my unkempt hair and fought the urge to break down and cry.

  “There’s two more left,” Charlie said, holding back her exasperated sigh at the waste. “You want me to launch another?”

  “No.” There was no point. We were alone, completely and utterly, while surrounded by enemies. “There’s no need. Direct them over the area to the south. If the enemy makes their move, I’d like to have at least a little notice.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  I left her there and wandered through the large house, stopping to look into the living room where the twins were lounging. Gabriel had his carved wooden animals out and was showing them one by one to an all too patient, Jinx. Nearby, Angelina sat with a book in her lap and I didn’t bother checking what book it would be, but knew it would be something gruesome.

  The cultist standing guard beside the door inclined his head ever so slightly, an acknowledgement of respect that they gave to few others. I managed a weary smile in return before I moved away, my dark cloud of despair following along behind me.

  Outside of the house, I stopped and sucked in a deep breath of the muggy morning air. There was a sticky kind of heat that made your clothes cling to your skin as sweat oozed from every pore on your body.

  I hated that sort of weather. Give me a dry heat any day, I could deal with that. Humidity though, that was another thing entirely and it certainly didn’t make my mood any less sour.

  The three wagons that we had up and running were parked towards the centre of the village and a long line of people hurried to and fro from them to the supply stores and back again. Like a long line of ants, gathering goods to take back to the nest, they worked quickly and quietly, as they loaded those wagons.

  “What’s that about?” I asked, the nearest guard who glanced in the direction I pointed and shrugged silently before returning to his silent watchfulness. “Thanks, appreciate the chat.”

  He didn’t respond and I stalked off in a huff, the heat, lack of sleep and general tension, resulting in a giant headache that was throbbing behind my eyes. I’d not felt as crappy as I did right then since I had partied way too hard back in my college days.

  “Gregg?”

  My friend turned at the sound of his name being called, and paused, a look of consternation crossing his face for a brief moment before he turned and shouted out an order that sent a handful of the workers scurrying with their burdens in their arms.

  “The hell is going on?”

  “Ryan as
ked-“

  I held up a hand to stop him. It was probably a good idea for me to know as little as possible about whatever he was planning. Would make it easier later to explain why I didn’t put a stop to whatever chaos ensued.

  “Are these people not needed elsewhere?”

  He made a show of looking around, flashing a wide smile at my easy acceptance of whatever it was he was doing.

  “Nah, Isaac has the place pretty much locked down. This lot would have just been sat in the warehouse waiting with nothing to do.”

  Why the warehouse, I wondered, but shook my head as I dismissed that line of thought. I had other things to worry about.

  “Where is he?”

  “Back in the houses over that way.” He waved off to my left and I turned towards the line of houses that sat alongside the southernmost road that ran east to west through the village. “Best not to go looking.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s... well...”

  Another soft sigh as I rolled my eyes and shook my head. The headache was not going and whatever he was up to would only make it worse.

  “Fine, forget it. Anything I can do to help?”

  His smile faded as his eye narrowed and he reached up to scratch beneath the eyepatch he wore over his empty socket.

  “You need to talk to Isaac.”

  “Why?”

  “He had a bit of a barney with Ryan earlier and he went off in a rage.”

  “They were... well, not quite friends, but they seemed to get on well enough back before...”

  Before they had been buried beneath the ground for five years. Before Isaac had returned home wracked with guilt and shame over leaving rather than staying to help. Before he had developed feelings for me that ended with an awkward kiss and tears from me as I realised I was not ready to move on from my grief and loss.

  “Crap.”

  “Aye, that’s one way of putting it,” Gregg agreed. “That’s going to be an issue sooner rather than later.”

  Which I knew, but had been trying to avoid in the hopes it would resolve itself naturally. After all, I wasn’t entirely certain that I knew what Ryan would do. Sure, rationally, I thought he was dead and all that, but the man was a killer and his anger levels were way more than normal of late.

  I simply didn’t want to put him in a position where he might lash out as that would destroy any chance of a relationship. Something that was, admittedly, not the firmest of things at that time. Sure, I loved him with all of my heart, but the man who had returned was not the same as the one who left. There was too much of the killer, and I couldn’t see that changing, not with the rage he carried.

  “Crap,” I said again, though quieter and more reflective as I lost myself in those thoughts, fingers rubbing at my temples to try to dispel the worsening headache.

  “You should sleep.”

  “Like there’s any chance of that.” I waved away his concern, grateful for it. “What I should do is check on Evie.”

  Another soft sigh. There was a never-ending list of things to do.

  “First, I need to speak to Ryan.”

  “He’s preparing for the attack as best he knows how,” Gregg said, waving an approaching worker over to the next wagon. “Though, to be fair, that’s another reason Isaac is so pissed. Can’t agree on the best way to stop us all from being killed.”

  I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my noses and just hoping to have a moment without some form of crisis or issue that needed dealing with.

  “Great, just bloody great.”

  “Could be worse.”

  “How?”

  He didn’t immediately reply and I smirked at him as he sought for something that could be worse than the current situation.

  “I’ll leave you to... whatever the hell you’re doing,” I said. “Check on your sister later, yeah?”

  “Of course.”

  I left him there and headed over to the houses where Ryan was doing whatever it was he was doing. God alone knew and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  As it happened, I wasn’t about to find out. One of his cultists met me before I could enter the first garden. She placed one hand against the top of the gate and gave a silent shake of her head.

  “Where is he?”

  She raised an arm and pointed along the road. I caught a glimpse of him in the shade of an overgrown hedge, speaking to one of his cultists.

  “Thanks.”

  No reply, not that I’d expected one. I headed over to my beloved who looked up at my approach, lips pursed as he reached out and touched the cultist's shoulder in an almost companionable manner.

  My brows drew down as I saw that as he did not touch others unless he had a good reason to. The cultist pulled off his hood, revealing a sweat streaked face and a shaved head. He licked his lips, appearing almost nervous, before he bowed low to Ryan.

  Without a word, he hurried away and I shot a questioning look at my beloved who just flashed a smile that I suspected he thought was innocent looking but in actuality made him look much like the fox sitting amongst the chickens, pretending it wasn’t he who had just feasted on them.

  “Do I need to know?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Why the hell did I agree so easily? “You should talk to Isaac.”

  “Why?”

  “The arguing between the two of you needs to stop. Whatever animosity you hold, you need to let it go. Please.”

  “Animosity?”

  “Yes. Clearly there’s tension between you. I need you to...” I trailed off at his blank look and heaved a sigh. “You don’t know what I’m talking about do you?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to Isaac then.”

  He lifted his shoulders in a half-shrug and flashed another smile.

  “Are you going to share your plans with the rest of us?” I asked, and again, another shrug and smile. “Should I ask why not?”

  “Probably best not to.”

  A shriek of pain sounded, making me start, and I glanced over my shoulder at the house and the copse of trees behind it. The source of that sound.

  “What the hell is going on there?”

  “Two is showing her displeasure at his treatment of her sister.”

  Christ! That was just what I needed.

  “Can you stop them?”

  “Probably, but I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they need to be able to feel their strength. To know they are not victims.”

  “They will do that by torturing a half-dead prisoner?”

  “Yes.”

  I swallowed back what I was about to say and just looked at him. There was an innocence, sometimes, that he showed. His view of the world could be incredibly simplistic because he didn’t understand it at all, but then there would come something that he seemed to grasp instinctively.

  The way he dealt with those women, his Furies, was one of those things. They would die for him, as would any of his cultists. I wasn’t entirely sure why since he wasn’t leading them on charisma alone.

  Not that he couldn’t be charming should he so choose, though he chose to be so rarely. No, there was something about him that drew people to him. Some people at least.

  It seemed that for many, there was an instinctive dislike of him. They recognised the danger he encapsulated and they wanted nothing of it. For others, like those women, he was something more, something compelling.

  For me too, it seemed. He brought out the need in us to be stronger, to be better. He inspired a need for change, though I wasn’t sure how.

  It was a very strange feeling, understanding the effect he had on us. I wondered if I should be concerned by that, by the need I had to be with him. To love him. But then I realised that even if I should be, I didn’t care.

  I loved him with all of my heart and I could accept that there were some things he would have a better grasp of than I could. And, when it came to winning a fight, to killing, he was the one to de
fault to.

  “Okay.” I leant in, my lips brushing his. “Have fun and try not to cause too much chaos.”

  His grin was like that of a child who had just been given a present and I laughed softly as I walked away, heading in search of Isaac.

  It didn’t take long to find him, standing on a raised platform behind the timber fence that allowed him to see over the top. There were several such platforms all along its length, places for the crossbowmen to stand watch.

  “Any luck at finding the boats?” he asked, without preamble.

  “No.”

  “Damn.” He scratched at his bushy beard and swore softly. “We’re fucked then.”

  “It’s not that bad, surely?”

  “We have too few fighters and an enemy that could come at any time,” he said, heat in his voice. “When they come for us, we will stand and fight but there’s no retreat for us. No way away from here.”

  So it would be a fight to the end. For them or us, and most likely it would be us. That was a deeply depressing thought and one that I didn’t need right then. I leant back against the rough timber and closed my eyes. I needed sleep.

  “You need to stop arguing with Ryan.” There was no need to beat about the bush and I was way too tired to care. “We need to be united if we want a chance of winning.”

  “Not much chance of that,” he muttered. “Your laddo doesn’t like me.”

  “He does.”

  “Then why does he argue?”

  “He just likes to argue. You’re defensive every time you’re around him.”

  “Aye, because I’m waiting for him to stick a knife in my guts for, for... well, you know.”

  “Yes, I do know. But trust me on this. He had no idea there was tension between you until I spoke with him about it just a few minutes ago. He bears no ill will.”

  Any response he could make was cut off by a cry from further along the wall. My eyes snapped open and I looked towards the sound. One of the women, standing with a crossbow in hand, was yelling and pointing over the wall.

  I stepped onto the platform beside Isaac and looked out, expecting the enemy to be bearing down on us but instead, saw only a lone figure running towards the trees. Young, wearing black and with a shaved head, I recognised him immediately as the cultist Ryan had been talking to.