Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel (11 page)

‘Hmmm,’ replied Tom, quickly blinking his way back to reality. ‘Yeah… well… well, there’s no point sitting here scratching our arses… and remember to keep that hand over your mouth Pete, there’s a good boy,’ he continued, glancing briefly back at his passengers before turning away from them to snap Star’s reins again.

It was only for a split second, but as Tom turned away from her Fran was sure she caught a glimpse of something a little disconcerting in his eyes, something she could only describe as excitement. Looking over at Kai, she noticed the worried look he was currently giving the back of Tom’s head; clearly he too had caught the strange glint in Tom’s eye. As if feeling her gaze upon him Kai’s eyes flicked to meet hers, a look of joint concern passing between them and in that instant an unspoken pact to keep a wary eye on Tom was made.

With each turn of the cart’s wheels the almost pitiful moaning of the Dead horde rose in volume. Their desperate pleas called out for the warm, bloody flesh that had eluded them as if  to encourage it to simply offer itself up as penance for the life it held; a fee for trespassing among them. Yet no willing offering appeared before them and as they raised their arms aloft no unholy sacrament of flesh and blood rained down upon them. For these were the Dead and if he existed, their God had abandoned them long ago and their hunger would be eternal.

‘Not looking good,’ Fran whispered, her mouth close to Tom’s ear.

‘Not by a long shot,’ he replied, using the reins to guide Star around the pathetically broken remains of a man that even now dragged itself across their path to join its Dead brethren pawing at the wall of the small building.

Any hope that the throng of hungry corpses had congregated only on one side of the building soon evaporated the closer they got to it. But it wasn’t until Star finally pulled them to the turning on the other side that they realised just how dire their situation had suddenly become.

‘Shit!’ Tom hissed under his breath, glaring at the metal gate across the concrete slip that led down to the cobbled causeway.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Dave nervously, as he looked from the closed gate to the decaying rabble only a few metres away. ‘How are we going to get across… we can’t just wait here for them to get bored and leave… we all know that’ll never happen.’

Tom and the others all knew this to be true, the Dead were single-minded in their determination. They would never forget and would never lose interest. That terrified spark of life that had caught their attention would become their whole world and nothing would deter them from claiming their mouthful of flesh; nothing that is except one thing, the sight of another life.

‘Well, there’s nothing for it,’ Tom began, turning to look at his travelling companions, ‘at least one of us has got to go out there to unlatch that fucking gate.’

‘Tom…’ Fran started to say, knowing just what the older man was about to suggest and hoping he wasn’t choosing this moment to wilfully give himself over the demands of his lost family.

‘You know I’m right, Fran,’ he interrupted, instantly waving away her concerns. ‘And anyway, I did say at least one of us… I could do with someone covering my back… from the looks of it, I’m going to need it.’

Fran absentmindedly patted Bella as she looked at the scene just beyond the safety of the cart’s walls.

‘Kai, swop places with Tom,’ she finally said, reaching past Dave to pull free a crowbar secured to the wall behind him. ‘You’re driving.’

‘Fran, I didn’t mean…’ Tom started to say.

‘If not me, who else?’ she simply replied, raising her eyebrows questioningly.

With her words, Tom’s gaze surreptitiously moved from one face in the cart to the next. Peter and Riley were instantly dismissed, as was Jane and even Kai, which left Dave and his brother, Max, as the only other viable options. Despite Tom having a good feeling about Dave as a man, he knew Dave’s place was with his small family and anyway, if Tom could help keep this family together, a tiny piece of old world normality in a new world full of insanity, then he would do whatever he could to protect it.

‘For fuck’s sake, just make sure you stay close,’ he finally whispered, realising as much as he hated Fran being in danger, he didn’t fancy trusting his life in Max’s hands. ‘I’ll shift the gate and when I’m done we’ll both make a quick sprint down the causeway. If we’re lucky we’ll be done before too many of them notice we’re even there… you just stop them from biting my arse off in the meantime… Deal?’

‘Deal,’ she agreed with a sharp nod, a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.

‘And at least we’ll be giving whoever’s up on the roof a chance,’ whispered Dave, his anxious stare drifting to the flat roof and the unseen survivor who had somehow escaped the Dead and their savage hunger.

‘Let’s hope they take it,’ muttered Jane, nervously taking her husband’s hand in her own for comfort.

After a few minutes of preparation, Fran found herself sat closely behind Tom, her fingers flexing and un-flexing about the cool metal of the crowbar in her grasp.

‘Ready?’ Tom whispered, glancing back at her.

‘Let’s do this,’ she replied, her fingers tightening one last time.

Without waiting for anything more to be said, Tom slowly slid aside the internal bolt of the hatch, pushed it open and silently dropped to a road below. No sooner was he free of the confines of the cart than his hands began to itch to feel the weight of his sickles once again.

‘Tom,’ his wife called playfully from beyond the grave, her words drifting to him as if on a breeze, ‘you want to make us happy, don’t you, Tom?’

Tom was about open his mouth to reply when Fran dropped down next to him, breaking the ghostly spell being cast over him by his own tortured mind. Knowing now was not the time to lose himself he tightly clenched his fists, the sharp stab of pain of his fingernails digging into his palms forcing him to concentrate as he began to slowly edge toward the front of the cart. For the moment their luck seemed to be holding and as Tom stole a cautious glance at the cadaverous crowd currently trying to claw their way up the sheer face of the building, which he noticed had once been offices for the harbour master, he realised there may just be a slim chance that he could actually get to the gate unnoticed after all.

Not wanting to miss the slim window of opportunity presented to him, Tom suddenly darted forward, leaving both the safety of the cart and a slightly startled Fran, behind him.

‘Christ!’ Fran inadvertently cursed under her breath, breaking cover to stealthily follow Tom the four or so metres past Star to the closed gate.

Slowly sidestepping her way, Fran nervously watched the Dead crowd, knowing that at any moment one could turn its head and she would find herself fighting for her very life. She couldn’t help but look from one decaying cadaver to the next, each seemingly more pathetic and rancid than its neighbour and wondered just which of them would be the first to realise that the very thing they desired stood open and exposed behind them. Beside her she heard Tom trying to silently unhook the latch securing the gate, the eventual gentle ‘clink’ of metal on metal the only sign he had succeeded. Praying that whoever lived on St Michael’s mount kept the gate hinges well-oiled, Fran took a few tentative steps backwards to allow Tom to pull the gate open.

With her shallow breathing and the loud hammering of her heart thumping in her ears the only sounds to compete with the mournful cries of the Dead, Fran continued to move backwards as quietly as she could, mirroring Tom’s movements as he silently swung towards her. It was almost half way open when she allowed her gaze to flick momentarily away from the Dead and over to Tom. Catching her eye, he winked back at her while, his mouth briefly twitching with a somewhat strained smile. It was at that precise moment that a long metal bolt that Tom thought had been secured in an ‘up’ position decided to fall. With a loud ‘clang’ the bolt hit the road surface, swiftly followed by a seemingly louder ‘squeal’ as the movement of the gate caused it to scrape a few centimetres across the concrete.

Instantly Fran’s gaze darted back to the Dead and the inevitable turning of film covered eyes to greet her.

‘Tom!’ she hissed, her own eyes widening in horror.

‘I know,’ he said without even looking back while he struggled to pull the bolt back into place.

‘Tom!’ she repeated, instinctively changing the position of her feet to put her in a more defensive stance.

‘I know!’ he growled again, unsure why the bolt was refusing to budge.

‘Hurry!’ she continued, watching as a Dead woman, her chest a riot of creeping mould, was the first to take shaky step away from the wall.

‘What the fuck!’ spat Tom, giving the gate a hard shove, only for his efforts to be rewarded with another high pitched squeal. ‘Why won’t you budge, you bastard thing!’

Tearing her eyes from the Dead woman who had been joined in her advancement by many of her decaying comrades, Fran glanced down at the bolt and instantly saw what the problem was; wedged tightly under the metal tip of the bolt was a small triangular chip of stone.

‘Step back!’ she warned, barely giving Tom a second’s notice before landing a hard kick at the base of the gate.

With a ‘screech’ and a juddering ringing of metal, the bolt was abruptly dislodged sending the gate slamming back into Tom’s grasp.

‘Come on!’ said Fran, grabbing hold of the top rung of the gate while making sure to kick aside the small stone.

Together Tom and Fran pushed and pulled the gate open, all the while well-aware that with each second that passed the Dead and their own possible deaths drew closer.

‘That’s it!’ cried Fran, the bolt finally clicking home into its channel when the gate was fully open. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

Of course Tom didn’t need to be told twice. Already his hands were reaching back to slip free the two curved blades positioned on his back from their harnesses. Darting back around the gate and barely a step behind Tom, Fran marvelled at the speed with which the man dispatched the Dead in his path. Limbs fell and heads rolled with each slash of his blades but if she was to think their escape was to be that easy she was about to be sorely disappointed. For even as Tom swiped at the arm of a male corpse dressed in the stinking remains of a once expensive business suit, a smaller female cadaver somehow managed to slip under the arc of his swing; her cannibalistic attention immediately fixing on Fran. Startled for but a second by the Dead woman’s sudden appearance, Fran went to take a small step back to give herself room to strike with her crowbar. Unfortunately the emaciated corpse of a six year old boy had doggedly made its way unnoticed around the side of the cart behind her and as she stepped back they collided; sending them both tumbling backwards onto the concrete slipway.

Landing awkwardly on the Dead child’s legs and torso, Fran felt and heard the boy’s brittle bones sickeningly snapping beneath her weight. Yet she pushed aside her revulsion and any pity she may have felt, for she knew she could spare none on this creature. As sure as night followed day it would gladly bite, rip and tear into her, condemning her to follow it in its unending search for living flesh to feast upon. Determined to avoid this nightmare existence just yet, Fran spared a few precious seconds to use the end of the crowbar to stab fiercely at the struggling young boy’s cadaver but with the end of the metal bar only skidding across his shattered cheek bone to rupture his left eye, Fran knew she didn’t have time to grant him a final death, not before the short Dead woman was surely upon her. So with a yell of anger she slammed her clenched fist hard into his small chest; knocking him momentarily back down to ground.

Briefly creating some much needed space between herself and the snapping Dead boy beneath her, Fran used the minuscule respite to push herself quickly to her feet. As it was, she only just managed to avoid the grasp of the lunging Dead woman, her blackened decaying fingers brushing sickeningly close to her face as Fran twisted to kick out at the woman’s corpse. The force of here blow was such that it sent the woman’s rotting shell effortlessly flying backwards into the open arms of her Dead comrades shuffling ever closer behind her.

‘Christ, Tom!’ Fran began to say, her head spinning as she sought the man who only moments ago had been but a few steps ahead of her.

But in the couple of seconds that she had found herself fighting with the Dead, both Tom and the cart had already advanced well beyond her reach and even as she frantically looked for a way to close the gap between them, more of the hungry corpses slowly ambled into what little clear space remained; cutting her off completely.

‘Shit!’ she spat, knowing if she wanted to live she needed to get moving.     

Out the corner of her eye she noticed the Dead boy was slowly pushing himself back on his feet and with rest of the cadaverous crowd almost within striking distance, she knew her options were running out, fast.

‘You can do this, Frannie,’ came her father’s voice, so much like that of Tom’s wife only at the same time, quite different.

For unlike with Tom, it wasn’t his voice that she heard but rather the ghost of a memory; a memory that had suddenly risen to the surface of her mind. He had spoken these very words to her many years before. Even now as her eyes flitted from one corpse to the next looking for a way out, she could almost feel her father’s comforting hand on her shoulder and the whisper of his breath at her ear.