Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel (6 page)

Without waiting for him to say anything else, the doomed young woman briefly nodded her thanks and then sped off in the direction of the car park. She had barely reached the barrier when a man’s voice called out what was presumably her name, causing her to falter slightly but ignoring him and certain of what she must do, she ducked under the bar and was gone.

‘Sharon!’ another unknown voice called out again, this time it was woman.

Wary of strangers, Kai reached into the cart, slowly wrapped his fingers about the handle of a long machete and making sure to keep his weapon out of sight, waited for them to make an appearance. Just as with Sharon, for Kai could only assume that had been the woman’s name, the two men, a middle-aged woman and a young boy of about eight, all looked totally surprised to find a horse and cart greeting them as they sped out from the side road in pursuit of their friend. The man in the lead abruptly skidded to a halt and locked eyes with Kai. It was clear he was trying to decide something, looking from Kai back to the woman and young boy. Then as if something suddenly slotted into place he grabbed the woman by her shoulders, stopping her.

‘You and Riley need to stay here,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder at the second, slightly older looking man, ‘Max and I will… we’ll deal with Sharon and the old man, Okay?’

‘No, Dave, I…’ the woman began to say, shaking her head.

‘Jane, you’ve got to look after Riley… please, just… just do as I ask,’ the man continued, already taking a step away from her to follow the man he had called Max.

‘Dad,’ said Riley, reaching for the man as he took a step away from the woman.

‘Look after your mum, son,’ said Dave,. ‘Uncle Max and I will be back soon… promise.’

‘And Pete?’ said Riley. ‘You’ll bring back Pete… and Bella.’

Dave’s eyes flicked briefly to his meet those of his wife and in that moment a look was shared. They both doubted Pete could have survived the attack from the old man and feared this loss would hit their son hard. 

‘Dave, we need to go!’ bellowed Max, already ducking under the car park barrier. ‘Come on!’

Dave looked at his wife and son one last time, and then as if glossing over his son’s awkward question he turned back to Kai.

‘Please… look after them!’ he said, before running to join his brother.

In their haste to catch up with Pete, his Dead grandfather and Sharon, Dave and his older brother had failed to notice the Dead woman pulling herself eagerly across the tarmac to Jane and her son. With their backs to the advancing corpse they did not understand why Kai suddenly jumped down from the cart, with a menacingly large blade in his hand.

‘No… Please!’ Jane whimpered, pulling her son close to her as she instantly imagining the worst and began to back away.

Worried the woman was about to literally walk backwards into the corpse’s open arms, Kai halted. He was about to speak when the Dead woman decided at that moment to release a deep raspy moan from her decaying lungs, alerting Jane and her son of her presence for him.

‘Jesus!’ Jane gasped, swiftly dragging her son beyond the Dead woman’s reach.

‘Oh, mum… she’s an easy one,’ said Riley, struggling to release himself from his mother’s tight hold so he could pull a hammer from a loop on his belt.

‘No, Riley… let the man deal with her,’ Jane told her son, keeping her eyes on the Dead woman who was once again trying to close the gap between them. ‘His knife is bigger… let him do it.’

‘Aww, mum!’ Riley whined, stopping just short of petulantly stamping his foot in protest.

Kai knew that Jane was probably only asking him to deal with the Dead woman not because she thought he was better armed or better skilled but rather she didn’t want to put her own son at risk when someone else, a stranger no less, was there to do the job for her. In fact Kai thought that Jane and, though he hated to admit it, probably even young Riley, would be better at dealing with the savage corpse than himself, after all they had survived the last five years among them; their unholy hunger an everyday constant.

‘St… stand b…back,’ he said, jerking his head for the woman and her son to move a little further behind him.

Raising the blade high behind him, Kai took another step closer to the Dead woman and prepared to end her unnatural existence. Looking down at her corpse, he took in every detail of her pitiful state. The grey tinged skin stretched taught across her skull, the tattered strips of flesh still clinging to her savaged torso, the blackened and broken fingers of her claw like hands and worst of all, the monstrous Dead eyes that burned with their ceaseless hunger. For a brief moment Kai wondered who this woman may have once been; what dreams had she had, what sort of life had she lived and had there even been someone with her at the end to mourn her passing. But of course he could know none of this, her story had already been written, its ending there before him to read in the decaying flesh of the limbs that even now reached beseechingly for his own. Her tale was over and yet forever unending. For she and the millions like her, still awaited that foreign hand, that unknown author, to gift them those final two words and as Kai let his blade fall, this woman’s story finally came to end; her page at last inscribed with the words ‘The End’.

Placing his boot against the side of her head for leverage, Kai yanked free the machete lodged deep in her skull, the action sending fragments of bone and a spray of dark rotting brain matter splashing across the road. After using a piece of the now lifeless corpse’s clothing to clean the worst of the gore from his blade, Kai turned back to the woman and her son and tried to think of something to say. His father may have been Thai but spending most of his life in English boarding schools had instilled Kai with the awkward standoffishness that afflicted the British in social situations with strangers. They may as well have been stood alongside each other in a lift or a busy train carriage for all the conversation that came to mind and it wasn’t until either Jane’s or Riley’s stomach made a disturbingly loud growl that Kai thought of what to say to break the tension.

‘W… would you like an a…apple?’

***

Fran’s head spun left and right, desperately searching for the terrified young man and his Dead pursuer but strangely there was no sign of them in the weed choked car park. Either side of her ran a high brick wall enclosing the space on three sides, on her right a small section of it had been reduced to rubble by the bus when it had ploughed through it, while in front of her the car park opened out on to the picturesque dunes and beach beyond. The car park itself was empty of vehicles, apart from the burnt out shell of a small burger stand and unless the young man was hiding amongst its charred remains Fran guessed he must have gone down to the beach. As if to confirm her assumption the sound of a dog barking suddenly drifted up to her through the rolling mounds of sand and tall spiky dune grass; whatever was happening, the animal was clearly distressed about something. Breaking into a run, the loose gravel crunching beneath her boots, Fran took some comfort from the weight of the hefty length metal pipe in her grasp but as she approached the edge of the car park she was even more grateful to hear Tom’s clumping footfalls were not far behind her.

‘Hold up!’ he grunted, sprinting across the car park. ‘Fran, wait for me.’

‘Try and keep up, Granddad!’ she called back to him, noticing the texture of the ground beneath her feet suddenly change from gravel to smooth slipping sand.

Glancing over her shoulder to make sure he was following, Fran was surprised to see the figure of an unknown woman entering the cark park behind him, a look of painful determination etched on her face.

‘We’ve got company!’ she called to Tom behind her, doing her best to control her descent down the steep slope of the dune. ‘She’s alive,’ she quickly added as an afterthought, not wanting Tom to misinterpret her meaning.

No matter whom the woman following them was, Fran knew they simply didn’t have time to stop and find out. If the frantic barking of the large dog and the young man’s terrified wailing were anything to go by time they were cutting it fine as it was; she only hoped she wasn’t too late.

‘Petey!’ Fran heard the woman calling from somewhere behind her, as she and Tom finally rounded a large mound of spiky grass at the base of the dunes.

‘This way,’ panted Fran, following the trail of bloody drool in the sand.

Running along the natural gullies and tracks formed between the sandy explosions of green and brown grass, Fran was wary of finding a scene of bloody carnage at every turn but thankfully she eventually slipped down the last sloping hill of golden sand and found herself out on the wide empty beach. For thirty meters or so the golden sand held sway, only finally relinquishing its hold along a tide line choked with seaweed and the flotsam and jetsam that laid sad testament of Man’s ultimate decline. After this natural demarcation the sand gave way to a salt and peppering of brown and grey shingle which led down to the softly lapping waves some forty metres away. For a second Fran was taken aback by the beauty of the seemingly endless ocean spreading out before her but with the barking Alsatian and the sound of something else a lot more terrifying growling in response snapping her back to her dark reality, she shook off her awe and sprang into action.

With Tom close on her heals and the unknown woman just behind him, Fran ran towards the first set of breakers. The thick wooden planks set deep into the sand every fifty metres along the shore were waist height and covered in huge patches of mussels and winkles. On one particular section Fran could see that some of the mussels had been caught on something as it crashed carelessly into them. Their broken shells still dripped with the perpetrator’s dark blood and knowing this most likely belonged to the Dead old man, Fran hurdled over the breaker praying she wasn’t too late.

Two things surprised her as she flew over the blood smeared wood. Firstly that the level of the sand was considerably lower on this side and secondly that despite the young man having some sort of mental disability not only had he managed to find perhaps the one hiding spot on the beach but he had also found it fast enough to save his life.

‘Shit!’ Fran spat, stumbling slightly after falling further than she had expected to.

Grateful not to have twisted her ankle, Fran prepared to make her move. She had been right about the blood on the breaker belonging to the old man’s corpse, for even as she stepped silently behind him while he pounded his bloody and torn fists against the hull of an upturned rowing boat she noticed the dark shards of broken mussel shells lodged in his side. The barking Alsatian, seeming to take comfort in her presence, darted to stand by her side and began a menacing growl deep in its throat as if to show they were now a united front against the wild cadaver.

‘Just don’t get in the way, pooch,’ she muttered, taking a step toward the Dead man.

At the sound of her voice the Dead man’s head snapped round to look at her, the boat and the wailing man hidden beneath it momentarily forgotten.

‘Yeah… you want a taste of me?’ she mumbled, repositioning her length of pipe in her hands as if she was playing a deadly game of baseball.

But before the bloody cadaver had managed to take a step towards her, a dark and lethal shadow suddenly flew overhead, twin arcs of silver flashing menacingly through the air.

‘Christ!’ gasped Fran, throwing herself back against the breaker while Tom landed in a crouch just in front of her.

For a moment the Alsatian by her side did not know what to make of this new arrival but as Tom rose smoothly to his full height, the sickle in his left hand already swinging out in a deadly arc, it somehow knew this man was unlike the other before it; this one smelt right, this one smelt alive.

‘Careful, mutt, ’said Fran, making a quick grab for the dog’s collar as Tom began his wild attack. 

Catching the Dead man just under the chin with a back handed swipe, Tom’s blade easily tore through skin, cartilage and tendon but unfortunately due to the awkward angle the strike left the attack just shy of completely removing the head from its shoulders.

‘I know,’ Tom muttered, once again replying to a ghostly conversation only he could hear.

With the corpse’s head now held in place by a few remaining shreds of muscle and skin, the gaping wound caused it to loll nauseatingly to one side but this had little if any effect on the Dead man’s determination to taste the living flesh almost within arm’s reach. And with its compulsion to feed forcing it to move yet even closer, the Dead man reached out with bloody hands, unaware his rightful and permanent demise was imminent.

‘Oh, J…Jesus… Pops!’ came a woman’s shaking voice from somewhere just behind Fran; the words coming broken and distorted as they forced their way past a choked back sob.

Glancing over her shoulder, Fran knew from the wide eyed look of horror spreading across the dark haired woman’s face that she had known and probably cared for the old man before them. It had been a while since Fran herself had been forced to confront the mutilated, yet still moving, corpse of someone she knew but the memory was as fresh, as raw and as horrific as if it had been only moments ago. Fran knew just what thoughts were going through the young woman’s mind; the anger, the fear and the sincere hope that the Dead had no recollection of whom or what they had once been. To even contemplate that somewhere within these stinking decaying shells, these parodies of humanity brought so low by a nameless cause, that the consciousness still somehow remained, trapped and unable to prevent the horrific acts they committed was truly the stuff of nightmares. Nightmares that every survivor was unfortunately forced to face at one point or another.