Star Drawn Saga (Book 2): Lost Among The Dead (3 page)

‘Oh, Wendy,’ said Emma, rushing to her sister’s side to pull her into a tight embrace. ‘I had to… I did it for you, Wendy… I couldn’t let him hurt you… I could never let him hurt you.’

And as Emma hugged her traumatised sister, safe in the knowledge she had saved her from the fate she herself had suffered, Wendy calmly looked down at the man who had been a father to her. She looked at his crumpled and blood covered shell, she studied the torn and ripped flesh about his neck and breathed in the coppery scent of his blood. And then, still standing in her sister’s arms, barely registering the cooed and whispered reassurances being spoken, Wendy tentatively licked her blood covered lips and smiled.

***

Chapter 1:

Just over three years later:

‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Fran muttered, her head spinning back and forth as she looked for inspiration, her words punctuated by the sound of moaning and the hammering of fists against the locked bedroom door. ‘I knew it was a bad idea. I knew we were too close to that village.’

‘This is b…bolted to the w…wall,’ stammered Kai, abandoning his impromptu attempt to use the large ornately carved wardrobe to barricade the door. ‘We’re going to have to make a j…jump for it.’

‘Crap!’ spat Fran, knowing that the high ceilinged rooms with their elaborately moulded plaster surrounds, which had appeared so elegant to her the evening before, now only added to their problems. Darting to one of the bedroom windows, Fran used both hands to grab fistfuls of fabric to pull aside the heavy but moth-eaten curtains. ‘Last thing we need is a broken leg with those things swarming the place… Tom?’ she continued, calling over her shoulder to the older man by the door, hopeful for some reassurance that it was still holding.

‘Soon,’ she heard him whisper, yet although he was standing with his back to her, his fists clenched fiercely about the handles of his two wickedly sharp sickles, she somehow knew he wasn’t talking to her.

‘Tom!’ she repeated, this time raising her voice, hopeful her tone would break though the ghostly reality his mind now eagerly wrapped itself in.

With a clatter of curtain rings knocking against each other, she yanked one of the curtains to one side, instantly piercing the shadows of the bedroom with a blinding shard of bright morning sunlight.

‘The door, Tom! How much time do we have?’ she coughed, rapidly blinking as her eyes adjusted to the bright light and billowing cloud of dust that moving the curtain had released into the room.

With no coherent reply forthcoming from Tom, she found herself instinctively glancing to Kai for words of comfort but where his dark eyes normally filled her with a sense of calm, this time she was met with nothing but a look of worry and growing concern; a look she knew that mirrored her own. Even though the young man was taller and physically stronger than herself, Fran knew she still had the upper hand, she had the experience. After all, Kai was still relatively new to this world of death and the Dead; and now that he had joined the fight to survive beyond the high walls of his boarding school sanctuary, it fell to her and the knowledge she had gathered over the last five years to get them through the next few minutes… hopefully alive.

‘Kai, we’ve got to…’ she began to say, breaking eye contact with him to look back at the window. ‘Oh…’ she suddenly faltered, finding not the window in front of her she had expected, but a set of floor to ceiling glass panelled doors that opened out onto a shallow Juliet balcony. ‘Now, I don’t suppose…’ she continued, reaching for a slightly tarnished brass door handle.

After a few futile attempts at the handle, trying to open the door, Fran took a step back.

‘Well of course not… that’d just be too easy,’ she grumbled, gesturing with her hands for Kai to take a step back as she prepared to land a sharp side kick at the door and hopefully break the lock.

‘W…wait!’ Kai interrupted, placing a hand on her shoulder before side stepping in front of her to reach up and release an until then unnoticed bolt set high on the door frame.

Giving him a brief look that screamed ‘Smart arse’, Fran returned to try the handle for a second time and was rewarded this time with click of the lock turning.

‘Thanks,’ she mumbled, swiftly pulling the door open towards her.

Yet her relief was to be short lived, for no sooner has she opened it wide enough for her to step through then the terrifying sound of wood splintering behind her filled the room. Instantly both she and Kai spun to locate its source.

‘Fuck!’ she gasped, her eyes growing wide as she beheld the large crack now running through one of the upper panels of the door.

With each pound of a Dead fist on the other side the cracked panel shook, bending inward to splinter just that bit more and soon the sickening stench of slowly rotting flesh began to permeate the room, wafting in and around them, like some unseen spectre, coating their tongues and nostrils with a film of decaying death.

‘W…whatever you’ve got p…planned…’ Kai started to say, at last tearing his eyes from the rattling door, just as Fran spoke.

‘Kai, take the back of my belt,’ she began, stepping out onto the shallow balcony and already lifting one leg over the thin railing. ‘I’m going to lean out, see if I can grab hold of that branch. Then I’ll get the grapple from the cart and you can both climb down.’

‘You sure it’ll take your w…weight?’ he asked, his face creasing with concern as he looked from the worryingly thin branch down to the overgrown garden below and the lone hungry cadaver already pawing at the base of the tree looking back up at him.

‘No, not really,’ she replied, swinging her other leg over the railing with decidedly more confidence and bravado than she felt, ‘but what choice do we have, it clearly won’t take yours… and no-one’s jumping… we can’t risk it.’

For a split second, Kai locked eyes with the young woman he loved and wished there was another way, a way he could take her place. But Fran was right, she was their only hope if they wanted to survive this and it would be her skills and knowledge that would save them.

‘Okay,’ he simply said with a nod, stepping up behind her to slip his fingers around the back of her belt. ‘Just b…be careful.’

‘Aren’t I always,’ she mumbled, trying to ignore the distracting sensation of Kai’s fingers as they brushed against the soft skin at the base of her back.

‘No,’ said Kai to himself, bracing his legs to take the strain as Fran leant forward, reaching out for the nearest branch.

‘Just a bit… further,’ she grunted, her outstretched finger tips brushing tantalizingly close to the gnarled bark of the apple tree. ‘If I can just…’

And then suddenly Kai shifted his positon a fraction, giving her that extra bit of reach she needed and with it her fingers were closing about the branch.

‘
Oh, crap!
’ she thought, instantly realizing Kai may have been right about the branch not being able to take her weight as she felt it start to bend alarmingly already.

‘Don’t let go, Kai!’ she panted, briefly glancing down before using her existing hand hold to reach out even further to a thicker part of the branch. ‘Not until I say, okay.’

‘I’ve g…got you,’ he replied, his stammer somewhat belittling the confidence the statement was meant to convey.

Fran could see the point where the branch was sturdy enough to support her, she could even visualize where she would move from branch to branch on her way down the tree but it was that small breach between where she could reach and where she needed to be that caused the problem. Falling short by the smallest of margins it may as well have been mile for all the good it did. There was no way she could make it on her own, that was clear; and then an idea struck her.

‘Kai, I need you to… to well, sort of throw me a bit,’ she said at last, knowing the look that would likely have appeared on his face. ‘Just a bit of a boost that’s all,’ she rushed on to say before he could protest. ‘Just to be sure I can get a hand hold far enough along the branch.’

She could feel the slight movement of his knuckles against the skin on her back, his grip on her subconsciously tightening, and as much as she was touched by this instinctive symbol of just how much he thought of her, she knew now was not the time.

‘Kai, we don’t have…’ she started to say; about to insist they didn’t have time for her to argue her case.

‘Okay,’ he simply said, cutting her off as he released his anchoring hold of the balcony rail to now take her belt in both hands. ‘Say w…when.’

‘Oh,’ she said, caught a little off guard that he had agreed so readily, Fran found herself second guessing herself.

Looking down at the Dead man at the base of the tree below her, his grey sallow skin hanging loose and tattered about his gaunt neck, she knew she only had one shot at this. She either made this leap of faith and succeeded, or she would fall, probably hitting half a dozen branches on the way down, to end up in a pair of welcoming open arms, arms that happened to be attached to an equally welcoming open mouth.

‘Christ!’ she whispered, looking away from the Dead man to refocus her attention on the spot on the branch she needed to aim for. ‘On the count of three,’ she continued, realizing from the sounds coming from the room behind them that they didn’t have time to waste. ‘One, two, Th…’

With a grunt, Kai abruptly thrust Fran away from the edge of the balcony. Straining as his out stretched arms struggled to support her weight without actually letting go of her, he watched as Fran’s hands scrambled desperately to grab hold of the sturdier section of the branch still a fraction beyond her reach.

‘Kai!’ she started to say, knowing just by the feel of her belt digging sharply into her waist that he still had hold of her.

But then with a second cry of effort coming from behind her, Fran found the tension on her waist disappearing and for one scary second she was half being shoved and half being tossed through the air towards the tree; instantly breaching the small gap between herself and the section of the branch she knew would hold her weight.

‘Jesus!’ she gasped, scrabbling frantically to find a secure grip just as her legs collided painfully against a lower branch and her body slammed into the sturdy trunk.

‘Fran!’ cried Kai, horrified that she may be about to lose her fleeting handhold.

But no sooner had her name left his lips than Fran’s grip tightened about the branch, saving her from the nasty and possibly fatal fall.

‘I’m… I’m okay, Kai, I’m okay,’ she panted, trying to ignore the alarmingly loud hammering of her heart while turning her head a fraction to briefly look back at him. ‘I’m okay,’ she continued, her words this time sounding more like a question as she couldn’t help but glance worryingly down to the Dead man below her.

‘Just b…be careful,’ she heard Kai call from the balcony, the sound of his concerned voice suddenly breaking the spell the hungry rotting corpse pawing at the base of the tree had seemingly cast upon her.

‘I’m okay, I’m okay,’ she repeated again, a little more conviction finally creeping into her voice when her foot tentatively found welcome purchase on the protruding stub of a lower branch.

Slowly she shuffled her foot along the branch, cautiously moving it closer to a point where she felt sure it could cope with more of her weight resting on it. Then, once she knew she wasn’t about to plummet to her death, Fran took a few precious seconds to take some deep steadying breaths; knowing she would need to calm herself and the wild drumming in her chest before she started her journey down the tree to deal with the putrid welcome that awaited her.

***

‘
They’re coming, Daddy
,’ his youngest daughter squealed with glee.

‘I know, Sweat-pea, I know,’ Tom muttered in reply, knowing his mumbled words would always be heard no matter how quietly he spoke them.

‘
And you’ll cut them,
’ came the voice of her elder sister, the nine year old trying to sound so grown up and serious despite there being only a few years between her and her sibling, ‘
won’t you, Daddy? You’ll cut them and make them pay for what they did
?’

‘Yes,’ Tom replied, her words twisting like a knife in his heart. ‘Yes, Daddy will make them pay… doesn’t he always make them pay?’

‘
And don’t we deserve that much?’
his wife asked, her rage roiling and bubbling, barely held in check beneath her words.

‘Carol, I…’ Tom started to say, his gaze never leaving the violently shaking and rattling door in front of him.

‘
After what they did to our babies, Tom… how they tore into them, ripping them to pieces in front of me, my beautiful babies,
’ she hissed, knowing her words would tear at the fabric of her husband’s soul. ‘A
nd you weren’t there… were you, Tom? Where were you when those monsters fed upon our children, fed upon me… we were alone and you weren’t there,
’ she continued, her resentment for his very survival dripping from every word.

‘I… I was looking for food,’ he started to say, his guilt bringing fresh tears to his eyes; tears of pain from an old and endlessly self-inflicted wound. ‘You know that... if I had only known… if I…’

‘
And we only ask this one thing of you,
’ his wife continued, her demanding voice whispering with such contempt that he could almost feel her cold breath against his ear. ‘
Make… them… pay.’

‘Make them pay,’ he blindly repeated, knowing once again he was losing his hold on reality but at the same time welcoming the numbing blanket of the bloody carnage to follow that was slowly enveloping him.

And he knew he would be true to his word, he would always make the Dead pay for what they had done. Ever since that terrible afternoon when he had returned to the abandoned cottage that he and his family had made their home, only to find the Dead had reduced those he loved to little more than torn and bloody nightmares, he had made them pay; each and every one of them. On some level Tom knew the pain his family has suffered, as horrific as it was, had at least been fleeting and had ended in oblivion but his own on the other hand, his was a self-imposed constant. This was the price he paid for his survival and he paid it willingly. His pain had woven itself about him, becoming part of who he was. For when, grief stricken and exhausted by loss, he had first held the two curved blades in his limp hands, knowing he would have to hunt down and end the unnatural existence forced upon his wife and children, something had fractured within his psyche, changing the makeup of both his mind and his reality in one devastating swoop.