Zombie Kids Books : Blood Red (from Snow White) - Fables of the Undead ( zombie books fiction,zombie books for kids,zombie books for kids) (zombie books for kids - Fables of the Undead Book 3) (2 page)

TONIGHT:

In the Deep Forest there is a clearing. On nights like this, when the moonlight drifts down upon the treetops, the pale lunar glow settles into the clearing and seems to touch every blade of grass, every fallen leaf, every sleeping bird and crawling insect.

The animals of the forest have always been attracted to Snow White. She had such an innocence, such purity. They were not afraid of her, nor could they bear to see any harm come to her. They had tried to warn her of the old woman with the apple – the Witch Queen in disguise – but to no avail.

Snow White is dead, and the animals mourn.

But for some reason there are few animals in the clearing where Snow White’s gold-and-glass coffin is displayed. Perhaps something keeps them away. Only a lone deer is present tonight, its doe-eyes large and brown under the moonlight, and the freckles on its back like silvery stars embedded in its fur.

It loved Snow White deeply when she was alive, and so it does not flee when the glass coffin cracks. It thinks that the lovely girl has returned to life somehow, and prances over to the pale, slender arm that rises from amidst the shattered canopy of the glass coffin.

The girl that had been Snow White reaches out for the deer. The deer comes closer, unknowingly innocent. Snow White tears out its throat with her teeth.

CHAPTER TWO: SOME OF SEVEN DEATHS

In which an undead princess is awakened to her new, ungodly appetites; and the little men fight for their lives.

Hawthawn is one of two brothers. He and Sorfius are twins, born within seconds of each other. But, like the other five men who live in the cottage, they were born deformed: barely four feet tall, stocky, with large hands and boxlike faces. Cast out of the white city of Everedge, over which the Queen’s black castle looms like a stone trident, he and the other little men eventually came to terms with the bigotry of Everedge’s citizens and learned to be happy together in the Deep Forest.

Hawthawn always denies it, but the others think of him as their saviour. It was Hawthawn, eternally happy, who saw the silver lining in their situation and turned their moods around. Well, all but Griff, who is the grouchiest of the lot and will probably never change. But still, the seven men love one another like brothers, the result of their adversity. Hawthawn wouldn’t have it any other way.

But then came Snow White. She had tricked the guardsman into letting her go, but she had become lost and the dark forest had nearly frightened her to death. With nowhere else for her to go, Hawthawn had persuaded the others to adopt her as their caretaker. It was wonderful to have a woman around the house, after all.

Hawthawn has just come back from dropping off today’s bounty. They have all worked hard in the mine, except for Sorfius, who has been so down with grief that he couldn’t bear to climb out of bed in this morning. Snow White’s death has crippled them all, and it will just take Sorfius a little longer than it would everyone else. He’s always been a drowsy one, slow on the uptake. Hawthawn won’t be surprised if he finds Sorfius still in bed, asleep.

Lo and behold, there Sorfius is now: snoring away in front of the cottage, slumped against the wall with his chin on his chest. Perhaps he’s dreaming of the girl, thinks Hawthawn. He’s dreamt of her two nights in a row.

“Sorfius!” he bellows, switching his pickax to his other hand. “Sorfius – or should I call you Snore-fius? Wake up, brother!”

Sorfius doesn’t move. Hawthawn approaches in the darkness. Something doesn’t feel right. Sorfius’ chest isn’t rising and falling in his sleep. And besides, it’s a funny place to take a nap…

Then Hawthawn sees the dark black stain spread down his brother’s chest. The red smears on his face and hands. The gaping black gash across his neck. The way he’s folded over himself like a sack of rocks…

Hawthawn drops to his knees beside the corpse of his brother, wailing into the night. What could have done this to poor, sleepy Sorfius? His throat is torn out like a wild animal’s dinner, and the meat of his neck, cheeks and shoulders has been eaten away. Hawthawn knows the spoor of wild animals, and these are not wolf-bites. Besides, there are no claw marks on the body.

“What spawn of Heck could have done this!?” he cries.

A shadow falls across the two little men. Hawthawn looks up. His eyes widen and his mouth gapes.

“Can it be?” he says tremulously, an almost-forgotten smile rising on his face. “Is it you, girl – our blessed Snow White?”

The girl in the shadow of the tree says nothing. Her body is motionless in the gloom. Moonlight catches the edge of her tattered blue dress, but nothing else. The rest of her is hidden deep within darkness, as though made of it.

“It’s me!” says the little man, getting to his feet. His old joints creak as he stands and steps towards the girl. “Snow White? It’s me, Hawthawn! How is it possible? But, oh – poor Sorfius! Why must a miracle be balanced by tragedy?”

Hawthawn rushes to the tree, too ecstatic at seeing the young girl alive to think clearly. He should have noticed the signs: the tilted head, as though her neck hasn’t the strength to stay upright, and the twisted limbs. Her legs are turned towards one another, and stiff with rigor mortis. One of her arms is a crooked bird’s wing held high by her breast. When she moves, it is with a slow, agonized gait, dragging one foot in the dirt.

“Snow White…?”

Hawthawn stops. There is something horribly out of place here…!

His realization comes too late. The living corpse is upon him. He has only a few seconds to see how the girl’s eyes are filmed over by cataracts, and how her scalp has been torn by glass and now hangs over her ear in a grisly flap. The same wound extends down her cheek, through which her teeth are visible, and across her lower jaw. The skin is peeled away to reveal her gums and teeth, eradicating her bottom lip completely.

What is left of her mouth is dark and glistening with fresh blood – Sorfius’ blood. It drips from her chin onto her white chest and has stained her satin dress black. Her hands, turned to claws, scrape at Hawthawn’s throat. There is no escape for the old man. Using her preternatural strength, she overpowers him and sinks her teeth into his shoulder, tearing away a chunk of flesh. Hot blood squirts across Hawthawn’s cheek.

He hasn’t realised yet that he is already dead.

Inside the cottage, Bostor is awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling. The others are sound asleep, but sleep eludes Bostor. He has always been a sensitive type. He cannot stop thinking about poor dead Snow White.

It’s for this reason that Bostor is the first to hear the screams. He jerks upright in his cot, trying to listen. All he can hear are the snores of his friends, and the bunged-up snuffling of Sion, who has permanently blocked sinuses. Even the forest seems quiet tonight. But if so, what was that n—?

There! Another scream! Bostor is sure about it this time. It was loud enough to wake the others, who sit up in their cots rubbing their eyes and mumbling.

“What the Heck is that?” snaps Griff. “Can’t a man sleep anymore?”

“I think it was Hawthawn,” Bostor tells the dark room. “Screaming … A blood-curdling scream! What could be the matter?”

The Doc, frowning, climbs to the window in his nightshirt and peers through the murky glass. “I can’t see anything. It must have come from the front of the cottage. We should ingestivate – um, investigate.”

“You gotta be kiddin’,” says Griff. “It was prob’ly just an owl.”

A low, raspy groan echoes through the night, as though a wounded creature is gasping for its last breath. It makes the little men’s skin shrink on their bodies to hear it.

“Th-that’s no owl!” says Bostor. “I’m not going! You go, Griff.”

“Forget it, it was the Doc’s brilliant idea. He can do it!”

“M-me? What about Sion? Or Daer? They should go!”

“Those idiots?” sniffs Griff. “They’ll get ripped to pieces in seconds by whatever’s out there. Quit shakin’ in yer boots – I’ll go look, an’ you lot can back me up. Right?”

“Right!” chorus the others.

Out goes Griff into the hallway, sneaking in his slippers, gown and nightcap, with a candle trembling in his hand. Griff had long ago proven himself to be the bravest of the lot of them, but even he can’t help shaking at the memory of that airy groan, as though a corpse had come to life and was howling at the moon…

The stairs creak one at a time as Griff descends into the main room. This was where Snow White made their meals; darned their clothes; danced to their instruments. She had been living with them such a short time, but she had changed their lives for the better.

The front door is still shut. A shadow moves at the window. Griff tiptoes across the kitchen and peers through the lead latticework on the glass, hoping to see a clue to the screams from outside. But there is nothing.

Gingerly he moves to the door. He is about to open it when there is a sharp noise behind him, and he whirls around with his heart in his throat – only to see the other little men standing on the staircase: his supposed ‘backup’.

“Keep quiet, will ya?” Griff rasps.

The Doc comes down for support. The others remain where they are, cowering behind the banister.

Griff takes hold of the door handle and opens it a crack. His round eye glances across the clearing, the treeline, the path … All he sees is a low, dark mass lying in the dirt a few feet away from the cottage.

“I think I see Hawthawn,” he tells the Doc. “I’m gonna go out an’ see … He looks hurt.”

The Doc nods. “I’ll wait here.”

“ ‘Course you will.”

The night air is cool and still. Neither the grass nor the trees move under the gaze of the gibbous moon. Griff listens for signs of life as he creeps out towards Hawthawn’s prone body, but hears nothing. To the left is the water trough. To the right is the shed, and the path leading to the diamond mine where they dig all day. Everything seems safe enough.

“Hawthawn?” Griff calls quietly. “That you?”

He snoops over – but soon wishes he hadn’t. Hawthawn’s body lies in a pool of thick blood, which covers his chest and arms. His head is twisted, separated from his body by two inches of exposed spinal column. The neck has been eaten away. His face is blank and grey. His skull has been shattered to a pulpy red-black heap, splattered outward.

Griff’s stomach heaves and he vomits into the grass. Someone calls, “Griff?”

“Don’t come over here!” he shouts, holding out a hand and wiping vomit from his lips with the sleeve of his tunic.

The Doctor, as usual, doesn’t listen. He runs over to tend to Hawthawn, not realising that he is long past saving. Griff is about to send him back when he sees the figure in the bloody dress lurch from around the corner of the cottage to grab the Doc from behind. Griff recognises the pale, once-beautiful face over his friend’s shoulder. It is Snow White’s face, but those are not her eyes. Snow White is gone, and Death inhabits her mutilated body.

She rips into the Doc’s neck with her teeth. The Doc screams and screams, but she had surprised him and he can’t catch his balance. He tumbles backward in a slow motion fall. By the time he is on the ground and she is on top of him, he has already lost one of his five pints of blood. His screams melt into a bubbling wail as blood wells out of his throat. He is drowning in his own life-fluid.

With the living corpse of the princess hissing and bashing the Doc’s skull against the wall, Griff runs for the door to the cottage, screaming for the others to get back inside.

But the undead girl has spun around and grabbed Griff’s leg, making him trip. She sinks her teeth into his calf, biting through cloth and skin, drawing blood.

“Griff!” screams Bostor, and he jumps out to grab Griff by his outstretched hands. Together the gang pull Griff into the cottage and away from the rasping creature with the wide open jaws and lolling, wet tongue.

He barrels into their shouts of terror and confusion, then slams the door shut behind him.

“Lock it!” he screams. “Board up the windows!”

“What the Heck is going on? Your leg…!”

“They’re dead! Sorfius, Hawthawne, the Doc – they’re all dead! An’ it’s Snow White what killed ‘em!”

“Snow White?” says Bostor. “But she’s dead, Griff!”

Griff slaps him across the face. “You don’t think I know that, you idiot? Whatever happened, she’s not all the way dead! Some evil spirit’s in her rottin’ body and it’s after us! Poor Hawthawn’s head was smashed to pieces … She ate his brain out of it…!”