Burden of Survival: Killing the Dead : Season Two (8 page)

Half way to the road the smell hit. Rotting meat and human waste. The urge to gag was always there when you first encountered the stench, no matter how many times you’d smelt it before. It always seemed to linger at the back of your throat.

We reached the stone wall without being noticed and I glanced to my right to see Jenny and Gregg crouched with their backs against it further along. I risked a look over the wall and ducked back after a quick head count. At least thirty zombies.

It wasn’t too many for us to handle, we could split their focus by attacking the group from both sides. The narrow confines of the road would work in our favour and so long as they didn’t make too much noise, we could do it without drawing the attention of more.

I flashed a manic grin at Pat and rose to my feet. I was over the wall in seconds and my knife plunged through the skull of the closest zombie before they even knew I was there. Pat was beside me in an instant and moans rose ahead as Jenny and Gregg joined the battle.

Dark blood sprayed as my knife buried to the hilt in the skull of a second zombie. I swore as it refused to come free as a third reached for me. Gabby hit it with her club as I placed one booted foot on the chest of the second and pulled at my knife handle. It came free with a slurping sound that even I found disturbing.

A nod of thanks for Gabby was all I could do before misshapen fingers clawed at my arm. With a hard shove the zombie fell back against another and I stepped forward to deliver a killing blow. My knife went through the eye of a third, the temple of a fourth and my booted foot crushed the skull of a fifth. Then it was all over.

Congratulatory smiles were shared by my companions as I looked inside and found, nothing. I was hollow. No joy, no pleasure, no more excitement than that provided by cutting logs.

I spat to clear my throat and wiped my blade carefully on the tattered cloth worn by one of the zombies. It looked to have once been a shirt and wasn’t too soiled. The others cleaned their own weapons as best they could and without a word I set off away from the road.

They soon followed on behind, their noise thankfully silenced as we aimed to once again avoid being noticed. I searched inside of myself as I walked but could find nothing. The hollow remained, a dark emptiness that threatened to consume me.

Something needed to be done to fill that great empty hole. I had to do something and the only thing I could think of was to kill someone and soon. To feel the pleasure of taking a life, to watch as they died and finally feel something.

With dark thoughts filling my mind we walked. Through the trees old and new, trampling heather and pushing through bramble and nettle. We walked in silence punctuated only once by the sharp exhalation as sharp thorns pierced Greggs clothing and tore his flesh.

We approached the lake but avoided leaving the cover of the woods to walk along its shore. The road that ran by its side had more than one group of undead walking its length. More than I’d expected to find and a likely reason for why the Coniston people hadn’t shown up.

Night was fast approaching and I knew we’d have to find somewhere to stay. Ordinarily it would be Hawkshead but so many of the zombies were headed that way that I didn’t think that was going to happen. Instead, I led them deeper into the woods, away from the lake.

My idea was to find somewhere far enough away from the road that we were unlikely to have any zombies stumble into us in the dark. That was the idea anyway.

“What the hell!” Pat said as we came upon the clearing.

Further quiet exclamations came from the others as we all stared. I scanned the thick screen of bushes opposite us and listened, tense for any sign of ambush. When I was sure we were alone, I crouched down and picked up one of the hundreds of bones that littered the ground.

Chapter 10

Lily

“You don’t know what you’re talking about?” I said. My heart beat increased as panic filled me and I didn’t know whether to slap her or scream.

“Sit down,” she instructed and I reluctantly did so. “I don’t mean to imply he’s bored with you.”

“Really!”
I bet.

“Not at all,” she said with a smug grin that I truly wanted to slap off of her face. “He’s bored with all this though.”

Becky waved her arm in a gesture that encompassed the entire island and I glared at her as I waited for her to continue. I’d be damned if I was going to ask her to explain more of her nonsense.

“One of the things I loved about my job was the research,” she said. Her sudden change of tack again was, I realised, designed to throw off the person she was talking to. I refused to play her game and waited for her to get to the point.

“During my many long hours of research, I read a great deal about what made a killer,” she paused as though waiting for a response. I waited silently for her to continue. “Do you know why most of them get caught?”

She seemed to require a response before she’d continue so I shook my head the barest amount I needed to. She still smiled as though she’d won a victory.
Bitch.

“They get caught because they can’t stop,” Becky said. “Whatever drives them to kill in the first place, and it can be any number of things. That urge grows and becomes more insistent. They lose their control and end up getting caught because they can’t hold back when they need to.”

“He’s not like that,” I said. My need to defend him apparently greater than my need to not respond to the hateful woman.

“Of course he is, they all are. In fact I’m surprised he’s held off so long while stuck on this island.”

“Why? He wouldn’t kill anyone here.”

“And why is that?” she asked. “I mean most of the sociopaths and psychopaths you find during a catastrophe take full advantage of other peoples’ misery. Why not your pet killer? Why isn’t he leading a band of thugs, raising hell with any survivors? Just what hold do you have over him?”

She shook her head as though not expecting an answer and pressed on.

“Whatever the reasons, he is behaving but its tearing at him,” she said. “He’s like a trapped animal and any day now he’ll turn on his captors.”

“I know him, you don’t,” I said hotly. It was a struggle to maintain my grip on my temper. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“What do you see in him?” she asked, changing tack once again. “He’s handsome enough I suppose, but hardly a conversationalist or someone you can share your thoughts and feelings with.”

“None of your business,” I snapped.

“No doubt,” she said with a smile. “I considered asking him to come with us.”

She smiled at my look of surprise and wagged a finger at me.

“You have no need to be jealous,” she said. “It would have been purely for the protection he’d bring.”

“Well go and ask him then, see how far that gets you.”

“Oh no,” she said. “It was readily apparent that you are the reason he’s behaving. Whatever you’ve got over him is a leash I don’t share. There’d be nothing stopping him from turning on me.”

It was my turn to smile. She ignored it and stretched before pushing herself up and leaning forward on the stone parapet wall that ran around the dome. She stared down at the people milling about and the bonfire of dead bodies that was still burning before turning back to me.

“He’s struggling,” she said quietly. “I can see and so can others. It’s part of the reason they’re so scared of him. Somewhere inside of themselves is the knowledge that he’ll turn on them.”

“But he won’t,” I said.
He promised me.

“The pleasure he finds with you,” Becky said. “Is nothing compared to that thrill he’ll get from killing; I imagine the zombies worked for a while but even they’re becoming uninteresting.”

Despite myself I was starting to listen to her. She was making some kind of sense and he had been distracted lately, I’d seen that.

“What will you do if he kills someone?” the sudden question took me by surprise and I blinked rapidly as I sought an answer.

“He won’t,” I said but even I could hear how weak that sounded.

“Imagine if he does,” she pressed. “What if someone said something to him at the wrong time and he lost control? The council would either have him executed or force him to leave. What would you do?”

“I don’t know,” I finally admitted. It was a question I’d asked myself more than once since he’d made the promise. In the early days the answer was easy, I’d leave him to his fate. Now though, with what had grown between us I couldn’t say whether I’d be able to.

“It would destroy you,” Becky said. “You’re a good person. The things you’ve done for the community here, the people you’ve saved and given hope to… it’s astounding and not something I expected to find.”

“You want to save everyone,” she pressed. “I can see that but he doesn’t. You are polar opposites and why that works for you I don’t know, it’s none of my business. I can see though that it won’t keep working. Something will give and it will destroy you both.”

“Your solution is to go with you no doubt,” I said with a sneer.

“Of course it is! I’m not claiming it will be a long term solution but for now, giving him a challenge and an enemy to face. Giving him the ability to do that thing he’s craving… well, it gives you a chance at least.”

A sudden burst of laughter escaped me and I hated how bitter it sounded. The way she’d gone about it was wrong but her words did make sense. I knew that I could really dislike her for that.

“I never expected to fall in love with him,” I said.

She came back to settle onto the roof beside me, not so close as to be intrusive but close enough to be there if I needed her.

“What about him?”

“It’s complicated and if pressed I don’t think he’d be able to even recognise it but I think… yeah, I think he loves me.”

“In the course of my research I met a few people like him,” she said. “Each and every one of them cared only for one person. Themselves.”

She put her arm around my shoulder in a comforting gesture that I was about to shrug off when she spoke again.

“I don’t see that in him,” she said. “It’s fairly plain to see that he does care about you. Why else would he suffer being trapped in this cage when he clearly recognises it is a cage?”

“You think?”

“My friend downstairs, Harry. He’s similar to your pet killer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Harry was in the army for a number of years. He enjoyed it so much because early on he found he liked killing people.”

I looked at her in surprise and she smiled back at me.

“He’s not quite the same as your pet,” she said. “He enjoys the killing but he has a need for orders. He wouldn’t go off and starting slicing people up on a night, no, he likes to be told who to kill.”

“So he obeys you?”

“Oh no,” Becky said with a guffaw of laughter. “We are helping each other at the moment. We both want to get to the naval forces that landed in Scotland and he knows as well as I do that we can’t do that alone.”

“So back to this,” I said with a sigh. “You want me to leave my people here and come with you so that Ryan will too.”

“Don’t forget Cass and her brother,” she said with a wide smile. “He is likely as immune as she and the baby probably is too. The three of them and my brothers’ research may actually be enough to find a cure for this disease that ravages the world.”

“I don’t know,” I whispered though deep down, I think I actually knew what I’d have to do.

“Take some time and talk to your pet,” she said. “We’re leaving at the end of the week and I want you to come with us. If you don’t, then we’ll still go. Of course we’ll likely die and the world will remain the same.”

“No pressure there then,”
bitch.

Becky grinned and positively bounced to her feet. She’d made her point and made it well, she knew she had me as much as she probably knew I really disliked her right then. It didn’t seem to faze her though.

“I wonder if I could find a plane,” she mused as she gazed out over the lake. “It would certainly make life easier.”

“You crashed your last plane,” I pointed out with maybe a little more malice than needed.

“Oh pish,” she said as she waved her hand. “Details darling, just details.”

“No promises,” I said with a sigh as I pushed myself to my feet. Time to re-join the rest of the community. “I’ll talk to him… what’s that?”

Across the water a dark shape was moving slowly with the current almost invisible in the last of the days light. I let out a gasp as I realised what it was and ran to raise the alarm as the zombie filled raft made its slow way toward us.

Chapter 11

Ryan

I picked up one of the bones and held it in my hand, turning it this way and that as I studied it in the little light that filtered through the new leaves covering the tree branches.

All across the bone was a distinctive pattern. Small puncture marks, gouges and double arch punctures on the edge of the bone. It was the pattern one would expect to see on bone that had been chewed upon.

“Someone had a feast,” I said.

The others were staring around the clearing and the scattered bones with looks that ranged from disgust to fear. It was an almost visceral reaction in them at the sight of so many human bones.

“Who did this?” Gregg demanded.

“No idea,” I said, though I had my suspicions. “The bones look fairly weathered so I guess this isn’t too recent.”

“How long?” Pat asked.

“A month, maybe two. Likely in the worst part of winter.”

“These all belonged to people,” Gabby said quietly as she stepped out into the clearing. She placed her feet carefully so as not to disturb the bones as much as possible. As she walked, she’d pause occasionally to peer down at something or other before moving on.

“You think the living did this or the undead?” Pat asked in his usual quiet voice.

“No idea,” Gabby said at the same time as I spoke.

“The zombies.”

“What makes you say that?” the vet asked.

I shrugged as I gestured at the enclosed clearing.

“It seems fairly clear. If the living did this, why would they do it here, in the middle of the woods? The undead would just eat wherever they found the prey.”