Death Plague Omnibus [Four Zombie Novels] (50 page)

I didn’t hear those soft words, I felt them. Each syllable slid through the gaps in my mind, caressing and massaging, comforting me, and as moments passed I became more aware that her voice was seducing me into doing her will. Yet my awareness didn’t halt my transition to self-destruction; on the contrary, it hastened it.

“There is a way for the both of us to reach a compromise.”

My sister gently turned my head and brushed her soft lips against mine.

“The girl wasn’t a monster, but what was to stop one of them taking her tomorrow or the day after? Human monsters were here long before the dead rose and long before the arrival of the Hunter. The Turning didn’t extinguish the original template; it brought them out into the open. We both know that, we’ve seen them, hid from them, and heard of them.”

Should I find it surprising that I heard her without my sister uttering a word? Danielle had not stopped kissing me.

“You’re terrified that now your demon is out, it’ll never go back. That’s why you want to take the coward’s way. You’re right. It won’t ever go away.” Her lips left mine. Danielle pulled back and rubbed her forefinger across my lips. “If you want really want to remember the little girl, see this moment as one more life changing moment. Give your demon what it craves, only pick and choose.”

“You mean, I hunt down the evil, twisted, and sick?”

She nodded. “Exactly that, Colin.”

Today’s sun had taken away its light, leaving long shadows that hid what remained of the girl’s corpse. Only in my case, I saw everything. My eyes took in every scrap of luminescence and showed me exactly what I’d done. Only now, I saw no crime at all, only a discarded meal. I shook my head from side to side, trying to dislodge that thought, feeling what was left of my humanity slip through my open fingers.

“They’re here, Colin. The parents are back. You know what you have to do. Finish this, finish them. They have no future.”

No matter how hard I tried, her silken suggestions coated my every opposing thought. They hadn’t seen their daughter unlike me, and their human eyes would only show them a small dark shape behind me. Not that they needed to see. They knew she was dead just by the scent of blood filling the air and by the sight of the pair of us covered in bits of the girl.

The women shrieked, her cry splitting open the sky. Instincts ripped through me, and my body was already airborne before the father had a chance to join her. In this silent world, human voices carried for miles. Within minutes, every walking corpse hearing that would be on their way to feast.

My clenched fists smashed into their jaws, splintering bones that ripped through their flesh. They both fell to their knees, side by side, their dazed eyes sailing up and down my panting body.

I no longer needed my sister’s verbal embrace to know what to do now, as my body had already woken up. My human emotions of guilt and shame that had earlier took me to the edge of self destruction had already left. I growled softly, saliva streaming down both sides of my mouth.

The last thing I heard from somewhere in the darkness was over a dozen answering calls leaving dead mouths. Their approach was of no concern, nothing was going to stop me from feeding.

***

I staggered back until my body slammed into the wall of the shipping container. “Just what the fuck did you just do to me?” I snarled, feeling and fighting that all too familiar malaise sliding over my fury.

The man in front of me shook his head. “Oh, you poor man.” Dominic hurried over and wrapped his arms around my waist. “Even now, you really have no idea. How can somebody be so blind? If you want to be truly free, you have to examine her motivations, Colin.”

“Shut up, just shut the fuck up about the past, I’m not here for a history lesson.” I pushed him away from me. I had no idea what he was talking about, nor did I have any idea how he had taken me back ten fucking years. “These clowns say you know where my sister is. Tell me now, or I swear I’ll pull your spine out of your fucking arse!”

Dominic giggled. “Oh my, you have no idea what your manly voice does to me when you get all macho!” He strolled over to Marcus and Nathaniel and placed his arms around their shoulders. “Linda, I’m sorry, but this sexy hunk of mansex will be leaving here without me fixing him.” Dominic dropped his gaze to the floor, and when he lifted his head, my blood froze. I found myself falling into a pair of bright crimson eyes. I shrieked as the floor dropped away, and my body plummeted towards an ocean of molten rock.

The blazing heat ignited my clothing, my skin charred and turned black, yet I my eyes still saw, and my voice continued to blast out my scream, even though I must be dead. The agony only ceased when my cooked carcass splashed into the magma, and blessed oblivion claimed my soul.

Chapter Nine

Expecting answers

My senses crept up on me one by one, and I welcomed their return gladly. Becoming aware meant that all I had suffered through that weird man had been a major attack upon my mind. I’d been subjected to a major mind-fuck. It unnerved me to be on the receiving end of a psychic attack of that magnitude, the disquiet made worse because the power even eclipsed my talents.

I felt warmth on my face and bright light scratching at my eyelids. As another sense funnelled through the melancholy, it became obvious that I was moving, or more to point, being carried. I couldn’t open my eyes, nor could I move any part of me, but it didn’t really matter, at least not yet.

Why panic when my body wasn’t fully powered? One aspect did make me question the motives of the ones I met, especially this Keeper. Did I really undergo a mental assault? Oh sure, it fucking felt like one, yet on the physical this Dominic showed no signs of aggression; quite the opposite, the man was making a move on me. It drew me to the conclusion that my fucked up mind drew up its own suspicious and paranoid interpretation of what he was trying to show me.

I now had sensation in my extremities. My eyes flickered open to show me dots of grey sky peeking through a heavy canopy of dark green leaves. I tilted my head back until I caught sight of light brown hair.

The sight of the woman behind me gave me some comfort, and as my eyes roved around this unexpected landscape, Linda’s ever present concerned looking expression was the only thing here that did offer me consolation.

The procession stopped beside the bank of a slow moving river. My dazed senses hadn’t asked the obvious question of how such a picturesque scene could even exist in this car crash of a town. Oh no, all that went through my cotton wool head was trying to remember if I could swim. For that fleeting moment, I honestly believed that the remaining family members were going to tip this makeshift stretcher and laugh as my body rolled into the clear water.

That never happened, so once again my two not so redeeming qualities of paranoia and suspicion were behaving like Adam and Eve’s unwanted reptilian gooseberry. Despite everything we had been through since hooking up with my unlikely comrades in arms, I still couldn’t bring myself to fully trust them.

My carriers gently lowered the stretcher, and going from their faces, both Marcus and Nathanial were glad to lose the extra weight. Linda leaned forward and stroked my left cheek then ordered the males to lift me up.

“You truly are honoured, Hunter.” The woman’s eyes had glazed over. “We all are. This is the Keeper’s private sanctum, his hidden garden.”

It took great effort not to follow her revered posture, and I had to admit, this place was a sight to behold. I wouldn’t have described it as a garden, though, more like how the Victorians would have perceived a jungle to look, pruned and semi-tame but still with that hint of danger hidden in the dense undergrowth. It wasn’t a large area, although, thanks to some clever camouflaging, this appeared huge as long as you kept your eyes at ground level. It ruined the effect if you just happened to tilt your head back.

The Keeper had grown his very impressive retreat in what used to be an open railway cutting. The blackened sheer brick walls visible behind the ever-growing vegetation stretched up until the horizontal lines kissed the blue sky. The two tunnel entrances cut into the ground were blocked off, leaving a man-sized high hole in the middle of the two tunnels.

It took my brain a while to grasp the enormity of what this meant. While the rest of the surviving humans were hiding, running, and starving whilst being hunted by the shambling dead and the likes of me, this joker was pottering about in this blocked off square, building his own little paradise. I wasn’t sure whether to applaud his genius or rip the weird freak into bite-sized chunks of meat.

I decided to go for the former. Apart from him blasting through my brains with a nuclear force hurricane, I did kinda liked the guy, and I couldn’t deny that he’d done an outstanding job here.

The family’s own feelings of awe had obviously worn off already. I watched them scurry over to a bank of small trees, their branches bursting with brightly coloured fruit. They reminded me of a troop of monkeys my Dad and I used to watch on the documentaries on TV back when I was a kid. It wouldn’t surprise me if they started grooming each other next.

I bullied my muscles into life and found enough strength and energy to clamber to my feet. A convenient tree trunk helped me stay upright as I finished my observations. Grass and a medley of low growing flowers of many colours carpeted the floor, and vines and creepers provided the canopy disguising the human build walls. A narrow path of red paving blocks surrounded the perimeter, with two paths cutting through the middle. It was on one of these paths that I noticed the woman making her way back to me, her feet sticking to the path. A difficult task, considering she’d piled her arms with fruit.

“Are you hungry, hunter?”

I thanked her and picked off a large red apple. “Your pal fried my fucking head. You do know that, yes?” I studied her face, feeling a degree of satisfaction when I saw that contented look slip away. I glared at Linda, not taking my eyes away while I pushed the tennis ball sized piece of fruit halfway into my mouth and bit down.

Unease filled her features. That made me feel so much better. I wasn’t used to humans feeling comfortable in my presence, it just wasn’t natural. “Great, so we’ve met your Keeper. He almost brain-wiped me, and you and your family are acting as though you’re on a fucking nature ramble.” The apple was delicious, and having something so sublime caressing my taste buds was playing havoc with my speech. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t find this whole experience a little disconcerting.” I whipped my arm out, my thick fingers curling around Linda’s wrist. “Thank you for the apple.” She didn’t mistake the menace in my voice.

“Please, hunter. I’m confused, too, you need to believe me.”

I was going to do no such thing. I sneaked my way into her mind, finding the pathway very easy. She knew I was there and made no effort to expel me. In fact, the woman had welcomed me into her with open arms. She was telling the truth, yet I could tell that Linda was holding something back. This time though, I’d let her just tell me. To be honest, I wasn’t too comfortable in her mind. Her immediate thoughts were beginning to distress me. It wasn’t open arms now, it was open legs.

“I know that you feel animosity towards our Keeper,” she said.

I tried to keep track of her monologue, but it took effort; I think that you’ve already figured out that my relationships with the opposite gender haven’t exactly been numerous. Believe me, getting a date when you’re a flesh eating monster living in this desolate world isn’t so easy. Her thoughts confused the fuck out of me.

She took my hand. “You need to understand Hunter. The Keeper wants rid of the other hunters as well. Those vile fuckers have wrenched the heart out of this town and in turn almost destroyed that gentle man.”

I shook my head, hoping the movement would dislodge the confusion that her thoughts had caused. There was something important here, and yet no matter how hard I tried, the pieces wouldn’t fit together. This Keeper dude had to be like me, he just had to be another hunter, no tainted human could have broken through my mental defences and subjected me to such vivid imagery. Linda’s so called gentle man was a hunter alright, and I had no doubt in my mind that he was a fucking strong one.

“I know what you are thinking Hunter. Why has he not already disposed of the unwanted intruders?”

At that precise moment the human had absolutely no idea how close she had come to me killing her.

“If I find you crawling through my mind again, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

Linda sighed heavily. “Oh, for crying out loud. I’ve been nowhere near your mind. It’s just a figure of speech. I’m a woman, remember? We have been able to tell what has been going through your minds since the dawn of our species. Think back to when you was a kid, didn’t your mum know what your father was up to?”

Linda moved back a pace. I guess that despite her cavalier reply, she still wasn’t sure whether I would punch the bitch in the throat. She did have a point, though, and mum could usually tell what dad was thinking, but I put that down to the obvious fact that they had been to together of over twenty years. After two decades, mum was bound to know what dad was thinking most of the time.

“Colin, the Keeper is unable to move away from his home, otherwise, I’m guessing that he would have already countered the threat.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

Linda shrugged. “Both, I guess. Please don’t ask me to explain why, I don’t know myself. I only know what he told me.”

The remains of my apple dropped from my hand and rolled off the red block paving and disappeared into the long grass. Danielle had always suggested that I had always been a sandwich short of a picnic, of having trouble with making connections. Well, I had certainly made the fucking connection now.

“My sister.” I looked past her at what I assumed to be the way I was carried in. “I’m such a fucking idiot. She’s the same as me, isn’t she? Danielle is another hunter.”

Linda cast her eyes down. “I’m so very sorry, Colin,” she whispered.

“And I never even fucking guessed.”

“It is the reason why we’re all in his garden. Linda ran her tongue across her lips. “It’s also the reason why you’re still breathing.”

“What?

“The Keeper had to make sure that you were what you said you were. Colin, you killed and ate two innocents. He needed to share your experience.” Linda took a deep breath. “Going from how he reacted, I don’t think that he was prepared for that. He’s like you as well, although I think you’ve already guessed that. Unlike you, he’s never feasted. Not once.”

I shuddered, trying to imagine what it must have been like for him. The first feast is always the best. It’s like getting your first hit;  the comedown is a bastard, leaving you feeling like death. Looking back, it must have been exactly what Danielle had planned to happen. No bloody wonder I felt like I’d just fallen into a volcano. Even a second hand feasting experience must have sent the Keeper slightly loopy, especially if he’d never tasted.

“She wasn’t taken from me, the bitch chose to leave. She left me to defend for myself.” I wanted to cry, to shout, to break something. Most of all though, I wished I could erase every day that I’d been alone. I lowered my body back onto the makeshift stretcher; I scanned the river and watched the ducks on the other side of the water struggling to climb the bank. “Go tell your Keeper that he can go find some other hunter to do his dirty work.” I laid down and closed my eyes. Right now, I didn’t care about anything.

“She didn’t leave you, Colin,” whispered the woman. Her warm breath tickled my left ear. “She had no choice, Danielle was compelled to come to this town, just like all the other hunters. Just like you. Believe me, it was no coincidence that you ended up here.”

I snapped open my eyes. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

“Just take it from me that your sister had no intentions of leaving you.”

Linda stood up, turned around, and walked over to her family, leaving me more confused than ever. What other choice did I have now? I jumped to my feet and stormed over, taking no satisfaction at seeing the males backing off and hiding behind one of the fruit trees. I wasn’t even sure why they were here at all, they had served no purpose other than to get in my way.

“Tell me what you fucking know,” I growled.

“I only know what he told me,” she uttered, busying herself with helping the others pick more apples.

As you could expect, at this point my emotions were in a complete mess, and I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Watching these three humans pull apples off that tree and stuff them in their bag, all the while ignoring the fact that I was breathing down their necks, made me feel even worse. It made me want to do something that I may regret in the future. I tightened my fingers, formed a hard fist, and imagined it slamming into the man’s face—then again, maybe not.

Linda spun around and placed herself between her husband and me. She looked up, wrapped her arms around my broad back, and kissed my lips.

I found the experience more pleasurable than I could have believed. Even so, I gently pushed her back and held her at arm’s length, casting my gaze at the silent witnesses.

I saw myself throwing the woman to the side before grabbing their heads and smashing them together. I reckoned I’d only need a couple of attempts before I broke their skulls; once the bone fractured, it all started to get a bit messy. Once those waste of skins were out of the way, I’d be able to do whatever I wanted to Linda. She wouldn’t protest, I’m sure of that, but even if she did it wouldn’t make much difference.

“Colin, you came here to find Danielle. You don’t need to search any longer. We’re going to take you to where she is.”

I blinked rapidly, pushing aside that alien thought. Where the hell had that come from? “Just tell me where she is, Linda. There’s no need for you to come.” Right now, being alone was what I needed, to be more precise, away from these three. I wasn’t confident that I’d be able to control myself.

“I’m sorry, hunter.”

I felt her arms snake around my waist again. I closed my eyes and thought of anything but sex.