Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel (3 page)

As she watched the child opened its mouth, its blackened slug-like tongue stretched towards her as if begging for the merest taste of flesh and in that instant Fran knew enough was enough. This child had been conscripted into the army of the Dead though violence, terror and bloodshed but now it was her job to gift it the eternal peace it deserved. Without further hesitation she thrust the blade sharply into the eye socket. With a ‘crunch’ she could both hear and feel the tip of her knife sliding through the orbit, thin shards of bone scraping sickeningly against the blade as it continued into the brain.

Once the job was done Fran sat back on her heels, used the long grass to wipe the worst of the gore from the blade of her knife and then slipped it back into its sheath.

‘I wonder where they all came from?’ Fran said aloud, looking at the half dozen corpses scattered about the small orchard, most of them in pieces. ‘I mean, we’re not that close to a town are we?’

But neither of the men chose to answer her. Tom was trying to make himself look busy by carefully plucking ripe apples from a nearby tree while Kai just watched him, arms folded and a scowl scrunching up his otherwise attractive features. Fran knew what each of her travelling companions must be thinking and in some ways she felt a little sympathy for both of them. Tom understandably was feeling ashamed and probably a little scared that he had lost control of himself so totally that he had almost attacked her, while Kai was feeling equally scared but for quite a different reason.

Tom and his ghostly voices were an unknown factor to Kai and he didn’t like it; after all, the unknown could easily get you killed out here among the Dead. Admittedly he had almost got used to the man’s occasional mumbled conversations with his deceased family, tuning out his incoherent muttering as they travelled in the cart. But it was when Tom gave himself over to the demands conjured from the darkest recesses of his mind that Kai felt he became too unhinged and dangerous.

‘Well?’ said Fran, looking from Kai to Tom, both of whom were still lost in their own conflicting thoughts about what had just happened. ‘Is one of you going to answer me? Kai?’ she asked, looking up at the young man with his exotic mix of Thai and European features.

But Kai only glanced down at her, the mix of anger, frustration and worry clearly evident in his eyes.

‘Tom?’ she continued, turning her attention to the clearly troubled older man.

‘I…’ he began to say, giving a specific apple a much closer inspection than it really warranted before falling silent once again.

‘Fine!’ grunted Fran, pushing herself up from the ground as her sympathy quickly turned into annoyance. ‘For fuck’s sake, life’s too short right now for moody silences. No-one got hurt, no-one died and got bitten, that’s the main thing and… we… we all need each other right now, so you two had better find a way to deal with your shit… Okay!’

With that, Fran angrily ripped an apple from a nearby branch, the action causing a few of its more riper counterparts to break free and land with a series of soft thuds in the tall grass.

‘I’m going to check on Star… make sure she’s alright,’ she grumbled, taking an equally angry bite from the apple. ‘You two can finish up here.’

As Fran stomped off through the small orchard, confident in her own ability to protect herself, Tom looked silently over at Kai.

‘W…W…What’s her problem?’ Kai eventually said, offering Tom a typically macho olive branch of peace.

‘Beats me?’ Tom replied, his lips twitching in a grateful smile of acceptance as he shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Women!’

***

Walking away, Fran could hear that the two men behind her had finally started talking to each other again, causing a small but slightly smug smile to spread across her face before she took another bite of the juicy apple. Of course she knew Tom and Kai were only papering over the cracks of their problems but if it meant they could all get along, at least until they joined up with the others of their lost group, she would accept that.

Following the path of trampled down grass that they had made upon entering the orchard, Fran soon found herself stepping out onto the weed-choked gravel track that led back to the road. Normally they wouldn’t have wandered so far from their precious horse and cart but with the locked metal gate blocking any closer access they hadn’t been given much choice; not unless they were willing to pass up the chance to replenish some of their much depleted food stores, which they weren’t.

Above her the clear blue autumn sky was a flurry of winged activity. Small birds darted and swooped effortlessly though the air, gorging themselves on the glut of winged insects in preparation for the harder times that the oncoming change of season promised. With her unhurried footsteps crunching on the loose gravel beneath her feet, Fran watched a small flock of merrily coloured Finches flitting above her and realised she was slightly envious of their carefree and simple existence. She paused briefly, following a particular bird flashing from one side of the track to the next, snatching a beak-full of unsuspecting insects with every passing. With her eyes darting back and forth tracing the birds progress she raised the half eaten apple to her mouth and was about to take another bite when she heard something; something that made her freeze. Ahead of her, just beyond the high blackberry bushes which obscured her view, something was obviously distressing their usually calm mare, Star. Whatever it was it that caused her to snort and anxiously stamp her hooves in irritation Fran knew she’d better prepare herself for the worst. So, tossing aside the half eaten apple, she pulled free her knife once again and began to move towards the gate as silently as the gravel underfoot would allow.

By the time Fran had made it as far as the high bushes the thunder of Star’s hooves had become an almost constant drumming against the cracked road surface beyond. She knew if she wanted to avoid the poor beast succumbing to this panic and bolting, she had to act fast to calm her down; for if she failed they could lose their only means of transport and with the Dead forever with them, this could simply prove fatal. But even with her necessity for haste pushing her forward, Fran knew better than to just charge out into the road to confront whatever was worrying Star. So she forcibly held herself back and tried her best to push aside her ever mounting concern. Fran could think of three possible causes for Star’s agitation; the Dead, dogs or raiders, all of which were equally as deadly. She instantly dismissed a pack of once domestic dogs gone wild being to blame, the savage growls and barking of the pack would have been clearly evident. So that just left the Dead or a raiding group of other unfamiliar survivors. Fran couldn’t decide which sickened her more, the Dead with their insatiable hunger or the living who had banded together to form cruel merciless gangs preying on the weak and defenceless. They had come across the unsavoury handiwork of such raiders many times over the last five years; meagre food stores and crops had been pillaged, once-safe havens overrun and left open to the Dead and worst of all, men, women and children both raped and beaten so badly that death had been a mercy to them. Fran needed to know what she was dealing with and in that instant she knew it was one of the rare occasions that she hoped only the Dead awaited her; at least their pointless violence she could understand.

Pushing aside some of the twisting tendrils of the blackberry bush, its thorny branches heavy with a jewel-like harvest, Fran tried to see through to the road on the other side. Ignoring the spikey thorns as they scratched and dug into her hands, she was eventually rewarded for her effects with a small but unrestricted side view of the cart.

‘Thank Fuck!’ she mumbled to herself, finally releasing a breath that up until that moment she had been unaware of holding.

Letting the thicker tendrils spring back into place, Fran jogged to the wide metal bar gate.

‘
Lucky this time… just another of the Dead,
’ she thought, the statement almost making her steps falter.

To think that she could treat the living corpses that had torn humanity apart limb by limb in such a dismissive manner suddenly seemed crazy to her. That they had all become so used to this unbelievable horror in their lives, that their very presence could be greeted with relief or thought of as the lesser of two evils was astounding. For five years now they had been living a nightmare, a nightmare that had somehow drifted into reality and become the norm without them even realising. This was their life now and Fran knew they had to just get on with it; as Darwin said ‘adapt or die’, it was as simple as that.

‘Alright, girl… alright, I’m coming,’ she cooed softly, while the mare stamped furiously to remove the clawing corpse from her front right leg.

Somehow, while they had been in the orchard, Star had been trying to deal with her own uninvited guest. Just how the mare had managed to lodge her hoof through the creature’s mangled rib cage she could only guess but as Fran clambered over the gate, knife in hand, she was grateful this time there was only one of them to deal with.

‘Now what have you been up to?’ she muttered, moving to the other side of Star and out of the Dead man’s reach.

‘Shhh…. Shhh… Shhh,’ she continued, gently stoking Star’s soft velvety mussel as she looked down at the pathetic creature that had suddenly noticed her presence.

Just why the Dead saw certain animals as food and not others was just another of those mysteries that had become part of their everyday lives; yet in this instance it was a mystery that gave man the tiniest spark of hope. That the Dead somehow couldn’t comprehend horses in the same way that they did cows, sheep, pigs and of course man, enabled the survivors to have a means of transport independent of the now almost non-existent petrol. Just who had realised horses were the new ‘must have’ in this world of the Dead, Fran had no idea but whoever it was, what was left of humanity certainly owed them their thanks. For these beasts of a bygone era, together with the box covered carts that hid the living passengers from hungry Dead eyes, gave them a way to move about the countryside in relative safety in search of food, resources and even as with Fran, Tom and Kai’s situation, a new home.

‘Whoa… whoa there, girl,’ hushed Fran, taking hold of Star’s bridle trying to stop the beast bucking her head.

As Fran wrapped her fingers around one of the leather straps the mutilated Dead man at her feet began to moan and paw pathetically at her calf and thigh. With a sneer of revulsion spreading across her face, Fran took a small step back hoping to get beyond his cadaverous reach. Unfortunately this only seemed to make the corpse double his efforts and with each lurching movement his shattered rib cage scrapped worryingly against Star’s fetlock.

‘Shit!’ Fran spat, noticing the small cuts Star had already received from rubbing against the shards of broken bone.

She knew if Star was to become lame or get an infection the situation for her human passengers would certainly take a turn for the worse but this aside, Fran liked the steady mare and definitely wouldn’t want to see her in pain or injured.

‘Now, hold still, girl,’ she said through gritted teeth as she struggled with the bridle to keep Star from moving.

The second Star momentarily paused, Fran took her chance and stamped down hard with the heel of her boot. Despite the sickening ‘thud’ as the corpse’s head connected with the road surface, Fran knew the blow didn’t have a chance of finishing the Dead man but then that hadn’t been the aim. With the man’s shoulders now flat against the road, she stamped down again, this time aiming for his withered neck. Again she heard the cracking of bone as the fragile vertebrae pinned beneath her boot ground together and fractured. With the creature’s head now held securely in place by her foot, she bent down and with a single stab to the temple her blade gave the Dead man the eternal peace denied him.

Almost instantly Star began to calm down again, simply showing her displeasure now through agitated snorts.

‘Now to get you out of this,’ said Fran, glancing up into one of Star’s large dark eyes.

For a moment she examined the lifeless corpse’s ruined body, trying to think of the best way to extricate Star’s hoof from its shattered ribcage. In the end she decided it was probably quickest to simply pull the broken ribs a little further apart to make the hole wide enough to just pull the hoof free. She was just about to reach forward to grab hold of the broken bone and torn decaying flesh when she noticed the small scratches and scrapes from the blackberry bush crisscrossing across her right hand.

‘Fuck,’ she mumbled to herself, pulling free the pair of thick canvas gloves she had tucked into the back of her trousers, ‘getting careless, Francesca…’

Wincing as the rough fabric brushed across the scratches on her hand, Fran berated herself for being so stupid. A second’s lapse in concentration and she could have found herself trying to fight off the million and one bacterial or viral infections that the putrid flesh of the decaying cadaver surely carried. She may not have been able to contract whatever transformed the living into one of the Dead, after all that could only be contracted through a bite and could take anything from a few hours to a few days to take hold, but nonetheless there were plenty of other opportunistic nasties out there just waiting to infect you.

‘Careless,’ she repeated, roughly tugging on the other glove.

‘Now,’ she continued, moving her now protected hands from one position to the next.

Once she was satisfied on her grip she yanked the already gaping ribs further apart with a sharp tug. Try as she might to ignore the wet cracking sound of broken bones shifting, Fran couldn’t help but take notice of the unbelievable rancid odour that rushed up from the exposed rotting flesh within.