Star Drawn Saga (Book 2): Lost Among The Dead (13 page)

Nodding his understanding, Kai waded as slowly and as quietly as he could back to the grassy bank and the crowbar he knew he had left resting on top of his bag of washing. Behind him Fran, standing motionless, barefoot and stripped down to nothing but her underwear, watched the group three Dead women and a Dead man, approach; ready for what may come. Studying the corpses so she would know her enemy should she need to fight them, Fran noted from what was left of its gore splatted attire that the Dead man had been a priest of some denomination in life and even as she watched it shamble along, the set of rosary beads about its emaciated wrist swung back and forth with each painfully slow and laboured step.

‘Fuck!’ Kai suddenly heard Fran hiss from behind him, just as his fingers closed comfortingly about the cold hard metal of his ad hoc weapon.

Fearful the Dead had spotted them, Kai span, ready to fight for his life and for the woman he loved. But his less than smooth movements, combined with the uneven pebbly surface beneath his feet, caused him to slip; promptly dropping him down to one knee with a splash. Biting back the sting as a something sharp cut painfully into his shin, Kai was about to push himself back up when Fran’s hand shot out; silently holding him place.

‘No,’ she whispered, staring intently at a wild haired female corpse on the opposite bank that seemed to have reacted to the sound of his fall.

Terrified he may have just made things ten times worse, Kai did as he was told and purposefully ignored the pink tinge in the water around his submerged leg; for any wound he had just received was nothing in comparison to what could occur if the Dead attacked and he knew it. But the Gods must have been looking kindly upon them, for even as Kai watched her through the softly moving wall of willow fronds, the Dead woman’s milky gaze drifted lazily across the river, their willow tree hiding place and then back again to the road ahead of her. It was only as he watched this female corpse re-join her sisters in death in their ceaseless quest for the living that Kai actually noticed what had surprised Fran in the first place. For there, coming down the road on a slow but steady collision course with the Dead was what could only be described as a huge upturned rectangular wicker basket rolling along on a set of four bicycle wheels. In fact the contraption was so large that, just like their own cart, it was clearly used to hide whoever was inside from the Dead as they made their way among them.

With a soft click of her fingers, Fran got Kai to look back at her, where she then gestured to her forehead; silently indicating that the presence of this woven screen had an obvious connection between the man that had attacked him earlier and this new unexpected arrival. Nodding his agreement, Kai glanced back at the basket-like vehicle and wondered at the bravery or just plain stupidity of whoever was inside it. It was bad enough travelling among the Dead behind the solid wooden walls of their cart, he could only imagine how harrowing it must be to have only a flimsy screen of woven sticks between oneself and a horde of hungry corpses. As if to put his point to the test, the first of the Dead women ambled dangerously close to the wall of wicker; her blackened and decaying shoulder brushing unnoticed against it. He may have been mistaken but Kai could have sworn he saw the creature pause for a fraction of a second, as if it knew something living was close by yet was confused by being unable to locate it. But if it did somehow sense the unseen person it made no attempt to reach them and as the bicycle wheels continued to turn, whoever was embarking on this perilous journey, left the woman’s corpse behind them; oblivious and forever hungry. And so it was that this unknown traveller safely continued on, slowly rolling past the second Dead woman, her withered chest an exposed mass of maggot ridden torn flesh, and then onward to encounter the corpse of the cadaver with the wild hair, its priestly companion not far behind it.

‘
The crazy bastard!
’ thought Fran, watching as the wild haired woman was gently nudged aside by the front of the huge upturned basket.

Out the corner of her eye she could see that being submerged in the cold river was finally taking its toll on Kai, causing the muscles on his shoulders and arms to shiver.

‘You can get up now…’ she whispered, knowing that there was only the Dead priest and the child’s cadaver further down the road still to pass by. ‘But move…’

She was about to say ‘slowly’ when a sudden and horrifyingly unexpected sound froze the word in her throat. She instinctively knew the source of the sound and as she made a grab to pull Kai up from his knee, she knew what she had to do.

‘Come on!’ she said, letting go of his arm as soon as he was back on his feet. ‘I’ll take the priest!’ she continued, all sense of stealth abandoned as she hurriedly began wading out into the river as fast as the splashing water around her thighs would allow. ‘Forget what I said, just aim for their legs!’

‘Fran!’ Kai called after her, his wider strides quickly closing the gap between them just as she pushed aside their camouflaging vale of greenery; his free hand grasping her arm. ‘W…Wait!’

‘Kai, we have to!’ cried Fran, snatching her arm angrily free of his grip. ‘I have to!’

With that Fran went splashing across the river towards the opposite bank; towards the road, the basket and the Dead that awaited her; all the while the stomach twisting sound of a baby crying coming from inside the wicker box spurring her onward.

***

Back in the cart Tom sat in the open hatchway, his legs dangling freely as he studied the folded up map in his lap.

‘I know, darling,’ he mumbled, the unseen spectre of his eldest daughter whispering in his ear distracting him, ‘Daddy’s seen them, he’ll deal with them soon enough.’

‘
But they’re getting nearer,
’ she whined, her ghostly lips surely forming a sulky pout, ‘
and I want you to cut them. Cut them up, daddy.’

With an exasperated sigh, Tom looked up from the map to check on the two Dead men he had spotted earlier; slowly shuffling along the road towards him. Since he had first spotted them, both corpses had also become aware of his presence and even though their painfully slow pace hadn’t really increased noticeably, they now both walked with their arms outstretched; blackened fingers flexing in anticipation of ripping into his warm bloody, living flesh.

‘
Daddy!
’ his younger daughter abruptly chimed in, joining in with her sister’s demand for retribution; her tone clearly holding the promise of a building tantrum.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Tom, reluctantly pushing himself off the lip of the open hatch, before placing the precious map carefully back inside the cart, ‘you win, you win… you always do.’

Now that his hands were free, he reached behind him and with the singing of metal brushing against metal, withdrew his two curved blades in one smooth well practiced motion. With a quick look behind him to make sure the road was still clear, Tom strode forward to meet the two Dead men head on. The first corpse, ahead of its rotting companion by only a few metres, was missing much of the right side of its face; the remnants of mouldy curling strips of flesh exposing the upper jaw, cheek and orbit bone. It was also missing a sizable chunk of muscle from its upper arm and even as Tom blankly registered this, the blade in his right hand was flashing through the air to add further injury to this brutalized cadaver.

With barely any resistance against the wickedly sharp blade, the moaning corpse’s forearm dropped, unnoticed by its owner, to the ground; instantly reduced to nothing more than a lump of useless rotting flesh. No sooner had his right hand completed this action than the blade in Tom’s left hand was moving, arching up to intercept the taught grey tinged skin of the creature’s neck.

‘
Kill it, kill it!
’ his lost daughters giggled in unison from beyond their graves, seconds before the creature’s head tumbled from its shoulders and Tom moved on to greet the second cadaver eagerly reaching for him.

Unlike the first Dead man, whose milky eyes impotently still followed Tom’s every movement from the grassy verge where its head came to rest; this second corpse only had one eye left to start with. Having at some point lost its right eye, together with the upper eyelid and a strip of flesh reaching back across its scalp, exposing a section of yellowing skull, the remaining milky orb still burned with an unmistakable hunger. Yet even as he distantly took in the Dead man’s facial injuries he knew these were not the cause of this man’s ultimate degradation and in fact the large wound in its abdomen was likely more to blame. He could just imagine the poor man’s screams rising hysterically as he was forced to experience pain a thousand times greater than any man was built to endure; savage teeth and hands tearing wildly at his stomach, eagerly ripping through his skin and muscle to pluck free the bloody organs within. But how this man had finally succumb to the Dead and their unnatural hunger, did not really matter to Tom, not anymore. For the moment the last breath was expelled from his lungs, this man’s fate was sealed; he had become one of them. No longer a man, male or even to be referred to as ‘he’; with the failing of his heart his humanity had died with him and with its loss he had become nothing more than an ‘it’.

‘
Take this one’s legs,
’ his youngest daughter pleaded, her tiny spectral hands seeming to tug at Tom’s trouser leg for recognition. ‘
Cut them off, Daddy… cut them both off. For me, do it for me, Daddy.
’

And with his smothering blanket of guilt wrapped about him, Tom willingly did as his lost child requested. His blades fell, swift and cleanly, and with their passing flesh parted, muscle tore and limbs fell. Yet even before this creature had landed face down in the road, awaiting its final demise, Tom knew nothing had changed, not really. For no matter how many of the Dead he sent into the dark embrace of true oblivion or how he rendered them limb from limb, pandering to the whims of his departed family, he knew nothing would ever change; not for him. For nothing could wipe away his guilt or clear his shame; he had failed those he loved when they needed him most and to compact his crime he had committed the ultimate sin of all, he had survived.

And as the snapping creature at his feet twisted and clawed to reach him once again, it became in Tom’s eyes not just one more Dead man whose unnatural existence needed to be extinguished but a cadaverous poster boy for all of them; for all of those corpses that had ripped apart families and loved ones alike and for all of the abominations that cheated youth of their dreams and the old of a peaceful parting. So with the encouragement of his departed family whispering in the back of his fractured mind, Tom let slip his tenuous hold on his sanity and with a scream of pure rage burning in his throat he poured forth his hatred and boiling fury upon this thing that had no right to endure.

‘Die, you fucker!’ he spat, forcefully stamping down on the cadaver’s head; shattering its jaw and cheek bone with his first strike. ‘You ruined it, you fucking ruined it! You took them all! You fucker!’ he continued, tears of anger and loss streaming down his face as his cries punctuated each stamp of his foot. ‘You cunt! You fucking cunt! You ruined it!’

Tom didn’t know how long he had stood over the ruined shell of the man, his shoulders heaving as he instinctively gulped down air to feed his burning muscles but as his mind drifted back to reality, like mist clearing on an autumn morning, he at last took in the destruction he had reaped upon the Dead man’s body.

‘Shit,’ he muttered, looking down at the mess he had made of the cadaver’s head.

What little was left above the neck of the now motionless corpse had been reduced to a misshapen mass of stinking flesh and broken bone surrounded on the road surface by a splattered halo of dark putrid gore.

‘Oh… great,’ sighed Tom, lifting his leg to see that his boot and much of his trouser leg up to his knee was now covered in the dark fluids that smelled of rancid death.

It was in that instant, as he looked disdainfully down at his filthy trouser leg, that he finally registered he could hear Fran’s voice. Looking quizzically back down the road to where Star patiently waited munching away at the tall grass on the side of the road, Tom briefly wondered if the two love birds had finally had their first argument. But then he heard her frantically shouting again and from her tone alone it was clear this was no ordinary lover’s tiff, something was happening; something bad. With this realisation Tom instantly broke into a run, sprinting back to the willow tree through which his young friends had disappeared; all the while trying not to give himself over to the murmuring voice of his wife whispering her demands for dark retribution from the hidden corners of his mind.

***

Fran frantically clawed her way up the steeper opposite bank, desperately grabbing hold of clumps of weeds for leverage. It wasn’t until she felt Kai’s hands on her backside giving her a much needed shove, that she managed to at last breach the lip of the overgrown bank and finally get out onto the road to help whoever was in the upturned basket on wheels and the baby they had with them.

‘Hey!’ she shouted, waving her arms, trying to draw the attention away from the basket and the unseen crying infant within. ‘Hey, over here! Over here!’

Hearing Kai grunt as he clambered up the bank behind her, Fran knew she had no time to wait for him and immediately broke into a run towards the wicker device and the cadavers that had turned their hungry gaze upon it.

‘Hey!’ she called out again to the hungry corpses, briefly stumbling as her bare foot suddenly came down on a sharp pebble. ‘Shit!’ she spat, quickly regaining her balance just as the cadaver dressed in the filthy priest’s cassock turned to look at her. ‘Yes, that’s it shit face!’ she continued, grateful that at least one of the cadavers had noticed her; her sudden appearance causing it to take its first shambling step towards her.