Star Drawn Saga (Book 2): Lost Among The Dead (44 page)

‘Fuck!’ gasped Fran, as Emma unexpectedly pulled her off balance causing her to land awkwardly on the decking with a painful thump and knocking the wind out of her.

Sure she was about to follow Emma over edge, Fran did the only thing she could think of and let Poppy slip from her arms; praying that if she fell Tom could pull himself back from the abyss of his mania long enough to protect her.

‘God….’ moaned Fran, fighting for breath as Emma tried to claw her way over her back onto the decking; the very weight to her pulling Fran closer to the edge. ‘Get… get off me, you fucking… bitch!’ she managed to groan, kicking out her legs; frantic to dislodge the young woman literally clinging onto her for dear life. ‘Get the fuck… off!’

‘I’m going… to fucking… kill you!’ Emma growled in reply dodging Fran’s kicks; right up until the moment a boot slammed her squarely in the face, rendering her nose to a bloody mess, ‘Agghh!’ she screamed, already feeling her tenuous grip slipping as she fought to see past the flow of her own blood. ‘Fuck… Oh… oh, shit! Shit!’ she eventually cried out, as Fran kicked her again, knocking her head to one side and finally dislodging her.

And with that Emma was suddenly falling backwards, her arms grasping at the air itself, desperate to stop her own descent; but it was pointless and as she saw Fran scramble backwards, back onto the decking, Emma realised it had all been for nothing. Those pointless deaths, those strangers whose lives they had snuffed out simply for the meagre possessions they brought with them; the way she had cheapened herself, offering herself to keep Dennis in line, to keep control and the way her own hate for a man long since killed by her hand had consumed her, changing her into a person she hardly recognised. For none of it had been worth it, not really. For this was how it was meant to end, she could see that now; how all their lives were meant to end, in desperation, fear and the knowledge that they were doomed to die alone.

‘
No!
’ she silently screamed just as she slammed into the ground, the sound of something vital snapping inside her chasing away all other thoughts.

And as she lay there panting, her breath shallow, painful and erratic, Emma realised she had been wrong; wrong in one vital and terrifying point. For Emma would not die alone, her soul would not join those countless points of light above her without a face she knew by her side, hands taking hers, a mouth reaching forward to kiss her a final farewell.

‘M…mum,’ she managed to whisper, a shard of moonlight catching the side of the woman’s face as she slowly dropped to her knees beside her.

But Angela Doyle would not be offering comfort her daughter when she needed her most, she would not be softly holding a hand to her face, gently kissing away her child’s pain; for Angela was now one of the Dead and now, just as she had brought this child into the world, her own body giving it life itself, so too would her body reclaim it; consuming it one mouthful at a time.

‘No! No! No! Ah…arrgguuhh!’ Fran heard Emma suddenly screaming from below her; the Dead of the forest surely claiming her as their own.

‘Fuck…it’s… over…’ Fran panted, holding her bruised ribs as she crawled across the decking to Poppy, pulling the crying infant into her arms. ‘Shhh… shhh… it’s over. Don’t cry, Poppy… shhh, it’s all over… don’t cry… don’t cry.’

Yet even as she tried to hush the infant her own tears began to fall, her grief finally bubbling to the surface to fill the void of her spent rage.

‘Kai’s… dead,’ she managed to say through her tears looking over at Tom, hoping that his mind was with her, that he could share in her pain and weep for the friend he had lost. ‘They… they killed him, Tom… they killed him.’

‘Fran… I…’ Tom mumbled in reply, his eyes seeming to truly focus on her as he slowly pushed himself to his feet. ‘I… Kai? Oh…’

‘They killed him and… and… and left him to turn,’ she wept, pulling Poppy even closer to her as if the crying child could somehow protect her from her own pain. ‘They left him to turn, Tom and I… I had to…’

‘Oh… Oh, Fran,’ grunted Tom, pushing himself away from the wall to stagger painfully towards her; his blood seeping through his fingers as he clutched his bleeding leg.

‘
You forgot us,
’ a female voice suddenly complained, distant yet intimately close, the sound causing him to falter. ‘
You forgot us so easily, Tom,
’ she continued, her words cold and full of accusation.

‘Tom?’ said Fran, seeing that he had stalled, swaying unsteadily on his feet, his blood dripping rhythmically over his hand and onto the decking. ‘Tom…’

‘
You forgot us, Tom, and left us with… nothing,
’ spat Tom’s wife, her spectral mouth surely contorted into an angry snarl. ‘
Your babies, Tom, you took away the one thing they had left... the one thing that held them here… that kept them alive.
’

‘I... I don’t know… I don’t know what’s real anymore,’ said Tom, shakily spinning as if to locate the physical presence of a voice that only he could hear, while further down the decking an unnoticed finger suddenly twitched. ‘You’re… you’re gone but you’re here… always here with me… always,’ he continued, tears filling his eyes.

‘No, Tom, please…’ Fran tried to interrupt, hopeful to break through to him. ‘Please just look at me…. Look at me and Poppy, Tom.’

‘And I don’t know what to do… how to make it better,’ Tom went on to say, Fran’s words going unheard; the twitching finger joined by an unseen spasm of a right leg. ‘I did what I could… I tried, Darling, I tried to keep our babies safe…’

‘
But they still died,
’ interrupted the voice of his wife, whispering in his ear. ‘
We all died… all of us. All of us, except you…
’

‘It’s not my fault,’ wept Tom, calling out to the heavens themselves. ‘If I could have taken your place, any of you, I would have… I would have died for you a thousand times…’

‘No, look at me, Tom, look at me!’ shouted Fran, the man’s pain clearly as raw and as bloody as her own. ‘Stay with me… look at me… Tom, look at me! I need you! Please look at me!’

‘It’s not my fault I wasn’t there,’ he continued, shaking his head as behind him what had been a young girl slowly sat up, ‘it’s not my fault.’

‘
Daddy,
’ suddenly came the voice of his youngest daughter; the dark corners of his mind conjuring it up to torment him further, ‘
you… you do still love us, don’t you, Daddy?
’

‘Of course I love you, poppet,’ he replied, her words like a knife in his heart, ‘you’re my girls… my special girls.’

‘D
addy…
’ his daughter continued, the sound of movement behind him slowly causing him to turn, ‘
you do love us… and…and you don’t want us to go?
’

‘No, baby,’ whispered Tom, taking a step forward, his arms opening, a sad smile on his lips.

‘Tom!’ cried Fran, her gaze flitting to the Dead girl that had once been Wendy. ‘Tom! Tom, no!’

‘Daddy wants you with him always…’ Tom continued, oblivious to Fran’s warning as the ghost of his daughter appeared before him wrapped about the body of a Dead girl. ‘Daddy loves you, baby… he wants...’

And then the Dead girl was charging towards him, leaping into his arms; the collision causing him to stagger backwards.

‘Tom!’ Fran screamed, horrified as the man welcomed the girl’s corpse into his embrace, pulling her close in a fierce and heartfelt hug.

‘Daddy loves you,’ she heard him say, kissing the top of the Dead girl’s head as it buried its face in his neck. ‘Daddy will always love you… you’re my special girl...’

But even as Fran pushed herself to her feet, her eyes frantically searching for her dropped machete, she knew it was too late.

‘My… baby!’ said Tom, his words suddenly broken by a sickening gasp as the Dead girl’s teeth ripped into the flesh of his throat.

‘No!’ shouted Fran, watching impotently as Tom took a shaky step backwards, the Dead girl in his arms pulling back her head sharply, stretching the skin between her teeth until the inevitable happened.

And then all Fran could see was blood.

‘No!’ she screamed again.

Fran could not comprehend the dark and cruel workings of Tom’s own mind that even as the Dead girl savagely ripped free a chunk of his flesh he was compelled to pull her closer, desperate not to let her go. She could not fathom the strange smile on his lips, as if this act of horror had always been inevitable, an unavoidable truth that he had simply postponed until now; and she could not bear the look he gave her as his tearful eyes finally fell on hers. It was an apology, it was a sad warning and it was his final goodbye. And then as Tom took another stumbling step backwards, Fran watched as he slowly closed his eyes again, forever shutting out the horror of the real world to truly be with his lost family once and for all.

‘Daddy… loves… you,’ she heard him finally choke just as he stepped back off the decking and disappeared from sight.

‘T…Tom!’ Fran managed to whisper, dropping to her knees in shock; staring at the empty space where moments ago the man who had been like father to her had stood. ‘Don’t… leave me … alone…’

***

She didn’t know how long she knelt there with Poppy crying in her arms, her breath pluming in the cold night air while her mind tried to catch up with the horrors of the last few minutes, but as the sound of pounding footsteps slowly drew her back she realised with sickening dread that her troubles were far from over.

‘Please… not him… don’t let it be him,’ she muttered, pushing herself up to drag herself across the decking to pick up her dropped machete.

Her fingers had just encircled the wooden handle, its weight solid and comforting in her grasp, when a figure appeared at the top of the walkway. Snapping its head back and forth, searching for the source of the noise that had called to it like a long awaited dinner bell, Wendy’s corpse locked onto Fran and the wailing infant in her arms.

‘
Shit!
’ thought Fran, just as Tom’s cadaver appeared behind the Dead teenager; the sight of his hungry glare and savaged neck causing her mind to freeze.

Somewhere in her shocked mind she knew it was going to be hard enough to fight one cadaver while holding a screaming child; two and the task became impossible. If she dropped the infant to engage them both then surely one of them would slip past her and pounce on the unprotected innocent; yet if she fought holding the child she would certainly be damning them both to a terrible and painful death.

‘
Move, Francesca!
’ the words suddenly bellowed through her mind, the voice a strange mix of Kai’s, Tom’s and her father’s; so real that it shook her from her paralysis.

Yet it was too late and Fran knew it. Already the two cadavers were racing towards her, their hands outstretched, their bloody mouth open, eagerly awaiting the taste of her warm flesh. And then suddenly Wendy’s cadaver collapsed to the decking in a tangle of limbs; the unholy life force abruptly snatched from her. Unsure just what had happened, Fran knew a chance when she saw one; a slim one but a chance nonetheless. So as the Dead man that had been Tom barrelled towards her, its eyes wild with hunger, she prepared herself to fight. But then out of the blue it too suddenly jerked to one side only to then lurch strangely back again, his bewildering and bizarre movements giving Fran the window of opportunity she needed to launch her attack. She was just drawing back her machete to strike when the corpse jolted again but this time as it twisted in front of her, barely a step away from reaching its goal, she noticed the long arrows now piercing its body.

‘
What…
’ her mind started to question, even as another arrow abruptly appeared in the side of the Dead man’s head.

Almost instantly the corpse’s legs collapsed beneath it, dropping Tom’s cadaver like a puppet suddenly devoid of its strings and as she looked down at his body, her heart hammering in her chest, her breath shaky, she knew at last her friend was at peace.

‘Jack, up here,’ a woman’s voice suddenly called, as Fran stared transfixed by the lifeless body at her feet, the sound of more running footsteps barely registering, ‘they’re up here!’

Fran was vaguely aware of more footsteps, of people approaching, of hushed conversations, their words distant and meaningless to her shell shocked mind, and yet still Fran could not look away from Tom’s body.

‘Are… are you alright?’ the woman went on to ask, bending down on one knee, her hand tentatively reaching out to touch Fran; hopeful the contact would wake her from her daze. ‘It’s Fran, isn’t? Are you alright? You and the baby, are you both alright?’

‘Poppy,’ Fran finally muttered, at last tearing her eyes from Tom to look at the infant in her arms. ‘Her name’s Poppy.’

‘Yes… we know,’ a man said, his gentle tone causing Fran to look up.

‘I… I know you,’ she whispered, looking at a bearded man in his late twenties with pale blue eyes that held an unspoken sadness to them. ‘Both of you,’ she continued looking down at the young blonde woman kneeling in front of her. ‘Why… why do I know you?’

‘I’m Jack,’ the man replied, with a reassuring smile; slowly releasing the arrow from his bow to put it back in the quiver strapped to his back, ‘and this is my sister, Caroline, Caz. The others are cleaning up the place… we’ll make sure it’s secure for tonight and then head off in the morning… You’ll come with us… if you want to, that is,’ he quickly added as an afterthought.