Killing The Dead | Book 22 | Fury

by Murray, Richard

  “Yes. I told you, I’m going to kill them all.”

  Chapter 6

  The walls inside the buildings were blackened and rough to the touch. There were no upper floors or ceiling and the only way to reach the upper storey windows was to climb the inner wall. A rope had been tied to the end of the beam and I guessed that was how the raider had climbed up to the vantage point above.

  I opted not to bother doing the same and instead just waited on the ground floor, standing beside the charred timber that had once been the wooden beams that had held the upper floors and roof in place. My new minions spread out, their faces showing the anger and rage that fuelled them.

  They had tasted victory and even with the death of one of their own, they were thirsting for more. Vengeance was a hell of a drug and they were fully hooked on it. Which was understandable after their years of abuse and degradation.

  Two and Four had carried in the body of their fallen sister, having first slipped a blade into the back of her skull to ensure she didn’t rise like the slain raiders would. Once again, I had no intention of letting the enemy see us as anything less than invulnerable.

  I’d have them dump her body in the river once we were done.

  Out on the street, the wounded raider continued to scream, his cries echoing from the ruins around us. I kept my gaze on the downed raiders, waiting for them to stir. As we weren’t too far from their base, I pushed aside the concern that they wouldn’t rise in time.

  Gregg pressed himself back against the wall beside me, sweat running down his ruined face as he clutched his knife so tightly that I thought he might actually hurt his hand. He chewed on his lower lip as he stared off into the distance and muttered the occasional comment too low for me to hear.

  I put his odd behaviour from my mind as the thump of running feet hitting the pavement came to us. Eleven people wearing the now familiar raiders armour, skidded to a stop as they caught sight of their comrade.

  One of them, clearly smarter than the others, put out his arm to stop his companions from rushing forward. A hurried conversation was had, and they moved slowly, stopping to check each building as they reached it.

  “They’ll see us,” Abigail said, voice low and filled with fear.

  I answered her with a shrug and a grin and turned back to watching the dead bodies out on the road. I was fairly sure one of them had begun to twitch. A surprised shout and pointing hand from one of the raiders suggested he’d seen it too.

  All caution was lost as the raiders hurried forward, their swords and axes drawn, eager to stop the dead from becoming a real threat.

  “Go!”

  I didn’t wait as I ducked out through the open doorway, my knife sinking deep into the neck of a raider as he ran past. He fell screaming and I was on to the next. Blood and screams filled the air as I brushed aside a clumsy slash and buried my axe in a woman’s face.

  She hit the ground, taking my axe with her and I leapt aside to avoid being impaled by a savage thrust. My fist hit the man’s jaw as I jumped straight back at him before he could pull back his sword. I spun, knife flashing and he was down, blood gushing from the wound in his neck.

  A woman screamed and I cursed as Four was eviscerated by a huge axe man who pulled his fire-axe free with a bestial roar before swinging it at another of my Furies. Her death was silent, and I grabbed my own axe and wrenched it free from the corpse it was embedded in.

  Behind the group, the dead raiders were rising to their feet and I ignored them as I batted aside a hacking blade, and rushed past, leaving the wielder to die at Gregg’s hand.

  The huge axe-man roared as he raised his axe high above his head. I grabbed the back of a raiders shirt and pulled him in front of me as I ducked and spun away to the side. The fire axe slammed down into the back of the raiders head as I rose up and thrust my knife into the axe-man’s ribs.

  Lights flashed before my eyes as I recoiled from the elbow that hit me square in the face and with tears filling my eyes, I scrambled back, away from him to give me time to clear my vision.

  I blinked rapidly and wiped at my eyes, then ducked as the axe crashed against the wall behind me. My own came up between his legs and his eyes went wide as I spun away, tearing a good portion of his anatomy away from his body as I yanked my axe free.

  The raiders were down, several of the undead feasting on their corpses as my own Furies, bloodied and battered, looked to me for orders.

  “Kill them.” I wiped at my face and spat blood from my mouth. My nose was definitely broken. “There’ll be message enough when I’m done.”

  I sheathed my own weapons and picked up the fallen fire axe. With a grin for Gregg’s look of disgust, I raised it high and brought it crashing down on the neck of the nearest dead raider. It took two more swings to cut the head away from the body and I moved straight to the next.

  “Some of these are women,” Gregg said.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Well… you know.” He looked over at the four remaining women as they finished off the zombies. “With what these raiders do…”

  I paused mid-swing and looked at him. I wasn’t sure that he could be that dense about the way of the world. After a moment, I just shook my head and went back to chopping off the head of the dead raider before me.

  “And you call me a child.”

  “The women are worse,” One said, wiping her blade clean. “Men, they grunt and thrust away then are done. If you are quiet and don’t fight, it’s quick. But the women… they use things, and it can go on for hours.”

  “God, I don’t think I want to know.”

  “No,” she agreed. “You don’t. They weren’t allowed out that often because by the time they were finished, we were too hurt to get any work done.”

  “Okay, I really don’t need to know any more.”

  “You do,” Two said, looking up from where she crouched beside the dead body of another of our group. “When you fight them, you can’t hesitate. You can’t do any of that macho bullshit where you think you can’t hurt them because they’re women.”

  “I won’t!”

  “No, you won’t,” she agreed. “Anyone who wears this armour is an enemy and they have all done the vilest things you can imagine.”

  Anger twisted her face and roughened her voice. That young woman who had first tried to warn me away back at the river was full of righteous fury and hate. She wanted nothing more than to destroy those responsible for her years of suffering.

  I liked her.

  “Finish up here,” I said. “Take our fallen to the river.”

  “You can’t!”

  I didn’t have to look to see that it was Abigail who was outraged at the idea of dumping the corpses.

  “They’re just bodies.”

  “But they were people!”

  “And now they aren’t. It doesn’t matter what happens to their remains.”

  She looked around, hoping for one of the others to speak up, to support her. None did. Even Gregg just looked away, shaking his head and muttering to himself once more, so I flashed her a grin and gestured for the women to get to work.

  I hefted the axe in my hands and continued with my bloody work as the women began to drag the bodies of their fallen sisters towards the river. Soon enough, I was done, and I began to gather the heads into a pile beside the still moaning dying raider tied to the pole.

  “What’s the point of this, mate?”

  “They need to be scared.” I lifted my shoulders in a shrug as I balanced the final head on top of the pile. Soon they would reanimate, and it would be a pretty gruesome sight. “I want them to see us coming and be so scared they barely fight. I want them too scared to leave their compounds to attack the innocent.”

  “Yeah, but there’s got to be better ways.” He gestured at the women coming back from the river, blood-spattered their clothing and their faces drawn with weariness. “We’ve little food and less rest. Now there’s just the few of us.”

  “T
here’ll be more.”

  “No! There won’t, mate. We can’t take any bases with just a handful.”

  He had a point, but it wasn’t really one that I wanted to listen to just then. Unfortunately, I was smart enough to realise that whether I wanted to or not, I might actually have to listen.

  “Then what do you suggest?”

  “We go back to the island. We get help.”

  I closed my eyes and held back a sigh. He still hadn’t realised that we couldn’t go back to the island. Not ever.

  “You aren’t going back.”

  Abigail glared right back at me as my eyes flicked to her.

  “What?”

  “He told me you weren’t going back.”

  “Mate?”

  I flashed a grin that didn’t seem to have any effect and I did let out a sigh then.

  “Fine, yes, we can’t go back.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “They’ve moved on. Lily, Cass, they think we’re dead. They have mourned and moved on with their lives. Then there’s the Dead.” I glanced over at Emma standing with the other women. “If I return, they will go full-on with the whole ‘Lord Death’ nonsense and I don’t think anyone could deny that would be a bad idea.”

  After all, the last time someone had died and returned to life, they were still building churches and killing each other in his name two thousand years later. While I didn’t really care what people would do in my name, I knew Lily would.

  That was another headache I would spare her if I could and I needed my friend to realise that. He needed to understand that even if I stayed away and he returned, they would ask questions. I couldn’t allow that.

  “Fuck!”

  Seemed like he did understand.

  He turned and stormed away without another word and I gave Abigail a quiet look, one that I knew unsettled people. She quickly hurried after him and with a small chuckle, I gathered my Furies around me, and we set off after them.

  We did need food and I was pretty sure the base would be fully stocked. With most of their people dead behind us, I was confident we would have little real trouble taking it. We would take any supplies, free the innocent and invite them to join us in our little war.

  Afterwards, I would lead my group to Birmingham where I would rid myself of one of the bigger threats facing the new world. Then, once I was done with them, I would move to the next for the world was full of monsters.

  But it wouldn’t be once I was done.

  Chapter 6

  The high-pitched laughter of children had me raise my head from the stack of papers in my lap and smile as the three children chased one another around the large garden. Even Angelina had lost a little of her broodiness as she played with her brother and Cass’s daughter, Pat.

  I took a moment to stretch and turn my head, easing the sore muscles there that had been earned by far too many hours hunched over looking at paperwork. All I wanted was to sit back in the grass and feel the warmth of the sun on my face.

  Sadly, I had far too much work to be able to do that.

  Black garbed men and women walked alongside the walls that encircled the garden, keeping a careful watch on any possible danger to my children. To the southwest was a copse of trees that they searched several times a day.

  The house at my back was too large for just me and the children, even with billeting the guards both Samuel and Isaac had determined I needed, so Cass had moved in with me. The kids all got along well and, if I were honest, the company did me good too.

  “I heard that we met a new survivor group.”

  “Hello to you too, Isaac.”

  Cass sitting beside me turned her head away, covering her mouth with one hand to hide her snort of laughter. I looked back to where the burly head of security was stomping across the patio, cheeks flushed, and brow furrowed.

  “It went well, I can assure you.”

  “Aye, well I somehow doubt that.”

  Samuel’s people had been travelling further and further afield for the past few weeks and their search had finally borne fruit. A small group living in a sheltered valley. Barely twenty people, though they had plenty of sheep and chickens that they were willing to trade.

  “No, it did,” Cass assured him. “Dropped off one of the portable radios and didn’t say much beyond that first introduction we’d written for them.”

  “I should talk to them, find out what they know about the local area.”

  Cass raised one eyebrow at that, and we shared a look. Charlie had her drones out day and night, searching the area and Samuel’s teams were doing pretty much the same thing. The small group were the first real signs of anyone surviving in Wales at all.

  The undead had hit the country hard and even the mountainous terrain hadn’t stopped them. Millions of them, coming from the south and searching for food. They hadn’t stopped until they reached the coast and had then just turned around and crossed the country once again.

  Anyone who had survived the first wave seemed to have perished in the second. The fact that even the one small group had been found was a minor miracle considering that there were still signs of the undead being in the area.

  Which, while worrying, was not really a problem for ourselves, but more for the smaller groups that couldn’t as well defend themselves. Samuel had his hunter teams out searching for those undead and assured me that they would be destroyed.

  “The first load of timber came out of the sawmill yesterday,” Cass said, quickly changing the subject. “I understand that the first load is going to you.”

  “Aye, it is.” He noted her carefully blank look and shifted his weight uneasily. “We need weapons.”

  “Wooden ones?”

  “Spears and crossbows.” He lifted one hand to scratch at the shaggy beard that covered his chin. “We’re gonna meet some raiders at some point and we need to be prepared.”

  How far we had fallen that our military force would be armed with spears and arrows. A far cry from the weapons of mass destruction we had been so comfortable with back before the undead rose to sweep aside the world of the living.

  “Have you considered looking for more military bases?”

  “Any we find we search,” I told her. “So far we’ve had little luck. Either the ammo was all spent fighting the undead or looted some time after.”

  “Which is my biggest fear these days.” Isaac’s shoulders slumped and I caught a glimpse of the weariness that clung to him. “We meet a group armed with assault rifles and we’ll have no chance.”

  “Things will work out.”

  Both of them looked at me and I waved away their concern and offered a smile instead. I hadn’t given up, but I did genuinely believe that things would work out. How could it now?

  We had begun rebuilding the infrastructure we needed and the crops were growing well back on the island. For the first time since the bombs had dropped those five years or so ago, we were in a position to help people.

  Sure, there were the raiders, occasional zombie and Sebastian to deal with, but I firmly believed that we would deal with them. We would win out and we would rebuild a world that we could have our children live safely in.

  Or as safe as anyone could ever be with the ever-present threat of the undead. All it would take was one person dying unknown, unseen, and the dead would be walking the world once more.

  “Where’s Samuel?” Isaac made a show of looking around. “He’s usually close by.”

  I fought back the smile and barely held back from rolling my eyes. The two men had an almost unfriendly rivalry going on and a big part of their irritation with one another seemed to centre around how they looked after me.

  Despite my insistence that I didn’t need them to look after me, they both had it in their heads that they wanted to. For Samuel, I was one half of the life and death mythology he had helped create around my lost love.

  For Isaac, it was something different. While I did think that he truly did have some feelings for me, ano
ther part of me couldn’t help but think he was feeling a great deal of guilt for leaving the others behind in London.

  Sure, it had been at Ryan’s insistence, but he had survived and they hadn’t. That left him with a hefty dose of survivors guilt that he seemed to want to ameliorate by ensuring that nothing bad happened to me.

  Frankly, I could do without it.

  “Samuel is giving a sermon or whatever it is that he does in their private quarters. He’ll be back to share the evening meal with us.”

  “You’re welcome to join,” Cass added, batting her eyes at him and grinning. “We could all play nice together.”

  “I’ll pass. Thanks.”

  Cass laughed as he shifted uncomfortably and I hid my smile as Gabriel and Pat ran over to me. My son wrapped his arms around my legs and looked up at me with those beautiful eyes of his, full of warmth and humour.

  “What’s up, baby?”

  “Angel’s hurting the frogs!”

  My heart sank a little as I dumped my stack of papers on the grass and rose to my feet before hurrying over to the pond where my daughter knelt with her back to me. Cass and Isaac hurried after and were polite enough not to say anything.

  Angelina, my dark and brooding daughter, the very spitting image of her father, had seemed to have inherited some of his other quirks. It was something that I had been dreading happening but there was no escaping that as she pushed down the frog and raised the stone in her little hand.

  “Stop!” I snapped, grabbing the rock from her hand and tossing it into the pond. “You can’t do this!”

  She didn’t cry or complain, she just turned and looked at me with her nose wrinkling as she narrowed her eyes, meeting my own. She released her hold on the frog and without a word, she stood and walked away.

  Cass took my hand in hers, a comforting gesture that I appreciated very much right then. I watched my daughter stomp across to the patio where she seated herself with her head resting on her tiny clenched fists and once again, I almost hated Ryan for leaving me alone to deal with it.

  “You okay?” Cass asked, and I didn’t immediately answer. How could I?

  “Not really,” was all I said as I squared my shoulders and prepared myself as best I could. “But I’ll talk to her. Try to make her understand that this isn’t right.”