“What’re we waiting for?”
“Assessing potential threat,” I said, my voice cold. “You’ve done little to secure this place.”
“What’s to secure? It’s a bloody castle.”
“These woods,” I said with a tilt of my head to indicate the thick trees that surrounded the castle on two sides. “Have undead wandering them. At least one of your people is dead in there and that wouldn’t have happened if you’d cleared them out or taken basic precautions.”
“Here now, you can’t just turn up and tell us we’re doing everything wrong.”
“I’m honestly surprised you’ve survived this long,” I said as I looked back over my shoulder at the ruined rear wall. “A toddler could break into that place and slaughter you all.”
“Aye well you’d know about that kind of thing wouldn’t you?” he snapped back. “We’ve tried to maintain some of our humanity.”
“And what does that mean exactly?” I asked with one eyebrow raised sardonically.
“Does it matter?” Gregg interrupted. “We’re wasting daylight.”
I held up one hand to silence him as I stared at my brother. “Can we rely on you to fight when required? To kill the undead and even the living?”
He blanched and he grimaced but he nodded. “I’ll fight the undead and do what I need to do to save a life. If we meet a living threat… I’ll not take a life if I can avoid it.”
“As I thought,” I said with a sneer and turned away.
We set out walking around the edges of the forest and north towards the road. Once past the trees, it was open grassland for two hundred metres and then a scraggly hedge barely four foot high with plenty of gaps in its length.
The road was barely wide enough to fit two cars going in opposite directions and had nothing but a shallow grass verge at either side. In most places, that grass verge had been driven over and had been churned up by tyres, leaving muddy gouges full of rain water.
In silence, we followed the road, each lost in our own thoughts. Every so often in the distance, across the fields, we would see an occasional zombie making its slow plodding way to whatever destination its withered and rotting brain had in mind. Not worth the effort to chase down and kill.
As the road turned north we passed the entrance to a camp site and I glanced at my brother who shrugged in return. “Was closed for the winter, nothing there of use. We checked.”
I gave it one last look and then turned back to the road and continued on my way. The day was wearing on and if we were lucky we’d reach Dumfries before darkness fell. That way we could scout the hospital and plan out what we were going to do.
While I had every intention of getting the medicines we needed as quickly as possible, trying to do so at night or while facing a horde of the undead would likely result in my death and then Lily’s. I had no intention of that happening.
The road north was flanked by open fields on the right and on our left, trees provided a screen before the stinking salt marsh and mudflats beyond that led all the way to the river. Occasionally through the gaps in the trees, I would see a struggling figure stuck in the mud. It didn’t bear mentioning and I ignored them.
By mid-afternoon, the distance between the road and the River Nith narrowed until it was barely a dozen metres. That’s when we came upon the village of Glencaple.
Chapter 5 – Ryan
The road that led through town was lined on the right by the empty homes of the former inhabitants. Several smaller roads branched off to the right, leading to more streets of empty homes. Abandoned cars and personal belongings littered the road, evidence of flight.
“Things happened fast here,” Gabriel said softly. I glanced at him and was surprised to see a look of sorrow on his face as he looked over the buildings with their broken windows and dark stained walls.
“You were here then?” Gregg asked.
“Oh aye laddie, we were in a house up past the hotel and out towards the school,” he pointed roughly north-east and grimaced. “All the wee kiddies were at school like, when the first person must have turned.”
“What happened?”
I shook my head at the stupidity of the question. It was clear what had happened, the same as everywhere else. Someone turned and bit another, then another and before you knew it the world had fallen and everyone you knew was dead. Jinx looked up at me, and she at least seemed to understand what a stupid question it was.
“All the parents rushed to pick up the little ones from school,” Gabriel said and looked away. “They were all there, crowded together trying to get their wee ones when someone got attacked. It was all over for them then.”
“Ah mate, I’m so sorry,” Gregg said as he reached out to my brother. A gesture that was accepted with a grateful nod.
“Spread through the village quickly after that and those of us who could, well we ran.”
“What made you think of the castle?” I asked, genuinely curious for the first time.
“Dad did,” he said. “When we first saw the news and figured things were getting bad, he told us we needed to plan for the worst and we all talked about what we’d do.”
I reached for my knife as we walked along the road, only half listening as a sound caught my attention in the distance. Laughter.
“He spoke to a few neighbours like, had them sort of thinking he was nuts but when it all went mad, they were ready,” Gabriel continued, blissfully unaware of any threat.
We came even with the white-walled hotel that sat at the halfway point between the north and south ends of the village. It was likely one of the larger buildings and on the opposite side of the road were a tea room and shop for tourists to browse through.
It also sat at the point where the road curved to the right around its northern end, splitting to head eastwards and north out of the village. I paused at the edge of the building and waved the others to silence as I peered around the corner.
Two men lounged beside the road. Both young, barely into their twenties with jeans and warm jackets on. One had a shaven head with a round face and a baseball bat of some light coloured wood casually slung over his shoulder, while the other wore a black woollen cap and carried a cricket bat.
They were talking and one said something that raised laughter from the other. Neither seemed concerned about the handful of emaciated corpses that littered the road around them. Dark spatter covered the tarmac around each of those bodies’ heads.
“What’s wrong?” Gabriel asked in a too loud whisper.
“Two people,” I said with a gesture for him to scoot forward and look.
My brother peeked around the corner and let out a laugh, “Ah it’s just Dennis and Lewis.”
“Who?” I asked as he stepped around the corner, arm raised in greeting. I glanced back at Gregg who wore the same wary look as me and I reached into my pocket and pulled out the claw bladed knife, pulling the blade open and holding it down against my leg, hidden from view as I followed my brother. A gesture from me before I turned the corner had Jinx settle onto her haunches and wait. No need to reveal her just yet.
“Alright laddies?” he called as he approached the two men.
“Long time nae see,” the shaven-headed man said in a thick accent. It sounded more like ‘Lang time nae see,’ to my ears.
“How are you?” the other asked and again, his accent made it sound like ‘Hoo are ye?” I could see that it would quickly become irritating and Gregg was looking from one to the other with incomprehension plain on his face.
“Not so bad lad, not so bad,” Gabriel said as he approached. “How’s things around here?”
“All quiet around here like,” the shaven-headed man said. “Me and Lewis here was just about to head home.”
“What’re you doing here?” Lewis asked before Gabriel could ask another question. I glanced at Gregg and caught his eye before gesturing for him to move to the other side of my brother with just a slight tilt of my head. He nodded, a quick bob and slowly moved
into place.
“We’re headed up to the town,” Gabriel said his eyes narrowing at the tone of the other men's voices.
“Not this way you’re not,” Dennis said as he lifted his baseball bat from his shoulder and held it loosely in one hand.
“Why not? C’mon lads, you know me.”
“Nah, we knew you once,” Lewis said. His jaw clenched as he looked from me to Gregg and back again, sizing us up. “You’se a stranger now.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“We have to protect our family,” Dennis said. “You understand that.”
“But we just want to go through the village,” Gabriel protested as my hand tightened on the claw blades handle and I estimated the distance between me and Lewis. Five feet. Gregg has his club to hand and Gabriel carried no real weapon. No use there then.
“I dinnae care…” Dennis began as I leapt forward, my left hand flashing out to leave a red line across Lewis’s throat. “What the fuck!”
My combat knife was in my hand as I dashed towards the shaven-headed man, leaving the other man to gurgle and thrash on the road as he died messily. I ducked beneath the first swing of his baseball bat as Gregg approached from the side and thrust upwards with the knife.
Dennis jumped back with a curse and raised his bat overhead to swing down towards Gregg who leapt to the side away from it. I seized the chance and sank my combat knife into Dennis’s chest and for good measure, swiped the claw blade across his throat.
The whole thing had taken less than a dozen seconds and both men were dead. Gabriel looked at me with eyes wide and mouth open as I turned to Gregg. “Help me get these out of sight.”
As we stooped to pick up the first still twitching body, my brother bent over and was noisily sick on the road. Gregg and I lifted the body and dumped it over the nearest garden wall before going back for the second.
“What’ve you done?” Gabriel cried as we lifted the second.
“These weren’t your friends,” I said as the body fell against the other. “They weren’t your neighbours, your countrymen or anything else. They were a threat that were going to stop us reaching our destination and accomplishing what we need to do to keep Lily alive. I won’t allow that.”
“You killed them,” he stammered as he turned to Gregg. “You can’t agree with this.”
“They weren’t going to let us pass,” Gregg replied with a shrug of his shoulders as he picked up the baseball bat and gave it an experimental swing. Satisfied with his new weapon, he let his own club drop to the road. “We’ve met their kind before. They’d have taken our belongings, beaten us, killed us or just driven us off. At best we’d have been forced to go around the village and add a load of time to our journey. Time we don’t have.”
I let out a low whistle and Jinx trotted around the corner, pausing to sniff at the dead bodies on the road. Gabriel seemed dumbstruck as he stared from Gregg to me and back again. He shook his head and mouthed something that I had no interest in trying to catch.
While it was clear he was having trouble dealing with what had just happened, I had neither the time nor the patience to wait for him to grasp the realities of this new world. I tilted my head to Gregg and set off through the garden of the nearest house towards the rear.
My reasoning was simple. If they had chosen to protect themselves towards the far north of the village, then they would have done so in one of the larger houses to the left-hand side of the road that I could see in the distance. They backed on to the river and provided somewhere for them to have easy access to fish while watching the road.
The homes to the right then were likely the best ones to use to shield us from the road and allow us to head straight north towards Dumfries.
A quick glance behind showed me that Gregg was following close by, head swivelling as he watched for danger and weapon to hand. My brother hesitated but followed along, eyes carefully averted from the dead bodies we had left behind the wall.
I held back my grin as I turned back to the path. Their ‘sanctuary’ must have been sheltered from the worst. They’d already admitted that they avoided killing the zombies unless they really had to, which would only be possible if they had only ever had a few pass them by at a time.
It was also beyond clear to me that they had not had to kill the living. My brother's reaction was evidence of that and it was a testament to their luck. With the Irish Sea behind them and Carlisle to their south-east to provide a buffer, along with the motorways that headed right past… well, like we had in the Lake District, they had weathered the worst by not being found. That would change.
My thoughts drifted away as I approached a tall wooden fence. It was half painted and long dry tins of paint sat on the damp grass at its base. I peered over and once sure that there was nothing to notice us, I clambered over and grinned at what I took to be Jinx’s look of disgust at having to be lifted over the fence by Gregg.
The next garden had a hedge that bordered the garden and a two storey property that sat dark and empty to the side. A quick look at the lock revealed it to have been broken but the door was closed anyway to protect the interior. Smart thinking to not leave it open to the elements after looting. Someone was thinking ahead.
We passed four more houses without notice and reached a stone walled garden that had open fields beyond and another two guards standing beside the road that led out of the village. I sighed and crouched down beside the wall, safely hidden from sight.
“We need to get rid of those guys,” I said to Gregg and he grimaced but nodded acceptance.
“What? Why?” Gabriel demanded in a too loud whisper that caused me to frown at him.
“We can’t cross the open fields without them seeing us and if they do, they will wonder why their friends hadn’t stopped us coming this far. It won’t take them long to put two and two together and set off after us.”
“No,” he said as he looked to Gregg for support. “No more killing. These are people Ryan.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” he ran one hand through his thick mop of dark hair and his eyes narrowed as he sought for the right words. “You treat them as though they were the undead. As though they were of no consequence, but these are good people.”
“So what?”
He stared at me aghast, as though seeing me for the first time and shook his head once more. “How far have you fallen brother?” he asked sorrow colouring his tone.
“If we leave them alive then they will be a threat to us in the future. It’s as simple as that.”
“No,” he said. It was matter of fact as though it were the simplest thing in the world to understand and only a true fool would miss its meaning. “How can we rebuild this world if we become so much less than what we are?”
“You’re an idiot and I have no time for this nonsense while Lily lays dying.”
I readied my knives, the claw blade in the left and the combat knife in my right. A quick glance over the wall and I had the approximate positions of the guards set in my mind. I could dash silently past the house, keeping low, and be on them before they knew it as they faced outwards looking for threats.
“Is saving one life worth the loss of so many others?” he asked as he grabbed my right arm in his hand. In a split second, I had the claw blade pressed against his throat as his eyes widened.
“She is worth more to me than anyone else,” I said. It was a struggle to keep my voice low and to hold back from digging the blade into his flesh. My arm trembled with the strain and Gregg inched closer, though whether to stop me or my brother, I couldn’t say.
“You’ll need to kill me before I let you take another life,” Gabriel said. “Could you do that brother?”
“Gabe…” Gregg began but a single look from me silenced him before I turned back to my brother, a grin forming on my face.
“Yes,” I said as I sank the blade into the flesh of his throat.
Chapter 6 – Lily
I was in a room, an off
ice of some sort. It had a window set into the old stone walls and a door that was closed. Little else though other than boxes and an office chair. A woman sat in that chair, reading a book to a small boy with dark hair, big blue eyes, and a face still chubby with puppy fat.
My throat ached and my skin seemed to be radiating heat in waves. I half expected the thin sheet that covered me to burst into flames such was the heat. Something was on my head and I reached up to touch a damp cloth before my arm fell back to the bed. It had taken all of my strength to move just that far.
The woman stopped reading and leaned down to whisper to the boy who giggled happily and ran to the door, pulling it open and disappearing through it as the woman stood and smoothed down the front of her plain blue dress.
She set the book to one side and picked up a plastic cup of water from the floor beside me and crouched down. It occurred to me that I was lying on something low, a camp bed perhaps. It was hard to focus or to move my head.
“Drink,” the woman commanded as she placed the cup to my lips and tepid water filled my mouth, spilling out down my chin. I shifted on my bed and moaned as pain stabbed through my stomach.
“Wh-where?”
“Don’t talk just yet,” she said as she wiped at my chin with a clean looking white cloth. “Drink first.”
I did as she said and managed to swallow more of the water. It stung my throat for a moment before salving it. A cough shook me and pain once more bloomed in my gut.
“Try not to move around, you’re in a bad way.”
“Ryan?” I asked and hated how my voice sounded so weak and feeble.
“He left hours ago.”
“Left?”
She looked from me to the door and chewed absently on her lip as she thought. Finally, she said, “He left with your friend, Gregg?” I nodded and she continued, “And Gabe.”
“What happened?”
“You were stabbed and I won’t lie, you’re not in a good way.”
Killing The Dead 9 (Season 2 | Book 3): Family Matters Page 3
