‘This is bullshit!’ spat Ray, shaking his head as he glanced back at Harry’s corpse. ‘You think you can fucking kill Harry and just get away with it.’
‘It wasn’t…’ Brett started to say.
‘I’m not going to tell you again, Brett,’ interrupted Dennis, without breaking eye contact with Ray, ‘keep it shut, I…’
‘The world may have gone to shit,’ Ray raged, talking over him, ‘but you murder someone and there’s still consequences… you still have to pay, Dennis.’
‘Now,’ Dennis replied, slowly pulling the machete from its sheath, ‘I’d think twice before you decide to go down that route.’
‘Dennis, Ray,’ said Sid, speaking for the first time, his neutral tone somewhat belittled by the slight nervous shake to his voice, ‘we’re… we’re all a bit on edge at the moment and probably saying things we may not mean. I… I think we should take a moment… just to think things through a bit.’
‘No,’ said Emma, ignoring Sid’s call for calm, letting the back of her fingers brush discretely against Dennis’ leg. ‘I think Ray’s already made his decision.’
Looking briefly away from Ray, Dennis found himself lost in Emma’s almost bewitchingly pale blue eyes.
‘We’re not going to make it, Dennis,’ Sid continued, hoping the larger man would heed his advice and take a step back from the bloody precipice he teetered on, ‘not…not unless we stick together… all of us.’
‘Clock’s ticking, Dennis,’ Emma repeated, forcefully holding his gaze while the little finger on her hand moved just enough to touch his thigh once again. ‘And you know… he won’t forget, neither will Paul. Deep down you know…’ she continued, her voice soft and calm as if talking to a child. ‘It’ll always be there, always waiting for you to slip up and they...’
‘What the fuck are you talking about you stupid bitch!’ snapped Ray. ‘Bloke kills your dad and all of a sudden you’re his best friend.’
As he spoke Emma slowly released Dennis from her captivating stare and turned her attention to Ray; a look of complete disinterest on her face.
‘Oh…Oh, shit!’ whispered Paul, the connection suddenly dawning on him, shaking his head in disbelief as his hand reached up to tug on Ray’s sleeve. ‘It was her, Ray. It was Emma. She killed Harry.’
‘It’ll always be there, Dennis,’ Emma softly said, ignoring Paul’s revelation as she tilted her head to rest it against Dennis’ arm.
For a moment nobody moved and nobody said anything; a silent standoff interrupted by only the sound of Grant shovelling spoonful after spoonful of cooling mashed potato into his mouth and the rhythmic dripping of Harry’s equally cooling blood hitting the floor.
‘Brett, Grant,’ said Dennis, at last breaking the silence and causing a nervous whine to escape from Natalie, clearly fearful of what was about to happen.
‘Getting your henchmen to do the dirty work are you?’ sneered Ray.
‘Ray and Paul here… they’re about to leave us,’ stated Dennis, ignoring Ray’s comment.
‘No, wait, please…’ Paul tried to say, a knot of terror already gripping his insides.
‘But Dennis, the Dead?’ added Sid, while beside him Natalie failed to hold in check a sharp fearful sob. ‘Please, you can’t…’
‘See they get to the park entrance safely,’ Dennis continued. ‘I don’t want them to get turned around in the dark by mistake.’
‘What? Like, right now?’ asked Brett, glancing briefly at his brother who simply shrugged his shoulders noncommittally.
‘Yes, now!’ Dennis replied without looking back; refusing to break eye contact with Ray stood seething in the doorway. ‘They won’t be needing to pack.’
‘You fucker!’ growled Ray, knowing Dennis had basically handed them both a death sentence. ‘What are we…’
‘Dennis, p…please… I … I don’t care about Harry, honest,’ Paul stammered, desperate to somehow find a way to convince the man to let him stay. ‘Please, I …’
‘They can take with them what they have on them now, nothing more,’ said Dennis, issuing his orders to Brett and Grant as if Paul hadn’t spoken at all. ‘Oh, and you can split the stuff they leave behind between the two of you once they’re gone,’ he said as an afterthought realising it was a good way to keep to two younger and physically able men on side; the soft motion of Emma’s thumb moving back and forth against his leg showing him she approved too.
Again the two brothers exchanged glances, a spoken agreement quickly passing between them with the barest of nods.
‘Okay,’ said Grant, through a final mouthful of food, before dropping the empty spoon down onto the table, ‘sorry gents but it’s check-out time at Camp Dead… time to leave.’
‘No, no, Dennis, please, Dennis,’ Paul continued to beg, shaking his head as if to wake himself from the nightmare that had unexpectedly descended upon him in the spate of just a few minutes.
‘Now, let’s not over-stay our welcome,’ sighed Brett, lifting a heavy length of piping up to rest on his shoulder and taking a step towards the two men. ‘I think we’ve all seen enough of the red stuff for one night, don’t you?’
‘Emma,’ a woman’s voice whispered from somewhere in the room.
‘Yeah, there’s no need to,’ added Grant, vigorously using his tongue to try and free something stuck between his teeth, ‘to make this any harder than it already is.’
‘Emma,’ the woman repeated.
‘You fuckers are going to pay for this,’ snapped Ray, turning to angrily push an almost weeping Paul back out of the doorway in front of him. ‘You’re all going to pay, mark my words you murdering bastards, somehow you’ll pay for this!’
‘Always be there,’ whispered Emma, gently shaking her head as if she was somehow exasperated by the man’s reaction; her hand slowly moving up to touch Dennis’ arm.
‘You’ll pay for this!’ Ray continued to shout from just beyond the doorway, as Brett moved to follow after him; Grant trailing closely behind.
‘Grant,’ Dennis suddenly called after the younger man, causing him to turn in the open doorway. ‘Take this,’ he continued, flipping the machete in his hand so he now offered the handle-end to Grant.
Slowly Grant reached for the handle, looking up at Dennis as his fingers encircled the grip.
‘Ray’s an angry man who knows our weaknesses,’ Dennis simply stated with a jerk of his head to the open door, finally allowing his hand to slip from the machete.
‘That not good,’ replied Grant quietly, his eyes momentarily flicking to long blade before returning to meet Dennis’. ‘Not good at all.’
With a nod of understanding, Grant tested the weight of the machete in his hand and then turned and left the cabin without saying another word.
‘Oh, Dennis,’ sighed Sid, dropping slowly back into his seat, all the tension of what had occurred suddenly catching up with him in a wave of overwhelming exhaustion.
‘Emma,’ the woman’s voice whispered from across the room once again, only this time holding an underlying urgency that demanded recognition.
Turning to look back, Emma had almost forgotten the bloody scene she had left in her wake but even seeing it afresh she still felt no remorse for what she had done. In fact it was only the strange look on her younger sister Wendy’s blood splattered face that caused her to pause and think perhaps there may have been a better way after all.
‘Emma,’ Angela Doyle continued, at last tearing herself from the crumpled form of her murdered husband to look at her teenage daughter, ‘your father, he…’
Yet even as Emma met her mother’s glassy stare, she noticed the sharp twitch of one of her step-father’s arms on the table behind her.
‘He…’ Angela continued, her voice sounding distant, forgetful and somewhat confused, as if she was trying to deny the reality of what had happened and yet at the same time desperately trying to pass on some vital message. ‘He’s…’
Behind her, Harry Doyle’s body jerked again, his r
ight leg suddenly kicking out to the side; the movement causing a chorus of cries to erupt from those still left seated about the table.
‘Dennis,’ hissed Emma, realising that unlike Sid, Norma, Jimmy and Natalie, Wendy still stood dangerously close to her step-father’s twitching corpse. ‘Dennis, he,’ she repeated just as the corpse of her father sat bolt upright and glared at her with milky film covered eyes. ‘Harry,’ she managed to gasp just as the carving knife flew from Dennis’ hand and lodged itself deeply in the corpse’s left eye socket; the force of the blow knocking him backwards off his chair.
With a screech of chair legs being pushed across wooden floorboards, Angela Doyle at last rose from her seat. She gave one last look towards the space at end of the blood covered table that only moments ago her husband, and then his reanimated corpse, had filled and then she silently turned and walked away. As she reached the doorway she paused, her shaking hand grasping the door surround for support and silently she looked back once at her eldest daughter, a strangely unemotional expression on her face and then stepped out onto the dark walkway beyond. For a few beats of her heart Emma simply stared at the dark chasm of the open doorway and in that instant she knew. She knew that her mother had known all along about her step-father’s sick desires and she knew she had done nothing to prevent it.
‘Emma… Emma, it’s over,’ said Dennis, tentatively touching her shoulder; the contact instantly breaking the spell her mother’s departure had cast over her.
‘What?’ she replied, momentarily confused by the emotions that battled within her as she looked up at the man that had spoken. ‘Oh, yes, yes, Dennis, it’s over…. finally over.’
Briefly a sad smile ghosted across her lips showing her thanks and then looking back at the empty table space she saw Wendy standing motionless, gazing down at their step-father’s forever lifeless corpse.
‘Wendy,’ she said, her words barely a whisper.
Blinking, the eleven year old girl seemed to briefly shake herself from the catatonic state that had wrapped itself about her.
‘Emma,’ she croaked, before slowly returning her gaze to the body at her feet.
‘Oh, Wendy,’ said Emma, rushing to her sister’s side to pull her into a tight embrace. ‘I had to… I did it for you, Wendy… I couldn’t let him hurt you… I could never let him hurt you.’
And as Emma hugged her traumatised sister, safe in the knowledge she had saved her from the fate she herself had suffered, Wendy calmly looked down at the man who had been a father to her. She looked at his crumpled and blood covered shell, she studied the torn and ripped flesh about his neck and breathed in the coppery scent of his blood. And then, still standing in her sister’s arms, barely registering the cooed and whispered reassurances being spoken, Wendy tentatively licked her blood covered lips and smiled.
***
Chapter 1:
Just over three years later:
‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Fran muttered, her head spinning back and forth as she looked for inspiration, her words punctuated by the sound of moaning and the hammering of fists against the locked bedroom door. ‘I knew it was a bad idea. I knew we were too close to that village.’
‘This is b…bolted to the w…wall,’ stammered Kai, abandoning his impromptu attempt to use the large ornately carved wardrobe to barricade the door. ‘We’re going to have to make a j…jump for it.’
‘Crap!’ spat Fran, knowing that the high ceilinged rooms with their elaborately moulded plaster surrounds, which had appeared so elegant to her the evening before, now only added to their problems. Darting to one of the bedroom windows, Fran used both hands to grab fistfuls of fabric to pull aside the heavy but moth-eaten curtains. ‘Last thing we need is a broken leg with those things swarming the place… Tom?’ she continued, calling over her shoulder to the older man by the door, hopeful for some reassurance that it was still holding.
‘Soon,’ she heard him whisper, yet although he was standing with his back to her, his fists clenched fiercely about the handles of his two wickedly sharp sickles, she somehow knew he wasn’t talking to her.
‘Tom!’ she repeated, this time raising her voice, hopeful her tone would break though the ghostly reality his mind now eagerly wrapped itself in.
With a clatter of curtain rings knocking against each other, she yanked one of the curtains to one side, instantly piercing the shadows of the bedroom with a blinding shard of bright morning sunlight.
‘The door, Tom! How much time do we have?’ she coughed, rapidly blinking as her eyes adjusted to the bright light and billowing cloud of dust that moving the curtain had released into the room.
With no coherent reply forthcoming from Tom, she found herself instinctively glancing to Kai for words of comfort but where his dark eyes normally filled her with a sense of calm, this time she was met with nothing but a look of worry and growing concern; a look she knew that mirrored her own. Even though the young man was taller and physically stronger than herself, Fran knew she still had the upper hand, she had the experience. After all, Kai was still relatively new to this world of death and the Dead; and now that he had joined the fight to survive beyond the high walls of his boarding school sanctuary, it fell to her and the knowledge she had gathered over the last five years to get them through the next few minutes… hopefully alive.
‘Kai, we’ve got to…’ she began to say, breaking eye contact with him to look back at the window. ‘Oh…’ she suddenly faltered, finding not the window in front of her she had expected, but a set of floor to ceiling glass panelled doors that opened out onto a shallow Juliet balcony. ‘Now, I don’t suppose…’ she continued, reaching for a slightly tarnished brass door handle.
After a few futile attempts at the handle, trying to open the door, Fran took a step back.
‘Well of course not… that’d just be too easy,’ she grumbled, gesturing with her hands for Kai to take a step back as she prepared to land a sharp side kick at the door and hopefully break the lock.
‘W…wait!’ Kai interrupted, placing a hand on her shoulder before side stepping in front of her to reach up and release an until then unnoticed bolt set high on the door frame.
Giving him a brief look that screamed ‘Smart arse’, Fran returned to try the handle for a second time and was rewarded this time with click of the lock turning.
‘Thanks,’ she mumbled, swiftly pulling the door open towards her.
Yet her relief was to be short lived, for no sooner has she opened it wide enough for her to step through then the terrifying sound of wood splintering behind her filled the room. Instantly both she and Kai spun to locate its source.
‘Fuck!’ she gasped, her eyes growing wide as she beheld the large crack now running through one of the upper panels of the door.
With each pound of a Dead fist on the other side the cracked panel shook, bending inward to splinter just that bit more and soon the sickening stench of slowly rotting flesh began to permeate the room, wafting in and around them, like some unseen spectre, coating their tongues and nostrils with a film of decaying death.
‘W…whatever you’ve got p…planned…’ Kai started to say, at last tearing his eyes from the rattling door, just as Fran spoke.
‘Kai, take the back of my belt,’ she began, stepping out onto the shallow balcony and already lifting one leg over the thin railing. ‘I’m going to lean out, see if I can grab hold of that branch. Then I’ll get the grapple from the cart and you can both climb down.’
‘You sure it’ll take your w…weight?’ he asked, his face creasing with concern as he looked from the worryingly thin branch down to the overgrown garden below and the lone hungry cadaver already pawing at the base of the tree looking back up at him.
‘No, not really,’ she replied, swinging her other leg over the railing with decidedly more confidence and bravado than she felt, ‘but what choice do we have, it clearly won’t take yours… and no-one’s jumping… we can’t risk it.’
For a split second, Kai locked eyes wi
th the young woman he loved and wished there was another way, a way he could take her place. But Fran was right, she was their only hope if they wanted to survive this and it would be her skills and knowledge that would save them.
‘Okay,’ he simply said with a nod, stepping up behind her to slip his fingers around the back of her belt. ‘Just b…be careful.’
‘Aren’t I always,’ she mumbled, trying to ignore the distracting sensation of Kai’s fingers as they brushed against the soft skin at the base of her back.
‘No,’ said Kai to himself, bracing his legs to take the strain as Fran leant forward, reaching out for the nearest branch.
‘Just a bit… further,’ she grunted, her outstretched finger tips brushing tantalizingly close to the gnarled bark of the apple tree. ‘If I can just…’
And then suddenly Kai shifted his positon a fraction, giving her that extra bit of reach she needed and with it her fingers were closing about the branch.
‘Oh, crap!’ she thought, instantly realizing Kai may have been right about the branch not being able to take her weight as she felt it start to bend alarmingly already.
‘Don’t let go, Kai!’ she panted, briefly glancing down before using her existing hand hold to reach out even further to a thicker part of the branch. ‘Not until I say, okay.’
‘I’ve g…got you,’ he replied, his stammer somewhat belittling the confidence the statement was meant to convey.
Fran could see the point where the branch was sturdy enough to support her, she could even visualize where she would move from branch to branch on her way down the tree but it was that small breach between where she could reach and where she needed to be that caused the problem. Falling short by the smallest of margins it may as well have been mile for all the good it did. There was no way she could make it on her own, that was clear; and then an idea struck her.
‘Kai, I need you to… to well, sort of throw me a bit,’ she said at last, knowing the look that would likely have appeared on his face. ‘Just a bit of a boost that’s all,’ she rushed on to say before he could protest. ‘Just to be sure I can get a hand hold far enough along the branch.’
Star Drawn Saga (Book 2): Lost Among The Dead Page 2
