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

by Stephen Charlick

  She could feel the slight movement of his knuckles against the skin on her back, his grip on her subconsciously tightening, and as much as she was touched by this instinctive symbol of just how much he thought of her, she knew now was not the time.

  ‘Kai, we don’t have…’ she started to say; about to insist they didn’t have time for her to argue her case.

  ‘Okay,’ he simply said, cutting her off as he released his anchoring hold of the balcony rail to now take her belt in both hands. ‘Say w…when.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, caught a little off guard that he had agreed so readily, Fran found herself second guessing herself.

  Looking down at the Dead man at the base of the tree below her, his grey sallow skin hanging loose and tattered about his gaunt neck, she knew she only had one shot at this. She either made this leap of faith and succeeded, or she would fall, probably hitting half a dozen branches on the way down, to end up in a pair of welcoming open arms, arms that happened to be attached to an equally welcoming open mouth.

  ‘Christ!’ she whispered, looking away from the Dead man to refocus her attention on the spot on the branch she needed to aim for. ‘On the count of three,’ she continued, realizing from the sounds coming from the room behind them that they didn’t have time to waste. ‘One, two, Th…’

  With a grunt, Kai abruptly thrust Fran away from the edge of the balcony. Straining as his out stretched arms struggled to support her weight without actually letting go of her, he watched as Fran’s hands scrambled desperately to grab hold of the sturdier section of the branch still a fraction beyond her reach.

  ‘Kai!’ she started to say, knowing just by the feel of her belt digging sharply into her waist that he still had hold of her.

  But then with a second cry of effort coming from behind her, Fran found the tension on her waist disappearing and for one scary second she was half being shoved and half being tossed through the air towards the tree; instantly breaching the small gap between herself and the section of the branch she knew would hold her weight.

  ‘Jesus!’ she gasped, scrabbling frantically to find a secure grip just as her legs collided painfully against a lower branch and her body slammed into the sturdy trunk.

  ‘Fran!’ cried Kai, horrified that she may be about to lose her fleeting handhold.

  But no sooner had her name left his lips than Fran’s grip tightened about the branch, saving her from the nasty and possibly fatal fall.

  ‘I’m… I’m okay, Kai, I’m okay,’ she panted, trying to ignore the alarmingly loud hammering of her heart while turning her head a fraction to briefly look back at him. ‘I’m okay,’ she continued, her words this time sounding more like a question as she couldn’t help but glance worryingly down to the Dead man below her.

  ‘Just b…be careful,’ she heard Kai call from the balcony, the sound of his concerned voice suddenly breaking the spell the hungry rotting corpse pawing at the base of the tree had seemingly cast upon her.

  ‘I’m okay, I’m okay,’ she repeated again, a little more conviction finally creeping into her voice when her foot tentatively found welcome purchase on the protruding stub of a lower branch.

  Slowly she shuffled her foot along the branch, cautiously moving it closer to a point where she felt sure it could cope with more of her weight resting on it. Then, once she knew she wasn’t about to plummet to her death, Fran took a few precious seconds to take some deep steadying breaths; knowing she would need to calm herself and the wild drumming in her chest before she started her journey down the tree to deal with the putrid welcome that awaited her.

  ***

  ‘They’re coming, Daddy,’ his youngest daughter squealed with glee.

  ‘I know, Sweat-pea, I know,’ Tom muttered in reply, knowing his mumbled words would always be heard no matter how quietly he spoke them.

  ‘And you’ll cut them,’ came the voice of her elder sister, the nine year old trying to sound so grown up and serious despite there being only a few years between her and her sibling, ‘won’t you, Daddy? You’ll cut them and make them pay for what they did?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tom replied, her words twisting like a knife in his heart. ‘Yes, Daddy will make them pay… doesn’t he always make them pay?’

  ‘And don’t we deserve that much?’ his wife asked, her rage roiling and bubbling, barely held in check beneath her words.

  ‘Carol, I…’ Tom started to say, his gaze never leaving the violently shaking and rattling door in front of him.

  ‘After what they did to our babies, Tom… how they tore into them, ripping them to pieces in front of me, my beautiful babies,’ she hissed, knowing her words would tear at the fabric of her husband’s soul. ‘And you weren’t there… were you, Tom? Where were you when those monsters fed upon our children, fed upon me… we were alone and you weren’t there,’ she continued, her resentment for his very survival dripping from every word.

  ‘I… I was looking for food,’ he started to say, his guilt bringing fresh tears to his eyes; tears of pain from an old and endlessly self-inflicted wound. ‘You know that... if I had only known… if I…’

  ‘And we only ask this one thing of you,’ his wife continued, her demanding voice whispering with such contempt that he could almost feel her cold breath against his ear. ‘Make… them… pay.’

  ‘Make them pay,’ he blindly repeated, knowing once again he was losing his hold on reality but at the same time welcoming the numbing blanket of the bloody carnage to follow that was slowly enveloping him.

  And he knew he would be true to his word, he would always make the Dead pay for what they had done. Ever since that terrible afternoon when he had returned to the abandoned cottage that he and his family had made their home, only to find the Dead had reduced those he loved to little more than torn and bloody nightmares, he had made them pay; each and every one of them. On some level Tom knew the pain his family has suffered, as horrific as it was, had at least been fleeting and had ended in oblivion but his own on the other hand, his was a self-imposed constant. This was the price he paid for his survival and he paid it willingly. His pain had woven itself about him, becoming part of who he was. For when, grief stricken and exhausted by loss, he had first held the two curved blades in his limp hands, knowing he would have to hunt down and end the unnatural existence forced upon his wife and children, something had fractured within his psyche, changing the makeup of both his mind and his reality in one devastating swoop.

  ‘Daddy,’ giggled his youngest daughter, abruptly shaking the image of broken windows and blood splatted wallpaper from his mind, ‘they’re almost here, they’re almost here!’

  At first the voices of his lost wife and daughters would come to him in fleeting and ghostly murmurs; their demands for retribution pleading and forlorn. Yet as time passed and Tom’s grief twisted and morphed into something hard and concrete within him, their anger at his own survival seeming to grow, placing him in more and more danger; and then soon their very presence became a real and an almost tangible thing to him. Ghostly forms seemed to forever linger just beyond his line of sight, constantly whispering to him while childlike spectral fingers would briefly brush again his hand or tentatively cling to the back of his jacket like a child hiding shyly behind him, afraid to show itself. Even now he would swear he could hear the footsteps of his daughters as they danced back and forth, excitedly awaiting the carnage yet to come. But he knew should he turn he would see nothing; nothing but the room behind him, as empty and as barren as his own meaningless life.

  A more rational mind would recognize this as purely the result of ‘survival guilt’ but with his blindfold of grief welcomingly wrapped about him, Tom simply could not see this. He merely paid penance for failing his family when they needed him most and it was a penance he knew he would one day pay with his life.

  ‘Open the door, Tom. Open it and be done with it!’ urged his wife, her presence so real he would swear he could feel her wraithlike lips brushing against his ear as she spoke.


  ‘Carol,’ he tried to protest, his knuckles turning white as his fists tightened about the handles of the curved blades he held in each hand. ‘I… I can’t… Fran and… and…K’

  ‘Let those rotting bastards in and make them pay,’ she continued, ignoring his refusal, demanding it was she that commanded his sole attention and concern.

  It was at that moment that the sound of splintering wood filled the room, cutting off his wife’s plea to send a sliver of ice-cold reality shooting through Tom, chilling him to his very core.

  ‘The door, Daddy, they’re getting through!’ cried his eldest daughter, promptly pulling him back to his ethereal world just as the top panel of the door in front of him splint and cracked under the continual onslaught from the hungry Dead in the hallway.

  Almost instantly, Tom saw the blackened and filthy fingers fighting with each other to force their way through the ever widening crack. So desperate were these cadavers to get through to the living flesh they knew lurked just beyond their grasp, that with each finger that pushed its way forth, decaying skin was sliced from bony claw-like hands sending rotting flesh falling unnoticed to the floor and with it the crack grew ominously larger. Behind him, Tom’s consciousness vaguely registered Kai calling to Fran, the young man’s voice dreamlike and distant to him, as if spoken far off or merely imagined.

  ‘Destroy them for us,’ hissed Tom’s wife, as if sensing his attention wondering. ‘Do it, Tom! Do it!’

  Just then the top of the bedroom door bent inward, creaking alarmingly as it moved and then, unable to withstand the pressure being forced against it any longer, the whole top panel suddenly shattered sending splinters of wood showering into the room.

  ‘Do it!’ Tom’s wife almost screamed in a voice only he could hear.

  ‘Come on then!’ shouted Tom, at last allowing the rage of his grief to consume him just as the decayed face of a Dead woman pushed its way forward past the grasping hands of its Dead comrades to leer hungrily at him. ‘Come on, you Dead fuckers! Come and get some!’

  ***

  From the noise above her Fran knew what little time they had left was running out fast, so with the rough bark of the tree trunk at her back and her feet resting on two lower branches for support, she slowly reached down and slipped free the sharp hunting knife from the sheath tied to her ankle.

  ‘Right,’ she muttered to herself, just as her eyes locked with the pair of milky film-covered eyes staring up at her, ‘time for someone to meet his maker.’

  Pausing, Fran’s eyes followed her route from branch to branch, down the tree into the tall overgrown grasses at its base and the Dead man eagerly awaiting her. As always she couldn’t help but visualize each twist, turn and movement she would need to make to ensure the outcome she wanted, it was an inbuilt trait; a trait that had saved her life on many an occasion.

  ‘Come on, Frannie,’ she remembered her Father’s coaching before one of her Judo matches many years ago, ‘plan your attack. Only when you can see it, that’s when you then act, girl… come on, you can do this.’

  With a smile tinged with loss twitching at her lips, Fran briefly pictured her Father, his proud face erupting in jubilant smiles as she ran towards him, the first of many first place medals clutched in her hand.

  ‘I can do this,’ she murmured, carefully placing the knife between her teeth before pushing herself away from the tree trunk to duck down into a crouch; her weight spread between two thick gnarled branches.

  She was about to move across and down to the next planned position when she happened to glance through the thinning canopy of golden brown leaves around her and out to the lane beyond the garden surrounding them; what she saw made her pause. For there just on the other side of an expanse of wild brambles, the last of their harvest hanging heavy and uncollected, was the disturbing shape of an overturned and badly charred cart.

  ‘Shit!’ she spat around the blade in her mouth, noticing the partly burnt carcass of a horse lying on its side and the two small dogs hungrily ripping at its flanks.

  As she spoke one of the dogs, a small Fox Terrier, filthy with matted and gore-caked fur, looked up from its meal of horse meat and let out a brief high pitched bark. Whether it recognised her as alive or was simply warning her off his meal, she didn’t know but no sooner had their eyes met than the animal turned its back on her, instantly dismissing her to continue feeding.

  ‘Thank God,’ she thought to herself, realizing from the colouring of what was left of the poor beast’s skin that it couldn’t have been Star. ‘Hope you two are on your own,’ she continued, giving the dogs a final concerned glance before deftly lowering herself down to the next branch. ‘Last thing we need is a pack of feral dogs adding to this mix of crap.’

  She had heard tales of these feral packs; they were savage, wild and unpredictable. Made up of a mismatch of long abandoned pets and mongrel new-borns, these animals had fallen back into a wolf-like existence and embraced that which had lay hidden deep within their genetic memory, they had abandoned their former title as ‘man’s best friend’ to carve out a new position in this new world of the Dead. Everything was fair game to them now. To them flesh was flesh, even that of their former masters; alive or Dead.

  ‘I know, I know,’ she muttered through gritted teeth, as the Dead man beat his putrid hands against the tree trunk below her; a desperate and pitiful moaning escaping his blackened cracked lips. ‘I’m coming, don’t you worry.’

  Within seconds she made good on her promise and was sat perched on the lowest of the branches, just barely out of the Dead man’s reach. Looking down at it, she tried not to think of whom he had once been; what hopes, dreams or loves this man may have once had. She had but one thought in her mind, to end its unnatural existence as quickly as possible so she could get to their cart before any more of the Dead heard the commotion and came to investigate. And so with her knife once again firmly in her grasp, she waited for just the right moment to present itself and then, with her Father’s words of encouragement flitting through her mind, she let herself drop. Almost immediately she found herself in the tall grass astride the Dead man’s struggling corpse; the wiry tendons of its neck stretching beneath mould tinged skin as it strained to reach her with its snapping tombstone-like teeth.

  ‘No, you… don’t!’ she grunted, gripping the cadaver firmly under its chin and yanking its head sharply to one side. ‘Shit!’ she continued, suddenly realizing the corpse’s movements and her tight handhold were causing the rotting skin covering its rancid flesh to slough and tear beneath her fingers.

  Knowing she was about to lose her grip, she quickly stabbed down with her knife, piercing the skull around the ear canal, ripping through the brain tissue beneath. With a wet ‘cracking’ sound Fran knew the job was done.

  ‘Wow!’ she coughed, suddenly covering her nose with the crook of her elbow as the corpse shuddered and then became still between her legs; the stench erupting from it turning her stomach. ‘You’d better hope there’s no door policy at those Pearly gates, man, because…’

  She was about to continue when a shadow fell across the lifeless cadaver’s face.

  ‘Oh crap!’ sighed Fran, looking up to see the body of what appeared to have once been a ten year old boy stumbling silently towards her through the tall grass; the missing lower jaw and absent tongue making it impossible for it to vocalize the hungry excitement that burned within its milky stare.

  Jumping to her feet, Fran ripped her knife from the now motionless cadaver’s skull, the sucking sound as she pulled the blade free a sickening precursor to the splatter of rancid brain matter that followed in its wake.

  ‘Great,’ she muttered, flicking her wrist to remove a stubborn blob of purple-tinged gore from the groove running the length of the blade.

  Even as the offending gobbet of matter dislodged itself to fall to her feet, Fran knew it had been a pointless exercise for already the Dead boy’s arms were reaching for her beseechingly, as if begging for the merest taste
, and she knew her blade would once again be dipping into the usual well of rotting flesh and putrid fluids.

  ‘Come on then,’ she murmured, stepping over the lifeless body at her feet to grab hold of one of the Dead boy’s outstretched wrists.

  With a sharp tug, she abruptly pulled the boy’s body towards her, knocking him off balance before easily sidestepping him and tossing his skeletal and abused remains to the ground.

  ‘I haven’t got time for this,’ she said to herself, trying in vain to ignore Tom’s shouts from above her as she quickly placed her foot on the back of the boy’s emaciated neck, the pressure easily keeping him in place.

  The Dead boy clawed uselessly at the ground, jerking his head back and forth, oblivious to the tearing of its skin and cracking of delicate neck vertebrae beneath Fran’s foothold. Sure that the creature was now pinned securely beneath her foot she swiftly leant forward and with one sharp stabbing motion aimed at the relatively thinner bone at the base of its skull, her knife at last gave the child’s corpse the gift of true death.

  ‘I’m sorry… rest in peace,’ she found herself fleetingly thinking, as she coolly pulled her blade free from the small skull and ran to the side of the house; leaving the two bodies lying forever motionless behind her in the tall grass at the base of the tree.

  Pressing her back against rough brickwork, she began to edge her way to the corner of the house, crushing overgrown and weed-choked flowerbeds beneath her feet as she went. As she came to one of the ground floor windows, its shutters hanging loose, pealing and dilapidated after years of neglect, she paused wary of passing directly in front of it; after all the last thing she needed was a Dead horde rushing the dirt streaked glass if they caught sight of her. But with a large thorny rose bush growing beneath the windowsill preventing her from ducking completely from sight she knew she had only one choice; she’d just have to chance it.