‘I heard you shouting,’ said Tom to Fran, glancing menacingly at Mike as he spoke. ‘Everything okay here?’
‘Yep,’ Fran replied, nonchalantly resting her machete on her shoulder. ‘Mike and… and Sam?’ she asked assuming that was the woman’s name. ‘Well, they’ll be joining us… for a while at least.’
‘Sorry, yes,’ the woman nodded, realising she hadn’t really been introduced to the people who had just save their lives. ‘My name’s Samantha, Sam… everyone just calls me Sam… well everyone that isn’t trying to eat us,’ she continued, a brittle smile on her lips as she subconsciously rubbed her child’s back to calm it down.
‘How old?’ asked Tom, suddenly transfixed by the bundle in Sam’s arms.
‘Four months,’ Sam replied, her gaze flicking to Tom’s blades still dripping in dark fluids. ‘She’s four months old.’
‘And she’s not usually so noisy,’ added Mike, gently taking the baby from Sam to free the fabric of her Babygro that had become caught under his distressed daughter’s chin, ‘or pink… are you Poppy, hey…mmm. You’re not making a very good impression on these people, Pops.’
‘Four months?’ said Tom, looking at the red faced baby. ‘How have you survived out here for four months with a baby?’
‘We’ve been staying in a house in Chacewater for the last five months,’ said Mike, looking from the child in his arms back to Tom. ‘There were hardly any of the Dead around… and I’d found that shop with some stock still left in the storeroom.’
‘Kudos on that by the way,’ interrupted Fran, rubbing her arms for warmth, ‘that was very clever, that fake hedgerow.’
‘Thanks,’ smiled Mike, a strange look of regret in his eyes, ‘it used to be my trade before all this crap… anyway, so yeah, we’d found somewhere safe and relatively quiet for Sam to have Poppy and we thought it was all good.’
‘Until the storm last night?’ suggested Tom.
‘Got it in one,’ Mike agreed, with a nod, ‘and then all of a sudden they were everywhere and then when I ran into you two in the storeroom, well, we figured it was time to make a break for it.’
‘But how on earth did you expect to get anywhere with a crying baby?’ Asked Fran, grateful that now Poppy was in her father’s arms she had calmed down a bit.
‘You’d be surprised what you can get out of a few old herbs,’ said Sam, sheepishly with a shrug of her shoulders.
‘Sam used to dabble in the other type of Wicca,’ smiled Mike, clarifying just what Sam had meant, ‘so she knows a lot about Herbology. We’ve had to keep Pops a bit on the drowsy side but if it’ll keep her safe, then…’
‘Of course, of course, no one’s judging you,’ interrupted Fran. ‘You do what you have to…’
‘To keep them safe,’ finished Tom in a whispered voice, unable to take his eyes from the child in Mike’s arms.
‘Erm…Yes,’ Fran continued, her eyes flicking worryingly to Tom.
‘She d…didn’t sound very d…drowsy to me,’ stammered Kai, removing what looked to be a small piece of someone’s scalp from his thigh with his fingers. ‘Gross,’ he went on to mutter to himself, flicking the offending scrap of hairy grey skin to the ground.
‘No,’ replied Sam, reaching over to lovingly brush the top of her baby’s soft downy head, ‘I didn’t have time to make a fresh batch so we just had to hope her pillow would be enough.’
‘Pillow?’ asked Fran.
‘Oh, sorry,’ Sam continued, looking over at Fran to clarify what she meant, ‘it’s a pillow that has a mix of hops and lavender in it. It’s meant to make her sleepy.’
‘We had hoped we’d get far enough away from Chacewater before Poppy cleared the last of Sam’s witch’s brew from her system,’ added Mike, jokingly stressing the word ‘witch’s’.
‘Mike,’ said Sam, giving him a stern look that told him she didn’t appreciate his comment.
‘But you clearly didn’t,’ remarked Tom, not impressed by the couple that had inadvertently endangered their own lives and that of their child, ‘and where were you headed… did you even have a plan?’
‘No, we thought we’d just amble about the countryside looking for nice spot to put up a tent!’ bristled Mike sarcastically in reply, not at all liking Tom’s tone. ‘Oh, course we have a fucking plan! Do you think we’d have a lasted this long if we were that fucking clueless?’
‘I’m sure Tom didn’t mean…’ Fran jumped in, trying to play peacemaker.
‘That’s exactly what Tom did mean,’ growled Tom, cutting off Fran’s apology and giving her a look that said ‘don’t speak for me!’. ‘You should have waited… you should have made sure.’
‘Yes, well that’s very easy to say in hindsight,’ said Sam stiffly, gently taking Poppy from Mike’s arms, her emerald eyes flaring in anger, almost daring Tom to challenge her.
Looking at the fiery young woman with the infant in her arms, something changed within Tom. He suddenly felt the anger that had flared inside him fade, dissipating only to be replaced with a much more familiar emotion. So familiar was this new emotion to him that he almost welcomed its arrival. For with this wretched and all-encompassing guilt that enveloped him came the realisation he had not been angry at Mike and Sam at all but rather at himself; angry at himself for failing his own family, angry for making the wrong decision that ultimately cost them their lives and more importantly angry for his very continued existence without them.
‘Yes,’ sighed Tom, his voice distant and somewhat removed as he stared forlornly at the fussing child in Sam’s arms, ‘we… we would have all done things differently… if only we’d known.’
***
Chapter 3:
'So where were you heading,’ asked Fran, twenty minutes later as she stood on the roadside, the willow shrouded river bank behind her, wringing out the last of her washing before dropping it in the bucket with the rest of her relatively clean clothes. ‘Mike said you had a plan. What was it?’
‘Oh, well he’s spent the last five months scouting for possibilities,’ Sam replied from where she sat breastfeeding Poppy in the cart while inside Bob silently watched her every move, ‘you know, houses or cottages that were out of the way and off the beaten track, that sort of thing.’ She continued, glancing from Fran down to her child. ‘He’d even found one abandoned house where someone had already bricked up the ground floor windows.’
‘Sounds like a good idea… right up until the moment the house gets surrounded by the Dead,’ Fran pointed out, picking up a rough towel to dry her arms. ‘And then unless you plan on digging a tunnel to escape, you’re really up shit creek.’
‘Oh, it would only have been for a few days anyway,’ said Sam, moving Poppy up onto her shoulder to burp her; Bob seeing this as his opportunity to make friends and walked over to sit next to her, his head on her lap, hoping for a pat. ‘We decided that if we had to leave in a hurry and were on the road anyway, that we’d ultimately try and make it to White Oak Park. It’s quite a way on foot and we’d have to go out of our way and take a lot of the smaller back roads to make sure we skirted round the villages on route, but with any luck we’d be there in a about week.’
‘Sorry, what’s at White Oak Park?’ asked Fran, rolling down her sleeves; grateful that she had at last finished the arduous task.
‘Oh, it’s one of those outdoor adventure holiday places,’ Sam replied, rocking Poppy in one arm as she gave Bob a much appreciated scratch behind his ear. ‘You know... posh cabins in the woods, lots of bicycle tracks and a big swimming pool under a dome… that type of thing.’
‘Right… yeah, I know the sort of thing you mean,’ said Fran, nodding while she reached past Sam to retrieve two wooden poles and a coil of thin rope. ‘But you’d still be exposed though… unless you’re planning on clearing and securing the dome I suppose… which, given there’s only the two of you, I wouldn’t advise.’
‘Well, no we wouldn’t…’ agreed Sam, watching as Fran walked round to the back of the car
t, climbed in and pushed aside two specific spy hole covers before pushing one of the wooden poles through each of them. ‘Sorry, what are you doing?’ asked Sam, suddenly losing her train of thought.
‘Clothes line,’ Fran simply replied, waving the coil of rope in her hand before jumping back down through the rear hatch. ‘So what was the plan then?’ she continued, walking back round to stretch the rope between the two poles now sticking out at a sharp angle from the wall of the cart. ‘You don’t sound any safer there than anywhere else.’
‘Tree houses,’ said Sam, glancing down at Poppy who had drifted off to sleep in her arms, ‘Mike’s been to White Oak Park before,’ she continued, lowering her voice so not to wake her child. ‘Some sort of lad’s weekend away or something. Anyway, he remembers that part of the park had these tree houses... well, more like cabins up in the trees really and well, a lot of them are interconnected with walkways. Oh, and the best bit is that some of them are around a small fresh water lake and Mike remembers it’s stocked with fish specifically for those on holiday who fancied a bit of fishing. So… he thought if he can build more of the screens…’
‘He could enclose a section of the park around the lake?’ suggested Fran, pausing as she pegged the damp clothes on the strung up rope to look over at Sam for confirmation. ‘So you’d have a clean water supply, fish; if you can catch them, easy access to fuel to burn via the forest and you’d also have the walkways as a second defence in case the walls got breached… Okay, I’ll give it to you,’ she went on to say, returning her attention to her washing, ‘you do have a plan after all.’
‘See, we’re not as totally clueless as Tom thinks we are,’ said Sam, with a smile.
‘Oh, it’s not that…’ Fran started to say just as Kai appeared through the wall of willow fronds carrying his own pile of wet clothes; Mike and Tom close on his heels each with armfuls of salvaged supplies. ‘All done?’ she said, quickly changing topic; knowing she would have to finish what she wanted to say to Sam another time.
‘Took longer than we thought,’ said Tom, grunting as he hefted a basket of odds and ends up into the cart, ‘Mike wanted to dismantle the frame for Betsey so he could reassemble her later.’
‘Betsey?’ asked Fran, a look of confusion on her face as she looked from Tom to Mike.
‘Boys and their toys, Fran,’ offered Sam, with an exasperated shake of head. ‘It’s what he used to call the basket on wheels thing… Yes, I know, I know. Why Betsey? God only knows!’ she continued to say, briefly abandoning petting Bob to hold up her free hand in admission to her husband’s idiocy.
‘Ignore her, Mike,’ smiled Tom, turning to take a pair of the large bicycle wheels that were lodged under one of the younger man’s arms, ‘women don’t understand these type of things. I used to call my cab Doris,’ he went on to say, moving to hook the two wheels over some nails hammered into the external wall of the cart. ‘My wife, she used to…’
But as he soon as the word ‘wife’ fell from his lips his voice faded away, dying in his throat and unable to continue, his hands paused mid-action; the wide rimmed wheels hovering just above the securing nails.
‘And…and you can remake it then?’ asked Fran, breaking the awkward silence and memories of death that Tom had suddenly forced upon them.
‘What? Oh, yeah, yes… given a few days somewhere safe and without interruption I can weave some new screens and she’ll be as good as new,’ Mike replied, his brittle smile hiding his discomfort, as Tom silently turned to him to take the last two remaining wheels from him.
‘A few days without the Dead,’ murmured Tom, his eyes suddenly full of resigned sadness as he secured the wheels to the outside of the cart, ‘you’ll be lucky! Where are you headed … the moon?’
‘I… erm…’ Mike started to say, glancing nervously over at Fran and Kai; unsure what to say or how to deal with Tom’s sudden change in mood.
‘The moon? No, I wouldn’t have thought so,’ said Fran, pegging the last of her clothes to the line, her tone purposefully light as if she hadn’t even noticed Tom had plummeted into a dark mood, ‘but Mike and Sam have found somewhere worth heading to, well, I think it is…Why don’t you listen to what they have to say while Kai gets a small fire going and then we’ll treat ourselves to some good old fashioned tinned beans… actually… no, on second thoughts,’ she said interrupting her own train of thought to reach into the cart to retrieve a bulging drawstring duffle bag, ‘you could do with doing some washing yourself… here!’ she said throwing the bag at Tom who caught it with a grunt. ‘Why don’t you take Mike back down to the river with you and he can tell you all about White Oak Park while you wash that lot.’
Tom looked at the duffle bag he now held in his arms, the darkness still hovering about him as his lips moved in mute conversation with his all too familiar conjured tormenters.
‘And you might as well treat yourself to a wash while you’re there too,’ Fran continued, hoping to draw him out of the melancholy that he had wrapped about himself. ‘It’s one thing when we’re all a bit ripe but when you’re the only one…’
Suddenly the silent movement of Tom’s lips halted and he looked at Fran, as if only just realising she had spoken.
‘What? Oh, yeah, washing,’ he said, as if slightly disorientated or lost by turn of the conversation. ‘Right… washing, okay…. You coming?’ he finally said to Mike, nodding back to the curtain of green and yellow leaves.
‘Erm… Sure,’ Mike replied, inadvertently glancing to his wife for a nod of reassurance before following Tom back down to the river.
‘I guess that’s the one thing we all have in common now,’ sighed Sam, subconsciously pulling her infant closer to her. ‘We’ve all lost someone… someone we loved.’
‘Yes,’ Fran sombrely agreed, her hand reaching out to touch Kai’s arm as he started to hang up his own washing next to hers.
As her fingers bushed against his skin, he turned to look at her, his dark eyes full of love tainted with a tragic sadness; as if he knew in a world of the Dead, his time with her was inevitably damned to end in gut wrenching heartbreak and loss.
‘But w…with Tom it’s… it’s a bit d…different,’ said Kai, at last tearing his eyes away to look over at Sam; her face suddenly full of worry and concern for her absent husband.
‘Oh, it’s nothing like that,’ Fran quickly added, noticing the way Sam nervously looked over to the wall of willow. ‘As you’ll be with us for a bit, well, there’s something I need to explain…’ Fran went on to say, before tactfully taking the next few minutes to fill Sam in on Tom’s past and how it manifested itself for good and for bad in his condition.
***
‘You t...took your t…time,’ said Kai, looking up from the small fire he had built on the roadside as Tom, freshly washed and still stripped to the waist, pushed his way through the willow fronds with Mike following close behind him.
‘Yeah, sorry,’ Tom replied, slipping the rucksack now filled with damp clothes off his shoulder to dump it unceremoniously to the ground; the strapping with his two sickles following it with a lot more care and attention. ‘We got talking.’
‘And I can see you roped Mike into helping you while you were at it,’ said Fran, glancing up from the map laid open in her lap to nod at Mike’s hands still red from wringing the water out of Tom’s wet laundry.
‘Oh, it’s no trouble…’ Mike started to say before Tom could reply.
‘What? He offered,’ said Tom with a shrug.
‘Nice way to get to know someone, I must say,’ tutted Fran, her eyes inadvertently flitting over the scars and dark bruises that crisscrossed Tom’s chest and side, ‘scrubbing rank blood and God knows what else out of a stranger’s scabby clothes…. how charming!’
‘What can I say?’ said Tom, shrugging his shoulders again; a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. ‘Someone offers to help me with my washing… I’m not going to get all prissy and pass on that now, am I?’
‘Well, kno
wing what his clothes smelt like before,’ Fran continued, turning her attention to Mike, ‘I can only apologise for the horrors you’ve clearly experienced in the last twenty minutes.’
‘I’ve smelt worse… believe me,’ laughed Mike as he walked over to stand behind Sam. ‘How’s it going?’ he continued, dropping down to a crouch, his hand gently stroking her back while she steeped various herbs in a canteen of hot water. ‘Will we have enough?’
‘Probably only for a few more days,’ she replied, looking nervously back at her husband, ‘after that... well then…’
‘We’re in trouble,’ finished Mike, knowing just how serious the situation would be if they couldn’t keep their child from crying. ‘Can we find more? What do you need?’
‘It’s no use,’ sighed Sam, shaking her head, ‘it was only by sheer luck we found what we did in that health shop anyway… hops just aren’t something you see growing wild and we’re simply in the wrong part of the country to come across what’s left of any commercial hops farm.’
‘Can you use anything else?’ asked Fran, concerned by the obvious and real worry in Sam and Mike’s faces.
‘Erm…’ said Sam, looking off into the distance as she mentally ran through her limited knowledge of herb lore. ‘Well… wait, yes… there’s valerian root… I know the plant has these tiny white flowers but even if we did find some in someone’s garden to be honest I’m not sure I’d recognise it, not really… not and be one hundred percent certain I was right, anyway.’
‘A l…little knowledge is a d…dangerous thing,’ said Kai, wrapping a cloth around the handle of the saucepan to remove it from the flames of the fire.
‘Exactly,’ agreed Sam, glancing over at Kai before looking back to meet Mike’s worried gaze, ‘I could end up killing her, Mike. I… I just don’t know enough…We can’t chance it,’ she went on to say, her words barely a whisper.
‘What choice do we have,’ he quietly replied, gently cupping her cheek as he stared into her emerald green eyes.
Star Drawn Saga (Book 2): Lost Among The Dead Page 12
