‘Wise move,’ said Tom, jerking his head in the direction the two men had taken; while, unheard by anyone but himself, his eldest daughter began a petulant outburst from beyond the grave, battling for his attention. ‘Just… just let the girl go… no one has to get hurt.’
‘Tom!’ warned Kai, his tone clear that their time had run out; the Dead were upon them.
‘Yes… yes, you know I loved you. You were my world,’ Tom suddenly said out of the blue, the spoken words meant for other far less corporal ears, bringing a flash of confusion to Ray’s features. ‘Yes, yes I will, Princess… yes, Daddy will cut them up,’ he went on the mutter, slowly turning his back on Ray and the girl, determined to reap the demanded vengeance upon the hungry corpses shuffling towards them.
‘Stay w…with me, Tom!’ said Kai, hoping to break though the man’s delusion and keep his mind in the here and now. ‘Tom!’
But already Tom was moving, rushing forward, his blades flashing through the air as he met the first cadaver head on. And with each movement moulding skin split, muscle and sinew parted and Dead limbs fell to the ground; once more nothing but lifeless rotting flesh. Tom span, slashing out at the corpse of a Dead man already missing arm; ripped savagely away when he had been cruelly conscripted into an army of walking death. Yet Tom could feel no pity for this creature before him. For as always, this Dead man was all of them; every hungry corpse that had ripped a child from a mother’s arms, every recently risen cadaver that had pounced upon a loved one, tearing into their flesh with abandon and every nightmare trapped in a human shaped shell that had stalked the living for the last five years. So as Tom’s blades sliced across the grey skin of the cadaver’s neck, separating head from shoulders, he felt no joy or release for even in his mania he knew there would always be more to take its place.
And so with his mind clouded by hatred and revenge, Tom barely registered Kai mirroring his movements next to him. Like a fading dream upon wakening, he was only vaguely aware of Kai crippling the corpse of teenage boy, knocking away its legs from under it before embedding his blade deep within its skull. But even as his mind fought to hold onto these details of the scene around him, his own perception of reality raced away from him; slipping from his grasp. For Tom’s whole world was the next cadaver in front of him and its impending destruction. Even if he wanted to, he was unable to abandon or turn away from this task; the conjured spectres of his wife and daughters would simply not allow it. So as Tom, lost to his psychosis, approached the next hungry corpse, its arms held aloft as if begging for a loving embrace, he could only partially hear Kai’s shouts and the sounds of a struggle coming from somewhere behind him.
Kai had sidestepped the cadaver of a young woman, its face stripped of both flesh and features as it had tumbled towards him, and leaving Tom to deal with the remaining three corpses, he had raced to the water’s edge where Ray was struggling to pull the girl the last few metres to shore.
‘Move it, you little bitch!’ Kai heard Ray growl, forcefully pulling the young teenager forward; his temper flaring when she fell to her knees, slipping on the slick cobbles beneath her feet. ‘Get up, you fucking…’
Whatever Ray was about to say it was abruptly cut short, for at that moment Kai threw himself at the man; taking him and his unwilling charge down in a classic rugby-style tackle. In a tangle of limbs all three fell back into the river; the girl crying out as she hit something lying hidden beneath the water. But Kai knew he could not let this distract him and no sooner had Ray landed on his back with a splash than Kai was roughly shoving the girl aside with one hand and throwing the first punch with the other. But this was to be no Hollywood style fight where opponents exchanged and reacted to cleanly executed blows; no, this was a brawl of the bar variety, at best. And so the two men fought for dominance; one moment Kai was on top, the next Ray; rolling back and forth in the river, splashing and throwing mostly ineffectual punches at each other.
Lost in their fight the two men had almost forgotten about the teenager, sobbing as she dragged herself to shore cradling a bruised shoulder; that was until the moment she let out an ear-piercing scream.
Deep within Tom’s fractured mind he played his part oblivious the real world around him, yet even his grief induced mania could not totally blot out the high pitch and terrified cry from the girl. Instead it somehow wove itself about his delusion, adding to it depth, clarity and colour. It became a true soundtrack to the whispered calls for revenge from his own lost daughters; the girl’s cries like fingernails dragged down the blackboard of his psyche. And so as the corpse of a Dead man fell before him, never to move again, Tom turned towards the sound of screaming; his gore dripping blades ready once more. Yet even now as his mind registered the girl struggling in the grip of a brutalised corpse, its lipless mouth eager to reach forward to take a bite from her arm, the mental prison he had constructed for himself would not relinquish its hold upon him. For Tom’s mind did not let him see the real girl before him, her shoulder length hair hanging limp like a bedraggled vale before a set of dark eyes sparking with fear, but instead imposed upon her the face of his eldest daughter; tearful and contorted with terror. This remembered face, this apparition conjured up by Tom’s mania to both torture and torment him, had one unexpected effect upon him. For Tom truly believed he had failed his daughters once before and as the image of one of his children appeared before him, weeping and begging for his help, he vowed he would not do so for a second time.
‘No!’ he roared, his throat straining with the force of his yell, as he threw himself towards the Dead woman’s corpse.
So loud and unexpected was his bellowing cry that it startled the girl and for a split second she glanced away from that decaying abomination that had her in its grasp to lock eyes with the stranger charging towards her. In that instant, time seemed to stop for both Tom and the girl; something unspoken silently passing between them. And then as time sped up again, for the second time in as many minutes she was being ripped from unwanted clutches by the force of someone ploughing into her and knocking her aside.
With a yelp the girl fell to the ground, landing painfully on her already bruised shoulder and almost instantly Tom was putting himself between her and the staggering cadaver, his blades already swinging.
‘Stay down, Baby!’ cried Tom, his mind twisting the image of the girl scrabbling across the wet cobbles, desperate to get beyond the Dead woman’s reach, into that of his own daughter cowering in fear. ‘Daddy’s here!’ he continued, his words little more than mumbled grunts as with the passing of his blade the Dead woman’s forearm dropped to the ground by his feet.
Whatever unnatural existence had been forced upon the female cadaver, Tom unceremoniously and with a clear determination stripped it away piece by piece. Limbs and nameless lumps of decaying flesh quickly fell to movements fuelled by Tom’s hatred. Yet despite his speed his attack seemed prolonged; almost as if through postponing the creature’s ultimate demise he could prove to his lost daughter just how much damage he could inflict on her behalf and yet still leave it standing, coming back for more. For somewhere is the back of Tom’s mind he needed to show her how much hatred boiled within him and this needlessly drawn out destruction of the Dead woman’s body was the only way he could think of to do it. But sooner than he had hoped, his blade sliced through the air for a final time and at last the cadaver had been reduced to little more than a crumpled mass of lifeless flesh scattered around him; only its impotently gnashing mouth and a pair of glaring eyes within the detached head a testament to its once previously animated state.
Panting, exhaustion nearly claiming him, Tom turned to look at the girl clothed in the ghost of his lost daughter. But this time her eyes were no longer wide with fear; this time they held something else, something close to admiration but somehow strange and undefinably different. Lost in each other’s mute stare, the pair did not notice the loud splash erupting from back down by the water’s edge, nor did they register the sound of footsteps sprin
ting past them as Ray at last made his escape. Instead, the girl slowly used the wall behind her to push herself to her feet; her attention totally fixed on Tom even as his eyes began to fill with unshed tears.
‘Princess…’ he whispered, the blades falling from his hands with a clatter; a pain sliced straight from his wounded soul twisting across his chest to choke off any further words.
With a wince the girl pushed herself away from the wall and took a step towards him; a look of purpose slowly creeping into depths of her eyes. In Tom’s tortured mind the illusion it had woven about the girl began to slip and waver; gradually changing with each step she took. One moment he saw the reality of the girl in front of him, fierce yet somehow deceptively fragile, and then the next the image was washed away and replaced with that of his daughter.
‘Princess?’ he repeated, confusion clouding the word, as he looked down at the girl suddenly now standing in front of him; her features seeming to morph between her own and those of a girl long since dead. ‘Princess, I… I…’
And then throwing her arms about him, the girl suddenly whispered something that tore at Tom’s mind; a single word that scattered his sanity and finally flayed his soul bare.
She called him ‘Dad’.
***
Chapter 5:
‘And you’re sure they can’t cross?’ asked Fran, absentmindedly chewing her lip as she looked at the river bank behind them; where even now the corpses of two Dead men slowly waded into the water intent on their hungry pursuit.
‘What is it?’ said the girl who had introduced herself as Wendy, patently ignoring Fran’s question; transfixed by the small infant Sam held in her arms.
‘A girl,’ snapped Fran before Sam could reply, slightly irritated by the teenager’s blasé attitude to the Dead; especially considering she had only just narrowly escaped becoming one of them a few minutes ago. ‘Now, can they get across or not?’
‘That’s what I said, didn’t I!’ spat the teenager, shooting an annoyed glance in Fran’s direction; a flash of rage blooming briefly in the depths of her eyes before she returned her besotted gaze back to the gurgling child. ‘The current’s too strong,’ she continued, mumbling as her hand tentative reached out to take the child’s small hand in her own, ‘ they… they’ll be washed miles away before they even get half way across.’
‘Hey, we just saved your arse,’ Fran growled in reply, bristling at the tone in Wendy’s voice. ‘You could be a bit more thankful.’
‘You? You didn’t save anything,’ stated Wendy, without looking back at her; the heavily stressed ‘you’ clearly meant as a jibe. ‘He did,’ she eventually continued, slowly turning her head to look past Fran to where Tom stood with Mike at the prow of the barge, each of them pulling on a heavy guide rope to slowly drag it back across the river Fal. ‘Oh… and him,’ she added almost as an afterthought, nodding to Kai who currently stood at the end of the cart, stripped to the waist, wringing out his wet top.
For a moment Wendy let her gaze dance over the pale skin of Kai’s muscular torso, his biceps bulging with each movement; that was until Fran, stepping sideways, purposefully blocked her line of sight. Wendy eyes briefly flicked upwards, meeting the unspoken challenge in Fran’s face and then, with an obvious smirk itching at the corner of her mouth, she calmly looked away again. With that one dismissive look, Fran instantly knew she had fallen for the teenager’s empty goading; exposing her own insecurities and she could have kicked herself for it.
From the first moment Fran had been introduced to Wendy, she could tell something was off with the teenage girl. Something about the way she clung to Tom as Kai led Star down the landing strip, spoke more than someone simply grateful for their rescue. Dismissive of Mike and barely offering Kai more than a cursory ‘thanks’ until she could use her interaction to taunt Fran, Wendy simply only had eyes for Tom; that was until Sam moved into the open hatchway with Poppy to offer her own welcome. Almost instantly, Wendy let Tom slip from her fierce embrace and moved slowly towards the opening, as if mesmerized by the appearance of the child Sam held in her arms.
Since then, while Tom and Mike acted as their ferrymen, getting any information out of the distracted teenager had been hard going at best. Answers were half mumbled in reply, details of the setup of White Oak Park were vague and sketchy to say the least and any questions as to just who and why this Ray person had been so determined to take her were subtly but quite simply ignored. Each time Fran broached the subject Wendy would either rehash her story of how she was snatched while collecting mushrooms in the woodland surrounding White Oak or she would engage Tom in conversation, taking on the mannerisms and tone of a child much younger than she truly was. There was no doubt about it in Fran’s mind, Wendy was playing some strange game with them all but why and to what ends she simply had no idea.
‘Here… put this on,’ said Fran, conscious of Wendy’s eyes upon her once again as she plucked a T-shirt from one of the clothes lines, checked it was dry and tossed to Kai.
‘Thanks,’ said Kai, catching the ball of grey fabric with one hand. ‘Oh… B…Batman, I like this o…one,’ he went on to say, flicking the T-shirt with the superhero logo emblazoned across the front once before slipping it smoothly over his head.
‘It suits you,’ commented Wendy, as Kai innocently rubbed his hand across his chest, enjoying the feel of the soft jersey against his chilled skin; while beside him, Fran silently bristled at the teenager’s words.
‘Thanks… Oh, s…sorry,’ said Kai, noticing that Wendy was still dripping from her tumble into the shallows earlier, ‘I’m s…sure we’ve got s…something dry you can w…wear if…’
‘I think Wendy has plenty of her own clothes,’ interrupted Fran before Wendy could reply, ‘and she’ll be back home soon enough.’
‘Yes… I will,’ agreed Wendy, flashing Fran an insincere smile, ‘but thanks anyway, Kai.’
Resisting the urge to charge across the deck and slap the smile right off the annoying fourteen year old girl’s face, Fran simply returned the gesture with an equal amount of sincerity, or rather obvious lack of, turned on her heel and before anything more could be said she slowly walked to the prow of the barge; seething with unvented irritation.
‘Bob, no… come away from the edge,’ tutted Fran, stopping to pull the small dog away from the low railing.
She was just wrapping her fingers through the belt she had put around Bob’s neck to act as a collar when she heard a noticeable splashing coming from the shoreline behind them. Standing, Fran looked back the way they had come and sure enough, just as Wendy had assured them, not only had one of the corpses already disappeared beneath the dark rushing waters but its remaining comrade was currently being swept swiftly downstream out of harm’s way. Fran followed its progress for a while, periodically losing sight of the Dead man’s body as the churning currents dragged it briefly under only for it then to reappear moments later again like a macabre jack-in-a-box. Only when she was sure the river had claimed the corpse for a final time, finally holding it within its murky depths, did Fran allow herself to look away. Even as she turned, at last leaving the cadaver wrapped in the cold embrace of its new watery grave, Fran knew that Wendy had been watching her, no doubt eager to catch her eye; a smug ‘I told you so’ look already lined up and waiting.
‘Come on, Bob,’ said Fran, purposefully making a point not to look in Wendy’s direction. ‘Let’s see how Tom and Mike are doing.’
Ignoring a sarcastic snort that surely came from Wendy, Fran led Bob past Star to the prow of the barge where Tom and Mike silently pulled on the heavy guide ropes.
‘Hey,’ sighed Fran, plonking herself down on an upturned crate, moving Bob into position so he sat out of the way by her feet.
‘You know… I don’t … remember it being this... hard,’ grunted Mike, smiling as he glanced back at her; the wiry muscles on his tattooed arms straining as he reached forward to haul yet another section of wet rope up from the dark depths in front of the
m.
‘Oh, do you want Kai to…’ Fran started to say, knowing that as far as muscle was concerned Kai’s hadn’t yet had time to dwindle to the taunt sinew of those forced to live on a near starvation diet.
‘No... no, almost there,’ puffed Mike, his face turning red from the strenuous effort. ‘Just must be … getting old… that’s all.’
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ she replied, trying not to look at the bulging vein running up the side of Mike’s neck that seemed to throb with each movement. ‘And what about you, Tom,’ she went on to say, knowing that his ribs must surely still be bruised and hurting from the battering they had taken recently. ‘Tom!’ she repeated, when he didn’t answer. ‘Tom, did you hear me?’
‘She’s just a child, Fran,’ he mumbled by way of reply, refusing to take his eyes off the rope rising from the water ahead of them.
‘What… Wendy? Tom what are you going on about? I…’ Fran started to say, slightly bemused by Tom’s words.
‘I’ve seen the way you look her,’ he growled, grunting as he reached forward to wrap his fists about the wet rope, ‘the snide comments, the digs. What’s the matter… don’t like the competition?’
‘What the Fuck are you going on about? What competition?’ Fran snapped in reply, at a loss at why Tom was taking the teenager’s side, a stranger to them all, over her own. ‘That little…’
‘She’s just a child,’ he repeated at last turning to look at her, his eyes holding a strange darkness in them that she hadn’t seen before, not even the deepest throws of his self-induced delusions. ‘So back off!’
‘Tom… I…’ Fran managed to reply, her mind reeling as a tightening in her chest cut off her words.
But as far as Tom was concerned he had said all he was going to on the matter and already he had turned away from her, falling silent, once again engrossed in his work. Fran open and closed her mouth, willing words of argument to erupt forth to vent the anger that surely raged inside her, but as she sat there, looking at the back of the man in whom she had trusted her life on countless occasions, she was surprised to find she could find nothing but a mute sense of aching betrayal.
Star Drawn Saga (Book 2): Lost Among The Dead Page 19
