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

by Stephen Charlick

  Running through the warren of planters, raised beds and vegetable patches, Fran silently made her way back to the side door that Wendy had used; all the while the golden glow of the fire behind her growing, pushing back the silvery darkness of the night, bit by bit.

  ‘It’s around here…somewhere,’ she thought to herself, her eyes searching the wall of dark rabbit hutches, their shadows as yet untouched by the encroaching light. ‘Ah, there it is!’ she continued, at last noticing the break in the row of darkness that could only be the door.

  Keeping low, Fran began to edge forward. She was just passing a wide knee-high planter overflowing with the broad leaves of some sort of squash or pumpkin, when she paused and reached for something she had noticed lodged in the damp soil.

  ‘Now… that’s better,’ she muttered, testing the weight of the small gardening fork in her hand, ‘not much… but better,’ she continued, at last slipping the butcher’s hook back onto one of her belt loops before darting across the open space towards the door. ‘My machete would be better though,’ she thought to herself, making a quick search for her dropped weapon as she ran.

  If it was still there, lurking somewhere in the deep shadows, Fran couldn’t see it and as she finally reached the door, she turned to take one final look at the Dome behind her. In the distance she saw the flames reflecting merrily off the curved ceiling of the Dome, growing brighter and brighter as the fire spread unchecked, and as she watched the changing colours, so vivid against the dark night sky beyond, Fran realised she could never come back here. For just as Kai had died, so too had part of her died in that room of ash; and in the void that his death had left within her, something cold and unforgiving had rushed in to take its place. She knew she was no longer the woman Kai had fallen in love with, the very absence of him changing her, and worst of all, Fran knew no matter what happened, she could never be that woman again.

  ‘Goodbye…’ she softly whispered, whether to Kai or her former self she honestly didn’t know. ‘I’ll miss you.’

  And with that she opened the door and slipped silently into the night.

  ***

  Dennis was mumbling something in his sleep as he rolled over, his thick bare arm flopping over the side of the bed, exposing it to the chill night air. Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered the cold slowly creeping into his fingers and even as his eyes darted back and forth across his closed eyelids, his dream morphed and evolved to include this tiny fact from the real world.

  ‘We need you… Dennis,’ Emma was saying to him, her eyes sparkling with mischief as she took his hand in hers, raising it to her lips; while behind her three strange brown rabbits up on their back legs danced across the windowsill, ‘I need you…’ she continued, softly kissing his fingers.

  ‘Your lips… are… cold,’ he commented, watching mesmerised as she moved from one finger to the next, caressing him with an icy touch. ‘Emma… your lips…. they’re so cold.’

  ‘So?’ she murmured, tilting her head to one side as if she didn’t understand his objection.

  ‘I…’ he started to say just as the young woman’s tongue snaked out between her pale lips to lick his thumb.

  Behind her Dennis noticed that one of the rabbits had stopped its merry dance and was now watching them, shaking its head quite disapprovingly.

  ‘Ignore him,’ she whispered, flicking her head toward the rabbit; her eyes never leaving Dennis’, ‘he’s just jealous.’

  ‘Just jealous…’ Dennis repeated, a smile twitching at his lips as Emma continued her cold seduction; much to the annoyance of the rabbit that thumped its back leg angrily down against the windowsill.

  ‘See,’ smiled Emma, her lips parting, ‘what did I tell you… jealous.’

  ‘Yeah… jealous,’ said Dennis, enraptured by the young woman in front of him; the repeated drumming of the rabbit’s back leg barely registering.

  With her mouth opening wider, Dennis watched as Emma licked her oddly blue lips before slowly taking his thumb into her mouth.

  ‘Jesus!’ he gasped, shocked as his thumb was suddenly enveloped by a wave of icy numbness.

  ‘Hmm,’ Emma groaned with pleasure, her eyelids slowly dropping.

  ‘Emma…’ whispered Dennis, the movement of the cold wet tongue in her mouth strangely erotic against the warmth of his thumb. ‘God… so… cold…’ he continued, aware her actions were having the desired effect on him. ‘God… I… I want you…’

  With her eyelids fluttering open, Emma looked up at him and smiled; her teeth playfully biting down before releasing him.

  ‘Really…’ she smiled, kissing his thumb one final time before slowly moving his hand down to cup her breast. ‘Well, let’s see what we can do about that…’ she continued, yet even as she spoke she turned to glare annoyingly at the rabbit that was still thumping its back leg angrily. ‘Look... perhaps… perhaps you should just get that…’ she went on to say, turning back to Dennis as the sound of the thumping changed and grew strangely louder.

  ‘What?’ he replied, unsure just what she meant; his eyes flicking to the little rabbit behind her again.

  ‘Oh, I’ve got a joke for you,’ said Emma, suddenly animated; all thoughts of sex seemingly forgotten. ‘Knock-knock…’

  But before Dennis could offer a bemused reply she continued, repeating herself over and over as if stuck in a loop; her words mirrored by the thumping of the disapproving rabbit’s foot.

  ‘Knock-knock-knock-knock….’

  ‘Door!’ the word suddenly emblazoned across Dennis’ sleeping mind, jolting him awake.

  ‘What! Jesus! Yeah, yeah, I’m awake… I’m awake,’ he grumbled, shaking the sleep from him as he swung his legs over the side of the bed; forcibly flexing the cold fingers on his left hand to get some warmth flowing back into them. ‘I’m coming… just hold your horses…’ he called again, readjusting himself in his underwear as he walked across the moonlit room; vaguely hopeful it was perhaps Emma paying him a visit so he could at least put his arousal to good use after all.

  With a cold shiver running through him, Dennis reached for the door handle just as series of brisk knocks sounded again.

  ‘I fucking told you I was coming, didn’t I!’ he angrily growled, yanking open the door; his words instantly dying with a gasp.

  Within a split second Dennis knew he had made a terrible mistake. For there stood before him, shrouded in shadow, her eyes wild, her face streaked with dirt, was the new girl, Fran, and in her hand, moonlight briefly glinting off the moving metal, was a gardening fork.

  ‘Shit!’ his mind managed to scream just as the fork pierced the skin of his throat; the three prongs ripping though his oesophagus, tearing vital veins and arteries as they went.

  His eyes wide in shock, his bloody mouth impotently gasping for air, Dennis stumbled backwards; the movement pulling the fork free with a wet sucking sound. Instinctively his hands reached up to his neck; his shaking fingers desperate to stem the flow of blood already spilling down his chest.

  ‘You’re going to die, Dennis,’ said Fran, her tone cold and unemotional, as if the man’s life held no value at all, ‘and you’re going to come back… ’ she continued, watching as the dying man reached out a bloody hand to steady himself against a small table, the piece of furniture slipping away from him to crash on the floor. ‘Back as one of them.’

  With the strength to stand finally leaving him, Dennis’ knees gave way beneath him, sending him crumpling to the floor by the upturned table.

  ‘I could finish you,’ said Fran, stepping partly into the cabin to retrieve the machete that she noticed had been placed by the side of the door, ‘end your suffering… make it easy for you… I could…’ she continued, pausing to examine the long blade in her hand before glancing back at something over her shoulder, ‘but you see, Dennis,’ she finally went on to say, dropping to a crouch to look him in the eye, ‘you don’t deserve that.’

  For a moment Fran’s gaze searched the man’s face, perhaps
hopeful to see a flicker of remorse echoed in his wide eyes; yet she saw nothing there, nothing but a terrible blend of fear and anger.

  ‘This… this is what you deserve,’ she said, pushing herself back upright and turning to leave.

  Stopping in the doorway, Fran looked back down at Dennis, a sneer on her lips.

  ‘You deserve every last second of this,’ she said, before turning and slipping away; her parting words even more final as Dennis saw the group of the Dead lumbering their way across the decking towards the open doorway; the bright moonlight illuminating each brutalised body in horrific clarity.

  ‘Jesus Christ… no!’ thought Dennis, his bladder failing him as he feebly tried to pull himself though an expanding pool of his own blood and urine; desperate to escape the oncoming nightmare.

  Yet even as he pathetically clawed his way across the wooden floor his life drained from him, spilling from him one heart beat at a time; and then the first shadow fell across him and with it his fate was sealed.

  ***

  It had been ridiculously easy for Fran to gain her Dead entourage on the way back from the

  Dome. Literally stumbling from the treeline and out on to the path, they were drawn to her and the chance to taste her living flesh and then, like a chain reaction, their hungry calls beckoned more and yet more of their decaying brothers and sisters from the darkness. She had easily dodged round them as they appeared from the shadows, ducking under their outstretched arms while they begged for a morsel to ease their raging hunger; and all the while she urged them to follow her, teasing them, promising the one thing they desired, until by the time she reached the first of the interconnected tree houses she had upwards of thirty shambling cadavers on her tail.

  ‘Many hands make light work,’ Fran had thought to herself, keeping an eye on the corpse of a Dead woman that was dangerously ahead of the pack. ‘But my work…not yours,’ she mumbled, darting back; her gardening fork making swift work of puncturing the cadaver’s eye socket to destroy the rancid brain within.

  With a grunt she tugged the fork free, allowed the now lifeless corpse to drop to the ground, turned and then ran back to duck down by the base of a tree.

  ‘Damn,’ she spat, when she later noticed that the drawbridge-style ramp had been pulled up again; cutting off the small community from the Dead below. ‘Well… let’s see what we can do about that,’ she thought to herself, moving silently from one shadow to the next; a nearby tree with some of its branches partly overhanging one of the suspended walkways; her goal.

  Hoping that if anyone should notice the horde of corpses, their arms held aloft at the base of the tree, that they would think that a frisky squirrel or something had caught their attention, Fran began to climb. With the feeling of rough bark beneath her hands and the smell of the Dead in the air she was briefly taken back to the last time she had climbed a tree. Only a few days ago, it seemed like another world to her now. Then it was to leave the Dead behind her and save those she loved, now she was alone and she would do all in her power to make sure death would follow in her wake.

  ‘Don’t think about him,’ she silently chided herself as an image of Kai looking down at her from the balcony suddenly popped into her head, ‘not yet… just get this done first… get it done and then go to pieces…he deserves this much… you owe him this much. ’

  With her words hardening her resolve, Fran pulled herself up onto the next branch with a grunt and then the next and the next. When she finally reached the overhang that she could use to drop down onto the walkway she paused. She knew once she set this ball in motion, once she started to edge her way along that branch, there would be no stopping her, no going back. She was just steeling herself to place that first foot on the bloody path that fate had chosen for her when she heard the tell-tale creaking of wooden boards drifting on the night air; someone was crossing the walkway below her.

  ‘Should have stayed home,’ she thought coldly to herself, pulling herself along the thick branch as quietly as she could.

  She had almost reached the furthest point she could go when the shadow passed beneath her. Holding her breath, she peered down at the young man as he slowly walked by, his hands trailing idly behind him on the guide ropes, whistling a nameless tune.

  ‘Ben,’ she realised, the man’s name suddenly popping into her head; wondering why he was out so late.

  Truth be told, she had barely spoken two words to him since arriving and the only thing she could remember about him was that he used a net to catch birds for food but that didn’t matter, nothing mattered now but the call of her revenge; for he was as guilty as the rest of them in her eyes and as such could not be spared. So after waiting for him to take a few more steps away from her, Fran quietly swung her legs to one side of the branch and then with the small gardening fork held tightly in her hand and the thought, ‘A jab to the throat should do the trick,’ flitting across her mind, she allowed herself to drop down.

  ‘Whoa!’ gasped Ben, grabbing the guide ropes tighter to steady himself as the force of Fran’s impact sent a wave along the walkway, rocking it back and forth. ‘What the…’ he began to say, turning to look behind him; fearful that the Dead had somehow started to fall from the sky.

  But before another word could escape his lips Fran was already moving, rising from the crouch she had landed in to charge the surprised young man; his eyes wide, his mouth agape.

  Yet even as she lunged for him he was turning away from her, avoiding her blow by the slimmest of margins.

  ‘Shit!’ she quickly spat, surprised at how fast the young man had been able to react to her presence.

  Despite this minor setback, Fran was far from beaten. For, almost without conscious thought, years of training flooded back to her, commanding her muscles to act and her body to move with lighting speed. She found herself instinctively twisting at her hips and kicking out at the fleeing young man; her foot clipping the back of his right knee, causing his leg to suddenly buckle beneath him and send him crashing down.

  ‘Now!’ her mind screamed, knowing she could not afford to let Ben cry out and alert the others.

  And so with the image of Kai’s body lying bloody and motionless in her arms rising to consume her thoughts, she was on him. When it came down to it, she suddenly realised, quite abstractly as if noting the details from afar, killing the living was much the same as killing the Dead. The resistance of the skin and muscle as the weapon hit home, the slightest almost unperceivable ‘pop’ as it finally gave way and the cough-like rush of air from the victim as they reacted to the physical force of the blow; all of these details were so similar, so familiar, only the result would differ. For one act would rid the world of an unnatural corpse that hungered for the flesh of the living, while the other simply created one.

  ‘Please! No… I…’ Ben managed to briefly gasp, as she plunged the fork again and again into his back; splintering ribs, puncturing lungs and tearing muscle in her frenzy to restore the balance of her grief stricken mind.

  She didn’t know the precise moment Ben died but as she looked down at his still body, his blood, so dark that it looked almost black in the moonlight, seeping across the boards of the bridge, she realised she just didn’t care.

  ‘This… this is what you’ve done to me…’ she panted, as she used the back of her hand to wipe a splatter of the young man’s blood from her face. ‘This is what you’ve all made me into… I hope… you’re… happy,’ she completed, her words sour and damning in her mouth as she slowly rose to her feet.

  Knowing that Ben’s corpse would reanimate as one of the Dead within a few minutes, Fran grabbed his legs and began to manoeuvre them between two of the walkway’s supporting ropes. Then, after lifting him from under his arms, she began to shuffle his body towards the edge of the bridge. The moment she began to feel the pull of gravity on the body she gave it that extra shove needed to help it on its way and then simply let Ben’s weight pull him the rest of the way over.

  ‘One down,’
she thought, waiting for the dull thud of the corpse hitting the ground below her before turning and making her way across the walkway towards the Hub.

  Glancing down to the forest floor as she silently moved across the walkway, Fran saw that like a diligent school party or group of tourists following their guide, the Dead shambled along in her wake, desperate to keep pace with her.

  ‘You’ll eat soon enough,’ she callously remarked, crossing the decking surrounding the Hub to get to the ramp mechanism, the cabin behind her seemingly dark and unoccupied.

  Flinching at each creak or knock that seemed to her alarmingly loud in the night, despite the moans of the Dead, Fran began to lower the ramp.

  ‘I need to get rid of Dennis first,’ she formulated, watching as the first of the Dead began to amble up the ramp as fast as their emaciated limbs would allow, ‘then the Nash brothers… after that the others, they shouldn’t be much of a problem…’

  Yet even as she turned away from the approaching Dead, sure in the knowledge they would follow her, she knew her plan was flawed. For even after she had dealt with Dennis and the Nash brothers there was still Tom; he was the unknown quantity in her scheme and she knew it. Out of all of them he was the one that could stop her and if he stepped in the help Wendy or Emma then she feared she would have to go through him to get to them and no matter how lost he was in his imaginary world or how real his mania appeared to him, she didn’t want to hurt him; not if she could help it.

  ***

  ‘Perhaps when I tell him what they did… to Sam and Mike… and to Kai,’ she thought, after she had left Dennis to the hungry mouths of the Dead and slipped away over the suspended bridges; first past Ben’s and then Jimmy’s empty cabins and then on towards the tree house of the Nash brothers. ‘He’s got to believe me…’she muttered to herself, finally slinking across the surrounding decking to a patch of shadows, acutely aware that some of the Dead were already crossing the walkways behind her in pursuit. ‘I’ve just got to get through to him, make him see what they are…’ she silently thought, edging along to a window that had been left slightly ajar. ‘What they’ve done…’