Killing the Dead (Book 10): Feral

by Murray, Richard

  She reached into another pocket and pulled out a small glass bottle. I wondered idly if everyone had thought to bring first aid gear with them. I knew that I hadn’t and I wasn’t entirely sure if that was because I didn’t really care or just never considered that anything would ever actually manage to hurt me. Obviously, I was wrong about the latter.

  A hiss of breath escaped me as she poured the contents of the bottle on my wrist, washing away the blood as she peered down at it.

  “I don’t think there’s anything caught in the wound,” she said. “Cleaning and bandaging it should be enough but if you start to feel anything, you tell me.”

  “Anything like what?”

  “Fever, nausea, fatigue… the usual. Anything that we’ve observed people go through when they’re infected.” She paused in wrapping the bandage around my wrist and her gaze met mine. “I’m serious about this.”

  “We’ve only seen people turn when bitten,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, well who knows what those fingers have been digging in,” she said. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I’m not quite ready to depart this world yet myself,” I assured her. “So I’ll be careful.”

  “Good.”

  She glanced back at Gregg and her expression fell. I guessed that she was worried about him turning too. Or maybe she was upset about him slowing us down now that he was hurt. Either way, I looked up at the clock tower and saw that the two figures up there hadn’t moved.

  “We should check them out, see if they’re alive.”

  “That can wait,” she replied absently. “We need to make sure Gregg’s ok first.”

  “We can’t do anything for him that isn’t already being done,” I said and stepped back from her glare when she turned her face back to me. “Well we can’t, and we’ve no idea what heard the noises we made in the fight. We need to finish up here quickly.”

  “Damn it! You’re right but would it really hurt you to take a minute to show some concern for your friend?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper. No doubt meant for me alone but Pat glanced our way and his frown was clear.

  “There’s nothing I can do for him,” I told her. “If there was, I’d do it. Making him wait here longer than he has to while we check on those people would be worse for him and splitting our group to take him back would be equally dangerous. Best thing is to check out the clock tower while he is being patched up.”

  “Make’s sense but it’s still a shitty way of looking at it,” Pat said. “You two go up. I’ll watch for any more zombies.”

  “Great,” I said with a smile for Lily. She didn’t return it which was weird since Pat agreed I was right so she should see it too.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” she said with a sigh.

  She turned to the clock tower and I watched her carefully. I was fairly sure that she was mad at me but wasn’t entirely sure why.

  With a shrug, I followed after her, certain that she’d explain it to me at some point.

  Chapter 10 – Lily

  As much as I loved him, at times, he could be bloody impossible. I mean, ok, his logic was fairly sound. If we waited around until Gregg was able to move before we checked out the tower, then we could find ourselves stuck with more zombies on the way.

  On the other hand, when your friend is lying there bleeding and pretty badly hurt, you don’t always react logically. Your first priority is making sure your friend is okay. The fact that he could so easily dismiss any concerns over the fact that Gregg or even he, could have been infected from those stupid, claw-like fingers as easily as from a bite, it was infuriating.

  “We’re going to talk about this later,” I said over my shoulder.

  “Talk about what?”

  “About what just happened.”

  “What? The zombies?”

  “No,” I said through clenched teeth. “The whole lack of any response to your friend being hurt thing.”

  “Oh. Right,” he said and then, “Why?”

  I swung round towards him, ready to let loose with all of the pent up rage and frustration I felt and… stopped as I saw the look of blank incomprehension on his face. He didn’t understand. He really, truly, didn’t grasp why he should be upset that his friend was hurt.

  “Forget it,” I said with a sigh.

  He wouldn’t understand it anyway and if I were to be at all honest with myself, it was my own upset about Gregg that was making me argue and it wasn’t fair to him. Still, he could give a little bit of a damn, I thought silently as it occurred to me to wonder if he’d show any emotion if it was me lying there instead of Gregg. But then I knew how he’d react, he’d shown me that when he’d rushed off to a zombie filled town in search of medicine to help me.

  “Doors are locked,” he said with barely a glance at them. I had to look twice to see that the locking bolt could be just barely seen in the thin gap between the doors.

  The tower was attached to a two storey red brick building. Looking at the same decorative stonework that adorned both the tower and the building, I guessed that they’d been built at the same time.

  Twin flag poles stuck out from their sconces attached to the front of the tower at first-floor level with an open window between them. The second-floor level had a copper statue of what appeared to be a man with a sword held up above his head. It was green from years in the open air and covered in bird droppings.

  Thick wooden slats were set horizontally over the windows on the third-floor level. They were opened wide enough that I could see into the dim interior. The fourth level had a stone balcony around the central turret that held the great clock. The two people the ferals had been after, were nestled up there heedless of the rain.

  “I think they’re dead,” I said and he grunted. “We still need to check, but I thought you should know that.”

  “Makes no difference to me,” he replied.

  “Then why mention them at all?” I asked as I looked back over my shoulder at him. Before he even answered, I knew the answer. He’d done it because he knew I’d want to know and the chance to kill some feral zombies was too hard to pass up. “Doesn’t matter.”

  He shrugged and headed around the corner of the tower. He stopped and waved me forward. When I reached him, I realised what those poor people had done.

  A long wooden bench lay on the paved ground on its side. It must have been knocked over by the Ferals as they tried to follow the people up. When set on one end and leant against the wall, it could be used as a climbing frame to reach the first level. After that, it’d be through the window and into the inside.

  “If they were inside, why are they sat at the very top in the rain?” I asked.

  “There’s obviously something in there. Probably more Ferals.”

  “Then we shouldn’t go in!”

  “Should be fine. Narrow confines of the tower will hamper them more than me,” he said as he reached down and grasped the bench.

  “Don’t you want to take your axe?”

  “No,” he said with a grunt as he lifted the bench into place. “Tower’s narrow. The stairs inside will wind around the interior meaning there’s probably room for one person at a time. Certainly, no room to swing an axe.”

  Again, his logic was reasonably sound but any normal person would be crapping themselves in terror at the thought of going into a darkened tower with limited space to move and who knows how many feral zombies waiting. I knew I was.

  Not him though. He climbed carefully up the bench until he could reach the thin ledge that ran around the tower just below the window. After pulling himself up. He shimmied along the ledge and ducked inside, knife at the ready.

  I sucked in a deep breath of air and wished I had something handy to moisten my mouth that had suddenly gone dry, and climbed the bench myself.

  It wasn’t too hard to be fair. When turned so that the top of the bench was pressed against the wall, the three support ‘legs’ th
at were set at either end and in the middle, provided more than adequate support. I was soon able to pull myself up until I stood, teetering on the narrow ledge, my back pressed against the brick.

  With the smallest possible steps I could make, I edged along the ledge towards the window. My hands sought purchase on the rough brick surface and I was pretty sure my heart was about to burst from my chest so hard was it beating.

  Muffled grunts and snarls came from within and I pulled my weapon free. It wasn’t much, just a short piece of wood that had been shaped into a rough club with string wrapped around one end to form a handle. It’d do the job though. I ducked inside and immediately gagged at the stench.

  It had been dull and grey outside with the rain and cloud filled sky, but inside the tower, it was hard to see much of anything. I had to wait nervously for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior before I moved up the stairs.

  He’d been right of course. Wooden stairs wound around the inside of the tower, a thin handrail was scant protection from stepping over the edge. I still held onto it for dear life though as I climbed higher.

  At the very top, shadows moved as two figures struggled. The growls and snarls I’d heard before were amplified in the narrow confines and I almost fell as my foot connected with something large that lay on the stairs.

  The foul odour that came from it assured me that it was a zombie, likely a Feral and judging by its lack of movement, entirely dead. I breathed a silent sigh of relief and edged past it, ever upwards.

  A sudden and loud crack echoed around the tower, the sound seeming to bounce off the walls and something large fell past me to hit the solid floor far below with a heavy thud.

  “You okay?” I called and gripped my club tight. If it’d been Ryan that had fallen then I’d be alone in a dark space with the creature that killed him.

  “All good,” he replied and I bit back on the sob of relief. “There’s a hatch up here, can be opened from either side by pulling back on the locking bar. Guess the zombies didn’t figure that out.”

  Light flooded into the tower as he pushed the hatch open and I had to shade my eyes and blink them rapidly against the glare as he climbed the rusted metal ladder bolted to the wall. I waited until he was through the hatch before climbing it myself.

  “That one’s dead,” he said as I pulled myself up onto the far too narrow balcony that ran around the top of the tower.

  At my questioning look, he waved at a young man, barely out of his teens, who sat half upright, back against the central turret. He looked much like any young man you’d have seen in any town in the UK. A scraggly bit of hair that could barely be called stubble and lank hair that hung down around a face that would have been almost pretty if not for the gaping wound in the centre of his forehead.

  “What happened?”

  “Been bitten,” Ryan said with barely a glance at the dead boy. “Back of the neck so she probably stabbed him after he died.”

  “What about her?” I asked as I turned away from the boy and towards the girl.

  She was pale and drenched to the bone from being out in the open during the rainstorm. Her auburn hair was greasy and pulled into a tight ponytail. She looked to be around the same age as the boy and painfully thin.

  “Swiped by a claw,” Ryan said and pointed to what looked to be an old t-shirt that had been wrapped tightly around her leg. Not tightly enough as it had slipped off and revealed a foul smelling wound in her thigh.

  “Infected?”

  “Looks old,” he said thoughtfully. “A few days at least and she hasn’t turned which bodes well for Gregg and me. Most likely, just the result of not being able to clean it properly.”

  “Poor girl.”

  “She’s alive, but not for long I don’t think,” he said.

  I moved carefully across the slim stone balcony and crouched down beside the girl. Up close, I couldn’t escape the rotten meat smell that emanated from the wound. It was clearly infected, the flesh an angry red looking that had begun to blacken.

  “They got hurt trying to get up here,” I guessed and he nodded. “Stuck up here for days with those monsters down below. How awful.”

  “She’s awake,” he said with an indifferent shrug at what she must have gone through. Another sign of just how different he was from the rest of us.

  The girl's eyes opened just barely enough for her to see and she coughed, a painful wracking sound.

  “W-w-who…”

  “It’s okay,” I said as I reached for her hand. It was cold and wet and so small. I revised her age in my mind to perhaps fifteen or sixteen. “We’re friends.”

  “J-J-Jamie?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. If she couldn’t remember her friend dying then she was pretty far gone.

  She coughed again and said, “It’s gone?”

  “The zombies are dead,” I said gently and her hand tightened as she shook her head.

  “N-n-no… was only one.” She coughed again and a white froth specked with crimson appeared on her lips. “Others came after.”

  I glanced at Ryan and he shrugged. “Probably one of those I killed.”

  “N-no!” she cried and began to cough once more.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her as I pressed her gently back down against the stone. Her constant attempts to rise would only cause her more discomfort.

  “I-it came… a week ago,” she said. “Other’s came with it.”

  “A Feral?” I asked and she stared blankly at me. “A zombie that is faster, smarter than the others?”

  “Yes!”

  “We killed all the Ferals here.”

  “No,” she said. “No, not all. Can’t have.”

  “There were seven,” Ryan said. “Were there more than that?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “How many?” I asked as my eyes widened with growing fear.

  “Many,” she said as a tear ran from her eye, down to mingle with the rainwater. “So, so many. They killed us all. He killed us all.”

  “He?” Ryan said as he leant forward, suddenly very interested in the conversation. “A human?”

  “No,” she replied as she tried to shake her head. “He controlled the others, was their leader.”

  “Shit!” I said as I looked at Ryan and could have almost hated him for the excitement I could see in his eyes.

  “Tell me about this leader,” he said to the girl. “Quickly, before you die.”

  “Ryan!”

  “What?” he asked with a brief look of irritation crossing his face. “She knows it’s happening.”

  “He’s smart,” she said as though she hadn’t heard him. “We were safe. He found us, killed us all and hunted us down.”

  “Safe where?” I asked gently. “Where did it find you?”

  “S-Silloth,” she said and my blood ran cold as my eyes met Ryan’s and I saw the recognition there. I searched the girl's face, trying to remember if I’d seen her when we’d been there. But it’d been a reasonably sized camp and I hadn’t met everyone.

  “That’s where it attacked you?” he asked.

  “They came over the fence at night,” she said, tears running freely. “A few of us escaped on a fishing boat. Headed up the coast but he’d managed to get onboard. Didn’t attack us till Bobby found it.”

  “Shit.” I could barely breathe.

  “What happened when it attacked?” Ryan asked. “How did you come to be here?”

  “W-we were close to shore. Ran aground when we couldn’t kill it. We ran and found this place.”

  “Just the two of you made it off the boat?” I asked and she coughed again as great wracking sobs ran through her.

  “No. Six of us. Jamie and I were the last.”

  “I think she’s done,” I told Ryan but he shook his head.

  “One last question,” he said. “What does it look like?”

  “W-what?”

  “The Feral. What does the Feral th
at did this to you look like?”

  “Like the others. Lots of scars though and only one eye,” she said and he settled back on his heels as he rubbed at his chin, eyes distant.

  “Does that mean something?” I asked. He looked at me steadily without replying and reached for his knife.

  “We can’t take her with us and couldn’t help her anyway. I can end her pain.”

  I looked from him to the girl, indecision gnawing at me. If I said no, he wouldn’t do it. He’d do everything he could to get her back to our group and not complain too much. But he was right. She was far gone and something had set his teeth on edge, there was a tension in him that shouldn’t be there.

  The thought of a challenge had excited him but something she’d said had changed that. Now, there was an urgency in him, a need to move and gather up our friends.

  Her eyes met mine and shifted once to the knife he held and back again before she squeezed them shut and her head moved, a shallow nod of acceptance, of readiness.

  “Do it,” I said.

  “Go back down,” he told me and I shook my head. It was rare but at times he did show some consideration. He knew I wouldn’t want to see this, but I had to.

  “No.” Just one word. One word that stated I would stay there and hold her hand. I’d provide what comfort I could in her last moments. I’d watch him as he did that thing that he loved to do and I wouldn’t look away. I’d see him as he truly was when he took the life of another and I’d still love him. Especially now, as he gave respite to a poor girl who so badly needed it.

  He nodded once and I held onto her hand with both of mine as his knife flashed down. A sickening sound of breaking bone followed and she went limp. All the while I watched his eyes and saw that pleasure he tried to hold back, to keep it away from me. I loved him but right at that moment, as he found so much joy in taking the life of that girl, I hated what he was more than anything.

  Chapter 11 – Ryan

  They had managed to wrap Gregg’s face with what must have been the majority of our bandages and dosed him with enough painkillers that he was able to get about without screaming and moaning. Always a bonus when surrounded by the undead.