Killing the Dead (Book 10): Feral

by Murray, Richard

  Cass helped and together we pulled a singed and soot blackened Ryan out of the doorway. He coughed and spluttered as I reached for my water bottle and passed it over to him. It was clear immediately though that he needed help so I tore the cap off and held it to his lips as he swallowed it down.

  “We gotta go,” Georgia said and I nodded.

  “Help me,” I said to Cass.

  Together we got him to his feet and moved as fast as we could to the back fence. Georgia moved ahead of us and I was glad of that as we rounded the corner and a Feral leapt at us.

  She barely paused as she swayed lithely past it and sank her weapon into the back of its skull. It fell dead at her feet and I could only gape at the ease with which she’d managed it.

  “Let’s get the hell away from here,” she said as she held open the gate.

  I was almost through when I glanced back and saw a Feral round the corner. It was big and bald with burn marks across its skull. A fitting counterpoint to the deep gouges over its face where its eyes had been.

  Sorrow filled me as I glanced at Georgia imploringly. She nodded once and stepped forward to give my friend his final rest. Cass hadn’t seen and I swore to myself that I wouldn’t ever tell her.

  Georgia closed the gate behind us and we moved as fast as we could away from the burning building. We wouldn’t have to go far at least, just a couple of streets with Ryan held between us, barely able to stand and leaking far more blood than he ought to.

  The Ferals, distracted or caught by the fire, didn’t seem to realise we had escaped and in short time we turned into a garden to see Gregg open the door and usher us in.

  We half dragged, half carried, Ryan into the living room and laid him down on the floor. Our new American friend watched warily as we checked his wounds.

  “Any bites?” he asked.

  “Doesn’t look like,” I said with a fresh surge of hope.

  “That doesn’t mean he’s not infected,” Georgia pointed out. “But let’s hope not.”

  His hand wrapped around my wrists as I made to stand, to move out of the way so that Georgia could fix his wounds. His eyes met mine and a smile formed on his face.

  “There was a leader,” he said and I nodded. “I killed it.”

  He was so pleased with himself, so happy that he’d almost died to kill a damned zombie. I wanted to scream at him, to tell him how foolish he was, to beat on his chest until he realised that I cared for him and was worried. Goddammit!

  “I think you broke my hand,” he muttered and my tears came.

  ****

  We spent the day waiting at that house. Ryan, his wounds cleaned and bandaged was deposited in an upstairs bedroom and I was told that I could stay with him, so long as I held a knife ready. We had no idea if he was infected or not and they wouldn’t risk everyone else’s safety.

  I understood that and also understood why they chose to take turns standing guard outside, in case I called for help. I understood the need for it, but wouldn’t have been anywhere else. I laid on the bed beside him and watched the rise and fall of his chest as he slept and Jinx lay across his legs.

  Sometime in the evening, before it turned dark, but as the daylight was fading. He awoke and I tightened my grip on the knife as he groaned. Jinx lifted her head and looked his way, ears twitching.

  When he reached over to the bottle on the bedside table, I breathed a sigh of relief and reached over to get it. Removing the top and holding it to his lips so he could drink. He coughed and spluttered, spilling water on the sheets, but managed to get enough down to wet his throat.

  “Surprised to be alive?” I asked as he blinked owlishly at me.

  “K-kind of,” he said and coughed once more. Gregg popped his head round the door and smiled as I waved to indicate all was well. Jinx settled her head back down on her paws and closed her eyes. Apparently satisfied that he was ok.

  “What happened?” I asked and he looked at me for a moment before closing his eyes.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said and it was my turn to gape at him.

  “Why?”

  “Pat,” he said and tears welled in my eyes again. “I saw him and figured if you hadn’t made it, you’d have been like him. But, really, in the back of my mind… I thought you were all gone, that I was alone again.”

  “Never.”

  He smiled at that, the slight curving of his lips and I could swear, there was a trace of sorrow there. Of loss.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said and so I did.

  I told him everything. About Becky and Gabe leaving us to die, about hiding in the cellar, Pat’s final fight to protect us, to give us time to get to safety. I told him about the argument that morning with his brother and what had been threatened and then about meeting the American and his offer.

  As he listened, his eyes remained closed but when I lifted his hand in mine, he gripped it tight. I told him of how we’d known that any source of mayhem was likely to do with him and so had convinced the American to find us somewhere safe nearby while we went to look for you.

  “Thank you,” he said as I paused. “I thought I was about to die. You saved me.”

  “Then thank me by telling me what happened to you,” I said and so he did.

  I listened in silence as he told of how he searched for the missing girl, Natasha. How he’d been chased by the Ferals and hidden from them. How he’d followed them that morning to learn what he could about the leader he suspected they had and how he’d seen Nat and our friend, both there in that yard.

  When he told me of his fall and subsequent plan, I gently swatted him. “Fool,” I said and he nodded as he continued.

  To be honest, the fact that this Feral leader had followed us all the way from the Lake District was scary. That it had managed to unite a number of Feral packs into one group was terrifying. It showed far too much control and I was glad it was dead.

  At the same time, I was furious with him. He’d risked so much just so that he could kill it. Risked everything so that he could have a challenge.

  “No more,” I said and he opened his eyes and looked my way. “Promise me, please. No more killing.”

  “I can’t,” he said with a finality that brooked no argument and I held his hand as the tears fell. I slid down beside him and he winced as he lifted one arm for me to nestle beneath. “You’re leaving me aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said and my body shook as I tried to stop the sobs.

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to break my promise to you,” he said so softly that I could barely hear him.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I do and it’s more than that,” he turned his head to look at me but I squeezed shut my eyes. Afraid to see what was in his gaze.

  “What?”

  “He was my friend,” he said. “I can feel his loss. For the first time, I mourn.”

  “That’s human.”

  “But it’s not me. It’s unbearable and he was just a friend. To lose you…”

  “You’re losing me if you leave anyway.”

  “But I know you’ll be safe. In my mind at least, you’ll always be safe. I can live with that.”

  “Damn you.”

  “Sleep,” he said. “In the morning you’ll wake and get that man and his children to their friends. They’ll take you north on their boat and you’ll find where the navy have established their safe zone.”

  “I love you Ryan.”

  He shifted and I knew that he was looking directly at me but I refused to open my eyes, even as he said, “I love you too.”

  “But you’re still leaving.”

  For some time he didn’t reply. He just stroked my hair as I wept and cradled me against him until my tears ceased and I fell into a slumber.

  When I awoke, he was gone.

  Chapter 24 – Epilogue

  Jess was the first. She stood guard beside the crumbling rear wall o
f the castle, hood pulled up against the ever-present rain and slumped against the wall, bored and inattentive of her duties. She didn’t even notice when I climbed from the moat.

  Dank moat water dripped from my clothes as I moved towards her, noting the half empty bottle beside her feet. A little something extra to keep out the cold during the long boring nights watch no doubt.

  Her head raised as I came into view and I had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes widen in surprise that quickly turned to fear as she saw the knife I held in my hand.

  Blood flowed and all that came from her was the last sighing exhalation of her dying breath as she dropped to her knees, hands moving up to the bright crimson line that crossed her throat.

  The silence of the night was unbroken as I moved past her and headed towards the castle proper. It had been three days. Three days for them to rest, to become complacent, to imagine that their pathetic threat had worked and the people they’d abandoned would stay away.

  A smile crossed my face as I found the door to be unlocked and slipped inside. If things had been different, if Lily and the others had returned, they wouldn’t have been so lax in securing the place. If Pat had survived, he would have done the rounds as he did every night, making sure those he cared for were safe and secure.

  I frowned down at the slight tremble of my hand when the thought of Pat surfaced. A worryingly human response that I only understood enough to know I should be wary of such things, for they denoted a change to who I was on a fundamental level that would be the end of me.

  When I walked into the main residence area, I dismissed such thoughts and returned my mind to the task at hand. Solar charged garden lights were spread through the room, tied to the ropes that crisscrossed the great open area, their lights facing outwards to shine down on the path the weaved through.

  All through the room, the people slept. Safe and secure in the false knowledge that their home was impregnable. That they were safe from any threat. They were wrong.

  I found Leo next. Asleep in his blankets, snoring softly. He was alone which was something of a relief for some reason. I couldn’t quite understand why but had the niggling thought that it had something to do with the changes that had been done to me by Lily and my friends.

  How I longed for those changes to be gone. For the darkness inside of me to spill out and have full reign, rather than for it to lay quiescent as it had for some time now, without my really noticing.

  My feelings for Lily, my care for my friends had hobbled me. The very fact that I could not think of my friend's sightless face staring up at me without feeling something alien, was a true testament to that. They had infected me with emotion and I would exercise it from me with each life I took that night.

  I knelt beside Leo and raised my knife. If I hesitated for just a moment, that moment soon passed and my knife plunged down. His eyes opened wide in pain as I pressed my damaged left hand over his mouth to stifle his cries. The bandages wrapped around it made a great gag.

  He thrashed beneath me but the damage was done. He was already dead, his body just had to realise that. Slowly, he subsided as his life blood flowed out to stain the blankets and I was on my feet and back on the hunt without looking back.

  Martin was easily recognisable from those ridiculous dreadlocks of his. He didn’t notice me following him to what had once been the lavatories available for use by visitors to the museum. He was oblivious to my presence as I stood behind him at the urinal, waiting politely for him to finish urinating. Well, less out of politeness and more because I had no intention of having him soil my clothing with anything but his blood.

  My knife blade entered the back of his skull as he zipped up his pants and he dropped soundlessly to the tiled floor. I stared down at his body for several minutes, heedless of the growing pool of blood.

  The passion, the sheer joy that I’d once found in murder was missing. That darkness within shied away from the killing as though what I was doing was somehow wrong. I could almost see Lily’s disappointed expression as I killed those she would still consider innocent, despite what their actions had caused.

  I left his body where it lay and went in search of my final victims, shaking my head to clear it of the pointless images that kept trying to push their way in. My friend was dead, I wanted to yell at those images in my mind, he died because of them. They deserve death. It didn’t help.

  She had done this to me. Left me with such thoughts and feelings that I was fast beginning to realise that I could never return to being the killer I once was. That the joy I used to find in the exquisitely planned murder of another was lost to me.

  My mood, understandably, was poor as I pushed open the curtain to my brothers ‘room’ and only worsened when I found both him and Becky absent.

  Despite my glower, staring at the empty blankets did nothing to make him appear and I stepped back out into the corridor. Dawn was but a few hours away and once people began to awaken, bodies would be found and I would lose my chance at vengeance. I’d specifically chosen my time to attack to be an hour after the change of watch so as to have the least possible chance of being disturbed.

  Of course! The watch change. My brother and his lover always took the same watch together, usually, so they could spend some time alone atop one of the watchtowers beside the front gate. That is where they would be and where I’d need to kill them.

  Getting to the gates was no problem. A stealthy walk back through the sleeping quarters and out the door I entered by. A quick glance at the slumped body of Jess to check no one had found her and I was off.

  I stuck close to the wall, deep in the shadows as I made my way around to the front of the castle. The light was poor, the only illumination coming from moon and stars when the clouds parted. It wasn’t much but it was enough to see the two figures standing atop the left tower.

  Generally speaking, there should have been one person on each tower. That was the whole point of having two people on watch. My brother though, as usual, chose the rules he followed by how much it conflicted with his desires. In this case, he was happy to break the rule so that he could screw about in the open air.

  It did, of course, afford me the advantage of stealing into the tower without their notice, so busy were they with their own pleasure. I crept up the winding stone stairs and waited at the top as I listened to their grunts and occasional moan of pleasure. Far be it for me to rob them of their final act of lovemaking.

  When they were finished and I heard low murmured words, I climbed into view. Fools that they were, they didn’t notice me as they dressed pulled on their clothes. As my brother crouched to lace up his shoes, I stepped up to Becky, wrapped one arm around her throat and pulled her close as I pressed my knife to cheek.

  “Eep!” she managed before I tightened my grip. My brother looked up and stared in shock at what he saw.

  “Hello brother,” I said.

  “Ryan…”

  “Be still and be silent,” I hissed as I pressed the point of the knife against Becky’s cheek. She winced as a trail of blood ran down her face. “The time of reckoning is here brother.”

  “Please,” he said as he raised his hands before him. A universal gesture to show he was unarmed as if that mattered.

  “You abandoned them,” I said and he shook his head. “Left them alone, in the dark with the Ferals.”

  “We had to,” he said. “They’d have killed us all if we hadn’t.”

  “You’d have done the same,” Becky said and a moment later spit blood as I drew back my hand and stabbed down, the blade driving into her lungs and likely nicking her heart along the way.

  I released my hold as she dropped to the stone roof of the tower and said, “I told you to be silent,” as Gabriel ran to her.

  He cradled her in his arms as blood frothed on her lips, the words she was trying to form, inaudible. His eyes met mine, tears forming as he let out a moan.

  “Why?”

  “Pat wa
s my friend,” I said softly and silence descended as the woman in his arms slowly died.

  “That’s why you did this?” he said finally as he wiped at his eyes with the dirty sleeve of his coat. “To make me suffer loss like you had?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then why, damn you?”

  “Because he was my friend,” I said after a moment's thought. “Because I grieve for his loss and I never want to feel that way again.”

  He gaped at me as though barely hearing the words and laid her body down before rising to his feet. Anger warred with sorrow on his face as he eyed my knife and I suspected he was about to attack, but to my surprise, he looked away, a flush rising up his cheeks.

  “Leave then,” he said. “You’ve had your revenge. Leave me be. God damn you for the shame you’ve brought on our family.”

  Coward, I thought as I looked at him to the body and back again, a slim smile on my face. What would I care for shame?

  “I’m not done,” I said and had the momentary pleasure of seeing fear cross his face as I stepped towards him.

  ****

  The swim back across the moat was as unpleasant as the first time and I pulled myself up the banking with ill grace and a fitting mood.

  Five people had died that night, died beneath my blade and I felt nothing. The one thing in the world that had once given me any joy was gone. Lily was to blame for that, I was sure. Her and the others, the friends I had found.

  Somehow they had taken that joy I once felt and changed it. Tainted it with their damned compassion, till the only way I could truly enjoy killing someone was if it was a death they’d approve of. I knew Lily and even Pat, wouldn’t have approved of my work that night.

  “Feel better?” A voice asked from the darkness beneath the trees and I reached for my knife.

  “What do you want Georgia?”

  The blonde poisoner stepped out from behind the tree, moving into view so that I could see she was alone and her weapon was securely held to her belt and not in hand.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Why did you follow me?” I asked while ignoring her query. She cocked an eyebrow and smiled, all too aware of what I was doing.