Star Drawn Saga (Book 2): Lost Among The Dead Page 13
‘But you’ve got enough for the next few days?’ said Tom, watching the young couple; both of them unsure what to do for the best.
‘Yes, but after that…’ Sam started to say.
‘Well, we’ll deal with that when the time comes,’ said Tom, pulling the first damp garment from the duffle bag to drape over second clothes line that had been erected on the back of the cart. ‘And anyway, we’ll make more headway in the cart than you would have done on foot in Betsey. With a bit of luck we might even get to this White Oak Park place before you even run out.’
‘You think so?’ asked Sam, looking hopefully from Tom to Mike.
‘Sure we will,’ Mike replied, clearly wanting to believe his own words as much as Sam did. ‘We’ll get there and Pops will be fine… you’ll see. She’ll be fine.’
‘Erm… I don’t want to rain on everyone’s parade,’ said Fran, her tone almost apologetic as she jumped down from the cart, ‘but have you thought you may not be the only ones to think of making a beeline to White Oak Park… I mean, if it’s a peachy as you say, what if someone else has already set up shop there?’
‘But there are plenty of tree houses,’ replied Mike, a hint of uncertainty creeping into his voice, ‘even if we take one that’s away from the lake… surely they’ll think it’s better to have more of the living around them then the Dead… you know, safety in numbers.’
‘Hmm… if only it was that simple,’ said Tom, grabbing a handful of damp socks. ‘You’d be surprised how many people would rather keep what they’ve got for themselves. Building a community and banding together isn’t everyone’s idea of how to survive all this.’
‘I’m alright Jack and sod everyone else,’ mumbled Mike, chewing his lip as he processed what Tom was telling him.
‘And have you met many?’ asked Sam. ‘Survivors… communities, I mean… other places where they’ve managed to keep the Dead at bay?’
‘If th…they had we’d still b…be there,’ Kai pointed out, noticing a Dead man slowly stumbling down the road towards them. ‘I’ll g…get it,’ he continued, nodding towards to the emaciated cadaver as he put aside the pan of hot food to reach for the crowbar once again.
For a second his eyes locked with Fran’s and in that instant he knew exactly what she thinking.
‘Be careful!’
‘B…back in a m…minute,’ he said, giving her a wink before jogging off to get in some more much needed practice in dealing with the Dead.
‘Kai lived in a boarding school,’ said Fran, watching as the man she loved draw closer to the walking corpse. ‘No Bob! Stay!’ she said, clicking her fingers at the small dog who had started to wander off after Kai. ‘Anyway,’ she went on to say, returning to her original train of thought, ‘it turned out to be run by a power hungry loon and surprise, surprise, it all went tits up… and then there was Saint Michael’s Mount.’
‘The island… yes, of course!’ interrupted Mike, a flash of realization dancing across his face. ‘I never thought of…’
‘Well think again,’ Fran continued, shaking her head. ‘It’s run by another looney, this time of the religious variety. Truth be told, we’re on the run from them. I sort of promised, well Kai and I both sort of promised that we’d stay, boost their breeding stock so to speak.’
‘And you couldn’t stay?’ asked Sam. ‘Was it really that bad?’
‘Don’t get me wrong there are some good people there, in fact we left a few friends behind with them, but no,’ she continued, glancing over at Tom who because of his age and mental affliction had not only not been offered a place on the island but had also been wrongly accused of murder while he was there. ‘There’s a shadow hanging over that place… we’d be forever walking on eggshells… Nope, we just couldn’t do it… so I drugged them and we high tailed it out of there.’
‘You drugged them?’ asked Mike, hopeful his new travelling companions had been holding out on him.
‘Sorry, I know what you’re going to ask, but no… it was their own concoction,’ she replied, clarifying what had happened, ‘and I used all I managed to get my hands on just to knock them out so we could escape.’
‘Don’t suppose you know what they used?’ asked Sam, hopeful Fran could spark some unremembered details or piece of information within her.
‘Sorry,’ Fran replied, with an apologetic shrug. ‘And anyway their gardens had been going for years… if not centuries… so they probably had access to plants you wouldn’t normally find out here anyway... sorry.’
‘Oh well,’ said Sam, sounding a little deflated as she looked down into the steeped water now tinted a yellowy green, ‘we’ve got a few more days.’
As if to push the point home, a weak cry suddenly came from behind her inside the cart; Poppy had woken up again after her nap and was clearly not in a good mood.
‘Great!’ sighed Sam, her shoulders drooping as a look of complete exhaustion seemed to fall over her. ‘Can’t she wake up happy for once… just once? I swear she’s the most irritable baby ever.’
‘She’ll be different when we’ve found somewhere safe,’ offered Mike, his fingers gently stroking the back of Sam’s neck, ‘somewhere she can get into a routine… that’s all she needs. You’ll see.’
‘Christ, I hope so,’ mumbled Sam in reply, wearily pushing herself to her feet as she ran her fingers though her short red hair. ‘I’ll see if I can feed her now and then get some of this down her… it should quieten her down for a few hours at least.’
‘Are you having trouble?’ asked Fran, moving out of Sam’s way so she could get in the cart to calm her child. ‘With breast feeding I mean.’
‘Who has the calories to spare these days,’ huffed Sam, nodding down towards her own chest. ‘I’m not producing very much, nowhere near the amount she needs, not really…. but at least it’s the one time she’s quiet and happy, for a few minutes anyway.’
‘I’m sure it’ll get easier,’ said Fran with a sympathetic smile; knowing all too well that without the proper nourishment and a safe place to develop, things did not look too rosy for poor Poppy Watkins, not in the long run. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, trying to force a lighter note into her voice as she waved the folded map in her hand at Mike and Tom, ‘I think I may have found somewhere for tonight. Obviously we won’t know for sure until we’re there but it might be okay… for tonight at least.’
‘Might be okay?’ repeated Tom, abandoning the rest of his damp washing for a while to see what Fran had found.
‘Yeah,’ said Fran, opening the map a little wider. ‘Look, here,’ she went on to say, pointing to a specific point on the map, ‘on the other side of this village here… the village of… Milestone. Anyway, look it’s a good mile out, sat right on its own so if we’re lucky…’
‘I’m not mad on ifs and luck has a way of turning round to bite you on the arse when you least expect it,’ mumbled Tom, studying the building and the surrounding area that Fran had found on the outskirts of Milestone. ‘You’ve been around here a while, Mike,’ he went on the say, looking from the map to the younger man, ‘did you get that far out when you were out scavenging? What’s Milestone like?’
‘Sorry, no idea,’ Mike replied, shaking his head, ‘I tried to avoid the built up areas, no matter how small they were…. And anyway that’s too far to get there and back by foot in one day, I wouldn’t have risked being away so long…not with Sam and Pops left back in Chacewater on their own… I couldn’t risk not getting back to them.’
‘Yes… yeah, I understand,’ whispered Tom, Mike’s words inadvertently twisting like a knife in his stomach.
‘So…’ Fran started to say, all too aware the effect Mike’s words could be having on Tom.
‘So we’d be going in blind,’ finished Tom, shaking the darkness from him, ‘but you’re right, on paper it probably is the best option…’
‘And barring any road blocks making us double back on ourselves, we should be there in under three hours… perhaps even two,’ ad
ded Fran, looking at Tom and Mike hoping they agreed with her.
‘Be w…where in t…two hours?’ said Kai, suddenly appearing beside them, the end of the crowbar resting over his shoulder dripping with a thick black and foul smelling liquid.
‘Fran thinks she’s found us a roof for the night,’ Tom replied, holding up the map to jab the area just outside the village of Milestone with his finger. ‘Here.’
With barely a glance at the creased paper Tom was holding up for him, Kai looked at Fran and with a wink, simply said one word.
‘Cool.’
***
‘Anything?’ whispered Fran, looking past Tom’s shoulder to the slit cut in the wall in front of him.
‘No,’ he replied, his thick eyebrows coming together in concern as he studied the empty street beyond the safe confines of the cart, ‘and I don’t like it.’
Earlier, after sharing their meagre meal by the roadside, Tom, Fran and Kai had initiated Mike, Sam and their soundly sleeping infant to the joys of travelling by cart and over the next two and half hours they had slowly gotten to know each other; each exchanging the details of their lives prior and post the arrival of the Dead in the usual whispered and hushed conversations. Thanks to Star, they had made steady but silent progress along the narrow rambling lanes that crisscrossed the Cornish countryside; while either side of them nature seemed ever determined to reclaim the land these manmade scars had stolen from her. Everywhere huge expanses of brambles, hawthorn, rosehip and a myriad of fast growing weeds, some still peppered with small brightly coloured flowers, all pushed in on them as they passed by; cocooning the travellers between walls of living foliage. And yet despite this life that blossomed about them, the Dead were always present; the sad wandering figures appearing at each turn in the road, seemingly determined to remind them of just how far Man had fallen. Alone or in twos and threes, these abominations, ruined shells of what they once were, would each silently amble past them; oblivious that the one thing they perpetually craved was silently slipping through their decaying fingers.
Yet as Star pulled the cart and her passengers along these roads now traversed by the Dead, the very presence of these cursed and hungry cadavers seemed to grow less and less frequent the closer they got to the village of Milestone. Despite being unsure why this should be the case, it was in fact the absence of the usual detritus and wrecked vehicles that he would have expected to find clogging the roads of Milestone that actually put Tom on alert. Something was going on here; just what it was he couldn’t put his finger on but if past experience was anything to go by, the unexpected and unusual rarely meant something good.
‘But why bother?’ said Fran, idly stroking the top of Bob’s head as she spoke. ‘I mean why go to the trouble of keeping the roads clear of crap? What for? Clearly no one lives in these houses anymore... just look at them,’ she continued, nodding to just another dilapidated house sitting amid a garden gone to seed that had become the norm.
‘More importantly, where are the Dead?’ mumbled Tom, his gaze flitting over a wrecked car that had clearly been maneuvered out of the road and half onto the pavement in front of an empty village shop. ‘A village this size… there should be at least fifty people, if not more… let alone the wanderers adding to that… So where are they?’
‘Could they have made their way over to Chacewater?’ suggested Mike from behind them. ‘To that rescue station before it all kicked off?’
‘Possibly,’ shrugged Tom, ‘but that doesn’t explain why vehicles have been moved and the roads are clean… I mean you’ve been to other places, when was the last time you saw a road in the middle of a village without at least one dropped suitcase or stuffed toy left to go mouldy in the street?’
‘And anyway, they wouldn’t have just up sticks and hightailed it over to Chacewater unless they were already under attack,’ mused Fran, chewing her lip in concentration. ‘People stick close to home when they feel threatened… well, until they’re left with no other option but to flee and if it came to that here…’
‘Then w…where are the b…bodies,’ said Kai, completing her thought.
‘Exactly,’ nodded Fran, looking back at him. ‘Not a single piece of bone out there… nothing.’
‘Are we walking into a trap?’ whispered Sam, inadvertently moving closer to the sleeping form of her daughter.
‘If it is, it’s the most bizarre ambush I’ve ever seen,’ said Tom, thoughtfully scratching his stubbly chin with the back of his hand as Star began to pull them round a curve in the road. ‘You usually want your victim to have no idea what’s happening right up until the moment you hit them… not put them on guard from the get go. So no, I…’
‘What?’ whispered Sam, acutely aware that Tom had stopped mid-sentence. ‘What is it?’
‘Christ!’ muttered Fran, seeing over his shoulder just what had caused Tom to stop speaking.
‘Well, I think we’ve found the good people of Milestone,’ said Tom, pulling Star to a halt as he turned to look back at his travelling companions. ‘And they didn’t go far.’
‘Why, where did they go?’/ ‘What do you mean?’ Sam and Mike said at the same time, each speaking over the other’s words as they crowded in next to Fran and Kai so they could see for themselves.
‘Oh… no!’ gasped Sam, her hands instinctively moving to cover her mouth.
‘What the fuck!’ spat Mike, glancing briefly to his side to meet his wife’s shocked wide eyed expression. ‘This is crazy!’ he went on to say, shaking his head in disbelief as he turned to look back at the small church surrounded by a wall of the outwardly-facing writhing corpses. ‘We need to get out of here… like now… I mean who does that! Who the fuck collects the Dead and ties them to railings around a churchyard… we need to go… we need to go now!’
‘Mike,’ whispered Sam, her fear turning his name into little more than a frantic plea as her fingers tightened about his arm.
‘Now… wait… just hold your… horses,’ said Tom, trying ignore the other whispered conversation that the presence of so many of the Dead had suddenly sparked; a conversation that only he was able to hear.
‘Hold your horses!’ exclaimed Mike loudly, shocked that Tom and the others hadn’t immediately agreed with him. ‘I don’t want to break it to you, Man, but that’s not normal… whoever’s done this, they’re not normal. Christ! Look at those bastards! Look at them!’
‘Mike…’ Sam started to warn, before Tom spoke over her.
‘Mike!’ Tom growled, his tone alone telling him to bring his volume back down to the appropriate and careful whisper. ‘Just because we haven’t seen any of the Dead until this lot doesn’t mean we can start mouthing off. So keep it down, okay… Right, anyway,’ he went on to say once he saw the apologetic and somewhat guilty look on Mike’s face, ‘what I was going to say is that, yes, this is some weird shit but you have to look past that…’
‘Weird shit!’ parroted Mike incredulously, his voice this time reduced to an appropriate level.
‘Tom… I think I have to agree with Mike here,’ whispered Fran, tearing her eyes from the macabre scene before them, ‘this is more than just your run-of-the-mill everyday weird.’
‘If you’ll all just calm down a bit and… and…’ said Tom, faltering as other opinions, whispered by unseen ghostly lips, briefly demanded his attention, ‘and as I said, look past the corpses… try to look at what you’re actually seeing. Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble here… see it for what it is.’
One by one they each turned to look back at the corpse covered railings.
‘They’re all f…facing outwards,’ said Kai, clicking his fingers as the realisation of what he was seeing suddenly struck home. ‘It’s an a...alarm,’ he continued, a smile spreading across his face as his dark eyes sparkled triumphantly.
‘Damn! You’re right,’ agreed Fran, with a nod. ‘They’re on guard duty aren’t they…they’re like a fucking watchdog… someone’s using them to watch out for the living.’
‘Could it be abandoned?’ asked Sam, hopeful they wouldn’t have to meet the person insane or genius enough to think of using the corpses in such a manner. ‘I mean, who knows how long they’ve been there... whoever did this may be long gone.’
‘N…no,’ said Kai, shaking his head. ‘The Dead, they’re m…moving, they’ve seen someone r…recently… someone alive.’
‘Guess there’s only one way to find out,’ muttered Tom, giving Star’s reins a sharp flick, urging her onward. ‘Let’s get a closer look… see who’s home.’ He went on to say, his voice finally fading away until his lips only moved in unspoken and mute dialogue with those much less corporal.
***
‘Well I suppose we should follow him,’ said Fran, looking at the open doorway that only moments ago had framed the teenage boy who had watched their approach with disinterest.
‘Stay close… both of you,’ whispered Tom, his grip on his blades subconsciously tightening as he shot Mike a look of warning.
A few minutes earlier, after Star had pulled them past the wall of limbless corpses secured by their necks and waists to the railings surrounding the church yard, they had come to a stop by a small covered archway. Beneath it and wedged open by a brick, was an intricately designed wrought iron gate unadorned by any of the mutilated Dead; the lack of corpses here clearly indicating that any visitor to the church was to use this and only this as the single point of entry.
‘Apparently we’re at Mrs. Bradbury’s Trading Post,’ Tom had said, reading aloud a hand painted sign that someone had left leaning against the open gate.
‘Warning! Shoplifters will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,’ said Fran, noticing a smaller second sign that had been wired to the ironwork of the gate. ‘Oh, and she’s put a nice smiley face at the end to show there’s no hard feelings,’ she added, with a chuckle. ‘How polite of Mrs. Bradbury… Right, so what do we need, what have we got to trade and who’s coming?’ she went on to say, wondering if Tom could control himself long enough to get past the row of corpses without hacking them to pieces.