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

  And so her frantic flight through the caravan park progressed, racing along gravel pathways, past long deflated paddling pools, picnic tables and clothes lines draped in scraps of rotting cloth. Charging past windows, some empty, some nothing more than fly infested screens, into a nightmare world of decaying flesh; and all the while she found more and more of the Dead waiting for her, their arms outstretched pleading for a taste of her flesh.

  And then her luck ran out.

  ‘Come on!’ growled Fran, kicking at the door again; fearful she would surely feel the clammy touch of decaying flesh on her at any second.

  Thankfully, as her boot connected with the door for a second time the lock finally succumb to the forces being exerted on it; breaking and sending the door flying back to collide loudly with the side of a counter just inside. Knowing she didn’t have the time to check whether the caravan was empty, Fran threw herself towards her only option of escape; her heavy bolt cutters raised and at the ready. As it turned out all that met her was the scurry of a few startled mice fleeing her noisy intrusion and as her gaze flitted across the caravan’s interior her mind raced through her very limited options.

  ‘Window!’ her mind screamed, wasting a precious second to pointlessly slam the door with its broken lock closed behind her, before charging through a galley-style kitchen to the rear of the caravan and a wall of dusty curtains hanging limply around a garishly patterned ‘U’ shaped seating area.

  Kneeling on the water marked and leaf strewn central table, Fran grabbed a fistful of the fabric in one hand and ripped aside the curtains; the force popping more than a few hooks from the rings on the wooden pole above her.

  ‘Shit!’ she spat, suddenly coming face to face with a dozen of the Dead on the other side of the glass; their grey tinged limbs already reaching up to paw against the window pane.

  With a sense of dread twisting at her insides, Fran realised she may have just backed herself in to a corner; a move that unless she could think of something and think of it fast, was going to cost her dearly. She knew that for the moment the door behind her was her weakest spot, so abandoning the already shaking window she turned; barely taking a step away from the table before the caravan door started to swing inwards.

  ‘Fuck!’ she gasped, her knuckles turning white as she gripped tightly the heavy bolt cutters; knowing there was no way she could get to door before the Dead clambered through it like an oncoming wave of death.

  Fran had but seconds to come up with a plan, and she knew it, but to her horror she found her mind was suddenly a blank. She watched, impotently, as a claw like hand inched its way round the door frame, slowly pushing it open. It was only as the opening grew wide enough for her to see the first of the Dead, a young woman with a series of bite marks across her moulding face and torso, that Fran instinctively took a step back; banging her legs against the dirty table top behind her. Luckily, it was in that instant that a casually observed and almost dismissed detail suddenly flared to be recognised; its significance striking home.

  ‘Leaves!’ she said aloud, immediately looking to the ceiling above the table and the skylight that had so long ago been left propped ajar.

  ‘Thank, Fuck!’ she thought, scrabbling onto the table; already swinging the bolt cuttings to knock the plastic skylight from its fittings up out onto the roof of the caravan.

  For a split second, Fran wondered what to do with the heavy tool in her hand; abandon it and leave herself unarmed or waste time she didn’t have trying to toss it through the opening above her. In the end, the shambling progress of the Dead young woman covered in bite marks made the decision for her. For even in the few seconds it had taken Fran to climb onto the table and knock open the skylight, the Dead woman’s corpse had almost closed the gap between them; leading the slow but determined charge of the other hungry cadavers behind her.

  ‘Fuck it!’ spat Fran, half-heartedly tossing the bolt cutters at the Dead woman before leaping for the open space above her head.

  Praying that it would hold her weight and with the aluminium surround digging painfully into the palms of her hands, Fran pulled herself up with an awkward ‘chin up’ movement.

  ‘Don’t let go! Don’t let go!’ she growled, frantically kicking her legs for extra momentum as, with straining muscles, she struggled to change her handhold and get an elbow up over the lip of the opening. ‘Come on… you can… do this!’

  Then with a cry of raw determination erupting from her throat, one of her arms was suddenly out on the roof, desperately grasping for anything she could use for leverage. Finding only a woefully thin cable that led to a small satellite dish, she wrapped her fist about it like the proverbial man clutching at straws and started to pull.

  ‘Please!’ she silently begged, releasing her other hand to grab hold of the meagre cable, hoping it would support her long enough to let her wriggle her torso up onto the roof.

  Suddenly, with a screech and the unsettling sound of something metal snapping, the dish abruptly jolted to one side.

  ‘Shit,’ she gasped, her grip on the cable tightening; fearful it would give out before she could pull herself clear.

  It was then that she felt the first terrifying brush of cold dead hands against her legs.

  ‘No!’ she cried, wildly kicking her legs; determined the hungry cadavers below her would not find purchase. ‘No! No! No!’

  She felt her feet connect with the nameless flesh below her, briefly knocking grasping hands aside only for another decaying creature to lay its rancid touch upon her. It would only be a matter of time before one of them managed to grab hold of her and pull her back down to the gaping maws that awaited her and she knew it. But she would not give up so easily and despite the worrying shudders she felt through the cord in her hands, Fran continued to pull herself up, inch by inch; until with a prayer of thanks thrown to the Gods, she felt the hands below her fall away. She was finally beyond their reach.

  ‘Thank fuck!’ she panted, rolling onto her back as she lay on the roof of the caravan; gulping down air to calm her hammering heart.

  It was only as her protesting muscles began to relax that she realised she still held the satellite cord tightly within her shaking hands.

  ‘Jesus!’ she puffed, tossing aside the cable that had saved her life to push herself up into a sitting positon. ‘That was close... too close.’

  Below her the loud and guttural moans of the Dead called out to her, their decaying minds unable to comprehend or understand her escape; and as they crowded around the small table beneath the opening, their arms held aloft, they wordlessly begged her to return. To them, her life, her reason for being, her very existence was to supply them with sustenance and their minds simply could not fathom a reason why they would be denied this.

  ‘Better luck next time, Shit-bags,’ muttered Fran, leaning over the open skylight to look down at the Dead horde below her; briefly noticing how the initial Dead woman who had led the pack had already been pushed aside by the frenzy of those behind her. ‘Haven’t you heard, Luv,’ she continued, meeting the Dead woman’s milky gaze, ‘it’s a brutal world… get used to it.’

  Despite her cocky behaviour, Fran knew she was hardly free of danger just yet. If she didn’t find a way to escape the caravan roof and the increasing number of Dead that were surely being drawn by the excited calls of their rioting brethren, she may have just traded one hopeless dead end for another.

  ‘Right,’ she muttered to herself, turning away from the moaning Dead throng to take in her new surroundings, ‘let’s see what I’ve got myself into this time.’

  Walking slowly across the roof, the aluminium sheeting popping and buckling slightly under her weight, Fran carefully made her way to the front of the caravan. Just as she had feared, more of the Dead, their savage wounds testament to their tragic passing, were pathetically jostling each other to get into the caravan and the warm bloody flesh that the call of their fellow Dead promised.

  ‘You’re too late,’ she thought,
abandoning the front to check out the state of the other three sides.

  It was as she was peering over the end furthest away from the skylight, looking down at three brutalised corpses, shambling into view from around the adjacent caravan, that she noticed just how close the two vehicles were.

  ‘I wonder,’ she muttered, taking a step back to gauge the distance to the next roof.

  Once she had figured the gap to be no more than two metres wide, an idea had quickly began to form and with it, a smile of relief crept across her face.

  ‘Right, come on you bags of stinking crap!’ she hollered, banging on the ceiling as she leant back through the opening to watch the growing number of Dead cram themselves into the space below her. ‘Come on! Come on, there’s room for more of you! Everybody’s welcome! Make room! Make room!’

  With nearly fifty corpses bustling against each to reach her, the scene below Fran had quickly transformed into a nightmare of blackened and ruined flesh but only when she thought she had attracted all the Dead that the caravan could hold did she put the next part of her plan into action.

  ‘Later, Scabs!’ she muttered, briefly saluting the writhing Dead horde before climbing to her feet and breaking into a run.

  With the aluminium roof making worrisome noises beneath her feet, Fran sprinted to the other end of the caravan.

  ‘Well, here goes…’ she thought, just as her foot reached the lip of the roof and she pushed off, launching herself into the void, ‘nothing!’

  ***

  ‘She’s taking too long isn’t she?’ whispered Sam, her eyes nervously flitting from Mike to Kai.

  ‘Fran knows what she’s doing,’ said Tom, to no one in particular, leaning forward for the tenth time to peer in the direction they expected her to come. ‘Come on, girl…’ he continued, muttering under his breath as he nervously scratched at his beard, ‘what’s keeping you?’

  ‘Should we double back and try to find her?’ suggested Mike, noticing despite the shadows in the cart that Kai’s dark eyes were clouded with growing worry.

  ‘No,’ said Tom, turning in his seat to look back not at Mike who had asked the question but at Kai. ‘We wait and we wait here. We said we’d be on the access road waiting for her, so we wait on the access road for her. At the moment Fran knows where to find us, we start changing the plan and it’ll get her killed. Clearly she’s run into some trouble of some sort but…’

  No sooner had he said the word trouble than Kai was moving, throwing open the side hatch next to him and jumping out; leaving those in the cart scrabbling to stop him.

  ‘Kai!’ hissed Tom, frantically trying to clamber out of the driver’s seat. ‘Get back in! For fuck’s sake, lad, don’t…’

  But whatever argument Tom was about to offer he knew it was pointless, he was too late. And as he slowly pulled the hatch closed again he briefly saw Kai running at full tilt along the weed choked gravel driveway back into the caravan park; the crowbar held tightly in his fist already swinging.

  ***

  ‘Whoa!’ thought Fran, rocking to steady herself as the roof of the caravan dented and buckled slightly under her impact. ‘Just two more and I should be okay,’ she went on to mutter under her breath, glancing back over her shoulder; the askew satellite dish on the fifth caravan behind her indicating how far she had already come.

  Once she had taken the initial leap of faith, jumping from one caravan to the next, she had found it a simple and relatively easy way to leave the Dead horde behind her and more importantly it avoided detection from those that had not yet reached their goal. On more than one occasion, her aerial exodus had gone unnoticed as she breached the gap between two caravans; the lone cadavers shambling beneath her oblivious to her passing, unable to do anything but answer the calls of their Dead brothers and sisters.

  ‘Just two more,’ she promised herself, once more breaking into a run; the edge of the caravan racing toward her. ‘Oh, Shit!’ she found herself gasping just as she launched herself from the roof, noticing only at the very last moment that the gap between this roof and the next was considerably wider than the others.

  Instinctively Fran found her legs pumping and arms flailing, as if these frantic movements would force her through the air just that bit further. But even as her foot left the lip of the roof behind her she had known it was pointless. The edge, even though so tantalisingly close, was just too far to jump and she knew it. So, as she watched the top of the next caravan rise past her shins, knees and then her thighs, she did the only thing she could think of; she threw out her arms hopeful she could stop herself from falling. But it was to no avail, for as her chest slammed against the edge of roof, painfully knocking the air from her lungs, her arms failed her and with sickening dread she found herself falling backwards away from the roof and toward the unknown below her.

  It was strange but the brief fall to the ground seemed to appear to Fran as a series of frozen snapshot details. The ‘v’ shaped flight pattern of a flock of unknown birds in the sky high above her, the strange pineapple shaped air freshener with the words ‘Tutti-fruiti’ printed across it that was hanging just inside the widow of the caravan and the small ‘my little pony’ sticker that some presumably long deceased child had placed just under the peeling windowsill. All these details cried out to her for instant recognition, demanding she notice them as she passed by; and then the ground hit her.

  Suddenly there was an explosion of pain across Fran’s back and instantly a terrifying image of her lying paralysed in the long grass as the Dead closed in on her flashed through her mind.

  ‘No! Fuck!’ she coughed, fighting against her protesting ribs to pull air down into her screaming lungs; a growing darkness threatening to creep across her vision. ‘No!’

  Yet even as her damaged body got its own way and the shadows clouded her sight, Fran distantly became aware that she was rolling onto one side and in this one action she took some solace that at least she wasn’t about to be left a defenceless cripple waiting for the Dead to claim her. Unfortunately this solace was all too short lived, for just as the last of her vision was shrouded in darkness she saw the corpse of the Dead woman standing in the tall grass to her left; its head slowly turning to fix her with its hungry glare.

  ‘No!’ she managed to feebly whisper, a thousand regrets and wishes instantly racing through her mind until, unable to fight against the needs of her body any longer, her eyes finally closed.

  In the dark void of Fran’s unconsciousness she could feel a distant pulling on her body, a sharp tugging, movement and then a flash of pain. Yet even as these constructs danced at the corners of her mind, abstract, their meaning fleeting and transient, Fran could not help but feel the need to rile against them. She somehow knew she needed to pin down these sensations; to use them to claw her way back to the light and the reality that awaited her. So, as another jolt of pain shot through her, nerve endings crying out to be noticed, she saw her chance. Her mind zeroed in on their call, focusing on the pain like invisible hands groping through the darkness for something tangible, something real and then in an instant she was there, her eyes abruptly snapping open.

  ‘Jesus!’ she gasped, sucking air through her teeth, the muscles in her back protesting; the sight of the back of Kai’s moving legs beneath her the only thing she could see.

  ‘Almost there,’ she heard Kai puff, as the ground beneath his running feet changed from grass to weed clogged gravel. ‘You’re g…going to be alright, Fran. Everything’s g…going to be alright.’

  ‘Kai… what?’ she mumbled, her head foggy as she bounced along on Kai’s shoulder; waves of dizziness crashing over her.

  And then in an instant the waves parted and with a sickening clarity the image of the female corpse with a dark vein-like mould creeping across her neck and face flashed across Fran’s mind.

  ‘No! Oh, my God, Kai… the Dead woman! The fucking Dead woman!’ she cried, struggling for him to put her down, despite the pain that bloomed across her back. ‘Did she b
ite me? Have I been bitten? Oh, my God… please, Kai, please tell me…’

  ‘Fran… Fran, it’s okay… it’s okay,’ he interrupted, coming to a stop and gently lowering her down from his broad shoulders.

  ‘I saw her… I’d fallen and… and I must have knocked my head,’ garbled Fran, unable to register Kai’s words as she sat on the gravel driveway frantically twisting her arms and legs, searching for bite marks, ‘it was going black and I saw her, Kai… and... and she saw me... Christ, she saw me!’

  ‘Fran… Fran!’ he repeated, taking her face in her hands; forcing her to look at him as he remembered finding the woman he loved lying unconscious in the grass; the corpse of a Dead woman already falling to its knees beside her. ‘It’s okay. I f…found you in time. It’s okay, it d…didn’t bite you. You’re okay… you’re okay, Fran.’

  Gradually her frantic movements slowed as his words finally began to sink in and then with a sob of ultimate relief exploding from her, she threw her arms about his neck; almost welcoming the shooting pain from her back as she pulled him close to her.

  ‘Jesus… I thought… I thought,’ she sobbed into his neck, the realisation of just how close she had come to death making her grip onto Kai even tighter.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he replied, softly stroking her hair; trying not to think what would have happened if he had found her even a few seconds later, ‘I w...was there, r…remember? Fran, we’d b…better get back in cart. Are you okay t…to stand?’

  ‘What? Yes, yes I think so,’ she replied, reluctantly pulling away from him to wipe her tear stroked face; the action seeming to draw a line under the whole affair, consigning the experience to be just one more fearful incident of her past. ‘Guess I owe you,’ she went on to say, puffing away the last shaky remnants of emotion as she slowly rose to her feet; wincing as she moved her neck.