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

  ‘Yeah… more or less,’ she replied, mumbling as she finally pulled the door closed behind her and briskly strode past Fran and Sam. ‘Come on…’ she called back to the two women as Bob began to sniff his way into the building, ‘I’ll give you both a quick grand tour and then it’s time to get to work.’

  ‘Bob… here,’ barked Fran, clicking her fingers to draw the animal away from the row of a dozen rabbit hutches set along the wall, each of them housing two or three furry meals; before she followed Emma further into the complex.

  Looking around her as they walked, Fran couldn’t help but be impressed by all that the small group had managed to accomplish; turning what had been the focal point of White Oak Park holiday resort into a huge life-saving greenhouse. Yet despite her admiration there was something that troubled her, some detail that itched at the back of her mind about what she was seeing. It wasn’t until Emma pointed out the children’s paddling pool now filled to the brim with earth and overflowing with a riot of greenery that it hit finally home. It was Emma’s reply, the ‘more or less’, it spoke of other hands toiling to complete the task as well as their own; other hands that were clearly no longer present.

  ‘So we have potatoes and cabbages in this one,’ Emma was saying pointing to the filled in paddling pool almost the size of a tennis court; a strange array of hosepipes and tubing suspended above it, ‘and tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes… erm…runner beans, peas and… some other root vegetables, I forget which… over there in the second pool,’ she continued pointing past a long row of raised bed planters to another converted swimming pool; this one being larger, deeper and filled only half way up its sides; leaving a drop of half a metre down to the soil level below.

  As they continued on their tour, Emma skirted them past a long wall of runner beans; the well-tended plants growing tall and heavily laden with a crop ripe for harvest. Just the other side of this, Fran caught a glimpse of the final and largest of the complex’s converted swimming pools. This had clearly been far too deep to fill with earth and with diving boards and a twisting slide that ended with a sheer drop of four metres down to the dry pool floor; it was just another sad reminder of what they had lost to the Dead. Of course this sad reminder came with a dazzling silver lining, for totally filling the pool from one end to the other were raised beds, pots, tubs and seemingly anything else that could hold enough dirt to encourage fruitful life to grow. Emma had just started to explain that the strange set up of tubes that seemed to endlessly criss-cross the air suspended above them was in fact and ingenious irrigation system drip feeding collected rainwater that came through carefully removed panels in the roof when Fran noticed Sid Murray ahead of them; slowly rising from his knees by a freshly toiled planter, a look of mild confusion on his face.

  ‘Emma,’ he simply said with a nod, acknowledging her presence yet clearly unsure what she was doing there.

  ‘Morning, Sid,’ she replied, bending down to move aside some large green leaves to reveal the almost glowing orange pumpkin hidden beneath. ‘Well, I bring you two new pairs of hands to help you with all this… and… and Natalie…’ she continued, looking around, suddenly aware the woman had disappeared. ‘Oh, she was with us a minute ago, I guess she’s…’

  ‘Natalie knows what needs to be done,’ he said, finally offering Sam and Fran a smile of welcome. ‘We worked out a work schedule between us.’

  ‘Yes, always away in corners the pair of you… whispering,’ said Emma, her simple comment sounding halfway between a threat and an accusation, ‘though to be honest I always thought something more racy was being discussed than the picking broad beans… oh well… poor Natalie,’ she finally added with a smirk, letting the leaves fall back into place over their golden prize.

  ‘How did you get all the soil in here?’ Fran suddenly asked as casually as she could, directing her question to Emma but all the while keeping her gaze firmly locked on the older man before her.

  ‘Wheelbarrows and a lot of hard work,’ Emma swiftly replied, pulling a mud covered spade from where it had been wedged in the earth of the nearest planter. ‘So, Sid, where do you want us?’ she went on to say, quickly changing the subject.

  But in the split second it had taken the young woman to answer, Fran had seen the real truth in Sid’s face; it was the way his eyes dropped to the floor, the way his features became clouded in shame, this was what told her what she really wanted to know. Clearly Emma had no idea how the earth had been collected and brought into the Dome and as far as Fran could see there was one reason for this, someone else had done it; someone else before Emma and her gang of puppets had even got here.

  ‘So they opened their doors, welcoming you into their home and then what…’ thought Fran, watching the way Sid busied himself with retrieving his trowel, still unable to look anyone in the eye, ‘what happened here, Emma... and did you even let them live to regret their mistake?’

  Fran knew there was only one way she was going to get any answers; she needed to get Sid alone and more importantly she needed to get him out of the earshot of Emma. Unfortunately though from the moment Sid set them to task Emma took it upon herself to be Fran’s workmate; never leaving her side or moving away from her for even a moment. Just why she allowed Sam the luxury of being left to work in peace, Fran couldn’t tell for sure but she thought it may have had less to do with Emma not seeing Sam as any form of the threat to the status quo of White Oak Park and perhaps more to do with the fact that Fran had spoken her mind one too many times. Clearly Emma had seen the hint of a challenge in Fran’s eyes and because of it, marked her down as a trouble maker; someone who was likely going to cause waves of unrest in her strange little kingdom.

  ‘So your father, he taught you,’ Emma was saying an hour and a half later, shovelling a mound of rabbit droppings from a bucket onto the turned earth in front of Fran. ‘The martial arts, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied, using her spade to work the manure into the soil, ‘every day after school and most weekends, my older sister and I would be training with Dad in one class or another… it was his way of getting close to us I suppose… you know quality daddy-daughter time and it didn’t hurt that we both won medals at championship level… there’s nothing like a disk on a bit of ribbon to swell the chest of a proud father.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ mumbled Emma, tipping the last of the contents of her bucket out. ‘My dad died just after Wendy was born… a car accident.’

  ‘Oh… sorry… and your mother, she didn’t remarry?’ Fran casually asked, surprised that she was being given a glimpse of another side of Emma.

  ‘Yes, she did,’ Emma simply replied, her clipped tone like a slap telling Fran the subject was suddenly closed.

  Clearly something had happened to Emma and Wendy’s stepfather but Fran thought nothing of it; after all, with the Dead a constant threat surrounding them, if you found someone who hadn’t suffered one traumatic loss or another, then you’d found a very lucky person indeed.

  ‘Right, so what now?’ asked Fran, slamming the blade of her spade deep into the earth; satisfied she had mixed the last of the rabbit manure into the dark mud of the planter.

  ‘Now, I need a drink,’ Emma replied, with a puff; wiping the sweat on her forehead against the crook of her sleeve, ‘I always forget how warm it gets in here… come on, this way,’ she continued, nodding for Fran to follow as she walked along the row of planters towards a large water barrel sat in a wheelbarrow parked at the far end.

  ‘So that was a look of surprise on Sid’s face earlier,’ thought Fran to herself, as she dutifully followed behind Emma. ‘You I don’t normally get your hands dirty at all, do you, Emma? Well, not like this.’

  ‘Here,’ said Emma, after filling a plastic bottle from the barrel’s spigot. ‘Don’t worry, it’s clean.’

  ‘Boiled?’ asked Fran, talking the bottle of slightly warm water.

  ‘Better,’ she replied, taking a few welcome gulps from her own bottle, ‘it’s ch
lorinated. Sid found a stash of chlorine in a store room. It would have been used for the pool water originally but used correctly it serves our purpose fine.’

  ‘Oh, right…. and where does the water come from?’ Fran continued, still a little reticent in case it was contaminated river water.

  ‘It’s rain water, okay,’ sighed Emma, taking another swig from the bottle as if to prove her point. ‘Just chlorinated rain water… all over the forest we’ve got these tarpaulins set up in clearings,’ she went on to say, bending down to refill her bottle again.

  ‘They’re weighted down in the middle,’ said Sid, surprising them as he suddenly appeared from behind a wall of tall cucumber plants. ‘There’s a fabric covered disk at the bottom to act as a primary filter and then the water is collected underneath in a sealed barrel…’ he continued, bending down to pull the tiniest weed from the soil in the planter nearest to Fran. ‘It’s quite safe to drink.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean…’ apologised Fran, looking from Sid to Emma. ‘It’s just some of the places I’ve been... well, they’ve not been as savvy as you when it comes to things like this… you’d be surprised...’

  ‘I’d be surprised they hadn’t already dropped dead,’ interrupted Emma, with a snort as she fiddled with the small tap to turn it off. ‘Some people are just asking to catch cholera…’ she continued, mumbling more to herself than speaking for the others to hear. ‘Morons.’

  At this comment, Fran couldn’t help but glance back at Sid still crouched by her side. It was only as their eyes locked that Fran noticed him pointedly looking back down at his hand; his hand that moved briskly over the soil drawing two sets of lines in the mud in front of him.

  ‘Where did you put Sam to work,’ Emma suddenly asked, forcing Sid and Fran to break eye contact.

  ‘Oh… I... erm… she should be over on the far side of the main pool with Natalie,’ he replied, pushing himself up from his knees; purposely running his fingers through the loose earth to obscure what he had written. ‘I asked them to collect and start shelling some of the runner beans for drying… they’ll store better that way.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Emma, lodging a full bottle of water under her arm, ‘we’ll take her this and then give them a hand…unless there’s something else you specifically want doing?’ she went on to say, almost as an afterthought.

  ‘No, no…’ he replied, glancing briefly back at Fran. ‘It all needs to be done… and many hands make light work.’

  ‘Yeah… exactly,’ said Emma, barely hiding the bored role of her eyes as she turned away from him. ‘Well, come on, Fran… let’s go pick some beans.’

  Knowing Emma’s words were meant more of a command than a suggestion, Fran took a welcome gulp from her own water bottle and then fell into line behind her.

  It was only as she turned to look back at Sid, staring after her with an anxious look on his face, that she suddenly realised that it hadn’t been the numbers ‘09’ she had seen him hastily write in the mud before her but in fact, seen from his perspective, it was a simple two letter warning; a warning that told her she needed to ‘GO’.

  ***

  ‘B…but then w…why does he stay?’ asked Kai, later that afternoon as he walked hand in hand with Fran across the walkway on route to the Hub for their evening meal.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, chewing on the inside of her lip as she mentally ran through the possible explanations. ‘But… I… I think probably for Natalie’s sake…’ she eventually offered, nodding as she spoke as if agreeing with her own conclusion. ‘I think they’re quite close… and well, she’s a such a wreck, I doubt she’d survive long in the world beyond this place... no matter how bad it is.’

  ‘B…but that’s just it, Fran,’ said Kai, pulling her to a stop and turning her to face him, ‘we have n…no idea w…what’s so bad about it… w…what’s so w…wrong with this place that Sid thinks we should leave. Yeah, the N…Nash b…brothers are a pair of idiots… and Emma rules Dennis by m…manipulation, but is that really that b…bad? I mean, we’ve b…both seen a lot worse,’ he finished, referring to the twisted horrors that had lurked, hidden in the basement of the boarding school he had called home; horrors that Fran and her friends had barely escaped from with their lives.

  ‘Hmm, yeah, I know,’ she mused, knowing Kai was right; yes, some of these people were unlikable, no one was denying that, but was that hardly enough to warrant trying to find somewhere else safe enough for them to call a home, ‘I just wish I knew what was going on here,’ she continued, running her hand through her short hair in frustration.

  ‘Careful w…what you w…wish for,’ chuckled Kai, the smile on his lips dropping slightly as his eyes flicked briefly to a point past her shoulder. ‘We’re b…being w...watched,’ he went on to say with barely a pause, the expression on his face unchanging.

  ‘Who?’ she asked, making a show of draping her arms about his neck, as if she was about to kiss him.

  ‘Emma,’ he replied, letting his hands slip to Fran’s waist before leaning in to gently kiss her.

  ‘Okay…’ she whispered, after pulling away from him. ‘Well, let’s just keep our eyes open for now…’ she went on to say, reaching up to brush a lock of his dark hair to one side. ‘If we have to leave, we have to leave… but we need to be sure.’

  ‘And w…what about Tom?’ mumbled Kai, as Fran turned away from him and made a point of acknowledging Emma’s presence with a brief wave; a wave that was returned with barley contained suspicion.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she sighed, as the pair continued their way across the walkway to where Emma stood waiting for them. ‘I’ll try to talk to him….’

  ‘So, Kai… how did your first day of clearing go?’ said Emma, suddenly stepping forward to greet them. ‘No trouble, I hope…’

  ‘N…no it w…was fine,’ stammered Kai in response, wondering if the young woman had heard any of their discussion.

  ‘And what about Grant? You two get on okay?’ she continued, the disinterested look on her face making her question appear little more than a throw away pleasantry.

  ‘I… he w…was okay, I suppose,’ he replied, unsure if Emma was looking for honesty or a tactful reply. ‘But I d…don’t think w…we’re going to be b…best m…mates any time soon, if that’s w…what you m…mean,’ he added after a pause, hoping he had chosen the right course.

  ‘Ha… you don’t say!’ laughed Emma, pleased that Kai hadn’t tried to get on her good side by lying to her. ‘Don’t worry, I get it,’ she continued, glancing back at Kai, with a sly smile, ‘he’s a moron… him and his brother, both. Believe me, before the Dead came I doubt Mr and Mrs Nash lost much sleep worrying how they were going to pay to send their sons to college… all brawn and no brains, those two… but… you have to admit, brawn gets you a long way these days… It gets you what you want…’ she went on to say, her gaze inadvertently darting in the direction of the Hub as the mirth slowly drained from her voice. ‘It gets you what you need.’

  Whether Emma’s final statement was meant as a subtle threat or a warning, Fran couldn’t tell for sure but as the smile slowly fell from the young woman’s lips a darkness seemed to settle within the depths of Emma’s eyes; a darkness brought forth as if she had suddenly become lost to some distant and terrible memory.

  ‘Come on… we’d better be going,’ Emma suddenly mumbled, turning away from them both; her thoughts still clearly distracted, ‘the others… they’re probably already waiting for us.’

  ‘Waiting for you,’ silently added Fran as she once again took Kai’s hand in hers and followed the younger woman across the decking of the tree house and onto the final suspended walkway that would take them on to the Hub.

  ‘Emma, do… do you know if the others are back yet?’ asked Fran, her words breaking into the rhythmic creaking of the boards beneath their feet as they moved. ‘Did they come back okay?’ she went on to say, desperate to know that Tom had returned to them yet fearful of the answer she may be
given.

  ‘Brett got a nasty wound to his arm. Norma had to give him some stitches,’ she replied, her fingers skimming delicately along the guide rope as she walked, ‘I wouldn’t bother asking her to mend any of your clothes if I were you… not if the state of Brett’s arm is anything to go by… but then I doubt you meant that… did you?’ she continued, glancing back at Fran.

  ‘Is Tom okay or not?’ asked Fran, trying to keep the irritation from her voice.

  ‘He’s fine…’ Emma eventually replied, stepping briskly off the walkway and over to the door to the Hub tree house; her hand already hovering over the handle as she spoke. ‘Well, physically at least,’ she at last finished, the smirk on her lips barely held in check as she glanced back over her shoulder at Fran before pushing open the door.

  ‘Come on, Wendy… we had fun last night, didn’t we?’ they heard Jimmy coo as they stepped into the room; his hand brushing gently against the teenager’s cheek. ‘I know I certainly did.’

  ‘Jimmy, it was …’ Wendy started to reply, a gentle smile on her lips as she tilted her cheek into the young man’s caress; clearly enjoying his touch right up until the one moment she became aware of someone standing in the open doorway behind her.

  Slowly, Wendy began to turn her head. Yet even as she did she saw Jimmy’s gaze flick past her shoulder; the look on his face telling her all she needed to know.

  ‘Look, Emma, don’t get…’ she started to say with an exasperated sigh, turning to meet the anger head on that she already knew awaited her.

  ‘Go home,’ Emma almost growled though her gritted teeth, cutting off whatever Wendy was about to say as she held in place a visibly paling Jimmy simply with the power of her enraged glare.