Killing The Dead | Book 22 | Fury Read online

  Fury

  Killing the Dead: Season Four Book Four

  By Richard Murray

  Copyright 2020 Richard Murray

  All Rights Reserved

  All Characters are a work of Fiction.

  Any resemblance to real persons

  Living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Some scenes are based on real locations that

  have been altered for the purpose of the story.

  Chapter 1

  The forest clearing was lit only by the handful of flickering torches that burned around the very edges, planted in the ground at intervals around the open area. Scots pine and conifer trees pressed close together with wild ferns and grasses growing between.

  I drew in a deep breath of the cool night air and forced down that growing excitement that had my heart thundering in my chest. There was a nervous energy to the air that even one as dense to such things as I was, could pick up clearly. But, beyond that, there was something else.

  Fear. The clearing stank of it.

  Some of them huddled close to one another, dirt-covered faces streaked with their tears, their clothing ragged and soiled from the hard travel. They weren’t quite ready, not yet, but they would be. It was time to prove themselves and they knew it.

  The younger woman, she that I had met two weeks before on the banks of a river, lifted her chin defiantly as she stared back at me. She would not be the first tested, no, she had stood up in that dark hangar and struck at one of her captors with a knife.

  It would be someone else. Someone weak. Someone that needed to believe.

  Gregg coughed into his hand, then waved apologetically as though embarrassed for breaking the silence. My smile became a grin as I figured that was as good a sign as any to begin, and I stepped forward, into the centre of the clearing.

  “You know me by now.” I turned, making sure to meet their eyes. “You fear me too, and you are right to do so. Tonight, someone will die.”

  A shiver of apprehension running through them, they sought comfort in shared glances and clasped hands. They were still weak, but they had to be strong.

  I continued to turn, watching each, one after another. Old and young, all thin and wearing the beaten-down look of the perpetual victim. They had survived the apocalypse by being little more than slaves to any who was strong enough to take them.

  “You have lost those you loved.” As had everyone who had lived through the end of the world. “You have been beaten and abused. They took your bodies and used them for their own pleasure while depriving you of everything.”

  Few would hold my gaze, their eyes dropping after just a moment. Full of fear, shame and bereft of hope.

  “Each of you died when the world did.” Confusion crossed their faces at that, and I fought back the urge to laugh. “The life you had, gone in a moment, torn apart beneath the weight of the zombie hordes. Your bodies may have survived, but the people you were, they are dead and gone.”

  “What remains is nothing. A pitiful shell of what you could have been. You were victims, and that is what you will always be unless you choose to fight back, to claw your way from the grave and find rebirth.”

  A shifting of weight as they shared looks once more. They were confused but too scared to argue with me. For years, if they had spoken out, they had been beaten. Like whipped dogs, they were too scared to break from those self-imposed chains.

  “Tonight,” I continued. “You have that chance.”

  Emma stepped forward from the darkness beneath the trees, pushing ahead of her the raider I had caught but a few hours before. He hit the ground hard at her shove, his hands bound behind his back, no help in stopping his fall.

  He had been stripped of his armour, that hammered steel breastplate and the rubber vambrace and pauldrons. Blood marred his face, and I did laugh then, low and cold as I remembered the killing blow of my axe against his companion’s face. That spurt of blood that spattered the raider before me and had him so panicked that he was almost disappointingly easy to subdue.

  “You.” I pointed to a young woman, barely out of her teens and slim of frame. “Come forward.”

  Her friends wouldn’t meet her eyes as she looked to them for support and she swallowed past the fear in her throat as she rose to her feet without objection or complaint. She was used to doing as she was told, and she stepped forward, as timid as a mouse.

  I walked towards her, my hand reaching out to brush her cheek, laughing low at the shudder that ran through her and the way she shied away, stopping herself at the last moment. I wondered how many beatings she’d had to endure to still that natural instinct in herself.

  “How many times have you been pregnant?”

  My question seemed to catch her by surprise, and she shook as she answered, “t-three times.”

  “Any of them by choice?”

  No voice to her words, she just shook her head. I caught a brief glimpse of Gregg’s disapproving scowl as I circled the young woman.

  “How many children have you birthed?”

  “N-none.”

  There was a woman who came. She took them into a private room, and she made sure the pregnancy was ended. Not always, some slipped through, but for most, it was often enough that it destroyed their ability to ever have another pregnancy.

  “How many nights have you spent alone since the world ended?” I didn’t care, but they needed to hear themselves say it, needed to feel that anger begin to burn. “How many nights were you free from a beating or rape?”

  “Two few.”

  Her whispered words carried easily through the clearing, with only the crackle of the burning torches making a sound. I nodded and held my grin in place as I leant in close to speak low into her ear.

  “What would you do if I told you to get on your hands and knees before me?”

  The girl’s head whipped around, eyes widening and that momentary burst of anger, that flash of hate that lasted barely a moment, was enough for me. That was what I wanted!

  “I will never do that,” I said, looking around the clearing. “But men like him will.”

  All eyes turned to the raider who seemed to shrink beneath their scrutiny. Sweat beaded his skin despite the chill night air, and he wouldn’t meet their angry gazes’ as he ducked his head, shaking it as though in denial.

  “They have taken everything from you and left you with nothing but a hollow existence. I am giving you the chance to be something more.”

  I thought, perhaps, the fear was lessening. It was hard to judge and I was in no way adept at reading faces, but Gregg’s scowl had faded before a look of grim determination. He gave a single curt nod and I knew I was on the right track.

  With one hand I pulled free my knife and offered it to the girl before me, hilt first. She stared at it as though it were some poisonous serpent, and I gestured with it for her to take hold. Her hand trembled as she reached up, curling her fingers around the leather-wrapped hilt, before taking it from me.

  “Tonight,” I said, voice rising so all could hear and know there was no misunderstanding. “Someone will die.”

  The girl licked dry lips as her gaze moved from the knife in her hand to the raider kneeling in the old leaves and dirt. I couldn’t hide my amusement much longer.

  “This is your trial, your one chance of rebirth, for let me be clear; you died years ago and tonight, either your body will finally reflect that or you will rise up and take back that which was stolen from you!”

  I stepped across to the cowering raider and pulled free my axe. It was wickedly sharp and still bore the blood of his companion on its head.

  “But know this,” I said as I reached him. “No birth comes without blood
and pain; it is no easy thing and nor should it be.”

  With one quick strike, I cut through the rope holding the hands of the raider together and spoke quickly, before he had a chance to move.

  “If you kill her, you walk free from here, but you can use no weapons and if you touch her knife, I will cut off your hands. Do you understand me?”

  He stared up at me, eyes wide and mouth agape as I grinned and turned my attention back to the girl.

  “One of you will die tonight. Do you have the anger, that strength, within you to ensure it is not you?”

  I ignored the whispers from those watching and the panicked look of the girl as the raider rose up to his full height. He towered over her and even with a weapon, it was clear she was outmatched. The raider glanced once at me, and I took a step back as I gestured for him to get on with it.

  His fist sent the girl crashing to the ground. One of the women stood, taking a step forward but stopped at a single glance from me. If any tried to help her, I would kill them myself. It seemed that they understood that for they settled back down, though most turned their faces away.

  “Watch!” I commanded, and to their credit, they did.

  The raider wasted no time in pressing his attack. He leapt forward, dropping down to sit on her stomach, legs spread to either side of her body holding her in place as he pulled back one meaty fist before bringing it down on her face.

  She screamed for help and she wept, arms flailing, and knife forgotten as she tried to fend off his blows. Gregg growled, low in his throat, and I knew it didn’t sit well with him. Nor the younger woman from the river, I realised, as her baleful glare was turned on me.

  “There is no one to help you,” I called to the girl. “There is no saviour, no hero coming to your rescue. No one to save you but yourself.”

  Another heavy punch to the face and blood filled the air. I had no doubt she would have a tooth or two loose if she did survive.

  “Do you want to die?”

  The raider grabbed her flailing arm and his eyes settled on the knife she held. My axe was against his throat in an instant and he stopped, looking up at me with fresh fear on his face. I shook my head and he released her arm, so I stepped back.

  “Last chance before he kills you,” I called, wondering if I had been wrong and how pissed Lily would be at me.

  He hit her again, the sound of fist on flesh all that could be heard above her screams. Then, I could almost see the exact moment it happened, a shift in her as her scream became one of rage and not fear.

  It was the raiders turn to scream as the knife cut deep into his upper arm. He cursed and slapped her hand away before grabbing her by the neck and squeezing. Her eyes were round, flickering rapidly from side to side as she sought help.

  They settled on me as her face turned red, and I shook my head, smile in place as I watched her slowly start to die. From red to purple, she gasped and choked, spittle mixing with the blood from her broken nose.

  “Kill him.”

  That was all I said, just two words, but done with such finality that it reached that desperate, fear-filled place inside of her where the burning embers of her rage were stoked to a blazing bonfire of fury.

  The knife sank into his neck almost to the hilt and then she pulled it free, the serrated edge sawing through flesh and skin alike. She stabbed again, and again, cutting into his shoulder and upper arms, then his cheek.

  Blood burst from the wound and he released his hold on her, falling back as he grabbed at the wound. She scrambled back, a wild-eyed fury on her face as she pushed herself up and dashed forward.

  I caught her arm before she could bring the knife crashing down into his skull and she yanked her arm from my grasp, staring at me with that same anger as she had the raider.

  “Not his brain,” I said. “Cut his throat or stab him in the heart, but when he dies, he will come back as a zombie. You understand?”

  She raised a trembling hand and wiped at her bloodied mouth with the back of it, then she glanced back at the other women and gave a curt nod.

  “Then finish him off.”

  Anger fuelled her arm and she reversed the knife in her hand and stabbed down into his chest. He died, gasping for breath as she stood over him, staring down at his face and glorying in her victory.

  “You are reborn,” I said, into the silence. “No longer a victim, or anyone’s plaything. You are an avenging force, a herald of death.”

  She didn’t speak, she didn’t need to. I could see it on her face, that knowledge taking root. She would not be anyone’s victim, not again. I stepped forward, within reach of the knife she held and smiled as I looked her in the eye.

  “I don’t need to know your name, for you lost that years ago when you died. But today, you have become the first of my Furies, and you will be known as, One.”

  “What if I don’t want to be?”

  “Then you can go out into the world and be whatever you choose. Victim or warrior, alive or dead. No one but you will ever get to make a choice for you again.”

  “Even you?”

  “Especially me.”

  I laughed then and cared little for the sound of madness that filled it. I had been so long underground and away from my family, a family that I could never see again. All I had was rage and a desire to walk the world sowing death wherever I may.

  “But, if you stay, you will obey my commands because you choose to do so, and together, we will cleanse this land of those who prey on others. The ones who make victims.”

  She was silent for a moment that seemed to stretch taut, but finally, she lowered the knife and bowed her head before me.

  “I won’t be a victim, not again.”

  “Then you will be my Fury,” I said, reaching out one hand, gently touching her chin with two of my fingers and lifting her face so that she could look into my eyes. “The first of them, and you will bring death to those who are my enemies.”

  “I will.”

  Lily would be upset, I knew that, but I also knew that I was not the personification of death that I allowed others to think I was. I was a man, albeit one with a talent for killing, and I had an army or raiders to face and after them, the Dead, that cult of death I had created that had failed me utterly.

  At my feet, the body of the dead raider began to twitch and stir, and I couldn’t help my laughter as I took the knife from One’s unresisting hand.

  “Who wants to kill a zombie?” I asked the gathered women. “No weapons this time, and no help. You live or die by your own choices. As it should be.”

  The gathered women shifted, and I glanced down at the twitching body. It would be a shame to have to kill it myself when it could form a lesson.

  “No one?”

  “I will,” the younger woman from the river said as she stepped forward. “I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” I said, stepping back. “Show me what you can do.”

  Chapter 2

  The boat rocked beneath me and a chill wind forced me to pull my coat a little closer around me as I watched my children. Angelina stared over at the side, watching the fish with all the intense concentration a five-year-old could muster, while Gabriel sat on the deck beside her, playing with his wooden animals.

  “Keep your coat on.”

  My voice might have been stern, but I smiled as I shook my head, watching Gabriel stop trying to remove his heavy coat. His shoulders slumped as he gave a dramatic sigh making sure that I was well aware of how much more difficult I was making it for him to play by forcing him to keep his coat on.

  “What are you looking at, little Angel?”

  “Fish, mama.”

  I glanced over the side, still surprised at how blue the waters of the Irish Sea were. I’d grown up in a country with grey waters around our shoreline and never realised that the colour was due to the sheer number of ships and boats that sailed those waters stirring up the seabed and was made worse with all the pollution.

  With most of the people gone, th
e waters had settled and regained some of their natural hue, which allowed my precocious daughter to watch the fish swimming around our boat’s hull.

  Pat hurried over to the side rail, grabbing hold with both hands as she stood on tiptoe to peer over like Angelina. Cass’s daughter was a little older, with tight dark curls, like her mothers, that were kept in braids and eyes that were entirely too like her fathers.

  “God, it’s cold,” Cass muttered, crossing her arms and rubbing them with hands covered by thick woollen gloves. “You’d think it was autumn and not almost summer.”

  I couldn’t disagree, not as I shivered, tasting the salt tang of the sea air while waiting for the scouts to return. I turned my attention to the docks where we were tied up and wondered, not for the first time, if I was doing the right thing.

  Sure, it had seemed like a good idea on paper, but in reality, as I waited on a boat with my children onboard, I had to wonder.

  The rest of the fishing fleet had taken anchor and were waiting as Samuel’s black-garbed cultists ran through the dockyard, checking for any danger. Once the way was clear, the other boats would move in to dock beside us and unload Isaac’s security personnel along with the workers who had volunteered to come.

  I knew that some of them had only volunteered because of the presence of my children and me, but if that was what it took, it was a risk I needed to take. The stakes were too high, and we couldn’t stay hidden away on the island while those other survivors suffered in the wider world beyond.

  “Colder than a room full of my exes out here,” Charlie said quite cheerfully as she joined us. She was wrapped head to toe by a thick blanket, and only her hands were loose so that she could push her chair along. “How long before we’re allowed to land, boss?”

  “Not long,” I assured her. “An hour at most.”

  “Balls!” She glanced back at the gaggle of technicians huddled miserably on the deck near the wheelhouse. “My lot want to get set up straight away. You know what us techies are like when we’re not in front of a computer.”

  “Vocal about it,” Cass muttered, with a half-smile as Charlie waggled her eyebrows and grinned.