Killing The Dead | Book 23 | Come The End Read online

  Come The End

  Killing the Dead: Season Four Book Five

  By Richard Murray

  Copyright 2021 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

  I looked older than my years. Hell, I felt older than my years but that face that looked back at me from the mirror was not one that I recognised. There were lines at the edges of my eyes and fresh scars raised upon the skin.

  My hair had begun to show signs of grey and hung down around my face, badly in need of cutting. Though the tangled mass of hair that covered my lower face, peppered with grey at the chin and long enough to hold in my hand, that needed to go first.

  Lily’s bathroom, for it, was hers and I was merely a visitor, I knew that, had scissors and a razor. Since she had no need to shave, I had to wonder if that belonged to some lover of hers, past or present.

  Wouldn’t that be messy if it was?

  A bowl of cold water was all I had to dampen my face and it did little to help make the process any more pleasant than a dry shave would have been. I trimmed the hair as best I could with the scissors, then began to shave away the remainder, the dull blade leaving my skin raw.

  Once finished, I stared at that image in the mirror and still couldn’t recognise myself. So much had changed in the years since the world had ended, and it seemed that I had changed with it. No longer the silent killer who lurked in the midst of humankind.

  No, I was out in the open and I should have been revelling in the slaughter I had wrought over the years. Instead, I found only an emptiness within.

  That emptiness had been filled with righteous fury, with a rage unparalleled and it had sustained me. Not well, but enough. With my return to Lily, that fury had vanished, swept away beneath a surge of feeling that I could neither understand nor process.

  It just left me feeling hollow.

  There was a churning in my gut, a feeling of anticipation as though I were about to enter a fight to the death. It was like the calm before the storm and I knew that as soon as I stepped back out of the bathroom and into the room where she slept, that storm would crash over me and I would be crushed beneath its weight.

  Responsibility touched with something that I couldn’t recognise. A sense of unease, a racing heart and a feeling of dread as I thought of stepping through that door to the bedroom and being alone with Lily.

  In that room, my future would be decided. Father, partner, leader of a band of misguided fools who seemed to revere me. Thousands of people who needed protection and I would step up and do so, all for her. Because she was my future.

  Or at least the only one I cared to have.

  Even allowing myself to think such a thing took away my breath as I clutched the edges of the sink so tightly that I feared it might shatter beneath my grip.

  The man I had been, no, the killer that I had been, he would never have felt such weakness. He would never have returned, or even fallen in love in the first place. He would have walked the world killing as he pleased and not just to serve her desires for protecting the weak that had somehow managed to stumble their way through the apocalypse without dying.

  I had changed. That was undeniable, and I could not say whether that would be for the better or worse. Only time would truly tell.

  A door slammed open in the bedroom and raised voices could be heard, though I could not tell what was being shouted. It could hardly be anything good.

  I squared my shoulders and pushed aside those weak emotions that seemed to grow stronger the longer I was with her, and I prepared to deal with whatever new problem had arisen. It was the right thing to do and would show how different I had become in the years since we had been parted. How much better of a partner I could be to her, or father to our children.

  The door swung open and I stepped through, back straight and head high, ready to show that no matter what new love she may have found, I was the one for her and no other would do.

  All eyes turned towards me and I cocked my head, a half-smile forming and fading swiftly beneath the withering gaze of Cass. Lily watched me with mouth hanging agape, her look of confusion doing little to dampen her beauty in my eyes, while Gregg leant against the doorframe.

  He lifted his shoulders as his gaze met mine and I wondered at that as the silence stretched taut, only to be shattered by the indignant squawk of a mother hen clucking over her wounded chick.

  “You stabbed him!”

  Gregg at least had the decency to hang his head and glance away as I met the furious gaze of the woman I had once called a friend. There was no give there and it was clear that she would not be dismissed, nor would her anger be waved away beneath glib platitudes.

  Honesty it was then.

  “Only a little.”

  Lily groaned softly and buried her face in her hands.

  “The fuck do you mean by that?”

  My eyes flicked to the door as a black-garbed bodyguard peered into the room, knife half clear of its sheath. A single glance from me was all it took to have him scurrying back out of view.

  “I mean that in the midst of an argument where I was pushed past the point of logic and into a place where only instinct resides, I acted rashly and without thought. Even so,” I said, as her eyes flashed with renewed fury. “Even in that state of rage that I had found myself, I struck him in a place that was not immediately lethal.”

  Lily groaned again and I glanced quizzically to where she sat on the bed, wrapped loosely in the bedsheets, head shaking and tangled mass of hair hanging loose around her face. I could not understand the reaction as I had answered truthfully and surely they could understand the logic behind-

  I ducked the heavy leather-bound book that was thrown with a surprising amount of force by the impassioned sister of my friend and then leapt aside as she followed the book with a glass that shattered on the wall behind me.

  “What are you-“

  A second glass shattered against the wall before Gregg managed to grab his sister by the arms and pull her away from the desk where Lily’s books and a variety of half-filled glasses sat. Cass snarled as she tried to resist her brothers embrace, but his years of travel and combat with me had left him all hard muscle and more than a match for her.

  “Stop it!” Lily snapped, throwing aside the covers and climbing from her bed, heedless of her naked form. “We’ve just got them back.”

  “He stabbed my brother!”

  Lily turned those beautiful blue eyes, brimming with emotions that I could never feel, let alone understand, and gave me a look of such disappointment that I almost felt a pang of conscience.

  Almost.

  “No harm done,” Gregg said. “It was an accident and if he had really meant to kill me, he could have done it without thinking. He chose not to, even then. That means something.”

  Did it? I honestly couldn’t tell, but I was smart enough not to make an issue of it just then.

  Lily stepped up to her friend who had begun to slow her struggles against Gregg’s firm hold, and cupped her face in her hands as she gently turned Cass’s head so that she was looking directly at Lily.

  “He brought us the vaccine. A cure to the threat of the undead.” She sucked in a breath, almost as though she was not quite able to contain some emotion at the thought. “Our children will grow in a world without needing to fear the undead. That matters.”

  “It does,” Gregg agreed.


  “A weapon against the parasites too,” Lily pressed on. “We can finally win this war and have a chance of rebuilding a world that our children can live in without violence or war.”

  Entirely unlikely, there would always be war and violence. So long as one person coveted what another had, there would be violence and death. Again, I was smart enough not to say that out loud since it certainly seemed to be cooling Cass’s ire.

  “Okay!” Cass snapped, shrugging her way out of Gregg’s grip as he too sensed her calming. “I’m okay, I was just so angry! To have him back, alive, only to hear that he had almost died! It was too much.”

  “Probably not the best time to have mentioned that, my friend,” I said and took a step back as Cass lunged for me once more.

  “Dammit, Ryan!” Lily snapped as Gregg grabbed his sister once again.

  I hid my smile and ran a hand through my too-long hair. Two showers the night before had not been enough to rid me fully of the dirt and grime of the past year. Though perhaps it was a different sort of grime I felt, standing there before such anger, knowing that they likely had not been told all that I had been doing during our long absence.

  “They came back,” Lily said, taking her friend into her arms and pulling her close, voice dropping to a whisper. “We thought them dead and they came back to us. Nothing else matters.”

  With a suddenness that surprised me, Cass burst into tears and began to shake and tremble. I cocked my head and wondered at the behaviour as Lily’s eyes filled with tears also.

  Gregg caught my eye and jerked his head towards the door. Taking the hint and eager to be away from the over-expressive use of emotion, I followed him without a word. In the next room, what looked to be a living room, he turned to me and placed a hand upon my shoulder.

  I glanced at that hand and he removed it quickly, as he well should have for he knew my dislike of physical contact with others.

  “We made it, mate.”

  “I did not doubt it.”

  His laughter was lighter than I recalled it being for some time and I watched him curiously. His face bore many of the same lines as my own and for the first time, I realised that he too had aged during our long time together.

  There was little fat on his rake thin form, after a year of fighting and marching with me on my campaign of terror against the Riders, we had both lost much of our fat reserves. A diet barely above starvation levels at times would do that for us.

  But still, there was a lessening of tension in him. His shoulders were no longer hunched as though the weight of the world were pressing against him. Nor was there that tenseness in his neck and jaw that I had become so used to seeing.

  “I am glad that you could come back to your family,” I said, surprising myself at hearing the truth in my own words. “And, for what it is worth, I am sorry for stabbing you.”

  His laughter rang out even louder than before as he clutched at his injured side, where I had stabbed him, and winced. Head shaking and shoulders trembling with mirth, he looked me in the eye and smiled.

  “I really do love you, mate. Never forget that. No matter what else might happen, that will always be true.”

  That confused me, which only seemed to make him laugh all the harder and he began to subside only after Lily and Cass came out of the bedroom, hands clutched together and eyes red-rimmed. Lily, having found a moment to dress in faded jeans and plain shirt, looked curiously at Gregg who waved away her unasked questions as he fought to control his laughter.

  “We’re good,” he said, when he could finally speak. “It’s all good. I promise. Nothing will ever be bad again. We made it home.”

  That seemed to raise the women’s spirits for they smiled as I was even more confused, so I pushed it from my mind as I considered it something that I would likely not understand and was not necessary for me to anyway.

  “Bloody hell!” a voice called out, irritatingly cheerful. “I did not believe it until I saw you standing right there.”

  “Charlie!” Gregg said, grinning broadly. “You look good.”

  I furrowed my brow at his blatant lie for she looked much the same as before, simply older and entirely more sleep-deprived than I remembered. She wheeled herself in, her chair squeaking annoyingly, and headed towards us.

  “Murder-boy,” she said, nodding at me. “Thought you were dead.”

  “Many people have thought that before.”

  “Still as charming as ever.” She looked at Lily and gave a shake of her head. “No idea what you see in laughing boy here, but if you’re happy he’s back, who am I to judge.”

  “I am.”

  “Alright then.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, before they could descend into even more banal pleasantries.

  Her expression changed then, and she simply said, “the first tendrils have come ashore to the east.”

  “What does that mean?” Gregg asked as all humour was gone in an instant from the women.

  “A parasite,” Lily said, voice low as her free hand clenched tightly into a fist. “In Liverpool, it’s made its way across the bay and is headed this way.”

  “I’ll grab my coat,” I said, already moving towards the bedroom. “All I need is a general location and-“

  “No!”

  A single word but said in such a manner that I stopped in my tracks and glanced back at her, eyebrow cocked quizzically.

  “You just got back, you are not leaving again!” her voice rose higher with each word uttered and I stared, unsure of how to respond. “I mean it, Ryan. I lost you once and I will not lose you again.”

  “I have killed two of them, it really isn’t that hard.”

  “No!” Cass pulled her a little closer, glare cast my way. “I will not mourn you again!”

  “You think I will die?” Was that why she was upset? “I won’t.”

  “Christ almighty, dude,” Charlie snapped. Even she was upset with me it seemed and I could not understand why. “You have an army of idiots willing to die for you. Let them go and you spend some time with your family.”

  “They won’t be able to kill it. I will.”

  “Spoken with such arrogant confidence!” Lily shot back. “I love you for your unwavering belief in yourself, but I do not share it. Not here, not now. I did not know just how much it hurt to have lost you until I had you back in my arms and I will not survive that again.”

  There really was nothing I could say to that. Of course, there was nothing stopping me from simply walking out and doing as I wanted anyway, but something cautioned me against that. There were emotions at play that I did not comprehend and, oh how I loathed that.

  “You have other problems to deal with anyway,” Charlie added.

  “What problems?” I asked at the same time as Lily, our voices in unison, as we tore our gazes apart and both looked over at the young woman.

  Charlie just lifted her chin towards the window and with a soft sigh, I crossed over to it and looked out, Lily, Cass and Gregg right behind me.

  There, lined up in front of the house were all of the black-garbed cultists that had survived the battle in Wrexham. Clothing stained with travel and the fight both, they must have marched the entire night through, to stand, weary beyond exhaustion and yet with heads high.

  “Words out that you’re back,” Charlie called from where she sat. More people were crowding into the road beyond the garden, staring at the house and talking amongst themselves. “You’ve risen from the dead, dude. Not sure you will understand what that means but I bet our, Boss-lady does.”

  “Oh, hell,” Lily whispered head dropping as I just grew more confused than ever.

  Chapter 2

  He strode out into the open space in front of the house that had become a home to our small family, and every single person watching fell silent. There was a breathless hush, as though everyone had simply stopped breathing.

  That silence was broken by the pounding of scores of clenched fists against breasts,
as his followers saluted him in their own style. Then, as one, they fell to their knees before him and bowed their heads.

  Confusion passed through the crowd watching and I caught my breath, Cass’s hand clenched tightly in my own, as first one, and then another, of those people knelt on that crumbling road. It was like a switch had been flicked and with a speed that I could barely comprehend, a shiver ran through that crowd and they all knelt.

  Each and every one of them.

  “Fuck.”

  It took me a moment to realise that the whispered word was mine, and I bit down on my lip as I saw the birth of a true religion right before my very eyes.

  I was less than amused.

  He scanned the crowd, face blank and expression calm though I could well imagine the cold darkness in his glare. His fists were held rigidly by his side as he stood, legs braced as though prepared for attack.

  I could practically see his hackles raised as he assessed the situation and considered it to be a danger to himself, though I doubted that he would know why. It would just be an instinctual knowledge that what was happening was incredibly dangerous to all of us.

  With the early morning sunlight shining down on his face, he was surrounded by an almost visible glow which really didn’t help matters at all. With anyone else, I would have thought they had done it on purpose for effect, but with him, I was sure it was just bloody awkward timing.

  “The hell is he going to say?” Cass asked, and it was Gregg who replied with a laugh.

  “Something profound, no doubt.”

  “More like something stupid,” Charlie quipped as I held back a sigh.

  I’d barely slept a wink all night, constantly jerking awake, panicking that he was gone, and it had all been just a dream. But he was there, fast asleep without a care in the world, as though it was just a normal night. Like the past half a decade hadn’t even happened.

  It was beyond galling.

  While I’d experienced a full range of emotions from surprise at his return, anger that he had been alive for the past five years and absent from my life, joy that he had returned, sorrow for the dark times he had endured and finally, to fear that he would be lost to me once more. He, it seemed, suffered none of that confusing rush of emotions that so plagued me.