Killing the Dead (Book 8): Dark and Deadly Land Read online

  Dark and Deadly land

  Killing the Dead: Season Two Book Two

  By Richard Murray

  Copyright 2015 Richard Murray

  All Rights Reserved

  All Characters are a work of Fiction.

  Any resemblance to real persons

  Living or dead is purely coincidental

  Dedication

  For my father, a great man who deserves more time than the illness is allowing him.

  Chapter 1 - Ryan

  Dark crimson fluid dripped from my blade and my hand trembled as the waves of pleasure suffused me. With no one to see, I gave in fully to that incredible feeling of rightness and allowed a rare and genuine smile to form.

  The woman’s body had fallen to one side, her hands still bound and an expression of surprise the last that would ever cross her face. I’d removed the canvas bag that had been over her head so that I could look into her eyes as I ended her life.

  She’d made little noise as she died and that was good. The others who waited outside, they knew what I had come inside to do; that it was necessary and had to be done but still, they wouldn’t enjoy the fear and despair as much as I did.

  As the pleasure began to fade all too soon, the world losing its colour and vibrancy, I stared down at her face and committed it to memory. Amy. She was called Amy, another name to add to my growing list.

  That she had deserved death was not in dispute. She had been party to the deaths of several of my people, my community, and worse than that. She had been complicit in the torment of Lily. Even were I a normal man; that alone would have been enough to incur my wrath. Being the killer, the empty shell of a human, the facsimile of a person… well, her death was a foregone conclusion and the reasons for it, merely a convenient excuse to take a life.

  I pushed myself to my feet and paused for a moment more as I looked deep within myself. The all-consuming darkness was there, quietened, sated for the moment but ready to grow once more. Her death had filled that void inside of me for now, but how long before I would feel the need again I couldn’t say. All I knew was that the vast majority of the undead did nothing to feed that need that only true death could quiet.

  A noise from the other side of the wall caught my attention and my smile widened. I wondered if he’d heard her die and knew what was coming. If he sat there, fear filling him as he waited for the sound of my footsteps beyond the door, waiting for death to walk through.

  The corpse was left where it lay. I had no intention of ever returning to the house and those of our community that were staying behind, well I doubted they would see the need. Safe on their island, they would see no point in visiting a house that had been looted long before.

  In a few short steps, I was outside the door to his room. I pushed the door open with one hand as I tightened my grip on the bloody knife handle with the other.

  Inside the room was bare. We’d long since removed anything from the house that we could use. All that was left were the tattered curtains and threadbare carpet covered in all manner of stains. Condensation covered the window and black mould climbed the walls. My remaining prisoner was sat cross-legged on the floor with his hands bound behind his back and a brown canvas bag over his head.

  He tilted his head when the door opened as though he could see through the bag and my smile faded a little. He showed no sign of fear or distress. I stalked across the floor towards him and ripped the bag from his head and tossed it aside.

  Marcus stared up at me and smiled showing crooked yellowed teeth. His face was framed by the thick reddish hair and beard that was badly in need of a comb. His eyes bright and without fear.

  “Feeding time already?” he asked.

  My frown deepened as I stared at him. He could clearly see the bloody knife in my hand and that I didn’t carry a plate of the chopped pork that I had been feeding him for the last few days. He must have heard his lover’s death and yet he showed no reaction to that. It was… irksome.

  “That experiment is done,” I said.

  For the first time, he seemed confused and then his smile widened as understanding came. His laughter filled the small room and only increased my irritation.

  “Oh very good,” he said. “You know, I genuinely thought you were keeping us alive for some reason I couldn’t quite figure out. I get it now though. The meat was tainted and you wanted to know if it was safe to eat.”

  He appeared genuinely amused and my knuckles whitened as my grip tightened on the knife. The urge to slice the blade across his throat was almost overwhelming but I held back, I wanted to enjoy it as much as possible.

  “I know it was pork,” he continued. “Were they bitten? No, wait. You fed them zombie meat didn’t you?”

  My expression must have told him he was right because his laughter redoubled. “Oh that’s rich,” he said between guffaws. “How delightfully fiendish.”

  “You do understand the experiment is over don’t you?” I asked. “That means I no longer have a use for you.”

  “Oh undoubtedly,” he said as he tried to wipe tear-dampened cheeks against his shoulder. “You’ve already finished off Amy, I can see that. But when I think of the sort of man you must be to feed us infected meat just to see if it will turn us into zombies, well… I can’t help but think of the wonderful things we could have done together.”

  His body was shaking with his mirth and for some utterly alien reason, I found the urge to kill him fading. I would, of that there was no doubt but I could feel no particular pleasure at the thought.

  Despite his seeming amusement, he kept a careful watch on my face and something he saw there emboldened him. “We have a lot in common.”

  “We do?”

  “Of course dear boy,” Marcus said. “You are a man who takes pleasure in death, I can see that clearly.”

  I shrugged. No point denying it.

  “You’ve killed often since this began… ah,” his smile widened. “Even before this?”

  My frown deepened and I could feel a headache beginning. I’d spent very little time with my prisoners over the last few days, the bare minimum in fact, and I regretted letting him speak now.

  “Oh how I envy you,” he continued. “Before all of this began, I was constrained by the laws of society. True, I had certain proclivities in the bedroom and the boardroom, but I was never truly free to be the man I am until the world ended.”

  He paused and shook his head, his face seemed to be showing admiration. It was vexing to me when it should have been showing fear.

  “You though. Well, you were free even before this weren’t you?” I ignored his pause where he waited for a response and he continued. “I admire that. We could have so much fun together.”

  “No,” I said quietly. “Your life is going to end today. No more fun for you.”

  “The woman?” he said. “Is that where this rage inside of you comes from? Because I hurt your woman?”

  “Lily, her name is Lily.”

  “She’s just a woman though,” he said with a look of surprise. “A toy to play with when the urge strikes but useful for little else. She isn’t even like us. Full of useless emotion and desire to care for others.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re right. She isn’t like us and I can see now that you are entirely too like me. There’s no fear in there for you is there?”

  The hilt of my knife tapped him on the forehead to emphasise my point. “No fear, no love, nothing but emptiness. Like me.”

  “So it would seem,” he said. “Once we were the outsiders. Reviled for our inability to show compassion or empathy, to care for o
thers.”

  He said the last with a sneer and such a look of disgust that I couldn’t help but smile. I’d thought the same once upon a time.

  “Not now though,” he continued. “Now, we are where we rightfully belong. Apex predators feared and obeyed by the sheep.”

  “Sheep?”

  “Yes, sheep. Those people back at the island, that woman you protect,” he spat as though to clear his mouth of a foul taste. “They are nothing to us.”

  “Perhaps once,” I said quietly.

  “You don’t have feelings for them surely?” he said. “You can’t. You are just like me and we’re incapable of such emotions. Anything you think you feel is a fallacy. A desperate desire to be like the rest of them. Such a desire should have been left back in the old world.”

  “I’m not like them,” I agreed. “But I don’t think I’m truly like you anymore either.”

  “Of course you are,” he snapped with the faintest touch of anger colouring his tone. I glanced down at him and he flashed a raptors smile. “I know what it’s like. You have to pretend to fit in, to get what you want. Sometimes you forget that it’s pretence. You start to think that you’re feeling something, that there may be emotions there. They aren’t though.”

  “No?”

  “We don’t have emotions like they do. We feel lust and anger but none of those weaker feelings. We have no compassion, no guilt and no remorse. Can you truly tell me that you would feel anything if you walked away and never saw any of those people again?”

  I had no answer to give and he took my silence for agreement. “You wouldn’t because they are nothing to you but tools. Kept alive when useful and discarded when not.”

  “That’s what you really believe?” I asked.

  “Yes!” he said. “They are nothing to us and together, well together we could rule them.”

  With a sigh, I shook my head and crossed to the window. A quick swipe of my hand removed enough of the condensation for me to see through. They were down there, leant against the wall, heads together as they spoke.

  Gregg was six foot in height with dark skin and a fuzz of hair across his scalp. He cut it short like the rest of us to avoid lice and the need to keep it clean. He wore a perpetual expression of worry these days and glanced at the house often as he spoke.

  She stood beside him, arms crossed and the weight of the world on those shoulders. Her hair was tied in a ponytail and her face still bore bruises from the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of the man behind me.

  Her form was slimmer than when I’d first met her and her clothes hung loose. That was as much because of the poor diet we’d had over the winter as much as for comfort. Being whipped with a leather belt left one with a desire to avoid tight clothing.

  The two of them were waiting for me to finish my business with the prisoners. Neither truly happy with the taking of a life but aware of the need. They were growing comfortable with killing the undead but neither would ever take any pleasure in taking the life of another.

  Not that that had stopped her when it was needed. She had done what was required to protect her people and several of Marcus’s group had died at her hand. Her natural desire to protect and care for others would no doubt mean that soon, she would suffer the guilt of what she had done. That didn’t for one minute take away how proud of her I was though.

  “They are my friends,” I said softly.

  “What?”

  “Some of those people at the island are my friends,” I repeated as I turned to face him. “I’d never had friends before this happened.”

  I gestured to indicate the world and the apocalypse that had ended it. A look of puzzlement crossed his face and I considered my words. As much for my benefit as for his, I needed to articulate it here, alone but for a man about to die. With no one to hear it except the two of us.

  “The feelings they have for one another, I can’t understand. I think I have begun to want to though,” I paused, perhaps afraid that to give voice to the next words would somehow change everything. “Something is growing within me. It’s so very small but it is there, something beneath the pain and the darkness, beneath the emptiness. Something that is there because of those friends, but mainly because of her.”

  “Your woman,” he spat.

  “Lily,” I corrected gently. “She has changed something inside of me and it is at odds with who I am, with what I am.”

  I sighed and leant back against the wall, my head turned just enough that I could see her through the glass.

  “A war has been started inside of me,” I said. “Something strange is fighting against the darkness and the longer I am with her, the stronger it grows. At times, I have even felt somewhat close to being at peace.”

  “Pathetic,” Marcus said and I nodded. How could I disagree? It was how I would have described it myself just a short time ago.

  “I agree,” I said. “Which is why I will be leaving soon. I cannot be what she needs and that thing she has started inside of me will destroy the man I am. To ensure she survives this, to ensure she lives, I will need to be the person I was. The killer.”

  “Then leave with me,” Marcus said. “Together we will sow death across this land. With nothing to hold us back, we will be unstoppable.”

  “As tempting as that is, I am afraid that I cannot,” I said as I pushed myself away from the wall.

  “Why not?” he asked. “We don’t even have to kill your woman if you don’t want to. We’ll find others to torment.”

  “You forget one thing,” I said as I stopped behind him and placed my free hand on his shoulder. l leant in to whisper in his ear. “You hurt her.”

  My wickedly sharp blade sliced easily through the flesh of his neck, leaving behind it a thin red line that split apart as blood gushed through. I held on to him as he thrashed and gurgled, struggling against his bonds.

  I held him as he died and while I felt less joy with his death than I had at Amy’s, I did feel a great deal of satisfaction.

  Chapter 2 - Lily

  “How bloody long does it take to do… that,” Gregg muttered for the seventh or perhaps eighth time.

  He glanced again at the house, up to the rooms where those two who had hurt so many of our people, were being kept prisoner. His leg was shaking, his shoe beating against the ground as he chewed on one nail.

  “It’ll take as long as it takes,” I said as I laid my hand on his arm and gently pulled his hand away from his mouth. Not the best idea to be chewing on your fingernails these days when you spent your days elbow deep in infected zombie blood.

  “Dunno how you can be so calm about it.”

  I shrugged and threaded my fingers through his, a convenient way to keep his hand away from his mouth and provide comfort at the same time. “It’s pretty amazing what you can get used to.”

  “Maybe.”

  The sun was well above the horizon and for once we had no rain and almost clear skies. We were midway through February and spring seemed to have come a little early. Fresh flowers poked through the grass, bright specks of colour amidst the dull green and yellow of the grass that covered the hillside. It was pleasant, almost enough to make me think that the world hadn’t ended last year.

  “Fuck man,” Gregg said. His palm was damp despite the still cool days we had and he seemed to be looking everywhere but at me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This!” he said as he waved his free hand at the house. “What he’s doing in there while we sit out here with nothing but the pigs and the stench of death.”

  I glanced back to the two remaining pigs that were wallowing happily in the muck of their improvised pen that had once been the garden of the house. The wooden shed at the far end of the garden was missing its door and its straw covered floor had been where they slept at night.

  “Why is this a problem now?” I asked. “You know what he is.”

  “Yeah but, I dunno,” he exhaled and his should
ers slumped as he stared down at the ground. “Sometimes you forget, you know?”

  He’d always been the one who’d struggled most with finding out who or perhaps more appropriately, what, Ryan was. His sister Cass and our friend Pat had both adapted quickly to the idea of his being a serial killer. They’d seen the benefits of having him on our side during the zombie apocalypse. Gregg though, well his reaction had been coloured by the obvious crush he’d had on Ryan.

  “I understand,” I gave his hand a quick squeeze and he glanced up at me. “Even at his most dour he can be charming and you forget about this side of him.”

  “I’ve seen him kill people…”

  “It’s different though,” I interrupted gently. “Seeing him kill during a fight is one thing. Knowing he is up there, with two bound and helpless prisoners…. Well, it’s a whole different thing.”

  “And when you know he’s enjoying himself,” Gregg said with a shudder. “I can’t understand it. I know it’s necessary and I like the guy… but… this is just too fucking weird.”

  My smile slipped a little and I forced it back onto my face. That the two people in that house needed to die was not in question. The things they had done, the people they had killed, it was more than justified. I just wished he didn’t take so much pleasure in it.

  The next sigh that sounded was mine. I’d been forced to kill to defend my people. Worse than that I had killed sleeping men, held them down and sliced my blade across their throats. I wouldn’t ever tell him, but every night since then I’d woken up in a cold sweat as I saw their faces in my dreams.

  I’d touched - oh so briefly - that cold and dark place that you needed to be part of to be able to kill someone in cold blood. To be able to murder someone. Frankly it scared the hell out of me and the fact that Ryan lived in that place, it was part of him all the time. Well, that scared me even more.

  No wonder he found pleasure in those deaths. Every time he killed he was allowed out of that darkness and into the light. All too brief to be sure, but for that short time after a kill, he was alive.