Lord of Death

  Killing the Dead: Season Four Book Six

  By Richard Murray

  Copyright 2022 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 fishing boat came to an almost gentle stop beside the long wooden dock that stood above the deep blue waters of the Irish Sea. A decade without the usual pollution and kicked up sediment from the ships that had plied the waves had allowed the sea to regain a natural colour and life that had been long absent.

  I didn’t wait for them to tie off the boat before I leapt down onto the dock, axe in my right hand and combat knife in my left. A lone zombie had begun to make its halting way towards me, its hunger outweighing any fear it may have of the sea.

  Considering the slow, shuffling, manner of walk, I had a few minutes before it arrived. Plenty of time then.

  “You sure about this?” Lily called, biting down on her lower lip and resisting the urge to stop Samuel as he lowered Angelina to the dock.

  “She needs to experience this.”

  Lily had made it painfully clear that she was concerned for our daughter’s safety. I was less so. Not that there wouldn’t be danger involved, but I was confident that I could keep her alive.

  Though if anything happened to her I was not entirely sure how I would react. She was my daughter after all.

  “You ready?” I glanced down at her, resisting the urge to smile at the determined expression on her face and the white-knuckled grip she had on the knife. “Remember what I told you.”

  “It’s bigger than me,” she said, voice hard as stone. Her eyes glittered and didn’t move from the approaching target. “Stronger with longer reach.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s stupid. I’m smart.”

  “This is true,” I agreed. “Now prove it.”

  She stalked forward, crouching low and moving as fast as her almost seven-year-old legs would allow. Angelina didn’t move in a straight line, but zig-zagged, darting from one side of the dock to the other, staying close to the water’s edge.

  Smart move. The zombie didn’t have the reaction speed that she did so it took a moment to readjust its movements every time she changed sides, and its fear of the water kept it from rushing in.

  “Looks like she paid attention,” Gregg muttered, as he joined me. For some reason, he seemed as concerned as Lily. “Shouldn’t we... you know, get closer, just in case.”

  “No.”

  There was a lesson to be learnt for Angelina and as dangerous as it was, she needed to understand it and that would require risk. Despite an uncomfortably strong urge to rush forward to stand between her and the undead creature, I held myself back.

  It was a lesson I needed to learn too.

  The zombie was almost upon her, its hands caked with old blood and its clothes torn. Something had ripped those clothes to reach the flesh beneath and his death had been an unpleasant one. Slow too, I guessed.

  “Christ!” Gregg took a step forward and I grabbed his arm, holding him back as the creature lunged.

  Angelina ducked beneath its grasping hands and darted to the side, her small stature and agility put to good use as she struck, fast as an adder, her knife cutting deep into the back of the zombie’s ankle.

  Tendons cut, it lost its balance and hit the wooden planks of the dock with a crash. There was no triumphant cry from my daughter, just a steely determination as she swiftly sawed through the other ankle, ensuring it wouldn’t be able to rise.

  “Good girl,” I heard someone whisper and realised with a start that it had been me.

  The zombie, moaned, the sound echoing from the grassy hills that surrounded the small bay. It reached for her, pulling itself around on its belly, as it sought her. A more difficult task awaited her as she needed to get past those grasping hands and drive her knife into its skull.

  Again, she didn’t hesitate, kicking aside the hand reaching for her and leaping over the other before spinning and striking with her blade. It hit the skull and bounced off of the thick bone, catching her by surprise for just a moment, which was long enough for the creature to grab her ankle and pull.

  A scream sounded from behind me and I winced. I could already hear the dressing down I would be getting from Lily. A heavy sigh escaped me as I strode forward, to where my daughter was clinging to the wooden planks with all her strength as she kicked out at the zombie, trying to keep it at bay.

  It paid no attention to me, not with its prey almost in reach of those broken and bloodied teeth, so it was an easy task for me to grasp it by the neck and pull it forcefully back as Gregg stamped on the wrist of the arm holding Angelina, booted heel shattering the bones there and allowing her to pull free.

  “What did you do wrong?” I asked her, keeping a firm grip on the struggling zombie.

  She pouted, rubbing at her ankle where it had gripped her.

  “I rushed.”

  “Correct.” I offered a slight smile for I could understand her eagerness. “You are too small to go rushing in. You did well by hamstringing it, but you left its hands free to grab you. There was no need to rush in for the kill, there are no other enemies near, you could have taken the moment to sever the tendons in the arms rendering them useless. This would have allowed you to take all the time you needed to kill it.”

  “Yes.”

  No apologies, nor sulking. She was annoyed at herself, I suspected because I would have been the same way. That eager rush to kill, that driving need, it was a powerful thing and she needed to learn to control it.

  “Another lesson for you, my daughter.” She looked up at me, narrowed gaze glittering with a familiar darkness. “You tried to do it alone when the smart thing to do would have been to have assistance.”

  The foul creature was struggling hard against my grip, arms flailing as it tried to reach me and I gripped it tighter.

  “You need to understand,” I continued. “It is easy to feel that you are alone, to be alone. Cut off from those around you who understand you as little as you understand them, but you do not have the luxury of being alone. There are dangers in this world that will take you unawares and there is no shame in asking for help.”

  “Do you understand?”

  A silent nod and I allowed my smile to grow. Whether she truly understood or not, it didn’t matter. The seed was planted and it would be well tended to grow in the fertile soil of her mind. She would reach adulthood a better person, a better killer because she would not have my weaknesses.

  “Come then, kill it.”

  Her eyes lit up and she hurried forward, taking only a moment to grab at the flailing arm so that she could hold it steady as she cut deeply through the tendons, severing them and rendering its hands useless.

  I nodded approval and lowered the creature to the dock, setting my knee against its back to hold it in place as I forced its head up.

  “As I showed you,” I said, “The temple is the weak point where your knife will cut deep into the brain beyond. You can also go through the eye or up beneath the chin if your knife is long enough.”

  She looked at the curved, claw-like, blade that I had given her, gauging its length and deciding correctly that it was too short to go up through the jaw. She stared at the knife for a long moment before letting her hand fall.

  “It won’t work.”

  “You’re right,” I said, smiling. “The curved blade won’t go through the skull easily and is used for slicing across the flesh, not stabbing, which is what you need to kill this. So, what do you do?”

  “My knife was wrong. You knew!”

  “Yes.” I could have laughed at the anger in her accusatory voice. “But you will often find yourself with either the wrong weapon or no weapon. You need to know how to adapt, to use what you have to win.”

  She didn’t reply, just reached for my combat knife and took it from my unresisting hold. I nodded encouragement as I held the zombie’s head steady. She gripped the heavy knife in both hands and placed the point over its left eye.

  Gregg turned away, unwilling to watch my daughter drive the blade slowly through its eye and into the brain beyond. I couldn’t take my eyes from her though, watching the widening of her eyes as that first rush of adrenaline and pure joy surged through her. The lifting of the corners of her mouth into a genuine smile, that preceded the chirp of pleasure that escaped her.

  It was the first true moment of unadulterated pleasure and the purest joy she had experienced in her short years of life. It was a moment she would cling to because for a short time, the world would make sense and she would feel connected.

  “Mama!” she squealed, turning at Lily’s approach. “I did it!”

  Lily, stared down at our daughter for a bare moment before she too smiled. It was genuine, I think, though I was hardly able to tell such things. But she seemed pleased to see our daughter happy.

  “You did, little Angel. Well done.”

  “Did you see? Were you watching?”

  “I was.”

  Lily laughed as Angelina rushed over to her, almost bouncing in her excitement as she told her mother all about how she had killed. Gregg, watching, shook his head and loo ked back at me.

  “There’s something disturbing about that.”

  “As well there should be. It is not a natural thing for people like you, to take such pleasure in the taking of a life. For her, though, for her it is everything.”

  “How can you be sure she won’t get a taste for it?”

  I laughed then, shaking my head for he truly did not understand. She wouldn’t develop a taste for something when she had been born with that urge. It was there from the first breath and would be to the last.

  What she needed was a way to learn to control it and I could teach her that. I had controlled my urges well enough back before the apocalypse. It had only become a problem for me when I had found myself doing so much killing that I could no more stop than I could quit breathing.

  But I too would learn control. As I taught my daughter, I would teach myself. Together we would learn to live amongst the normal people, and she would learn to be their protector. To use her darkness as a means of preserving their light.

  It would not be easy, but it would be something that I had to do for to not, would mean leaving her at risk of dying, alone and hated by those around her for the monster she would be.

  That could not be her fate.

  “What now?” Gregg asked, sensing the need for a change in topic.

  I glanced up at the hills surrounding the small bay, just to the south of the town of Douglas on the Isle of Man. A short walk, to a town filled with the undead and the answers we hoped to find.

  Behind us, the fishing boat was discharging all of the remaining survivors of Mostyn. It had been a cramped, but thankfully short, journey from the village to where we had landed. The village though was done.

  Lily had set up there because of the sawmill and that had burned. The few resources that remained would not last long and there was limited water and no chance of feeding the survivors over the coming winter.

  While we had wiped out the larger threat of the nearby raiders, there were still others. A lot of communities had been freed but were also defenceless. We no longer had the resources or the people to help them so they were at the mercy of whichever new monster rose to power from the ashes of the old.

  Our dead had been burned, our losses counted, and we had set forth. We were refugees, survivors without a home. The firebombs I had set as traps for the raiders had burned those homes we had there, so we had little choice but to leave.

  “Now,” I said. “Now, we will cleanse this island of the undead and rebuild as best we can. After that?”

  I shrugged then. That was for Lily to decide. She led and the rest of us would follow. I would be the sword she wielded and strike where needed, but looking out for the needs and wants of a bunch of idiots was something I had no taste for.

  Still, there were plenty of targets for me to strike. Sebastian Cho was out there and he was very much someone I would be looking forward to killing. There were many more raider groups and, of course, GenPact.

  It was they who had wiped out our community. It was they who had helped the raiders in their attack on the village in Mostyn, and it was they who had stolen the vaccine and viral load that would kill the zombies and parasites.

  There was a great deal to do and one thing I was certain of was that I would be doing a lot of killing before I was done.

  Starting with the zombies in the town of Douglas.

  Chapter 2

  Angelina was practically bouncing with excitement after her experience and didn’t kick up too much of a fuss when I told her that she couldn’t go into the town with her father. I didn’t think even he would be willing to risk putting her in that situation.

  I half-listened to her as I watched the survivors from Mostyn disembark from the boat, and what a sorry bunch they were. The fact that we’d all been able to fit into the fishing boat was telling, and the majority were those who weren’t in the fight. There were plenty of white-sash wearers and workers, but less than a handful of Isaac’s troopers.

  There was a pang of sorrow at the thought of the brash mercenary. We’d found his body as we searched the village when dawn had come. He’d died fighting and the number of dead surrounding him was testament to his skill as a warrior.

  He would be sorely missed.

  Seventeen of Ryan’s cultists remained, including Samuel. Hardly an army but still formidable, and those Furies of his, the two women who remained at least. They, I owed my thanks to for they had spirited the children away to safety and stood watch over them until the battle ended.

  For that alone, I would owe them everything.

  “Now what?” Cass asked.

  I winced as I turned to look at her. I’d taken a few injuries during the fight and while bandaged and full of what pain relief we had, at least I hadn’t lost any body parts. Unlike Ryan, who had lost a finger while fighting the Infected warrior.

  That creature had torn through our people with barely a pause, cutting them down where they stood, so the fact that he had only lost a finger was incredible. He had other wounds, of course, but he barely acknowledged them and certainly didn’t seem inclined to let them stop him from leading the fight into Douglas.

  “We clear out the zombies and secure the town.”

  “Big town for the few of us that remain.”

  She clutched her daughter’s hand tightly as she spoke and I could understand why. Her daughter had been taken along with my children, and she was well aware that she owed her daughter’s life to Ryan’s command to his followers to protect her.

  Since Cass and Ryan’s most recent relationship was more than a little complicated, it was not something that she was quite able to process. Her head was telling her to distance herself from Ryan, but her heart knew she owed him everything.

  For his part, he hadn’t even mentioned it. Nor would he. No, he had simply done what he thought best and ensured that he protected those he cared about. Cass, whether she liked it or not, was his friend and he cared about her as much as he could anyone.

  “Not like we have much choice,” I said. “If there are any survivors, they will be there and the food supplies too.”

  “GenPact will have taken them.”

  “If they had the chance.”

  I’d been given confused reports about what happened that night. Ray and his crew were the only survivors that we were aware of and their accounts changed depending upon who was talking. The one thing they could all agree on was that the fleet had been attacked while out fishing and most of the boats sunk.

  Ray and a few of the other captains had steered their boats westwards, heading around Ireland and then south, all the while with the GenPact ships chasing them. They had finally lost them somewhere along the French coast during a storm that swept over them, but by then there had only been the one boat remaining anyway.

  They had made their way north, back to us, and had arrived the morning after the battle with the raiders. Too late to help, but just in time to give us some hope of travelling across to the Isle of Man and finding the answers we needed along with the supplies and a chance to survive the coming winter.

  “There was in excess of fifteen thousand people in the town,” Cass said, voice dropping low. “You think Ryan and twenty of his followers will be able to survive, let alone clear the town of danger?”

  I couldn’t answer that because I wasn’t sure. But we had no choice and the one thing I had learnt, and a painful lesson it had been, was that I couldn’t hold him close for fear of losing him. He thought it was the best course of action, so I would stand back with our children and wait for him to return triumphant.

  While he went off and cleared the town, I was left with the less than enviable task of getting the survivors somewhere safe and out of the chill weather. Autumn was upon us and the weather had begun to change, and not for the better.

  “If I remember correctly, there was a small hamlet just west of here,” I said, eyes following the road that led up the hill. “A handful of houses. Might be the best place for us to set up.”

  Cass’s forehead creased as she looked back at our people. Beaten and battered, they had survived an all-out assault on our base just a little over a day before, and they had lost friends and loved ones in the fight.

  They were demoralised, cold and hungry, and what hope they might have had died back at Mostyn. Most had only decided to come with us back to the Isle of Man because they could think of nothing else to do.

 

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