Standing before his brother, Fandel glared at him with his piercing stare. Seeing that his brother wasn’t the slightest bit interested – as he had heard similar stories many times before – Fandel wailed:
‘Oh what’s the point!’ and then skulked from the house and back to his bleak looking cottage hidden away amongst the cliffs in deepest, darkest Cornwall.
And it was this cottage that Anna now lay in, feverish and in pain as her uncle tried to convince her to take his revolting medicine.
Pulling the lip of the duvet away from Anna’s face, Fandel placed the yellow spiky tablet against her lips.
‘Go on. Be a good girl and take your medicine,’ he whispered.
Puckering up her lips, Anna shook her head from side to side.
‘Don’t you want to get better?’ Uncle Fandel asked her, a twinge of irritation evident in his voice.
Anna shook her head in reluctance and wheezed, ‘I’m seventeen and you can’t make me do anything that I don’t want to do.’
‘And I’m your Uncle and you have been left in my charge, so you will do as I tell you!’ Fandel said. The irritation he had earlier tried to mask now making his voice sound hostile.
Looking into his eyes, Anna could see they were black and cold – lifeless. Anna couldn’t bear to look into them and wished that her father were still alive. Her father had been a gentle man with kind eyes and a lopsided grin, which lit up his face like candlelight. Turning her head away, she buried her cheek into the pillow. She did this not to break her Uncle’s heartless stare, but to hide the hot sticky tears that now ran the length of her ashen face.
But before the pillowcase had soaked up even one of her tears, her uncle curled his long, gnarled fingers around her face, forcing Anna to look at him. Tightening his grip, he forced her mouth open. Being too weak to resist, Fandel popped the yellow spiky pill into her mouth and forced it shut.
Desperate not to swallow the pill, Anna’s eyes began to bulge in their sockets. The spikes on the tablet scraped the inside of her cheeks and mouth.
‘Don’t fight it,’ Fandel tried to sooth, but however hard he tried to make his voice comforting, his eyes betrayed his true feelings as they danced in their wet-looking sockets.
Anna fought to push the tablet back towards her lips with her tongue. But the spikes hurt too much and her mouth began to taste of rusty copper as it started to fill with blood. Realising she would have to swallow the tablet or let it tear her mouth to pieces, Anna closed her eyes and gulped.
Rolling to the back of her mouth, the tablet sliced against her tonsils and then disappeared down her throat. Shaking her uncle’s hand free, Anna buried her chin into her chest, lent forward and swallowed hard. The yellow spiked tablet forced its way down her neck and she wondered if it was a similar feeling to eating broken glass.
As the pill made its way through her body, her chest grew warm then hot and her lungs felt as if they were on fire. When it reached her stomach she felt a rush of hot bile in her throat, and then the pain began to subside. A wave of tiredness swept over her as it always did after taking one of Fandel’s tablets. She lowered her head onto the pillow and fought the urge to close her eyes.
Scooping up the tray, Fandel glided across the room on his stilt-like legs. As he reached the door, Anna whispered after him;
‘Where’s Zach? I want to see my brother.’
‘No visitors until you’re better,’ her uncle grinned back, sneaking beyond the door and closing it behind him.
Turning to look through the lattice window across from her bed, Anna searched outside for any sign of her younger brother. But it was turning dark, the late December afternoon growing old. Then her own darkness came. Sliding her eyes shut, Anna fell into a deep sleep, listening to the boom, boom, boom of the waves as they crashed against the cliffs below.
Chapter 4
Yanking on the creatures manes, William brought them to a halt amongst the trees. Zach glanced over his shoulder and saw the hooded figures roaming just beyond the tree line. The sight of them made him feel uneasy.
‘Are you sure they won’t follow us in?’ Zach asked William.
William placed one of his long fingers to his mouth.
‘Shhh,’ he said, glancing up into the treetops as if waiting for something.
Unlike the desert they had just raced across, the forest was dark and just the smallest chinks of light cut through the rich canopy above them. Being amongst the shadows of the trees had an eerie feel to it, and Zach could hear his own heart thumping in his ears.
‘Quick! Here they come!’ William barked, clambering from the roof of the stagecoach.
‘Who’s coming?’ Zach asked, jumping to the ground and following William around the side of the coach.
Before William could say anything else, the forest began to wail with deep groaning sounds that vibrated off the trees and the earth beneath their feet. Looking round, Zach shivered as the sounds grew louder. Branches began to rustle and snap, like breaking bones and the ground started to erupt beneath them.
‘What’s happening?’ Zach asked above the deafening sounds.
Pulling open the carriage door, William turned to look at Zach through those thick bulbous lenses.
‘Don’t just stand there! Help me get her out!’ William barked, climbing into the stagecoach and disappearing from view.
The ground all around Zach began to bulge outwards like giant boils starting to burst. Leaves and pine needles showered him from above like green raindrops. Looking at the tree line, Zach wondered if he wouldn’t in fact be safer in the desert with the hoodies then inside the forest with William. Through the trees, Zach could see the hooded figures on their skeletal beasts prowling back and forth outside.
All of a sudden, one of the bony apes reared onto its back legs and began to pound its ribcage in anger – or perhaps it was fear. The hooded figure astride it fought in desperation to hold on but, in its eagerness to escape, the ape threw its rider free sending it crashing into the ground at the edge of the forest.
Then Zach saw the first of them. From one of the trees a deranged looking figure sprang. Its hair was matted together in rough clumps, and its face was screwed up – tortured looking as if it were in agonizing pain. The thing wore a dark coloured cloak that was ripped and torn in places and covered in dead leaves and soil. The thing raced towards the tree line and, being careful not to venture out into the hot glare of the desert, reached out and grabbed hold of the hooded figure’s robes. With a single, swift and powerful movement it yanked the figure into the shadow of the trees.
The whole forest then came alive with these creatures. They fell from the trees and forced their way up from beneath the ground like the dead waking from nightmares. Their groans and moans filled the air like drumbeats. Some of them ran, others staggered towards the hoodie that had been captured and was now being pulled to pieces. The hoodie made a gargling sound in the back of its throat as it was ripped apart.
Without thinking, Zach placed a hand on the hilt of one of his crossbows, preparing to defend himself should one of these things come for him.
‘You’re wasting your time! You ain’t gonna kill them,’ William said from inside the stagecoach. ‘Didn’t I tell ya? They’re already dead!’
Zach wheeled round, peering into the darkness of the carriage.
‘What!? Like zombies?’ he asked.
‘Not exactly – but similar,’ William said.
The earth beneath Zach’s feet began to tremble and the horses (if that’s what they were) began to wail with fright and started to edge forward pulling the stagecoach deeper into the forest. Failing to notice the stagecoach moving away, Zach looked in horror as a set of dead-looking fingers shot from beneath the earth inches from his feet. He staggered backwards as the fingers were followed by an arm, a pair of shoulders and then a head. The creature twisted and turned in the hole like a bloated worm and turned to face Zach.
He looked at it and the zombie-thing was grotesque. With eyes that were white and blank, the thing stared at Zach as he inched himself away. Opening its mouth to reveal a fleshy set of black gums, the zombie-thing grinned. A globule of creamy, yellow-looking pus ran over its tongue and onto the forest floor. Releasing an agonising groan from the back of its throat, the thing reached out towards Zach with a pair of decaying hands. The fingers were knotted like twisted tree roots.
‘Will you stop playing around back there and come give me a hand!’ William shouted, thrusting his head out of the carriage to look for his companion.
Hearing his voice, Zach turned his back on the creature and charged towards the carriage.
‘Take her legs!’ William said, diving back into the stagecoach.
Without warning, a pair of naked feet were thrust into the open doorway and Zach wrapped his arms around them.
‘Pull! Pull!’ William urged.
Zach pulled on the legs and a semi-conscious girl appeared in the carriage doorway cradled in William’s arms. The groaning was closer now and looking over his shoulder, Zach could see the zombie-thing lumbering towards them. Its arms were outstretched and its hands were clawing at the air like a terrified child searching for its mother in the dark.
‘Faster! Faster!’ Zach shouted, carrying the girl between them like a stretcher.
‘They won’t hurt us,’ William assured him, pulling the girl’s legs free from Zach’s grasp and swooping her up into his arms.
‘How can you be so sure they won’t hurt us?’ Zach said, the zombie-thing inches from them.
‘Because she’s with us,’ William said, nodding towards the girl.
Zach looked at her. She was about seventeen years old and very undernourished. Her skin was waxy-looking and pale, and a fine sheen of perspiration covered her brow and cheeks. She looked like a waxwork that had started to melt. The girl’s eyes rolled in their sockets and she murmured as if talking in her sleep. She was delirious. Her hair was long and thick and it lay in dark ringlets about her shoulders.
‘Who is she?’ Zach whispered.
William pulled the girl’s cloak tight over her as if to keep her warm.