Devouring The Dead (Book 2): Nemesis (15 page)

“What’s that?” queried Jessica.

“A big fucking problem,” said Tom crossing his arms. “It’s about two miles away. We didn’t see it on the way here because we came from inland. This place is out to sea, about two or three hundred yards off the coast I think. It is
literally
a mount. There’s a castle on top of it and it’s difficult to access. You can get across the beach when the tide is out, but otherwise, you’d need a boat. It’s built on granite mostly, and the terrain is tough. It gets battered by any storm before the mainland and it’s had its share of bloodshed over the years.”

“So why would they be there? Sounds
horrible.” Jessica popped open the can of lemonade she had grabbed from the restroom.

“Sounds perfect to me,” said Harry. “It’s pretty inaccessible which means it’s easy to defend. If anyone or anything got to the island, you still have to work your way up a steep rocky hill to get to the castle. If they’ve kept it clear of
infection, then it’s a pretty good place to be right now. Whoever’s in charge over there is onto a good thing and they know it. I’m guessing they use the ambulance to run errands, you know, come to the mainland now and again and see what they can pick up? They probably didn’t figure they were going to pick up Laurent and Rosa today; that was just a fluke.”

“So how do we get them back? We can’t just knock on the
door, can we? What would they want with Rosa? Lenny’s just an old man, what use could they have for him?” Jessica absent-mindedly picked up a trowel.

“Best not to think about it,” said Tom. “
Look, we’re going to have to do something. We handled Brad and we can handle this. If we can get to them and back without being seen that would be best. We don’t know how many people are on the Mount and the less that know we’re here the better. I’m thinking we run a small scouting party up there, two or three of us at the most. Find a way in, get our friends and get out of there quickly.”

“You just said it was inaccessible,” Jessica argued. “We don’t have a boat and by the time you’ve got across the causeway and up the
hill, they’ll have had plenty of time to see you coming.”

“True.
” Tom’s eyes were vacant. Jessica could see him mulling something over. “Ask yourself, where did that ambulance come from? You’re not telling me they keep it on the Mount and drive it back and forth over the beach. I bet there’s a tunnel.”

*
* * *

Tom,
Harry and Jessica explained to the others what they planned. It was simple. Whilst Christina, Heidi, Jessica and Mac distracted the zombies outside again, Tom and Harry would sneak out and make their way back to the crashed van. Their supplies were still in it, hopefully, and that meant guns. They had surmised that if the men from the ambulance only had knives, then they didn’t have any serious weapons or guns. Tom and Harry would then look for the ambulance and the tunnel to the Mount. All being well, they would be back with the others and they could head to Penzance as planned for the rendezvous with the ship tomorrow morning.

“I should come with you as far as the van,” said Moira. “
You can’t carry all the guns and bags with you, so whatever you don’t need I’ll bring back here.”

“I’m coming with you too,” said Jackson coughing.

“No way, you need to rest,” said Tom.

Jackson stood up and grabbed the long-handled shears. “If you think you can stop
me, Tom Goode, you just try it. I’m not sitting around here waiting to die while my friends are out there in trouble. I need to do something and I’m coming with you.”

“You sure?” said Harry.

“Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” said Jackson, “yet.”

Tom laughed and they all joined in. Jackson had a black sense of humour sometimes.
Tom could not believe his friend was dying. As Jackson pointed out though, he wasn’t dead yet.

“R
ight, let’s do this,” said Tom.

“I’m worried,” said Caterina as half the group left the restroom.

“Me too, honey, but have faith. We’ve gotten this far and Tom and Harry know what they’re doing,” countered Christina. “Besides, you need to worry about nothing but yourself, okay? We’ve talked about this.”

“I know, but what about Jackson. Will we see him again?”

“Probably not, Cat. When he said goodbye just now he knew it was the last time. He’s a brave man. He wouldn’t want some big fancy goodbye. He’ll help get Rosa back, and the others too. We just have to wait now.”

*
* * *

Tom and Harry watched as Moira began jogging back to the garden centre, laden down with bags of ammo. They had ditched the food and water. There was too much to
carry, and with the arrival of the navy tomorrow, they would have plenty of food and water soon enough. Tom and Harry took two guns apiece and enough ammo for both.

“Think she’ll be okay?” asked Tom.

“She’ll be fine,” said Harry. “I’ve been out there with her a lot and she can handle herself.”

“What about us?”
asked Jackson. He was carrying a pair of shears and a saw. He didn’t want to be carrying the guns so that, if the infection took hold and he couldn’t carry on, they wouldn’t be lost.

“
Lead on, Jackson. You said the ambulance went down the coast, yeah?” Tom slung an automatic over his shoulder. They had kept it from the encounter with Ferrera at the airport and Tom was glad they had.

“This way.”

Jackson trotted off down the street. They had gotten away from the garden centre with only a few of the zombies following them. The majority had been drawn to the fence where Heidi and the others were shouting and screaming. Tom nipped down alleys and small streets until they had managed to lose the zombies. It felt odd being out in the open. There was no sign of any dead out here on the road, but Tom still kept one hand on the trigger. Jackson had been caught unawares and if he and Harry were caught too, then the group would be in serious trouble.

They jogged down the road together in the mid afternoon
sun, the ocean on their right with empty fields and broken houses on their left. After a while, the road began to turn inland slightly, but they always kept the ocean in their sights. They passed a caravan park and more houses, but there was no sign of anything alive. The salty sea air breezed past them and Tom remembered how much his mother had loved going to the seaside. She had always loved the smell of the ocean. It was a shame they could not enjoy it now, and Tom was desperately hoping they would find the ambulance soon.

A honking flock of geese suddenly flew low above them, traversing the coastline. Harry watched them fly away in a V
formation, as they kept jogging. “What do you think that thing was earlier, Tom? That monstrosity that attacked Jess?”

“
I don’t think even God knows what that was. I just hope we don’t run into any more of them. It’s not just zombies we have to watch out for anymore. And not just bad guys either. Now we have these...monsters? Things that can fly and crawl and who knows what.”

“Look at that,” said Jackson. He stopped and pointed to something on the side of the road. It appeared at first to be a dead rabbit. A rat was sniffing around it, deciding whether to make a meal of it or not. The rat was thin and breathing heavily. It looked
as if it had not eaten in days and was weak. Jackson jumped back, astonished, when tendrils burst from the rabbit’s stomach and snared the rat. They wrapped around the rat’s body and it squealed, unable to escape. Its feet lost contact with the ground as the tendrils hoisted the rat into the air and curled around the rat, squeezing it tighter and tighter. Blood seeped from the rat’s eyes and mouth as the tendrils began to crush its bones until with a loud crack, it squashed the rat completely. It exploded like a jar of jam in a microwave, shards of blood flying in all directions and sticky red rat blood spurting out over the road.

Tom raised his gun and pointed at the rabbit
creature that had made a meal of the rat. The tendrils were growing, now a foot long, and seemed to be swaying in the air as if searching for something. They went stiff and then bent low, pointing at the ground, pointing toward Harry. Tom pulled the trigger and blasted the dead creature. The rabbit’s body exploded just as the rat had done moments earlier.

“Let’s hurry this up, shall we?” Tom slung the gun back
in his belt and left the bloody entrails of the rabbit and the rat on the road.

“
That ship had better come tomorrow,” said Harry as he jogged after Jackson and Tom toward the Mount.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Jackson was the first to spot it. “Look, over there, I see it. The ambulance!”

The road they were on had turned back toward the coast and they had religiously followed it until they saw the Mount. They had not seen any more zombies since leaving Longrock. There seemed to be another small town the closer they got to the Mount, with little houses, shops, cafes and a school. Their progress slowed as they proceeded more cautiously, unwilling to rush for fear of stumbling across a zombie, a flying undead cat, or worse. They passed a slip road that was signposted as leading down to the beach for vehicular access to the Mount at low tide. The ambulance wasn’t there, so they continued on, looking for its hiding place.

When they did come across it, it was easy to spot as t
he ambulance wasn’t hidden particularly well. There was a seafront café and the ambulance was parked in the vacant lot next door, right out in the open. Harry and Jackson waited behind the café whilst Tom approached it. It was unguarded. Tom tried the doors, but they were locked. He peered inside, but nobody was around. He signalled for Harry and Jackson to come over.

“What do you
think, Harry?”

Harry was looking across to the Mount. It was silhouetted against an orangey-blue sky streaked with flat clouds. The tide
was in as the causeway between it and the mainland was covered in water. The Mount itself looked deserted. There was no sign of movement either on the hillside or the castle atop it. He still couldn’t be sure that a dozen eyes weren’t watching them now and he felt nervous.

As Harry looked at the
Mount, he felt a shiver run down his spine. It was not the castle in particular that perturbed him, but the Mount itself. It was as if the island was looking at him, the dark watchtower of the castle standing tall and dark against a colourful sky, waiting for them to come. Harry felt that with every step closer to the Mount, they were closer to death. The plague of zombies receded from his mind and he almost felt like bowing down and weeping before the Mount’s miserable majesty. He hadn’t felt so dejected since he lost his son.

“I think we need a change of plan,”
Harry said leaning against the ambulance. “We all go in there and we don’t know what will happen. We don’t know what’s in there or how many of them there are. We also need to find
how
to get over there. The tide’s up so we need to find this tunnel.”

“It can’t be far,” said Jackson wandering over to the cliff edge. “Look, there are some steps over here leading down to the shore.
It makes sense they’d leave the ambulance close by. They wouldn’t risk parking it miles away from the tunnel entrance and having to go through the town to get it. They probably reasoned that nobody was going to come along and steal it either.”

Tom joined Jackson and looked at the steps. “Let’s check it out.”

“Okay, okay, but hang on.” Harry joined them at the top the steps. “Say the tunnel entrance is down there, then what? We shoot whoever comes out? Force them to take us over to the Mount at gunpoint?”

“Works for me,” said Jackson.

“And what if they refuse? What if they’re being watched? What if someone’s watching us right now? What if they come out armed to the teeth and we all get gunned down? We can’t do this without a solid plan. If we fuck this up, then our friends are dead.”

“What do you have in
mind, Harry?” asked Tom curiously.

“H
ow do we get around the zombies when we need to? Other than blowing their brains out, we create a diversion. That’s
exactly
what we need here. As soon as they come out of that tunnel, they’re going to lock it up again. One of us needs to get their attention so the others can slip in unnoticed. Our strongest weapon is the element of surprise.”

“So who does the shooting and who does the sneaking?”
queried Jackson.

Tom looked over at the Mount. It was a foreboding place
. The castle looked impregnable, the rocky ground and hill impassable. A rescue mission was going to be difficult. But staying put was equally fraught with danger.

“Harry, you and Jackson should go. Let’s get down
to the beach and find the tunnel. You two find somewhere to hide. I’ll wait up on these steps and when they come out, I’ll start shooting. That should give you the time you need to get in the tunnel.”

“What will you
do, Tom?”

“I’ll lead them away from you. See if I can lead them a merry dance around here
and away from you, buy you some time.”

“Just take care,” said Jackson. “
Don’t forget there are still zombies around here and I saw one of them kill one of their own in cold blood. They’re not going to hesitate to execute you if they catch up with you.”

“Then I’ll have to make sure they don’t catch me,” said Tom resolutely. “
I’ll give you ‘til nightfall. If you’re not back up here by the ambulance in a couple of hours’ time I’ll know something’s gone wrong. I’ll head back to Longrock and get help. I’m not leaving you out there alone. Right, come on, let’s do this.”

Tom stood halfway up the steps while
Harry and a wheezing Jackson carried on down to the beach below. They found exactly what they wanted at the bottom. There was a small hut on the beach, nestled against the cliffs, its doors opening outward onto the golden sand. In the doors were two small cracked windows and Harry peered through them. Inside the hut were more doors that seemingly led straight to the rock face. Harry noticed on the hut floor two lines where something had been dragged from whatever lay behind those doors. He looked around for somewhere to hide. The beach was empty and stretched out for miles, curling around the bay until it reached Penzance in the faint distance. Harry motioned for Jackson to join him and they hid behind a large rock, just ten feet away from the hut. Then they waited.

Tom scoured the horizon for any sign of the navy. He looked for boats, small or large, masts, sails, tugs
, but there was nothing. To the west, he could make out the faint skyline of Penzance. Where are you, he thought. Are you really coming? Could there really be a ship out there with dozens, maybe hundreds of people on? Or was he wasting his time, leading himself and everyone else into a dead end? He looked across at the Mount. Whoever was tucked away on that small island had taken up a good position. It was naturally fortified and if they had provisions they could last months, years possibly. The zombies would struggle to find that place. If the worst happened, Tom fully intended to make sure that with his last breath, he would lead every zombie in the vicinity to that castle.

They had waited no more than twenty minutes when Harry heard noises coming from inside the hut. There was a screeching, scraping sound
as the inner doors were opened. Bangs and chains rattled until finally the outer doors swung open. Jackson pressed himself against the cold rocks, willing himself not to cough. His lungs burned and his blood ran cold. He could feel the infection spreading throughout his body and knew he didn’t have long left. He was not beaten yet, and there was no way he was going to let this thing stop him from helping Harry onto the island.

Harry watched as two men stepped outside. One was a short stout man, the other tall and well built. Neither spoke. The small one began closing the hut doors whilst the tall
one began ascending the steps up the rock face.

“Ready?” whispered Harry.

Jackson just nodded in reply. He dare not open his mouth in case he gave away their position.

Suddenly a burst of gunfire interrupted the peace and Harry saw the beach ripped up, sand flying into the air as bullets whistled into it. The smaller man ra
n for the cover of the rocks, waiting at the bottom of the steps for the gunfire to stop. Harry watched as the tall man fell over the side of a railing and plummeted down onto the beach. He landed with a thud on the sand. He had been hit by a bullet and was screaming in pain. He had fallen about fifteen feet and had probably broken several bones too.

“Honok, help me, for fuck’s sake! Honok!” the tall man screamed.

“Shut up, Shane,” came the reply.

Harry took a step away from the hiding place and saw the stout man, Honok, slowly ascending the steps.

“Hey, you up there, what’s your problem? We’re unarmed! Let’s talk, eh?” Honok advanced slowly up the stairs toward Tom holding the carving knife low by his side.

“
How about I just take this vehicle of yours?” shouted Tom.

Harry heard Tom mutter an expletive and then
he dropped the gun. Tom said something about being out of ammo, but Harry knew he had plenty on him. It was a ruse. Tom was drawing the small man out. Harry took a small step onto the beach and looked up.

Tom was backing up the steps and Honok had given up hiding.

“You’ve made a big mistake, my friend,” said Honok climbing the steps. “You’d better run ‘cause when I catch up with you, I’m gonna cut you up and feed you to the zombies piece by piece.”

Harry watched as Tom climbed the steps with Honok following. The plan was working. When Tom and Honok had disappeared over the crest of the rock face, Harry and Jackson went to the hut doors. Honok had not had time to lock them and the doors opened freely.

“Hey, what are you doing?” said Shane. The pain had numbed him and he was lying on his side, exactly where he had landed. His blood was soaking into the salty sand right in front of his eyes.

“What are we doing?
We’re getting our friends back. The ones you kidnapped. I don’t know who you people are, but…” Jackson stopped and coughed. The pain in his chest got worse and he covered his mouth as he doubled over, the violent coughing shaking his body. When he stopped, he saw droplets of blood on his hands. His leg was burning as the infection spread higher.

Harry walked over to Shane. “How many of you are there over there?”

“You’re going over to the Mount?” Shane winced as he tried to move. He recomposed himself, knowing it was futile. He was going to die out here on this beach. “You’ve got no chance. Lazarus will kill you. There are thirty of us and we will defend ourselves to the death.”

Harry thought for a moment. This man was not lying and sneaking past thirty armed men to find the others was sounding suicidal. An idea formed in his head.

“Jackson, help me carry him, will you? He’s coming with us.” Harry grabbed Shane’s arms.

“You think this Lazarus will bargain for this piece of shit? Come off
it, Harry, he’s nearly dead. Don’t waste your energy,” said Jackson as he tried to calm himself down. His head was swimming and spots darted in front of his eyes.

Harry began
dragging Shane toward the hut doors. “I’m not bargaining with anyone. I’ve met enough scum in my life to know when the time for reasoning is over. No, help me pick him up and I’ll explain on the way over there. Let’s get into that tunnel before anyone else comes along.”

Jackson trusted Harry and so
he picked up Shane’s legs. They ignored his cries of pain, dragging him across the sand to the hut. Once inside, they saw the cart and put Shane inside. Harry and Jackson began the descent into the tunnel, pushing the cart with them, as Shane fell into unconsciousness.

“I hope you know what you’re
doing, Harry,” said Jackson clutching his sides. The infection had spread rapidly from his leg to his chest. It wouldn’t be long before it took the rest of him too.

* *
* *

Laurent put his hands over his ears. He tried to drown out the whoops and hollering
, but it was impossible. He tried to block out the crying, the sobbing, the screaming, the tormented wailing, but it was hopeless. He pushed himself further into the corner of his cell and screwed his eyes shut. He had tried to stop them. He had ordered them to stop, asked them, pleaded with them, and begged. He offered his life if they left her alone, but his desperate pleas fell on deaf ears.

At
first, they had forced him to watch. One of them, an Australian, had stood over Laurent with a blade to his throat, forcing him to watch Rosa being raped. She was in the cell next to Laurent and had cried throughout the whole ordeal. When the second man came in, Laurent had been made to watch again. The second man was their jailer; an obese man whom Laurent had learned was called Norm. He had not taken long with Rosa, but it had been horrendous to watch. After he had finished, another six men came down into the cells. Laurent had tried to talk to them, but the Australian told him to shut up and had beaten him. Laurent had crawled away, bloodied and bruised, unable to block out the sounds of the men forcing themselves upon Rosa.

Laurent took his hands down as the sounds diminished. He heard doors slamming and keys clanking together. There was a faint whimpering and he turned around to face Rosa’s cell. A thin reedy man was walking out, zipping up his trousers, whilst Norm locked the door after him. Norm walked away whistling and went up the steps, leaving the prisoners securely locked away.

Laurent crawled over the stone floor. He had two broken ribs from the kicking Ed had given him and a variety of bruises forming on his face. Despite the pain he felt, he wanted to get closer to Rosa. He knew the pain he felt was nothing to what Rosa was going through. She had barely left her teenage years behind and shouldn’t be subjected to this. Laurent had not contemplated murder before, but he would gladly kill everyone on this island if he got the chance.