Star Drawn Saga (Book 1): Death Among The Dead: A Zombie Novel by Stephen Charlick

now.’
    ‘Yeah, just a few dotted about the road now, Son,’ added Tom, giving the man-child a friendly smile and wink before turning back to concentrate on the road ahead. ‘Nothing to worry about at all.’      
    Yet even as he said the words Tom’s eyes narrowed, his calculating gaze taking in each detail of the road ahead and the Dead upon it. Tom had survived far too long among the Dead for it to be his over confidence that actually brought about his final demise. He knew all too well that nothing was a certainty now, nothing was easy and unless you had eyes in the back of your head, even the simplest of tasks could go wrong; and in a world where the Dead walked, ‘wrong’ could mean a terrible but temporary death sentence. So he looked from one rotting cadaver to the next, breaking down the threat, if any, that each of them posed. He peered into the ransacked and abandoned shops of Marazion, their sad dark interiors now little more than shadowy tombs threatening to spill forth a rotting plague upon them and he scoured the crashed and rusting vehicles, whose twisted wrecks could so easily hide a hundred and one nightmares waiting to crawl forth and greet them. But for once luck seemed to be with them, for the desolate streets of Marazion held none of these hidden horrors and as they made their way along one street after another, each transformed by the Dead and their passing, all they found were the decrepit and decaying cadavers desperately following in the wake of their more agile brethren.
    ‘Christ, it’s like a scene from the Pied Piper of Hamlin,’ muttered Tom,  slowly shaking his head as he watched the corpse of an old woman pull herself hand over fist along the cracked and littered road, her limp body trailing behind her like a slab of rotting meat.
    ‘What?’ whispered Fran, looking over his shoulder, a look of confusion on her face.
    ‘Pied Piper?’ he replied, glancing back at her. ‘You don’t know the fairy tale?’
    ‘Ermm, my dad was more the type to practice Judo moves at bedtime with me and my sister than read us a story,’ she replied, with a shrug of her shoulders.
    ‘Well, long story short, these villagers have all these rats and they hire this piper to lead them away but then refuse to pay him, so to teach them a lesson he makes all the children follow him into a magical mountain cave or something but there’s this crippled kid that can’t keep up and he gets left behind,’ Tom whispered in reply, using the reins to guide Star around the upturned remains of a souvenir stall, its faded bunting fluttering back and forth in the gentle breeze.
    ‘And the Dead here are supposed to be this kid?’ Fran suggested, nodding to the ruined corpses trying valiantly to follow the Dead horde in their pursuit of the living flesh that had entranced them so.
    ‘Hmm,’ he replied, chewing on his lip absentmindedly as a niggling thought started to form.
    ‘But that’s a good thing isn’t it?’ said Dave, looking from his brother to Tom and Fran. ‘I mean, if there’s only the damaged and broken corpses left here, doesn’t that work in our favour?’
    ‘I hope so,’ muttered Tom. ‘The sea-front promenade is the next turning… we’ll know more by then I guess.’
    ‘T…Tom, wh…what is it?’ asked Kai, realising there was so much more that the man wasn’t saying.
    ‘Nothing,’ he muttered, his past life as a taxi driver causing him to instinctively look left and then right for non-existent oncoming traffic as Star began to turn onto the main promenade. ‘Just a bad feeling, that’s all.’
    ‘A bad feeling,’ Max snorted, shaking his head while he picked at the dirt under his fingernails.
    ‘Max,’ sighed Dave, knowing his brother was surely about to say something obnoxious.
    Waving away his brother’s interruption, Max continued to speak.
    ‘No offense, mate, but from what I’ve seen you’re clearly a bit touched in the head,’ he began, ignoring the