Savage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel Read Free Page B

Poppy.
    Alistair grinned and nodded.
    “When Garfield tells me to.”
    Alistair pointed his chubby finger up at her. 
“Now you look here, Poppy.  Garfield ain’t here,
and when he ain’t here you do as you’re told by your elders.  I was at
this pier long before Garfield, so don’t you believe I take orders from
him.  You need to start pulling your weight, girl, or else you’ll be
gone.  Got no time for freeloaders.”
    “ You can talk!  If it wasn’t for all the
food that Garfield brings back, you wouldn’t be able to stay so fat.”
    Alistair went bright red.  “You just wait until
you come down from there.  You’ll have my hand across the back of your
legs.”
    “Touch me and Garfield will beat you up.”
    Alistair snorted.  “We’ll see about that, young
lady.”
    “Yes, we will,” said Poppy with a sudden grin on her
face.  There was movement on the horizon at last.  “Because he’s on
his way back right now.”  At last.
    In the distance, Garfield and the foragers were coming
down the main road.  They dragged their wooden sleds behind them, carrying
the things they’d found.  Any luck and they would have some food.
 Even better and they might have found some books or toys.
    Give me something to do around here, please!
    As Poppy squinted into the distance, she noticed
something unexpected.  One of the forager’s sleds held no food or toys at
all; it carried a man.  Somebody was injured.
    Oh no.  I hope we can help them.  I hate it
when people die.   Who is it?
    Poppy glanced down at the pier, to tell Alistair what
she could see, but the fat man had already gone, so she hung down from the edge
of the roof and dropped down to the wooden deck below.  Her ankles stung
as she hit the ground, but the pain soon left once she started running. 
She headed for the gate, wanting to be the first to greet Garfield when he
returned.
    But when she got there, she heard rattling and
moaning.  There were dead men at their door.

ANNA
    A nna heard the moans followed by the
rattling of the pier’s main gate.  It was not unusual to find dead men on
the pier’s walkway, but it was something that always needed dealing with. 
If enough of the dead gathered together then they might manage to bring the
gate down beneath their sheer weight.  Anna had seen what the collective
strength of the dead could do several times over the last year.  They’re
like a force of nature when they group together.
    Anna was tucked up in her sleeping bag, re-reading a
paperback, when she saw members of the pier race by the window of the gift shop
in which she lived.  It wasn’t a reason for great concern, but she put on
her jacket and followed after them, wanting to see what the fuss was.  She
joined up with them at the gate where a dead man and woman were thudding
against the iron bars.  A light rain had begun falling and a wind whistled
in from the sea.  Seagulls circled in the air, as they always did around
the dead.
    “Why aren’t we staying out the way?”  Anna
frowned.  When dead people arrived at the gate, the common thing to do was
to lay low and wait for them to lope away.  More often than not, they did
so within the hour.
    “We can’t afford to leave them at the gate,” Alistair
informed her.  “The foragers are coming in.  We have to clear the
way.”
    Anna studied the two zombies on the other side of the
wrought iron bars and felt confused.  The female was little more than a
skeleton, with a waistline she probably would have killed for in life.  Hell,
I would kill for it.  Her entire stomach had rotted away and the
crusted remains of her lungs had fused to her spine.  The man beside the
dead woman was a boxer, still wearing his ring shorts and gloves.  Once
upon a time it may have been comical to see the sportsman in full gear, but the
people at the pier were all used to the oddities of the dead and long past
paying any notice.  Previously the gate had been host to a dead