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

growl began to build in her throat. Almost immediately Dave sprang to his feet, his arm reaching out to touch Bella but this time Tom had beaten him to it and already two of his fingers rested gently on the bitch’s nose, instantly silencing her warning growl.
    ‘Tom?’ hissed Fran, resting her hand on his shoulder as she looked past him through the front viewing slit.
    ‘Damn, I was afraid of this,’ he muttered, nodding toward the Dead crowd pawing at the walls of a small building built further along the sea wall.
    ‘What… what is it?’ asked Jane nervously, her arm subconsciously pulling Riley just that bit closer to her.
    ‘Well, it looks like we now know what made the Dead go walkabout,’ he said, nodding to the horde ahead of them and the large pool of congealed blood splattered across the road. ‘Looks like they ambushed a small group.’
    ‘And just how can you tell it was a group?’ asked Max, keen to score even the smallest points against Tom, while Kai silently reached past him to pull a battered looking pair of binoculars from a hook.
    ‘From the bloody mess on the road, clearly at least one person met their maker today,’ Tom whispered in reply, scratching at the stubble on his chin, ‘and then at least one managed to get away, causing some of the Dead to go on the march.’
    ‘So, just two then,’ interrupted Max, with a snort.
    ‘Max!’ warned his brother, noticing the muscles on Tom’s jaw tensing as he ground his teeth in annoyance.
    ‘And just what do you think got their attention, smartarse?’ growled Tom, jabbing a finger in the direction of the group of corpses huddled around the base of the single story building. ‘You think they’re just desperate to buy some candyfloss or something?’ 
    With his face suddenly flushing with anger, Max’s eyes narrowed with barely concealed contempt.
    ‘Hmmm, I suppose a third person could have…’ he began through gritted teeth.
    ‘Suppose, my arse!’ laughed Tom, knowing he was right. ‘Only one thing whips corpses up like that and that’s the sight of a bit of living flesh. My guess is whoever’s there, they’ve managed to get up onto the flat roof somehow.’
    ‘Do… do you think they’re still there?’ asked Dave, his genuine concern for a stranger clearly fighting with his fear for the safety of his own family.
    ‘Even if they are, we can’t risk stopping to find out?’ hissed Max, glaring at his brother, almost daring him to contradict him. ‘There’s far too many of the Dead for us to handle. We’ll have to send a larger party back once we get on the island.’
    ‘N…N… No choice,’ stammered Kai, lowering the binoculars and slowly handing them over to Tom. ‘We’ll h…have to d…deal with them ourselves... look.’
    ‘Where?’ asked Tom, raising the binoculars to his eyes.
    ‘R…right,’ Kai replied. ‘The… the sign.’
    ‘Sign… sign… sign,’ Tom mumbled to himself, adjusting the focus slightly. ‘Oh, there it is… Crap!’ he tutted, suddenly looking back at Fran and the others. ‘Kai’s right, I don’t think we have a choice this time, we’ll have to clear some of those corpses… somehow.’
    ‘Why?’ whispered Fran, taking the binoculars from Tom to look for herself.
    ‘There’s an old sign saying something about crossing times,’ Tom continued. ‘It looks like the opening to the causeway is on the other side of that building.’
    ‘But the Dead, they could be just on this side… couldn’t they?’ suggested Jane, hoping they could slip past the Dead unnoticed to get onto the causeway.
    ‘It’s… possible,’ muttered Tom, seeming to momentarily drift off somewhere as other unheard voices suddenly claimed his attention.
    ‘I guess we won’t know for sure until we get closer,’ said Fran, jabbing Tom’s shoulder with the binoculars to draw him back from his ghostly world. ‘We’ll just have to wait till then to see what we’re dealing with.’
    ‘Hmmm,’ replied