Zombie Kids Books : Blood Red (from Snow White) - Fables of the Undead ( zombie books fiction,zombie books for kids,zombie books for kids) (zombie books for kids - Fables of the Undead Book 3) (4 page)

Guided by the shouts, he soon emerges from the trees at the edge of a wide path, where a cottage is overhung by long branches. There are four corpses on the path, one of them a deer. The Prince’s hands tremble, not with fear but with adrenaline. He knows that he may well be about to have the fight of his life.

The Prince rushes into the house, but all he finds are two more small bodies. At first he thinks they are children, and then he realises they are little men. One of them has blood all across his face, as though he was drinking from the corpse of the other. A pickax is lodged in his chest.

Then the scream comes again, this one louder and longer than before. It doesn’t come from inside the cottage. The Prince runs outside and leaps astride his horse, then thunders down the path. After several metres he comes across the corpse of another small man holding a pickax, lying on his back. The Prince is about to ride on when the corpse jerks.

“Good Lord!” exclaims the Prince, jumping down from the saddle. “You’re alive! What happened, man?”

“Dangerous…” Bostor croaks. Blood froths from his mouth. His throat and face have been chewed to mince, and he is not long for this world. “Not … Snow … Death…”

The poor little man expires. With his jaw set grimly, the Prince looks further along the dark path, dreading what he will find.

He soon finds out. He emerges on horseback into another clearing, this one at the bottom of a rocky hillside. There is an active mine here, with rails running out of a tunnel in the hillside and a capsized cart nearby. A young woman, drenched in blood from her mouth down, is swaying on her feet in front of another small man. The small man stares back at her, blinking stupidly. He seems unharmed.

The Prince draws his sword. “Just what in blazes is happening here?”

The girl whirls around with a snarl. Her eyes are like ice, her face a toothy maw streaming with thick red blood.

“It’s … you!” the Prince exclaims. “What on Earth—?”

Then he remembers what the dying man had said. Dangerous. Snow. Death.

“Are you Snow White?” asks the Prince, the horse turning anxiously beneath him. “No, I can see that she is gone, and only a monster remains. You there – little man. What is your name?”

“Daer,” says the little man. The moonlight is bouncing from his bald head. The Prince sees that he is stupid as a rock, but that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t be saved.

“Get onto my horse, here, Daer. Quickly!”

Daer moves to do as he is told, but the ravaged princess jerks to stop him. She blocks his path with her body, but she does not attack. Why doesn’t she attack?

The Prince remembers the corpses from the cottage. Ripped apart, as though eaten, with the skulls cracked open…

“Good Lord,” he mutters. “The little man’s so stupid, she isn’t even sure he has a brain to eat…!”

As the Prince’s horse turns around, the Prince sees other people arriving. It is more little men: one with his throat torn out, another with a pickax in his chest, even the one that the Prince just saw die on the roadside. Four in total. Once dead, now alive.

They encircle the Prince and his horse, reaching out with stubby arms and curling fingers. The Prince roars and lashes out with his sword, taking off an arm here, a leg there … As blood splatters across the path, soaking into the dust, the four little men collapse into a heap of headless bodies.

Daer makes another attempt to run for freedom, but he trips on a rock and falls flat onto his face. The horse, startled, whinnies and rears back onto its hind legs, in turn startling the undead girl. She hisses and rushes for the horse, dashing between its circling hooves, and sinks her teeth into its muscular neck. The horse screams, throwing the Prince from its back and jerking away. The girl has a mouth full of raw horse meat and hair. She spits it out and then lunges again, holding onto the animal like a spider and biting at its neck and face. Eventually the poor animal falls, too weak from blood loss, and lies panting on its side as the girl turns to the Prince, who is trapped beneath the heavy body of the horse.

“Get away from me!” the Prince warns the hideously disfigured girl. “Stay back!”

But his sword has been thrown out of reach.

Desperately, the Prince turns to Daer. “You! Grab my sword, quickly!”

The stupid little man joins the princess by her side. He is smiling.

“Snow … White,” Daer says, looking at the monster with love in his eyes.

The Prince screams in frustration. The girl that he fell in love with leaps for him, blotting out the sunlight with her small, decomposing body. He feels her humid, virulent breath on his cheek as she gnashes ferociously. Spittle lands on his face, almost runs into his mouth…

Putting all of his weight behind a final shove, he manages to push the creature off him and slip out from under the dead weight of the horse. He is wobbling as he stands up, braced for another onslaught – but she is rocking on her back like a beetle, trying to right herself with weakened limbs.

Nearby, Daer has gotten to his feet. He looks like he’s about to go to help Snow White stand.

“No!” shouts the Prince, holding out his hand. Daer stops, surprised. “That creature is not your friend! It only looks like her! For your own sake, step away!”

Daer does so – just as Snow White lurches up and grabs the Prince’s outstretched arm. Her jaws part wide to accommodate his forearm, but he pulls it away in time. Her teeth clamp down on air.

“My sword!” the Prince calls to Daer. “Give it to me!”

The fallen horse is between the Prince and his weapon. Daer looks at the sword on the floor. He picks it up, holding it curiously by the hilt, then offers it to the Prince, blade-first. With no other choice, the Prince grabs the blade carefully with two hands—

The bloodied girl rushes towards him—

“Stop!” he wails, unable to believe what he is about to do … but the undead girl lurches within reach of his vulnerable flesh, and with his hands gripping the sword’s blade he swings the hilt towards her head. It glints in the darkness before coming down hard on the girl’s scalp. Her skull explodes across the mine rails. Her small body drops like wood to the ground, completely still.

Daer lumbers around the horse, rubbing his head. His face is a perfect picture of agony. The Prince can only guess how he feels. All of his six friends are dead, and so is Snow White.

The Prince wipes the sword’s bloody hilt on the grass, then sheathes it.

What terrible evil has taken hold of the Deep Forest? The mutilated deer, earlier, had also been infected by this evil sickness. But what was its source, and how many other undead victims are walking this land, ready to pass on the foul infection…?

The Prince approaches the corpse of the girl. She is most definitely dead, now, her skull caved in by his sword’s iron handle. There are multiple contusions and tears in her flesh, which would have debilitated any living thing. But not her … Something has stripped her of her soul and occupied her broken, rotting body. What malevolent hellspawn could have created such a being?

He drops to his knees, mourning the beautiful young girl that this monster had once been. Never has he loved, except Snow White, and now she is gone from him forever.

As the Prince mourns, he does not notice the shadow looming over him from behind … It is only with the heavy clatter of a hoof against a rock that he is startled, and turns.

The horse…!

Once white and beautiful, the stallion is now drenched in its own clotting blood. Infected, it too has white eyes and a snarling mouth, turned vulgar as its lips snarl back to reveal its large crooked teeth. It clambers desperately with its hoofs, trying to stand, but Snow White’s attacks had been to damaging. Only its hind legs retain their memory of motor skills.

Repulsed and sickened, the Prince once again draws his sword.

“Forgive me,” he says, and wishes he could close his eyes to strike, but he cannot. The blade swings down against the horse’s muscular neck. Once, twice. Finally the blade splits the spinal column and the heavy body collapses into the mire created by dust and blood. The animal breathes its last, undead or otherwise.

A squeak makes the Prince whirl around again, but it is only Daer. The simple little man is troubled by the violence, and doesn’t seem to understand what has transpired. The Prince wipes, then sheathes his sword. He holds out his head to Daer.

“Come on, my friend. My horse is done for, but we can get another at the next town. I’ll take you to safety.”

Daer slowly follows the Prince, but his eyes are glued to the body of Snow White. “She said you’d come.”

But the Prince doesn’t hear. His mind is full of confusion and darkness, and uncertainty as to what to do next. What if this malady has spread to the neighbouring cities? How can he be sure that he is not infected himself, although he sustained no wounds?

He becomes aware that the little man is speaking to him. “I’m sorry, friend. What did you say?”

“She said that her prince would come to send her suffering.”

“Well,” said the Prince, turning his eyes to the horizon. “I suppose I did.”

THE END