Last Days With The Dead (Lanherne Chronicles Book 3)

by Stephen Charlick

  ‘Pity you didn’t take his example,’ Jen said with a smile.

  ‘What?’ Leon said, lifting his arm to smell the armpit of his T-shirt. ‘That’s the smell of a man that is.’

  ‘Yeah, a man that hasn’t washed in two days,’ Jen continued, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘But everything’s okay?’ Liz interrupted.

  ‘For the moment, yes,’ Leon replied, as he pushed himself back up. ‘Look, let me get some food, and then Cam and I will tell you what happened.’

  Trusting that if it was something that posed an immediate danger to the safety of Lanherne, he would have said so right away, Liz nodded back at him, all the while, her hand moved slowly in a circular motion over Saleana’s back. After watching the young man disappear through the side door that led to the kitchen, Liz turned back to Jen.

  ‘It suits you, you know,’ she said, nodding towards Danny, ‘being a mum, you’re a natural.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Jen replied, looking from Liz back to Danny, ‘I never really thought I’d get to experience that side of life, well, not until I came here. I spent the last four years travelling with my brother, so just trying to stay alive was hard enough...’

  Jen’s voice trailed off, as sad memories of the brother’s pointless death rose to the surface of her mind, bringing tears to her eyes.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to…’ Liz said, reaching to touch Jen’s shoulder.

  ‘No, no, it’s alright,’ she replied, shaking herself free of the memories. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, being a mum was never on the cards before, but who knows, this place seems different, perhaps, one day…’

  ‘What do you mean ‘perhaps one day’?’ Liz said, nodding towards the silent child nestled between Jen’s legs. ‘You’ve moved Danny into your room, you wash, feed and care for him, if that’s not being a parent what is?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she replied, looking thoughtfully back down at Danny.

  ‘And with you and Leon,’ Liz continued, waggling her eyebrows suggestively at Jen, ‘it won’t be long until you have one of your own too.’

  ‘God, and twins run in my family!’ said Jen looking at Liz in mock horror.

  ‘Ouch,’ Liz laughed, ‘well, look on the bright side; at least we’ve got Avery.’

  ‘I’ve got Avery,’ said Phil, following Leon back into the Refectory, ‘and I just happen to let you professionally borrow him from time to time, that’s all.’

  For a man in his forties, Phil was a great bear of a man. With his close-cropped hair, dark goatee beard, and a tall, hard, muscular frame, he certainly cut an imposing and at times, fearful figure. But Liz knew beneath the somewhat gruff exterior, beat a heart of gold and in fact, on more than one occasion, he had risked his own life to save her from the Dead. That he had at last found the love he needed in Avery’s arms, gave her a warm feeling of satisfaction. Although, with Avery having his background in microbiology, and Phil being a butcher, Liz did at times wonder how the two men found any common ground.

  ‘Funny, you don’t look like a doctor’s wife,’ Liz joked.

  ‘I’ve got no qualms about hitting a woman,’ Phil replied, placing the plate of food for Cam on one of the tables before turning back to Liz, ‘but perhaps, not one with such a precious cargo.’

  ‘Can I?’ he asked holding out his large hands to take Saleana from Liz.

  ‘Okay, but don’t wake her,’ Liz replied, slowly passing over her baby to Phil.

  Phil gingerly lowered himself onto one of the benches and looked down at the tiny baby that suddenly looked even smaller in his large arms.

  ‘You’re beautiful, aren’t you, eh, just like your mummy,’ Phil whispered, softly stroking the fine dark hair of the sleeping child, ‘and your daddy’s a looker too. So you’re going to break a few hearts when you get older, you mark Uncle Phil’s words.’

  Looking up, Phil noticed the adults in the room had all turned to watch his heartfelt exchange with the oblivious sleeping baby.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ smiled Liz, leaning forward to kiss Phil on the forehead.

  ‘Oh good, you’re here, Phil,’ said Patrick, walking into the room with Imran and damp looking Cam behind him. ‘Did Gabe find you?’

  ‘Yep, and he was carrying something that stunk to high heaven,’ Phil whispered, afraid to rouse Saleana from her sleep. ‘He told me he was to come out with me to shift the bodies later.’

  ‘Yes, and don’t go easy on him,’ Patrick continued, ‘he’s got a lesson to learn.’

  ‘Suits me,’ Phil said, turning his attention back to the baby in his arms.

  ‘Now, come on you two, spill,’ Liz said, stopping Leon’s spoonful of scrambled eggs half way to his mouth, ‘why are you back so early?’

  ‘Well, first off, the Penhaligan house is now the Penhaligan ruin,’ Leon started, ducking his head down to meet the halted spoon.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Patrick asked, sitting down.

  ‘When we got there, the house was nothing but a burnt out shell,’ Cam replied, swiftly running a comb through his damp hair before turning his attention to the plate of food in front of him. ‘It must’ve blazed for days to reduce a building that sturdy to the smoking shell that greeted us.’

  ‘But how?’ Liz asked. ‘How does a building that huge just suddenly burn to the ground?’

  ‘Could’ve been a lightning strike or sunlight catching a shard of glass at just the right angle,’ commented Phil, ‘but it’s not as if it’s the middle of summer and everything is tinder dry.’

  ‘What about the grounds?’ Patrick asked, leaning forward. ‘Any sign someone had been there before you?’

  ‘Hard to tell, there was a lot of fallen debris from the house all over the front, and the crops growing out the back of the house,’ Leon replied.

  ‘That’s why we only got a few sacks worth,’ Cam added, reaching for a glass of goat’s milk. ‘We couldn’t shift a lot of rubble, not with just the two of us. The orchard is fine though, the fire didn’t touch it, so at least we’ll still get a fruit harvest come autumn.’

  Patrick rested his chin in the palm of his hand, and absentmindedly ran his thumb along the scar that ran from just above his left eyebrow and down most of his cheek. As he did so, he mulled over Leon’s news. He knew that without further information, they would ultimately just have to accept this had just been a freak accident. Just because they hadn’t had any thunder storms here, didn’t mean that there hadn’t been one forty miles away.

  ‘That’s not all,’ Leon continued.

  ‘Well?’ Patrick asked, the movement of his thumb suddenly stopping.

  ‘It’s the Dead,’ said Cam, ‘there was an awful lot of them, a lot more than usual.’

  ‘But that’s not the main thing,’ Leon butted in, ‘it was the type of Dead we ran into.’

  ‘New?’ asked Phil.

  ‘No,’ continued Leon, waving away the concern, ‘they’d been dead for years. The thing is, you could just tell from what they were wearing that these people hadn’t been living in the countryside when they died. They were from a city.’

  With the mention of ‘cities’, all of those present knew what that could mean.

  The towns and cities had been terrifying places those eight years ago when the Death-walker virus had first struck. Initial outbreaks had been scattered at first. A heart attack victim in one part of town, the passing of an elderly patient in a care home, or road traffic accident in another, but as the Dead then went on the rampage, their numbers increased at a wild and alarming rate, until the living soon found themselves hemmed in with the Dead on all sides. The Dead had then swept through the populated areas like a wave of destruction, leaving only bloodshed and more of the hungry Dead in their wake. Because of this, whole areas of the country were now considered ‘no-go’ areas. Of course, by now, the Dead would be nothing but slow moving decaying shells, but their sheer numbers alone, made it pure insanity to venture into these deadly
zones.

  ‘Hmmm,’ Patrick mumbled, getting up to look at the large map of Cornwall on the wall.

  Just like the smaller maps that they took with them whenever they left Lanherne, this large map was covered in a myriad of red patches and small black crosses. The red zones indicated the areas now solely populated by the Dead and they were avoided at all costs. The crosses marked any road made impassable by flooding, fallen trees too large for them to move, landslides, or even too far eroded to be useable.

  ‘Well, here’s the Penhaligan home,’ Patrick began, his finger pointing to a small blue dot, ‘so that means the Dead have either come from Newquay or St Austall.’

  ‘Newquay was more of a fishing town or holiday destination wasn’t it,’ said Cam, placing the now empty glass back down on the table. ‘The Dead we saw didn’t look like they had been involved in either, really. It’s difficult to pin down , but I think, and I know it makes me sound like a snob, but I think some of the Dead we saw weren’t dressed like the sort of people I’d have expected to come from Newquay for a weekend away.’

  ‘So they weren’t dressed like working class tourists, is what you’re saying,’ said Phil, giving Cam a roll of his eyes.

  ‘Erm, yes,’ replied Cam, sheepishly.

  Even though things like ‘class’ were now a thing of the past, even the Dead couldn’t totally eradicate a life time of being able to read class and social indicators.

  ‘Oh, don’t get your old school tie in a knot, Cam,’ Phil continued, jokingly. ‘So what you’re saying is, the Dead you saw were neither fishermen nor chavs dressed in long shorts, flip-flops and England strip T-shirts. Don’t worry, I think after all I’ve been through, a bit of class stereotyping isn’t going to offend me.’

  ‘So we’re basically talking about middle class corpses,’ Patrick said, trying to hide his smile, ‘business types and well-dressed families, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Cam.

  ‘Hang on,’ came Nadine’s voice suddenly from the other side of the room, ‘St Austall? That name rings a bell.’

  Nadine had a remarkable memory, and even as the rest of the group paused to wait for her to speak again, they could almost visibly see her sifting through the information stored in her head, looking for just the right reference she needed.

  ‘The Eden project,’ she said triumphantly, ‘St Austall is where they built the Eden project.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ said Patrick, remembering why the town had sounded familiar.

  ‘Eden project? What’s that?’ asked Leon.

  ‘The Eden project was the world largest set of greenhouses open to the public,’ Patrick began, surprising Nadine by his knowledge. ‘It had been built over a reclaimed mining pit just a few miles outside of St Austall, and was a collection of vast bio-domes type things that were made into various environments, you know, a tropical dome, a desert dome, that sort of thing. It was basically an ecology and conservation place. Quite impressive.’

  ‘Oh,’ replied Leon.

  ‘I was roped in on a school trip, back when I was a P.E. teacher,’ Patrick said to Nadine, noticing her look.

  ‘So, looks like that’s where our nice middle class tourists came from then,’ said Leon, giving Phil a grin.

  Like Phil, Leon’s upbringing had been far from middle class, and he knew his mother had at times even struggled to pay the rent on their small council flat on the estate.

  ‘Leon,’ said Jen, slightly shocked by his attitude, ‘middle class or working class, they were still people, and they died horribly.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he replied, realising Jen probably came from one of the types of families he had just casually written off.

  ‘Can we drop the social commentary,’ said Patrick, leaning against one of the long tables, ‘none of that matters now. What matters, is why the Dead are on the move after all this time, and if they’re coming this way.’

  Silence descended on the Refectory, broken only by the sounds of the younger children whispering to each other as they played.

  ‘So assuming there’s an exodus from St Austall, and as the Dead only move when they see something worth following,’ Liz finally said, taking Saleana, who was starting to wake up, from Phil’s arms, ‘who or what are they following?’

  ‘Could there have still been survivors living in the domes after are all these years,’ Imran asked. ‘And for some reason, they had to leave and now the Dead are following them.’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ replied Patrick, absentmindedly chewing on the inside of his mouth, as he contemplated the likelihood that people could have been living in the domes all this time.

  ‘Look, there’s nothing we can do about the Dead,’ said Phil, pushing himself up from the bench, now that he was free of his tiny burden and walking over to look at the large map. ‘We can increase patrols and clear them as often as we can, but if they’re coming this way, they’re coming. All we can do is to make sure we’re ready for them.’

  ‘Phil’s right,’ Patrick agreed, ‘we just have to be vigilant for now and hope the bulk of them passes us by. We should have a proper meeting this evening to fill everyone else in on what’s happening.’

  ‘Right, now that’s settled, I’m going to clear the corpses from outside. I’ll spread the word about the meeting as I go,’ said Phil, turning to leave. ‘Oh, if it’s okay with you, Patrick, I think Gabe’s punishment should wait until we’ve got a better handle on things. There’s no point in us both being out there, not now.’

  Patrick thought about it for a second and then nodded. As enthusiastic and as proficient at dispatching the Dead as Gabe was, there was no point in putting him in danger unnecessarily. Not now, they knew they could be swamped by the Dead at any moment.

  Phil’s hand was hovering just over the door handle when the door was suddenly pushed open from the other side with some urgency, banging into his hand.

  ‘Ouch,’ said Phil, automatically lifting his fingers to his mouth.

  ‘Oh, my God, sorry, Phil,’ said Chloe, her face flushed as if she had been running.

  ‘No problem,’ replied Phil not very convincingly through a mouthful of his fingers, ‘what’s your rush anyway?’

  ‘It’s William and Damien, they say they’ve seen something from the walkway,’ she said, catching her breath, ‘you’ve got to come.’

  Instantly forgetting his banged fingers, Phil pushed himself past Chloe and began to run down the corridor. With the sound of multiple feet echoing off the stonewalls behind him, Phil could tell that at least Patrick and Imran were following close on his heels. He was halfway down the corridor when he passed a surprised looking Alice holding a large pile of washed nappies in her arms.

  ‘Whoa,’ she called, turning abruptly so Phil didn’t inadvertently barrel into her, ‘what’s going on, Phil?’

  But Phil had already disappeared round a corner and her question was left hanging unanswered.

  ‘Trouble,’ she managed to ask, as Imran sped past her, closely followed by Patrick and Liz.

  ‘When isn’t it,’ was all Imran could say, already reaching for an arrow from his quiver as he ran.

  Speeding through the Convent’s shadowy corridors, it took Phil less than thirty seconds before he burst through the large main doors, and out into the courtyard bathed in the bright spring sunshine. For a second, he blinked at the brightness, as his eyes adjusted to the light, but he knew the layout of the courtyard like the back of his hand and carried on moving regardless. With a flurry of mottled feathers and a riot of disapproving clucks, Phil ran through and scattered a dozen of their hens that had been merrily pecking away at the dirt, searching for something to eat. Jumping over one particularly stubborn hen that had refused to move, Phil made it to the ladder that led up to the walkway. Glancing up, he could see Damien and William standing in the southwest corner of the Convents walkway, both of them looking out and over to some specific point in the countryside.

  With a thunder of boots on the planks of the walkway, Phi
l reached the two men on watch.

  ‘What,’ he said, barely out of breath, ‘what is it?’

  Silently, William handed Phil a battered looking pair of binoculars and pointed out to the west. Lifting the binoculars to his eyes, Phil adjusted the focus slightly and saw what the two men on watch had been observant enough to notice.

  ‘Shit,’ was all he could say, as he was joined by Imran and Patrick, with Liz coming closely behind them.

  ‘What is it?’ Patrick asked, and Phil handed the binoculars over to the man they had agreed would be the leader of Lanherne.

  ‘Smoke trail,’ Phil said, turning to Imran and Liz, ‘coming from the village.’

  ‘Damn,’ said Patrick under his breath, lowering the binoculars again.

  ‘The smoke plume hasn’t got any bigger since we noticed it,’ added Damien. ‘So whatever’s on fire can’t be that big.’

  ‘It’s the fact something’s burning in the village at all that worries me,’ said Patrick, subconsciously rubbing his scar again. ‘Phil, Imran, I think you two should go check it out and take Rich with you.’

  ‘No,’ interrupted Liz, ‘I’m going with them. Alice or Nicky can keep an eye on Saleana.’

  Patrick looked briefly from Imran to Liz. He knew Liz was unrivalled in her skill with her sword. In fact, like many at Lanherne, he owed his life to the swiftness of her blade, but he was surprised that the young mother would so readily put herself in possible danger when there were others who could go in her stead. He certainly knew Helen would think twice before offering to leave their daughter behind in someone else’s care.

  ‘The best way I know to keep my child,’ Liz began, almost as if she had read Patrick’s thoughts, ‘to keep all our children safe, is to fight for them. If I’m to stay on top of my game, I need to stay sharp, and training in the courtyard with some old scarecrow just isn’t the same, Patrick. I’ll be no good to anyone if I’m left to sit around here twiddling my thumbs whenever there’s killing to be done. I need to go.’

  Patrick looked into the young woman’s eyes and saw an unwavering determination there. He knew there would be no persuading her, and from a glance at Imran, he knew it too.