Last Days With The Dead (Lanherne Chronicles Book 3)

by Stephen Charlick

  With an annoyingly loud screech, the years of rust on the hinges finally gave way, and Patrick began to pull one side of the large metal gate open towards him. He had only pulled it halfway open when the base of it scraped along the gravel and became wedged on the uneven ground.

  ‘Shit,’ he mumbled to himself, hoping the other side would open fully or they would have to get the spades out to level the ground themselves.

  He was just stepping back to reach for the other side when an arrow unexpectedly shot silently through the air just in front of his face.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said, jumping back, startled by Imran’s arrow.

  Snapping his head to the left, Patrick watched the body of a Dead man, just inside of the gate, falling to its knees with Imran’s arrow lodged deep in the side of its temple.

  ‘Must’ve been the sound of the gate opening that attracted it,’ called Imran, already reaching for another arrow from his quiver.

  ‘Thanks,’ Patrick smiled, stepping closer to the badly decayed corpse that wore a filthy green T-shirt with ‘Eden Project’ printed across its front.

  Placing his boot on the corpse’s head, Patrick bent down and with a tug, pulled free Imran’s arrow before returning to open the second gate. Thankfully, after only a little more screeching protest from the rusted hinges, the gate swung fully open and came to a stop next to a small post set in the gravel surround.

  ‘Do you think you can get through?’ asked Patrick, looking back and forth, trying to judge the width of the opening.

  ‘Phil says yes, just about,’ Imran replied, ‘but can you guide us in so we don’t get the wheels wedged.’

  ‘Okay.’ Patrick nodded, stepping backwards further through the gate.

  With a brief look over his shoulder to make sure nothing rotting and hungry was about to pounce on him, Patrick began to wave the cart through the gate. Using Imran’s retrieved arrow as a pointer, he guided the cart as it slowly rolled through the gates.

  ‘Right, you’re clear.’ Patrick called to Phil, stepping backwards so Samson and the cart could make the turn on to the path.

  Imran had been right. Next to the gate was indeed a small shed like building with grey slate roof tiles, and a small leaded window. On its door, loose hanging metallic letters spelling out ‘aff only’, told him if he looked hard enough in the explosion of plant growth at the base of the door, he would surely find a missing S and T. It had obviously been used as some sort of supply shed for tools, and the tiny building, nestled tightly between a vast expanse of rhododendron bushes and the fence, had been spared much of the harsh effects of direct weather. All about the small building for as far as Patrick could see, plants were growing tall, wild, and unchecked. They spilled out over the weed chocked cobbled pathway and like a maze, enclosed the cart in walls of living greenery.

  ‘Think you were right, Imran,’ Patrick began, looking along the pathway, ‘this place really is a warren, we need to find some sort of ‘you are here map’ or we’ll…’

  But his words were cut short as from the bushes behind him, another Dead member of the Eden staff threw itself at his back and bit down hard on his shoulder.

  ‘Fuck!’ shouted Patrick in pain-fuelled panic, as he automatically flipped the emaciated corpse over his shoulder.

  With a clatter of rag-covered bones, the cadaver landed on the cobbles in front of him. Using the only weapon he had to hand, Patrick lunged forward and stabbed the creature through the eye with Imran’s arrow. With a squelch, the film covered eye popped, sending a rancid liquid over his hand, but Patrick was far from finished with the creature and drawing his hand back quickly, he stabbed again. This time the arrow tip momentarily met the resistance of bone, until with a crack, the arrow plunged deep into the rotting brain, forever stilling the Dead man.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ Patrick yelled, not knowing what a bite from the Dead could do to them now that they had effectively been cured of the Death-walker virus.

  Almost immediately, Liz was out of the cart and by his side.

  ‘Let me see! Patrick, let me see!’ she cried, her own panic mirroring his, as she frantically pulled aside his jacket and jumper.

  ‘Oh, thank fuck,’ she finally said, relief flooding through her when she found the two crescent marks at the base of his neck, ‘it didn’t break the skin, it didn’t bite you.’

  ‘What? Are you sure, Liz?’ said Patrick, craning his neck trying to look at the marks himself. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, yes, calm down, Patrick. You’re alright. You’re alright. Look,’ she replied, wiping her hand over the teeth marks to show him there was no blood.

  ‘Fuck, that was close,’ Patrick said, letting out a shaky breath, ‘too fucking close by far.’

  ‘And why aren’t you wearing your neck protector anyway?’ she snapped, her worry turning to anger, as she noticed the absence of the buckled canvas that he should be wearing under his clothes. ‘You could’ve been killed; shit, you and Phil are just alike. You both think your size is going to keep you alive, well newsflash, it’s not, and just because it’s a bit uncomfortable, you both think it’s an excuse not to wear one. Well, Fuck you! I’m not going to be the one to tell Helen you died because you couldn’t put up with a bit of discomfort.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Patrick replied, realising every word Liz said was true.

  ‘Shit, Patrick, we could have lost you,’ she said, her anger suddenly fading away as she pulled the big man into a fierce hug.

  ‘I truly am sorry, Liz,’ he continued, pulling her away to look in her eyes, ‘and you’re right, I won’t be so stupid again.’

  ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you, don’t make any promises you can’t keep,’ she finally said, a smile creeping onto her lips while the tension and worry left her.

  ‘Come on, we’d better get back in the cart,’ she continued, looking up and down the cobbled pathway, ‘if there’s any more of them close by, they’re bound to have heard all that malarkey.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied, finally reaching down to pull the arrow free of the corpse’s orbit, ‘let’s get going.’

  As they climbed back into the cart, Phil made a point of turning to look at them both and pulling aside the collar of his top, smugly revealing his canvas protection beneath.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Liz, shaking her head, ‘let’s just get going shall we. Smart arse.’

  With a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, Phil gave Samson’s reins a flick and once again, they were moving.

  For the next few minutes, the rhododendron bushes walled them in on both sides, while along the base, bulbous masses of lavender threatened to block their path at every twist and turn of the path. But it didn’t take them long before they finally reached a junction with another path, and from the lower level and layout of the plants here, it was apparent the path they had just travelled was never meant to be accessed by the public. Here, the plants, even after all these years untended and uncared for, showed some semblance of the landscape designer’s attention to detail. One plant would visually morph into the next, its neighbour mirroring either leaf shape or colour, while behind them towering flower beds rose and fell creating a colourful backdrop.

  ‘Looks like a nice place,’ said Karen, watching the sea of green hues flow past through one of the spy holes. ‘I wonder if anyone tried to secure the area? Those dome things would make perfect…’

  ‘Wait!’ she suddenly said, her hand falling sharply on Phil’s shoulder. ‘Stop! You just passed a signpost.’

  ‘Shit!’ said Phil under his breath. ‘Sorry, must’ve missed it. Whoa, Samson.’

  Pulling back on the reins, Phil brought Samson to an abrupt halt, while Liz jumped down through one of the hatches. Sure enough, Karen had been right, half hidden in the tall foliage of a plant she didn’t know the name of, Liz saw the sign post. At the top pointing to the right, and painted in off white letters on deep bottle green, it read, ‘Mediterranean Biome.’

  ‘Biome?’ Liz said lookin
g back at the expectant faces in the cart. ‘What’s that? Is it just a fancy way of describing the domes?’

  ‘Guess so?’ replied Karen, shrugging her shoulders.

  Pushing aside more of the tall sprouting greenery, Liz at last found what she was looking for.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, brushing aside, years of growth and debris.

  Just as they had hoped, the small map had an arrow pointing to a specific point, indicating their recent location within the Eden complex. She traced her finger along the route they needed to take to get to the main entrance, memorising the twists and turns of the winding cobbled pathway through the myriad of gardens.

  ‘Not too far…’ she started to say, turning back to look at Patrick.

  It was then that the unexpected sound of gunfire shattered the peace of Eden.

  ***

  Progress had been painfully slow for soldiers as they made their terrified way through the Cornish countryside. Corpses, hungry for their flesh, seemed to be in every field, and at every corner, and after only half an hour walking, their nerves were raw and frazzled. They simply were not used to this constant threat of a horrific death, and with every step taken full of fear and apprehension, they were simply not covering as much ground as Sergeant Ridge wanted. Even with her muddled mind hidden behind her glassy eyed trauma, it was only Lucy who knew how to remain hidden from the Dead, but then, she had spent more of her young life with the Dead than without. For now, she would share her secrets of survival, if only for the sake of the baby in her arms she would help keep the soldiers alive. But she promised herself, this fear that the Sergeant and the soldiers felt was only the tip of the terror she would force upon them when the moment arose. This was her nightmare reality that the soldiers had been plunged into, and she would use it to reap her revenge for what they did to her family.

  ‘Another three up ahead, Sir,’ whispered Pelling, from her position pressed as deep into the roadside hedge as the foliage would allow.

  Sergeant Ridge tapped Mallon on the shoulder and using hand signals, told him to go forward. With a look of grim determination on his face, Mallon nodded his understanding and edged past his commanding officer to crouch down beside Pelling. After changing her hand hold on the already gore covered crowbar, Pelling gave Mallon one brief glance, and then the pair darted forward. The two soldiers, keeping as low as they could, ran silently toward the three shambling corpses that at the moment, were dragging their decaying bodies step by step along the road. They had soon discovered there was a knack to dealing with these walking remains. They had to be quick, they had to be silent and most of all, they needed to finish the job before the corpses worked themselves up into too much of a frenzy. If that happened, their hungry groaning only alerted more of the corpses that living flesh was near and then instead of clearing their passage, they just added to the problem.

  Mallon rushed up to the first of the cadavers, his hammer already held back and ready to strike. As he got to within striking distance, the thing that may have once been a woman, abruptly turned her head to look at him. How she was even aware of his presence was beyond Mallon’s comprehension, for the corpse’s face seemed to be nothing but a mass of writhing maggots, and even as she snapped her head in his direction, some of them fell free of their rotting home, to tumble down her skinned chest.

  ‘Christ!’ Mallon said, unable to hold his tongue in the presence of such a repulsive scene.

  Despite his revulsion, Mallon did not falter and his hammer continued in its arc to connect hard and fast with the maggot ridden corpse’s skull. With a wet cracking sound, the face end of Mallon’s hammer smashed through the decaying skin and bone, to rupture the putrid brain matter. Instantly, whatever unnatural abomination had kept this poor creature on its feet was finally gone, leaving behind nothing but a mass of useless carrion in its wake. With a grunt, Mallon yanked the hammer back from her skull, pulling free large broken shards of the yellowing bone in the process. A spray of something wet, stinking, and dark, splashed across his face and Mallon only just managed to choke back the vomit that threatened to erupt from his stomach. Now was not the time to throw up, there were still more victims of the Death-walker plague to deal with.

  Meanwhile, Pelling had run slightly ahead of him and was already swinging her crowbar at the knees of a male corpse dressed in the gore and filth covered remains of a bus driver’s uniform. Just as with Mallon, the cadaver had heard her approach and was already shuffling to face her. As much as she didn’t want to, she instantly took in the horrific details of the man’s corpse in front of her. Much of the flesh had been viciously stripped from his neck and face, leaving blackened flaps of skin hanging about his shoulders like some macabre ruffle. As disgusting as this was, it had little effect on the female soldier. She knew what she had to do if she planned to survive this day and that any hesitation, even a second, could cost her life. So brushing aside her fear and revulsion, she swung the meagre weapon she was allowed to use through the air in a sick parody of a golfer’s Tee-off. With a sound much like the snapping of a branch, her crowbar connected with the brittle bones of the corpse’s leg, shattering them instantly and sending the bus driver tumbling to the road. Before his corpse had even settled, Pelling had flipped the crowbar over in her hand and was using the pointed end to stab down hard into the dead man’s temple. With a crunch, the metal passed through the man’s skull, decimating the rotten brain within.

  ‘Pelling!’ Mallon called from behind her.

  For the briefest of seconds while she dispatched the animated corpse to the oblivion it deserved, she had failed to keep a lookout for the remaining cadaver, which even now was reaching for her.

  ‘Shit!’ she said, realising too late she had taken her eye off the ball, as the cold hand suddenly clasped onto her shoulder.

  But Pelling was not a woman so easily flustered, and with a movement that could not have looked more intentional if she had practised it, she pulled free the crowbar from the shattered skull below her and swung her arm in a backhanded arc, catching the second man’s cadaver on the side of his face. Whether it was the strength of her blow, or the fact that his face seemed to be being held together with only the minimal of rotting flesh, she could not tell, but as her weapon connected with him his whole lower jaw disintegrated and was ripped free.

  ‘Jesus,’ Pelling whispered, her brain quickly processing what had happened as fragments of putrid flesh and jawbone flew across the road.

  With the man’s animated cadaver stumbling back slightly from the force of her blow, Pelling knew now was the time to press home her advantage. Trying to avoid looking directly at the thing’s blackened slug-like tongue that lolled impotently back and forth in the space where the lower jaw had once been, she darted forward and with an upward thrust, forced the crowbar through the exposed roof of the cadaver’s mouth and up into its brain. After a brief final spasm, the corpse finally became still and as Pelling pulled free her crowbar with a wet squelch, its body slipped lifelessly to the road.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered to Mallon, flicking globules of rotting brain matter from the end of the crowbar as they darted back to the side of the road.

  ‘Right, it looks clear now as far as that house on the corner,’ Ridge was quietly saying when Mallon and Pelling re-joined the group. ‘We need to make up some time, so we’re jogging till then, but keep it low and tight to the hedge.’

  ‘Do you think you can run that far, Lucy?’ asked Andrews, looking from the house some two hundred metres away and back at the frail young girl clutching the child tightly in her arms. ‘If you get tired, let me know, okay. I won’t let them leave you behind, I promise.’

  Lucy’s gaze seemed to study Andrews’ face as he spoke, something akin to confusion dancing behind her eyes. Eventually she silently nodded her reply.

  ‘Good,’ Andrews softly replied, giving Lucy a friendly wink.

  The house that they were jogging towards was the first in a row of seven medium sized homes built alon
g one side of the road that they would need to take to get to Carlyon Bay. As they ran, Andrews could hear Lucy behind him breathlessly whispering words of comfort to the child in her arms. Thankfully, at the moment, the infant was relatively quiet, but Andrews knew that couldn’t last forever and a bawling child could be a death sentence to them all if the hungry corpses heard it. He prayed for the child’s sake, its contented disposition continued. He knew for certain Sergeant Ridge and even Pelling, would happily silence it permanently rather than put their own lives in danger, and if it did come to that, Andrews knew he would have to intervene to prevent it, whatever the cost.

  ‘Down!’ whispered Ridge, ducking under the overhanging branches of a blossoming cherry tree to lean against the low garden wall of the first house.

  One by one, the group crouched behind the Sergeant, each of them nervously scanning the road about them. Cautiously edging to the corner of the wall, Sergeant Ridge silently pushed aside the wispy foliage of a vast pampas grass plant to steel a glance of what awaited them on the road ahead. He did not like what he saw, far from it, and as for as the chances of them surviving the next hundred metres on this road, it looked bloody awful.

  ‘Shit!’ he spat, gently letting the pampas grass fall back into place as he backed away from the corner.

  ‘We’ll have to find another way,’ he whispered, pulling the folded map out from under his jacket, ‘there’s at least forty of those pus-bags on the road and even more further on. They’re just milling about now, but if they catch a glimpse of us, the shit will really hit the fan.’

  He let the meaning of his words hang, un-clarified, in the air. He didn’t need to explain, they all knew what he meant. Even if they dared to use their assault rifles, they would be overrun and slaughtered within minutes. As Sergeant Ridge frantically searched for another route, Grimes could be heard desperately trying to vomit without making any noise. He was failing.