His words were abruptly cut short by the sight of a naked young woman running across their path sprinting towards to woods as if her life depended on it. Directly behind her, almost within arm’s reach, was a second woman clothed in a gore splattered oversized T-shirt. Startlingly similar in appearance, the two had to be related in some way but at the moment there was a world of difference between the two, the second woman was Dead.
‘Charlie,’ said Phil, already reaching for the handle of one of the side hatches, ‘she needs our help… I’m going out.’
‘What?… Phil!’ Charlie managed to say before soft moonlight flooded the cart’s interior.
‘Damn!’ he continued, catching a glimpse of Phil’s back as he ran to the woman’s aid, a heavy length of pipe in his hand.
As it happened, the young woman wasn’t quite as helpless as she first appeared and dropping suddenly to her knees, she allowed the Dead woman to plough directly into her crouched form, sending her flying. Before the Dead woman had even landed on the gravel, the young woman was up on her feet and surprisingly charging towards, rather than away from, the moving corpse. When she reached her, the Dead woman was just pushing herself up with arms but with more power than her lithe body suggested, the young woman leapt into the air, her right leg extended and landed hard on the back of the Dead woman’s neck. With a sickening crack the woman’s neck broke and at last her Dead limbs were still.
As if all the wind had suddenly been taken from her sails, the young woman slumped to ground, her hands in her lap as she forlornly watched the impotently snapping jaws of the Dead woman still trying to reach her.
‘Would you like me to finish her?’ asked Phil, coming to a halt just behind the young woman.
‘What? Oh… No, no I’ll do it,’ she managed to say, tilting her head up to Phil. ‘We… we promised each other… if… if one of us ever…’
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Phil interrupted, crouching down beside her as he pulled his hunting knife free of the sheath on his calf. ‘You shouldn’t have to do this…’
‘No… I promised,’ she replied, her tone telling him anything else was not an option.
With a nod of understanding, Phil flipped the knife in his hand and handed it to her, handle first. For a moment the woman looked at the comically large knife in her small hand, a flash of silver momentarily illuminating her face as the blade reflected the moon above her. With her fingers shaking slightly, the young woman pushed aside the Dead woman’s blood-matted hair and choked back the deep sob that threatened to overwhelm her.
‘Debs,’ she said, ignoring the visage of the snarling corpse with the snapping jaws that even now looked at her with such wild desperation and need.
For she could not see the monster the woman in front of her had become, she could only see her sister. The sister that had held her as hell vomited forth its plague on humanity condemning them to an all too short life of fear and pain, the sister who had fought by her side to keep the Dead at bay for the last five years and the sister who had ultimately sacrificed herself so that she could live. But they had made a promise to each other, a vow that neither of them could break and even as the tears fell freely from the young woman’s eyes she took the knife and placed it above the growling cadaver’s ear.
‘I love you, Debs,’ she said, the tip of the knife spearing through the ear canal. ‘I kept my promise…’
With a sharp downward thrust and a stomach turning ‘crack’, the knife broke through the skull to destroy the brain within. Instantly the Dead woman became still, whatever unnatural tie her body had with the living now severed.
‘I’m sorry… Erm…’ Phil whispered, pausing for the woman to fill in her name.
‘Frances… Fran, they call me Fran,’ she whispered back, her lips barely moving as she gently stroked her sister’s face.
‘Right… Fran, we need to get out of here,’ he replied, gently lifting her to her feet.
After a few shaky steps Fran released herself from Phil’s helpful support.
‘Here,’ he continued, quickly pulling his long sleeved T-shirt over his head as they briskly walked back to the cart, ‘you might want to put this on.’
‘Thanks,’ she replied, slipping on the oversized garment just as they got to the cart.
‘It’s a bit cramped but it’ll only be for a few hours until the Dead have slowed down and then we can go back in and clear the Institute,’ whispered Phil, helping Fran up through the open hatch.
Pulling the hatch closed after him, even in the darkness Phil could feel Charlie’s angry gaze upon him.
‘I couldn’t just sit here,’ he defensively said to the darkness.
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ Charlie growled.
Phil knew Charlie’s anger was justified, he had endangered them all by leaving the cart the way he had. If any of the Dead had seen him and Fran returning they would have attacked them all, their moaning alerting more and more of Dead that the living were inside and as sturdy as the cart walls were, they could only withstand so much abuse if the Dead attacked on mass.
With a click of Michael’s tongue Snow began to move again, pulling the heavy cart behind her.
‘Can anyone else smell smoke?’ asked David, in a hushed voice to no one in particular.
With the sound of sniffing, Liz adjusted Anne on her lap as best she could and pushed aside the cover of one of the spy holes in the back wall of the cart.
‘Oh, shit!’ she said, looking back the way they had come. ‘It’s the institute… the main building, it’s on fire.’
Behind them, golden flames flickered at many of the barred upper floor windows, illuminating the tragic figures of the Dead as they hunted the few living souls still trapped inside the building. In one of the vegetable gardens below, Liz watched as the silhouetted figures of two Dead men took down a man as he bolted through the main doors hopeful to escape the inferno. Even from a distance, she could see he held in his arms a terrified child. They didn’t stand a chance and although he fought gallantly to protect the child, Liz knew the result was inevitable.
‘We’d better come up with a new plan,’ she softly said, closing the cover back over the spy hole. ‘I doubt there’ll be much to salvage by morning.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Charlie began, his voice an urgent whisper. ‘We stick to the plan…. Wait it out on the other side of the wall until morning and if all that’s left is a burnt out shell, then so be it… We’ll survive.’
‘I agree,’ said Tom, ‘there’s nothing in there that won’t keep till dawn and certainly nothing worth dying for.’
A few minutes later the gentle rocking of the cart came to an abrupt halt as Michael pulled Snow to a stop.
‘Well… would you look at that!’ he said, under his breath.
‘Looks like we’ve found Star and our missing cart,’ he continued, smiling to himself as the dark mottled mare just beyond the gate seemed to shake her head in recognition at Snow’s approach, ‘and whoever drove her out here has obviously had the same idea as us to wait out the storm…’
‘Yes, but just who will we be waiting out the storm with?’ mumbled Charlie, reaching for the bolt of the nearest side hatch.
With all the Dead still concentrated nearer the burning Institute, Charlie knew now was the best time to check out who was in the other cart. To leave it any longer simply ran the risk of running into them as they began to disperse in search for more of the living.
‘Be right back,’ he whispered, slowly opening the hatch, jumping down and closing it behind him.
Walking to the front of the cart, Charlie gave Snow a reassuring pat as he passed her.
‘Good girl,’ he mumbled, his hand running along her thick neck.
Glancing back at the institute, before the high wall cut it off from his line of sight, Charlie cursed their bad luck. He had hoped it would simply be a case of clearing the Dead to reclaim the building and then they could carry on as before but seeing how much of the buildi
ng was ablaze he knew that was no longer to be an option. Even the trees closest to the building had caught alight; the older among them already sending their rotten branches crashing to the ground in a shower of flaming sparks.
Charlie had just reach the rear of the second cart when he heard the tell-tale scraping of painfully slow footsteps approaching from somewhere to his right. Behind him Snow gave a brief snort of displeasure as the stench of rotting flesh reached her and when the smell hit him also, Charlie knew, with relief, that whatever was coming had been dead a long time. Turning so his back was to the cart, he waited for this new guest to arrive. If he was quiet the creature may just pass him entirely, unaware of his presence, but that was not the way Charlie did things. In his mind any of the Dead left to wander was just one more set of teeth that one day may be tearing into your flesh or that of someone you loved, so as a rule he dispatched these walking cadavers whenever the opportunity presented itself. The amount of corpses he consigned to their denied oblivion was but a infinitesimally small drop in the ocean compared to the countless hordes of the Dead that roamed the planet, but in some way the fact that he did his small part made it just that bit easier to sleep at night.
The sound of loose gravel skittering close by told him whatever was dragging itself by was almost upon him. Sure enough, with the pale moonlight filtering through the light cloud cover above him and the soft orange glow from the burning Institute, Charlie saw the walking corpse suddenly appear from the shadows. The Dead man looked as though he may have been a workman of some sort at one time. His florescent jerkin, now dull and covered with ancient gore, hung loose about his withered frame. His naked torso beneath, once presumably covered in muscle built up from a hard day’s labour, was now sunken and emaciated. Blooming from the right side of his chest, up along his skeletal neck and across his gaunt face, a spider web of dark mould had taken root to extract the last remnants of nutrition from his decaying skin and muscle. Charlie couldn’t initially tell what had killed the Dead man but as the cadaver forced his legs to take another excruciating step forward it became all too apparent. There, between his jerkin and the loosely hanging trousers perched precariously on angular hip bones, was the ragged gaping hole where his kidneys had once been. Whether it had been the blood loss and trauma that had killed him or he had fallen victim to the unknown activator that the Dead held within their bite which pulled the living to their death beds only to force them to rise again as one of the Dead themselves, it didn’t matter. The man was gone, whatever had made up his personality, hopes and dreams had been stripped from him the moment he had fallen to their unnatural hunger.
Stepping silently behind the cadaver, Charlie quickly made a grab at the back of the jerkin and even before the Dead man could turn his milky eyes upon him, he thrust upwards toward the back of the Dead man’s skull. With a crack the hunting knife strapped to Charlie’s wrist tore through the thin bone at the base of the skull and sliding through the putrid brain to its hilt, the knife came to a stop just proud of the matted hair on the top of the man’s head. As a dark and foul smelling liquid began to drip from the puncture wound down onto the plastic covering of what was left of his prosthetic arm Charlie yanked his arm back, allowing the corpse to fall lifeless to the road.
After a brief pause to make sure the Dead man had been alone, Charlie turned and knocked gently on one of the cart’s hatches. When nothing happened he knocked again, this time with a little more urgency.
‘Who’s in there?’ he whispered, eager to find out just who had helped themselves to Star and their second cart.
‘Oh, thank God,’ came a woman’s worried voice, followed by the sound of a bolt being drawn across.
By the time the hatch had been pushed open and the woman’s blood splattered face had appeared from the darkness, Charlie was unsurprised to see Sally looking back at him.
‘You have a knack for survival, Sally,’ he mused, pulling himself up into the darkness safe beyond the prying eyes of the Dead. ‘Is it just you in here?’
‘Yes,’ she tearfully replied, dramatically throwing herself against Charlie’s chest in true damsel in distress manner, ‘I only just managed to escape… They tore through the door before we knew what had happened… Daniels… they… they ripped him apart… I got past them and made my way through the kitchens to the stables… I didn’t know what else to do but drive Star out here and wait… wait for other survivors… ’
Charlie nodded his understanding, unseen in the darkness. Sally had barely had enough time to build any sort of feelings for Daniels but even so, it was always horrific to witness the fast moving Dead in full attack. The fact that she had managed to escape them as they had swept through the Institute while others had fallen victim to their ravenous hunger proved to Charlie that when her life was on the line, Sally could be as lethal to the Dead as the rest of them. Perhaps she had some hidden talent after all.
‘Did… did we lose anybody?’ she continued in a whisper, almost as an afterthought to her own story.
‘No, thank God,’ he replied, feeling a little uncomfortable as Sally rested her head against his chest.
He had already made it clear to her before that he held no interest in her in that way but Sally was just being Sally and if she could ingratiate herself with a man who would protect her, she would. Of course it never occurred to her that Charlie would protect her anyway regardless of any advances she made toward him, just as he would for any of their group. It was simply just in his nature.
‘And Phil managed to rescue another young woman,’ he continued. ‘Fran, she said her name was.’
‘Oh… her,’ Sally said, leaning away from Charlie, ‘I’m surprised she needed any rescuing. From what Daniels said about her and that sister of hers, she can take care of herself… her father was a judo instructor or something… she’s very tomboy-ish.’
‘She just had to kill that sister of hers,’ said Charlie, already not liking Sally’s disapproving tone toward Fran, ‘So play nice…’
‘What?’ she interrupted.
‘You know what…’ he replied, realising he was wasting his time if he thought he could ever change Sally’s attitude to other women.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘there’s far too many of us in the other cart, so I’m going to go and bring some of them over here. You know the drill, keep quiet and in the morning we’ll check the grounds for other survivors and see what’s left in the Institute we can salvage…’
‘So we’re moving on then,’ asked Sally, a resigned sadness creeping into her voice.
‘I’m afraid it looks like it,’ he replied with a heavy sigh, as he slid aside the bolt on the hatch door.
Thankfully the process of transferring some of the group from the full cart over to Sally was completed in only a few uneventful minutes. Dividing those with fighting skills between the two carts, Charlie decided rather than move her unnecessarily, Carmella and therefore Vincenzo should stay where they were, together with Liz, Anne, Cam, Fran and himself. The others would be joining Sally for the night.
‘If Paul falls asleep make sure he doesn’t cry out,’ whispered Charlie as he began to close the hatch on Tom, Phil and the others.
‘I’ll stay awake to make sure,’ replied Tyrone from the darkness.
Tyrone realised his profoundly deaf brother could be a liability to them all, even to the point of possibly endangering their very lives. Unaware and unable to control the sounds he made in his sleep while his mind tortured him with horrific dreams Paul, and by default Tyrone himself, could easily have been abandoned or left to fend for themselves if Charlie had pushed the point. But despite the dangers, Charlie had brushed aside his worries and told Tyrone in no uncertain terms he would never even contemplate leaving them behind. Such was the type of man Charlie was.
Charlie silently closed the hatch on the second cart safe in the knowledge Tyrone would be true to his word and would indeed stay awake to watch over his brother. Walking back to towards Snow, he paused brief
ly to grab the Dead man he had dispatched by the ankles. Despite a layer of filth covered denim between his hands and the Dead man’s emaciated legs, he could still feel the loose skin sloughing and tearing beneath his grasp as he pulled the corpse over to the side of the road. With a grunt he tossed the body, legs first, into a large bramble bush before walking back over to Snow.
‘That better, girl?’ he whispered, giving her cheek a friendly pat.
As if to answer him, the trusty mare briefly snorted and nudged him back affectionately.
‘We’ll find you something to eat in the morning,’ he mumbled, looking over at the burning Institute as the soft golden glow from the flames danced across his concerned face, ‘hopefully…’
Chapter 2
As her blade whispered through the air Liz casually noticed the Dead woman in front of her was missing three of the fingers of her right hand; yet this was in fact the least of the Dead woman’s injuries. With only a dried leathery strip of curling skin on her shoulder, she was actually missing her whole left arm. Offering barely any resistance, the razor sharp edge of Liz’s blade sliced effortlessly through tendon, withered muscle and bone, sending the Dead woman’s mutilated hand dropping to the road. Of course this did little to stop the Dead woman in her compulsive advancement toward the flesh she craved, towards Liz. But now with only the severed stump reaching for her, Liz could take her time to exercise a clean killing blow. With a flick of her wrist her sword sliced through the air yet again, the arc of the blade bisecting the woman’s face just above her jaw bone. Almost instantly the Dead woman’s moaning stopped and her remaining arm fell lifeless to her side. For a split second she seemed to waver back and forth, unsteadily on her feet but then, as gravity took control, her ruined body fell to join the hand at Liz’s feet. Liz watched as the top half of the cadaver’s head bounced along the cracked road surface, finally coming to rest by a large patch of dandelions that had taken root just near the curb. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure Charlie, Cam and Tom had the other Dead under control, Liz walked over to what was left of the decapitated head. Even though the Dead woman was effectively out of action and no longer a danger to anyone Liz refused to allow the remaining abomination to carry on its unnatural existence. Trying to ignore the roaming film covered eyes that followed her every movement, she placed her foot on what was left of the corpse’s face and thrust down with her sword. Its tip easily punctured the skull to tear through the decaying brain housed within and as she removed her foot to walk away she knew the cadaver’s eyes would never look upon the living again.
Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead Page 4