‘Yeah, but still,’ continued Phil, using the crook of his elbow to wipe the rainwater from his face.
‘I know…,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘but what choice do we have? Until Carmella is fit to travel we’re sort of stuck with doing whatever Zak asks.’
‘And that’s another thing,’ said Phil, ‘for someone in charge he’s barely said ten words to us… don’t you find that a bit odd?’
‘So he’s not very ‘hands on’… doesn’t make him a bad person,’ offered Tom, looking up from the map.
‘No, but it makes him a bad leader,’ muttered Charlie, pulling Star to a halt in front of the gate.
Looking through the viewing slit, Charlie watched one of the bowmen slowly removing the secured padlock. Then as the young man began to swing open first one side of the gate and then the other Charlie noticed a figure standing in lone vigil under the raised platform. It was the old teacher, he had returned. Hidden partly in the shadows, unnoticed by the guards, he stood watching the cart’s departure with a look Charlie could only describe as pure hopelessness etched over his drawn features.
‘Charlie,’ said Tom, nudging him in the back.
‘What? Oh, sorry,’ he said, realising the bowman had stepped beyond the gate and was now waving him forward. ‘I was miles away.’
‘You alright?’ asked Phil, concerned by Charlie’s out of character lapse in concentration.
‘Yeah… Yeah, I’m fine,’ he replied, glancing back at the two men behind him.
‘It’s nothing,’ he continued, turning back to give a flick of Star’s reins.
But even as Star pulled the cart through the fortified gate, Charlie couldn’t help but watch the old man still following their passing; their eyes seemingly locked, right up to the moment until he was finally lost from sight and Charlie hoped it really was ‘nothing’ after all.
***
Adrian Porrow silently watched the young man who had once been his pupil slowly close the gates behind the departing cart holding the three men; the three men he knew would never see their friends again. For what seemed like the hundredth time that morning his mind was consumed with a swirling mix of fear, shame and an all-encompassing darkness.
When the other members of the faculty had abandoned the boys at the school to their fate, it was he who had stood by them. It was he who had promised to protect and nurture them; and it was he who had helped them build a new way of life in this world of the Dead. Just how something that had started out so full of hope and promise had turned into such a vile and abusive regime, he could not understand. He had thought that Zak, and what was left of the rugby team, had been the obvious choice to lead the rest of the boys. They had been popular, well respected and more importantly were physically able to protect those less capable. Yet he had soon come to realise that he had helped Zak turn Saint Xavier’s into little more than a gilded cage; a cage of high walls, vegetable plots and rationed electricity, but a cage none the less. Trapped behind its invisible bars of fear with nowhere else to go but out among the Dead, something dark blossomed within Zak and his guards, changing them until what little of the good natured boys Adrian Porrow had known was left. Something twisted and terrifying had descended upon Saint Xavier’s and to his shame they had all accepted it with fearful open arms.
He had lost count of the bedraggled survivors who had sought the safety that the walls of the Academy promised, only to fall foul of these young men drunk on power and lust. The girls and women were raped, beaten and broken, only to be handed out like so much meat to the men of Zak’s guard; while their men were simply slaughtered or sent on doomed missions never to be seen again. And he had simply stood by and let it happen. Perhaps if he had challenged Zak and his men earlier, perhaps then he might have saved them. Yet he had said nothing and the dark cancer that had taken hold within Saint Xavier’s had flourished until little else remained; and as this cancer grew so did his own shame until it too consumed him. It twisted about his sanity like a deadly creeper, clouding his own mind from reality; a reality he knew he could no longer stand to witness. But even then in his dark solitude sometimes the strangling creeper would part, its cloying foliage pushed aside by the simplest of kind acts or words from a stranger; such as the young woman who had spoken to him last night. She had shed a brief light into the depths of his swirling despair and in that moment he knew it had to end; by his hand Saint Xavier’s had survived the initial arrival of the Dead and by his hand it would perish.
In front of him the guard had replaced the padlock, locking the gates and was walking towards the platform to resume his oppressive watch over those working in the gardens. Pushing himself deeper into the shadows, Adrian watched as the young man climbed the ladder unaware of his presence. Glancing nervously about him, he willed his feet to move and after what seemed like an age, he finally stepped away from the wall to place his foot on the first rung of the ladder.
‘What do you want, Porrow?’ said the young man, barely sparing a contempt filled glance in his old teacher’s direction.
‘I… I…’ Adrian began, searching for the words as he stepped closer to him on the platform.
‘Oh, just fucking spit it out you,’ growled the guard.
But whatever insult he had intended to deliver to the old man, his words were abruptly cut short by the knife ripping through his ribcage to puncture his lung.
‘I’m sorry,’ Adrian Porrow whispered, helping the shocked and bleeding young man to the floor of the platform.
With his eyes wide in disbelief the young man looked up into the face of his killer, shaking his head back and forth as he impotently opened and closed his mouth to gulp down panicky breaths.
‘I’m so sorry, Jamie,’ Adrian repeated, forcing the blade deeper into the young man’s body with a second sharp thrust.
With a gasp, Jamie’s lung tore further; the knife rending vital tissue to a bloody mess. Then with a sound half way between a cough and a gag, deep red blood suddenly erupted from Jamie’s mouth, splashing across his killer’s chest and in that instant Jamie knew as much as he needed to fight for his life, but it was a fight he would ultimately lose.
‘I’m sorry but it has to end, Jamie… I’m so sorry,’ Adrian tearfully whispered over and over again, holding the dying young man tight in his arms until his ever weakening struggles finally ceased and he knew this task was complete.
‘It has to end…’ Adrian repeated to himself, standing to look down at the now motionless body at his feet.
With the bloody knife still clutched in his fist, Adrian Porrow turned away from the momentarily lifeless corpse, climbed down the ladder and began to walk over to the next guarded platform, some hundred meters along the wall.
‘It has to end,’ he muttered to himself, a few minutes later; once again standing at the base of a platform.
***
The creature that had been Abby, alerted to the presence of the living by Anne’s soft whimpering, thrashed its body back and forth in the darkness; letting forth a pleadingly desperate moan. Just like every other person who had died during the last five years, Abby’s cadaver had reanimated within minutes of that special spark fleeing her mortal shell. It had come back enraged by the hunger that burned deep at the centre of its being and even in the darkness the Dead girl sought salvation from this desperate need that consumed her. Her lifeless ears still registered the soft choking cries of something warm and living nearby and somehow she knew if only she could tear into it her desire may be sated. She simply had to find the flesh. She had to rip, she had to tear and she had to consume; she had no choice.
As the Dead girl strained against her bonds, desperately trying to wriggle through the blackness surrounding her to get the flesh it knew was tantalisingly close; Liz, Anne, Sally and Fran did their best to shuffle away from her. Kyle had said the Dead were more docile with the bag over their heads and from the evidence she had seen with Baxter and Parker Liz knew this seemed to be the case but when Abby had died only to come back
as one of the Dead moments later, the lack of sight had done little to diminish her wild savagery. Out of pure luck, rather than by any calculated plan, Liz and the others had manage to make their way across the floor of the cellar and over to the wall by the door. With their backs pressed against the cold brickwork they had each waited for that terrifying moment when out of the darkness unseen teeth could suddenly rip into their flesh. At one point Sally had even felt some part of the Dead girl brush against her leg but luck had been with her and the hungry cadaver had moved on in its blind search unwittingly allowing Sally’s flesh to slip through its fingers. But the night had worn on and as the hours passed the Dead girl’s manic desperation finally begun to wane. With the slow decaying of her brain, her reactions had slowed down and her muscles had started to stiffen; yet still the compulsion to feed would not release its hold of her.
Beside her, Liz could feel her sister shaking, the almost silent sobs that she fought to keep inside her racking through her small body.
‘Won’t be long now,’ Liz whispered, lowering her chin to the mess of curls on the top of Anne’s head.
Even at the sound of her brief hushed words the Dead girl let forth a wretched moan from somewhere in the room. As the call echoed through the smothering darkness Anne instinctively pushed herself closer to her big sister, burying her face in her chest.
‘Lizzie,’ she sobbed, the single word muffled by fabric of Liz’s jacket.
‘It’s alright Anne,’ said Fran, her whispered voice coming from somewhere on the child’s left. ‘Ab… I mean the Dead girl, she’s slowed down now. We should be able to keep…’
Fran was about to say more but the sound of the door at the top of the stairs opening suddenly drifted down to them and she stopped.
‘Someone’s coming,’ she hissed to Liz, receiving another moan from Abby’s cadaver.
‘Get ready,’ Liz began, ignoring the corpse’s pleading calls, ‘Kyle wants us alive but he plans to kill Charlie and the others. We’ve got to stop him… keep an eye out for any opportunity… We’ve got to…’
As the sound of the bolt being drawn across echoed loudly through the dark basement, Liz stopped talking. She had played Kyle’s game until now to keep Anne safe but from this moment on he was about to experience a glitch in his egomaniacal plans. She didn’t know how she would do it, but she knew she would make sure he paid for how he had treated Abby and if she found out she was already too late to save Charlie then God help him; her retribution would be unstoppable.
With a ‘click’ the lights overhead suddenly came on, bathing the basement in harsh light. Quickly turning her head away and blinking at the sudden brightness, Liz tried to ignore the brief bloody snapshots she had been given of the room around her. Transformed into a horrific tableau during the night, the floor was crisscrossed with streaks and smears of sticky blood left by Abby’s corpse as she has made her slow progress about the room to find the living flesh that eluded her. The trail finally led to her bound and hooded cadaver wedged under a large worktable.
‘Dear God!’ choked a man’s voice she instantly knew wasn’t Kyle’s. ‘Those… those boys… what have they done? My God, what have they done?’
Craning her head to the side, Liz was surprised to see the old teacher, Mr Porrow, slowly stepping into the room with a look of utter distress etched on his face. More worrying than the old man’s unexpected arrival was the fact that not only was he spattered with blood but clenched in his fist was a knife and it looked as if it had been recently used to take someone’s life.
‘It… It all went wrong,’ the teacher wept, seemingly talking to himself rather than to anyone in particular. ‘How did it all go so wrong?’
Dropping to his knees in front of Abby’s excited corpse, Adrian Porrow tentatively reached out a blood covered hand as if to calm the Dead girl.
‘I’m sorry, Abby. I’m so sorry,’ he sobbed, gently stroking the hood over the Dead girl’s head, ‘It was never meant to be like this…. never like this.’
‘Sir,’ said Liz, trying to break through to the man whose sanity had obviously cracked.
‘They were good boys… at the beginning they were so good,’ he continued, as if oblivious to Liz’s presence. ‘But something went wrong… some… something bad took them over…and… and I couldn’t stop them…’
‘Sir, Mr Porrow,’ Liz tried again, pushing herself away from the wall. ‘Sir, we need your help. Please, can you cut us free…?’
‘I… I should have stopped them,’ he wept, banging his forehead with the fist still clutching the bloody knife. ‘May God forgive me, I should have stopped them… I should have stopped them.’
‘Sir!’ Liz said again, raising her voice. ‘Help us.’
This time something in her tone managed to reach him and with the bloody fist still pressed against his head, his tearful eyes slowly turned to her.
‘Help us,’ she repeated, holding out her bound wrists.
‘You have to hurry,’ he replied in a whisper, shaking his head back and forth. ‘It’s already started… Saint Xavier’s is dying…’
‘Please…’ she said again, thrusting her wrists forward.
With one final glance to the Dead girl under the table, Adrian Porrow pushed himself up from his knees and began slowly walking towards her.
‘All those girls and women…,’ he said, holding Liz’s stare. ‘So…so many… so many lost for no reason… no reason at all.’
‘And… and I just stood by and let it happen,’ he continued, looking down at her, ‘I didn’t know what to do… Do… do you think they can they forgive me… please… please say they forgive me…’
‘I…I’m sorry…I… I don’t know,’ Liz managed to whisper in reply, looking up into the eyes of the broken man.
As she said the words the bloody knife slipped from his fingers and landed on the stone floor with a clatter. Unnoticed and instantly forgotten by the man whose reality had finally proven too much for him to bare, Liz knew a chance when she saw it.
‘Already dying,’ muttered Adrian Porrow, his gaze drifting to some unknown point.
‘Fran,’ hissed Liz, nodding toward the knife as Porrow turned away from her and began walking deeper into the room. ‘Can you reach it?’
‘I… I think so,’ Fran grunted in reply, trying to manoeuvre her legs so she could reach the blade.
‘Damn!’ she snapped, realising her boots were just knocking against the knife rather than dragging it closer. ‘Hang on… wait a sec…’ she continued, awkwardly shuffling her whole body away from the wall on her side.
‘Yes!’ she cried, finally kicking the knife within reach of the hands bound behind her back.
Careful not to cut herself, Fran deftly turned the blade around with her fingertips until she had the cutting edge lodged between her palms and facing towards her wrists.
‘I’ve got it,’ she whispered.
Gently at first, Fran used the stone floor beneath her to apply pressure to the handle of the knife, slowly forcing the blade through the miniscule gap between her wrists. Then with a ‘snap’ the blade cut through the plastic ties and she was free.
‘Thank fuck…’ she gasped to herself, moving her aching wrists back and forth before cutting at the tie’s about her ankles.
‘Forgive me,’ came Porrow’s ignored whispered words from across the room.
Concentrating on freeing themselves, Fran and the others did not see Adrian Porrow raise his shaking and blood covered fingers to the door at the other end of the room; the door that held the Dead women and girls at bay.
With a ‘snap’ Fran cut free the ties holding Liz’s ankles.
‘Wrists,’ she said, tossing the broken plastic to one side.
‘Please forgive me,’ mumbled Adrian again, resting his forehead against the cold metal door while his fingers began to tighten about the securing bolt, ‘please…’
‘Liz!’ said Sally, looking over Fran’s shoulder with wide eyed horror to the old man abou
t to open a doorway to hell.
‘Jesus!’ Liz gasped.
‘Mr Porrow!’ she called, glancing down as the knife Fran was holding suddenly broke through the plastic ties about her wrists. ‘You need to come away from the door. Please, Mr Porrow, Sir, just come away from the door…’
Jumping to her feet, Liz pulled an already freed Anne behind her.
‘Mr Porrow!’ she shouted, trying again to get through to the man whose remorse and shame had consumed his sanity.
But even as she said the words she saw the bolt sliding slowly across in its channel, until with a ‘thunk’ gravity took control of the weighty door and it swung open a fraction.
‘Hurry!’ Liz hissed to Fran, quickly looking down at her as she worked on Sally’s ankles.
Without even waiting for her wrists to be free, Sally stood up the moment the knife snapped through the ankle ties and began edging toward the door.
‘Sally, your wrists,’ Fran whispered, glancing over her shoulder to the old teacher as he slowly pulled open the door.
‘Sir!’ cried Liz, taking a small hesitant step forward. ‘Please don’t…’
Almost immediately the smell of rotting flesh enveloped the room, coating their tongues with a film of death.
‘We need to get out of here,’ spat Sally, covering her mouth her hand, ‘and now, before that lunatic kills us all.’
‘Saint Xavier’s is already dying…’ Adrian whispered, looking back at them with sad tear filled eyes; his blood stained fingers shakily touching his lips, ‘already dying… we’re already dying… and in death all we can beg for is forgiveness…’ he continued, while beyond him the shadowy hooded corpses suddenly began to move to the open doorway; their excitable moans increasing in volume. ‘I have to beg forgiveness… their forgiveness.’
‘Porrow. No!’ screamed Liz in horror, as the old man turned away from her to step into the moving shadows to be lost from sight.
Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead Page 26