Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead

by Charlick, Stephen

  ‘OK,’ Phil eventually said, with a sharp nod.

  ‘Yeah, I’m in,’ agreed Tom, mirroring Phil’s nod.

  With a smile of gratitude spreading across his face, Charlie turned back to the road ahead of them and began to look for a wide enough section to manoeuvre Star around.

  Just what sort of reception they could expect from Zak and his guards upon their ‘empty handed’ return, Charlie was unsure; but one thing he was certain of, one way or another their brief stay at Saint Xavier’s academy was at an end.

  ‘Star, let’s go get our people,’ Charlie muttered, giving the mare’s reins a sharp flick.

  ***

  Up on the roof of Saint Xavier’s Cam and Michael battled against the gusting winds and heavy rain to pump the water from the tank on the lower level to the main reservoir on the roof. Kai, who at the moment was acting somewhere between a supervisor and the role of babysitter, was managing to shelter from the worst of the weather under a large plastic poncho; his two conscripted workers were not so fortunate.

  ‘Tell me again why we’re doing this?’ grumbled Michael, adjusting the collar of his already water clogged jacket to a position higher up his neck. ‘Especially in this weather!’

  ‘Oh don’t start,’ said Cam, pausing briefly to push his wet hair away from his eyes. ‘we’ll probably be doing this all day… I don’t think I can cope with the rain and you bitching about it at the same time.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it make more sense to have tanks that you could just take the lids off and let the rain fill them up in weather like this?’ shouted Michael over the howling wind to the young man from Saint Xavier’s.

  Realising one of the men was talking to him, Kai gave up his pointless fight to keep the wind from catching the bottom of his waterproof, pushed himself away from the small roof access door and with a brief glance to make sure the length of timber was still wedged between the door and its frame, jogged over to them.

  ‘S… Sorry?’ he said, cupping his hand around his ear in an attempt to shield it from the wind.

  ‘I said, why don’t the lids come off the tanks and then the rain can fill them up,’ Michael repeated, pushing down on the pump handle while the handle in Cam’s hands rose.

  ‘I did p… p… point that out to K… Kyle once,’ Kai replied, the mix of his stammer and the wind making it difficult for Michael and Cam to catch every word he was saying. ‘B… but he didn’t th… th… think it impor… important.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Michael, nodding politely to avoid Kai having to repeat himself.

  It was clear to Kai that the man hadn’t heard him and in his answer he was just being polite. So to prevent an awkward situation he simply played along, shrugging his shoulders and giving him an ‘I know’ type smile in return. For a while Kai watched the two men working but he soon felt a little uncomfortable just standing by as the Michael and Cam worked in the rain, so he turned, pulled his waterproof tighter about himself and began to walk over to the carved balustrade that ran the perimeter of the roof. He had barely taken two steps when the briefest drop in the howling wind allowed him to catch Michael asking Cam for confirmation on what he had said. With a smile twitching his lips, Kai began to prod pointlessly at a large patch of lichen growing on the stonework. He had just picked off a tiny patch of the slow growing plant when an odd sound carried on the wind caught his ear. Confused as to what it could be, Kai tilted his ear to the wind to see if the sound would come again. Sure enough it did but as to its source he had no idea. It was only when peered forward over the balustrade that he realised what it was; in an instant his blood had turned to ice and the smile faded from his lips. For there, trampling their way through the vegetable patches and making a beeline for a screaming figure that had already been tackled to the ground were thirty or forty of the Dead.

  ‘Fuck!’ Kai managed to say, his terror seeming to override his stammer.

  ‘The gates!’ he cried, turning to look in wide eyed horror at Cam and Michael.

  The two men had seen this look countless times over the last five years and instinctively knew what Kai meant; the gates were open and the Dead had breached Saint Xavier’s. Without even stopping to see for themselves, they both darted for the access door. As they disappeared through the doorway Michael grabbed the hefty piece of timber lying against the doorframe to use as a weapon.

  ‘No!’ shouted Kai, spurring his legs into action as he watched the door, caught by the wind, slowly swing shut.

  ***

  ‘Wait!’ cried Fran, grabbing Liz’s sleeve as they ran, while behind them the moans of the Dead still echoed.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Liz, glancing nervously over the young woman’s shoulder, ‘I’ve got to get Anne to the cart before the Dead catch up with us… Porrow, Baxter and Parker, they’ll have come back by now and they’re going to be able to move a lot faster than the others… it’s the only way to keep her safe.’

  ‘I know, but this is the way I was taken yesterday to get to Carmella,’ panted Fran, pointing down a branching hallway to a small staircase. ‘It’s just up here and along to the left.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Liz, knowing they had more chance of staying alive if they kept together. ‘This place is like a warren, you get lost and…’

  She left her statement unfinished, they both knew what could happen if she was wrong.

  ‘I know,’ Fran continued, trying her best to ignore the calls of the Dead that seemed to be getting louder and more importantly closer with every second. ‘But this is the way I need to go, I’m sure of it… and to get outside you’ll need to carry on down here, past a large room with big windows, it looks as though it was once a biology lab or something, then take the left turn and then the second left again… that should take you out into the gardens.’

  Liz anxiously chewed her lip, looking from Fran to Anne held in Sally’s arms, her wide eyes full of fear.

  ‘I’m not leaving her,’ said Fran, slowly shaking her head, ‘I promised…’

  ‘OK,’ Liz finally said, knowing their window of escape was closing fast. ‘You get Carmella and her baby and get to the cart as quickly as you can.’

  ‘What about the others?’ asked Sally, uncharacteristically thinking of the missing members of their group. ‘We can’t just abandon them, they’ve no idea the Dead are here…’

  ‘From the blood I saw on Porrow I think they’ll already know the shit’s hit the fan,’ replied Liz, knowing the man had killed at least one person before his fatal trip to the basement, ‘but once Anne is safe I’ll try to find them.’

  ‘And if I come across them I’ll tell them the cart is the collection point,’ said Fran, already turning away from the two women to make her way down the side hallway to the stairs.

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ she added, looking over her shoulder.

  ‘Just stay alive!’ Liz called after her, worried she could so easily never see her relatively new friend again.

  ‘Do my best!’ called Fran, breaking into a jog.

  Hoping Fran’s ‘best’ was going to be enough, Liz turned her attention back to her own survival.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ she said looking to Sally, ‘and try to keep behind me… just in case, OK?’

  ‘No arguments here,’ Sally muttered, falling into a jog just a few steps behind Liz with her deadly sword in her hand.

  Following Fran’s hasty directions, Liz led Sally and Anne past the room with the high windows and on to the left turning. Just as she rounded the corner, Liz glanced back the way they had come.

  ‘Christ!’ she spat, seeing the horde of Dead women had already dragged their decaying bodies into view at the far end of the hall.

  Suddenly a brutalised and gore covered figure angrily pushed its way through the Dead throng of women, knocking the less stable of them to the floor. Almost instantly it locked its Dead gaze upon Liz and letting forth a loud guttural growl, it began to thunder towards her. It was, or rather had once been, Baxter.
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  In their feeding frenzy the Dead women had greedily torn chunks of bloody flesh from the man’s arms, legs and torso. Lost in their compulsion to feed they had revelled as they ripped free much of the flesh from the left side of his face; one fortunate Dead woman going so far as to pluck out his left eye just before he died. But died he had and as was the way in this world his path through the darkness of death had proved to be a short one. Even now as he ran towards Liz, shredded skin flapped back and forth about his chin while thick dark blood oozed from his exposed eye socket. Yet none of this mattered to Baxter’s cadaver, all that concerned this creature was his need to rip, tear and bite into the living flesh that consumed him.

  ‘Move!’ she hissed to Sally, the word dripping with urgency and fear as she roughly pulled the woman past the corner.

  ‘Go!’ she cried, pushing Sally past her. ‘Take the second left like Fran said… Hurry!’

  From the way he moved Liz could tell they had no hope of outrunning Baxter’s corpse and if Anne and Sally were to have any chance to escape, she needed to deal with him here and now. Unfortunately she knew stopping the Dead creature that had once been Baxter would take more than a single strike of her blade, his very height making it almost impossible to remove his head in one go; she would have to disable him some other way. So, doing her best to ignore the hammering of her heart in her chest, Liz crouched down with her back pressed against the panelled wall and waited for the abomination to appear.

  With the rumble of his footsteps getting louder, Liz took a deep breath to calm herself.

  ‘Three… two,’ she whispered, counting down the seconds before the hungry cadaver appeared.

  Before she could count down to zero the ravaged corpse suddenly skidded to a halt in front of her, eager to follow the living he knew had fled this way.

  ‘One!’ she growled, swinging her blade as hard as she could towards the tall corpse’s knees.

  With an almost surprised look on what was left of Baxter’s features, the bloody cadaver turned its ruined face to the unexpected sound of her voice. But Liz’s knew this could be her only chance and before the Dead man even had a chance to reach for her, her blade was tearing through muscle, cartilage and tendon; amputating his left leg to send him tumbling to the floor.

  ‘Zero!’ Liz cried, jumping up from her crouch to swiftly bring her sword down on the Dead man’s exposed neck while he struggled to right himself.

  In the blink of an eye, one moment the Dead man’s head was attached to his shoulders and the next it was rolling across the floor. Before the decapitated head had even come to rest Liz was running; she had to catch up with Sally and with the Dead horde on her heels she had no time to waste. Sprinting down the corridor, Liz almost threw herself round the turning she knew Sally had taken, her eyes automatically going to the two figures huddled by a closed door further down the hallway.

  ‘Lizzie!’ cried Anne, relief at her sister’s safe reappearance bringing tears to her eyes.

  ‘We’ve got a problem,’ said Sally, her own features contorted with worry.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Liz panted, quickly leaning forward to kiss the top of Anne’s head.

  ‘The Dead… they’re already out there,’ Sally replied, nodding toward the small glass panel set in the door.

  ***

  With nothing but a few intermittent skylights to illuminate her way, Fran ran along the dim narrow hallway she knew would take her to the room holding Carmella with her newly born son, Vincenzo. Just what she was going to do about Freya, if she was still there, she hadn’t yet decided. Liz hadn’t specifically told her either way if she should or should not bring the young woman with them; after all she had lied to Sally and Anne to get them into the basement. Yes, it had been in a fruitless attempt to save her sister from Kyle’s wrath but Fran didn’t know just how forgiving Liz and the others were prepared to be; could they really ever trust the woman again.

  Behind her the ominous moans of the Dead as they made their slow but steady progress through the ground floor corridors of Saint Xavier’s drifted up to compete with the rhythmic pounding of her feet as she ran. Although she doubted the Dead horde had made it as far as the bottom of the stairs just yet she knew she would have to find another way down if she wanted to avoid coming into contact with them altogether, especially if Carmella’s hadn’t regained some of her strength during the night. The last thing she wanted was to have to fight her way out while supporting Carmella’s weakened body, it would be a nigh on impossible task.

  ‘Which door?’ she panted to herself, skidding to a sudden halt in front of five possible closed doors.

  It was not that she expected to open the wrong door to find a surprised stranger looking back at her, after all there were far more rooms than ‘inmates’ at Saint Xavier’s, it was more that her mind had just suddenly gone blank.

  ‘Carmella!’ she loudly called out, stepping over to the nearest door, hoping the woman would hear her and reply.

  When no reply came to her, she turned the handle anyway. It was locked.

  ‘Carmella, are you in there?’ she tried again, wondering if perhaps Freya had locked her in before going off somewhere.

  Rattling the handle again almost for her own piece of mind rather than anything else, Fran pressed her ear to the door and listened; nothing. But then she heard a thump coming from one of the rooms further down the corridor. Peering along the hallway she noticed that a dark metal key was lying partly hidden in shadow on the floor in front of one of the closed doors, as if it had fallen from its place in the lock.

  ‘Carmella!’ she called again, running to the door.

  Transferring her stolen long bow to her left hand she scooped up the key, hurriedly replaced it and began to turn the stiff lock.

  ‘I’m coming!’ she called, hearing another worrying thud from within the room.

  With a ‘click’ the lock mechanism suddenly turned and with a shove, Fran pushed open the door and instantly froze.

  The small room that only the night before had been a welcome retreat from the world beyond the walls of Saint Xavier’s had been transformed into a horrific bloodbath born of the worst of nightmares. Dark sticky blood seemed to drip and pool on every surface, while small chunks of indefinable flesh and skin appeared scattered about the room as if torn from their host in wild abandon. But it was the two bloody figures turning to look at her with milky Dead eyes that caused her head to spin and the alarming darkness to swirl at the edge of her vision.

  Freya, her torn floral pinafore dress drenched by a sea of dark clotting blood, looked at Fran with an all-consuming hunger. In the brief time before she had reanimated as one of the Dead, Carmella had clearly been able to feast well on the unfortunate young midwife. Strips of flesh running from the left side of her neck and across her face had been greedily ripped free by Carmella’s teeth and hands and her left shoulder had been flayed bare, revealing savaged muscle and tendon beneath; while in her frenzy Carmella had also reduced the right side of the young woman’s chest to little more than shredded skin on a glistening and exposed ribcage. But it was Freya’s mauled stomach that sickened Fran the most. In her newly Dead state her corpse, unable to withstand the burning compulsion to devour the tiny living thing inside her, had violently clawed and ripped away at her own flesh to get to it. Luckily the infant had not lasted long under its mother’s crazed attack and by the time Freya had finally plucked it from her tattered womb it was already dead and instantly discarded as worthless. With her abdominal muscles torn to shreds there was nothing to keep Freya’s internal organs in place and even now as she took a shaking step toward Fran something dark and bloody slipped free to join the rest of the bloody carnage already covering the carpet.

  ‘No…’ Fran managed to whisper in horror as bloody hands reached out to her.

  But the two Dead women would hear no pleas of mercy and even as Freya’s cadaver took another stumbling step, spilling yet more vital organs in the process, Carmel
la’s corpse pushed her way forward; eager to feel Fran’s warm flesh tearing between her teeth. Still frozen by the scene of the two ravaged women slowly advancing towards her, Fran desperately tried to suck air into her lungs to regain control of her limbs. Carmella was close enough now that Fran could see the scraps of stolen flesh stuck between her bloody teeth and as the image of the woman tearing into the defenceless body of her new born suddenly flashed through her mind, Fran screamed. It was a scream not born of fear or despair but rather of anger, of rage and of hate. Hate for whatever had caused Carmella to come back to claim the life of not only her own child but also of the woman who had helped bring it into the world; anger that a God could so abandon his most innocent of children and rage against life in a world they could no longer call their own.

  Almost instinctively Fran struck out at the thing that had been Carmella with the bow in her left hand. Unfortunately the glancing blow had little effect but to snap the Dead woman’s head abruptly to one side and in fact cracked the shaft of the bow in the process, rendering it now useless as a weapon. Dropping it, Fran prepared herself for the inevitable attack that was to come. Despite the horrors that stood before her, Fran felt a comfortable calmness descend upon her and in the back of her mind she could almost hear her father’s voice instructing her, just like he had on that first day in his martial arts class.

  ‘Legs apart Frannie…left foot forward… turn slightly… reduce the area of your body open to attack… not too much or you’ll find it difficult to counterattack… left elbow in to cover your ribs… hands up…palms flat ready to strike… good, Frannie… that’s my girl…’

  ‘Yahh,’ Fran cried, twisting at the waist to kick out with hard her right leg.

  Her blow to the solar plexus, which could have caused some serious damage to a living assailant, merely knocked Carmella’s cadaver back into the room and into Freya.

  ‘If you can’t beat your attacker, Frannie… retreat!’ came her father’s warning from somewhere in her past.