Yet even as he said the words he knew the damage had already been done. The woman had claimed her prize and in doing so she had taken the last remaining part of Tyrone’s life away from him.
‘Aarrghhh!’ Paul finally screamed, the jar of fruit suddenly slipping from his grasp as his hands automatically went to his ravaged neck in shock.
But the Dead woman had not finished with Paul. His warm and now bloody flesh still called out to her, demanding to be consumed, demanding to be feasted upon. Only this time as she moved forward, her mouth still chewing on a piece of stolen flesh, Tyrone now stood in her way and his rage erupted over her like a torrent of fire. Grabbing hold of the cadaver’s neck, he threw her pitiful corpse against the counter, smashing her head down again and again on its hard surface. Within seconds the woman’s face was reduced to dark bloody pulp as grey skin ripped and withered muscles tore under his onslaught; yet still she struggled in his grasp.
‘You fucking bitch!’ Tyrone screamed over and over again, his voice horse and cracking. ‘You fucking Dead bitch!’
‘Tyrone!’ Liz cried, kneeling down next to Paul as his life blood pumped from the wound on his neck. ‘For fuck’s sake, Tyrone… Paul… Paul needs you!’
At the mention of his brother’s name, something cleared in Tyrone’s grief stricken mind. He looked at the writhing cadaver in his grasp, her ruined face looking up at him with nothing but a pure burning hunger and slowly reaching across the counter, he picked up a large pointed fragment of shattered glass. Ignoring the pain as it sliced into his palm, Tyrone thrust the point through one of the Dead woman’s eyes and then as the thick jelly like mucus from the punctured eye splashed across his hand he lifted her head one last time and slammed it down on the counter. With a ‘crack’ the shard tore through the back of her eye socket and into her brain.
‘Tyrone,’ said Liz, knowing if the man wanted to say goodbye to his brother he needed to do it now.
Dismissing the now lifeless cadaver, Tyrone turned to look at Paul. What Liz saw in Tyrone’s face brought tears to her eyes, he was a devastated and broken man. Dropping to his knees he took Paul’s head in his lap and through his sobs, with his fingers covered in blood, he began to sign. Just what he said to his brother and what words of comfort Tyrone managed to find for Paul, Liz did not know but as she watched the two young men, her own tears falling freely, she knew the worst was yet to come.
Suddenly with a loud ‘bang’ the back door to the kitchen was thrown open. Turning to look back, Liz instinctively rose to one knee in readiness but what she saw made her stomach plummet and her heart race. No matter how bad she thought dealing with Paul was going to be, what she saw pushing their way through the open doorway had just made it ten times worse.
‘Tyrone, we need to go!’ she cried, looking at the Dead horde spilling into the room. ‘And we need to go now…’
‘I’m not leaving him,’ Tyrone replied blankly, pulling Paul tight against his chest.
Looking down, Liz noticed Paul’s hand hanging limply by his side. If the poor boy hadn’t already died he was certainly close to it.
‘Tyrone, I’m sorry but… but we’ve got to go… the Dead,’ she continued, rising to her feet.
‘Just… just go, Liz,’ he whispered, his bloody fingers stroking Paul’s hair.
‘Tyrone, you can’t…’ she began to say but then he looked up at her.
‘Go, Liz… keep Anne safe… don’t… don’t ever let her go,’ he said, his words barely audible over the hellish cacophony of the approaching Dead.
‘Please,’ she replied, holding her hand out beseechingly; desperate to save the man from his own grief.
But Tyrone simply looked down at his now lifeless brother and weeping, began to sign again to unseeing eyes.
‘Tyrone…’ Liz begged, slowly backing up to the door she knew led to the dining hall. ‘Please…’ she whispered, knowing the man was lost to his own despair.
The Dead horde were almost upon him now and as Liz saw the first of many Dead hands reaching for Tyrone all she could do was wish him a quick death before she turned and fled.
***
‘Shit!’ spat Charlie, pulling Star to a halt. ‘We’ve got a problem.’
He didn’t need to explain to the two men behind him just what the problem was, the fact that the gate was wide open and the Dead were happily traipsing through it said enough.
‘Christ!’ said Phil, as one of the young men of Saint Xavier’s suddenly tried to make his desperate escape though the ambling Dead crowd only to be pulled to the ground by the faster and recently deceased cadaver of one of his classmates.
‘Right,’ Tom began, reaching behind him to pull his two sickles from the channels on his back, ‘let’s…’
‘No!’ interrupted Charlie, turning to look at Tom.
‘But…’ Tom continued, confusion in his eyes.
‘Look at them, Tom,’ Charlie began, nodding to the Dead that even now where tearing into the body of the young man who had tried to flee. ‘There’s too many of them. We go in there we’ll hardly be out of the cart before they’ll be on us.’
‘But what about Liz and the others?’ said Phil, nervously scratching his beard as he gave Tom a wary sideways glance.
‘She’ll know to get our group in the other cart with Snow,’ Charlie replied, noticing Tom seemed to be having a conversation of his own under his breath. ‘They may already be there…’
‘So what’s the plan then?’ Phil asked, catching Charlie’s look at Tom.
‘Well, I think the Dead will be more spread out and easier to handle from inside the grounds, so I say go over the wall here,’ he replied. ‘We check our people are safe in the cart and then all get the hell out of there…’
‘And if they’re not in the cart?’ asked Tom, his focus apparently back with them.
‘We search the school,’ Charlie replied, matter-of-factly. ‘Hopefully just because the gate’s been breached it doesn’t mean the building’s been compromised as well.’
‘That’s a lot to hope for,’ added Phil, already reaching for his spiked club.
‘Well it’s about all we’ve got at the moment,’ sighed Charlie, flicking Star’s reins to get her moving again.
Star had barely taken four steps when Charlie brought her to a stop again. With the cart as close to the high wall as the overgrown verge would allow, he just prayed Liz had been able to get Anne and the others to the cart in time.
‘Right, everybody out through the roof hatch,’ said Charlie, tying off Star’s reins.
It was no surprise to him that Tom was first through the open hatchway, his hands itching to feel his bloody sickles in his grasp once again.
‘Charlie,’ Phil whispered, nodding to Tom who had resumed his mumbled conversation and was already jumping from the roof of the cart to the top of the wall.
‘I know,’ was all Charlie could say, concern bringing his eyebrows together.
‘He sure fucking picks his moments,’ Phil grumbled under his breath, pulling himself up through the open hatch to follow Tom over the wall.
Landing on the other side of the wall amid a patch of tall runner bean frames, Phil was surprised to find Tom had waited for them. Perhaps they would be lucky and Tom wouldn’t lose himself this time to his unsettling bloodlust; although the way his eyes darted back and forth with an almost gleeful excitement did little to give him reason to justify this hope.
With a ‘thump’ Charlie dropped from the wall above to come down next to Phil.
‘Star should be OK on her own for a while… we’ll come back and get her once we’re out of here.’ he whispered, his gaze scanning the ensuing carnage for his friends.
With a sense of relief he realised he couldn’t find a single face he recognised amongst the figures moving about the gardens, alive or Dead. Yet this relief was tinged with a resigned sadness, for of all those now in the gardens only two were living and it didn’t look as though they would stay that way for much longer. A
lready it was clear that the young woman, her back to the wall, had but seconds of life left before she felt the unholy and terrifying touch of Dead hands and teeth upon her skin. Even though she valiantly swung her meagre weapon back and forth, desperate to keep the Dead at bay, it was a battle she was destined to lose and knowing she was too far away from them to launch any sort of rescue, Charlie turned his gaze away from her; not wanting to witness the poor woman’s inevitable and bloody demise.
‘Shit!’ he hissed, looking across the cadaverous horde slowly making their way through the vegetable beds in search of their own form of sustenance. ‘How the fuck did it all fall apart so quickly?’
‘Hey, the cart’s been turned around,’ whispered Phil, pointing to Snow who was now facing towards the open gate, ‘and she’s already harnessed… looks like someone’s got ready to leave at least…’
‘Hmm,’ mused Charlie, scratching his chin with the blade on his wrist, ‘but who?’
‘Come on,’ he continued, edging out from behind the tall plants, ‘and keep low…’
Moving slowly from one tiny piece of cover to the next the three men managed to get as far as the rear of the small outside toilet block before they were noticed by any of the Dead but then two rancid cadavers, one male and the other so old and savaged that its gender was anyone’s guess, suddenly shambled round the corner; almost bumping into them.
‘Fuck!’ barked Phil, pushing the Dead man away from him.
‘Mine!’ Tom said under his breath, almost pulling Phil out of the way to get to the two cadavers.
‘Tom!’ hissed Charlie, reaching for the man.
But Tom had already lost himself to the ghostly pleas of his deceased wife and children. They begged him, they goaded him, they beseeched him and they ultimately praised him as a good husband and father who would reap their demanded vengeance for their deaths. His sickles whistled through the air, removing one decaying limb after another; reducing the two hungry cadavers to little more than a pile of stinking flesh within seconds. But it was then that the young woman by the wall finally lost her battle to survive and as her tortured screams echoed across the gardens Tom let his need for vengeance consume him.
‘You Fucking Bastards!’ he screamed, breaking cover to charge into the Dead horde, hopeful to save the only other living thing before him, a young man with ginger hair fighting for his life.
‘Shit!’ snapped Charlie, knowing it was too late to stop him.
‘Come on,’ he continued, grabbing Phil’s sleeve. ‘Now’s our chance to check out the cart while Tom’s got their attention…’
Keeping low, Charlie edged around the corner of the toilet block.
‘That crazy bastard’s going to get himself killed,’ he muttered, watching Tom running from one hungry cadaver to another, cleaving heads from shoulders at every turn.
Running in a crouch, Charlie and Phil darted from the side of the small building, scattering three bedraggled looking chickens in their wake, to duck down by the cart’s large wooden wheels.
‘Who’s in there?’ he whispered, tapping against one of the side hatches with one of his ice picks as he scanned left and right for any of the Dead.
‘Charlie?’ came Sally’s relieved gasp quickly followed by the sound of an internal bolt being drawn across. ‘Oh my God, Charlie, thank God you’ve come back… they’re everywhere, the Dead, they’re everywhere…’
With the slightest of ‘creaks’ the hatch was pushed open from the inside revealing to him that only Sally and Anne had managed to find sanctuary there.
‘Where’s everybody else?’ he asked, reaching in to give Anne a comforting stroke of her cheek as his relief that she was safe flooded through him.
‘Liz got us here first and then went looking for the rest,’ Sally replied, fiddling nervously with her hair. ‘We’d seen Tyrone fighting with the Dead, I think she went to help him and then it looked like they both ran off to the kitchens… Other than that, God only knows where the others are…’
‘Fran went to get Carmella and her baby,’ added Anne, trying to fill her little voice with as much bravery as she could muster
‘Oh yeah, she’s right,’ Sally continued, transferring her nervous outlet from fiddling with her hair to biting her finger nails, ‘Fran went to find Carmella.’
‘So Fran, Liz, Tyrone and probably Paul are all inside the building… well at least that’s something,’ said Charlie, ‘but we’ve no idea where Cam and Michael are…’
‘Charlie, the Dead are inside already,’ said Sally, pausing with her thumb nail between her front teeth. ‘If Liz and the others are still inside they need to get out of there pretty quick… we only just escaped them the first time…’
‘Great!’ Charlie growled. ‘How the fuck did they get in so quick?’
‘They’ve been there the whole time,’ she replied, lowering her hands. ‘It’s a long story but let’s put it this way, some of the boys of Saint Xavier’s… enjoy… the company of Dead woman.’
Charlie and Phil just looked at her, letting this last titbit of unsavoury information sink in.
‘Right, Phil I need you to stay here with Sally and Anne,’ Charlie finally said, shaking the sickening and perverse images from his mind.
‘But…’ Phil began to argue.
‘There’s no time for a debate, Phil,’ he snapped, ‘I need you to keep them safe, OK’
Phil looked at Charlie and knew there would be no moving him on this issue. If it had just been Sally in the cart perhaps he would have wanted Phil to come with him but with Anne to consider he knew Charlie couldn’t risk her being left unprotected.
‘Sure, Charlie,’ Phil finally said with a nod.
‘You’d better get in now while you have the chance,’ said Charlie, knowing it was only a matter of time before one of the Dead noticed them.
Nodding, Phil clambered up into the cart.
‘I’ll see if I can get through to Tom and send him back here too,’ said Charlie, using his ice pick to close the hatch. ‘Just sit tight and if we ‘re not all back within a few hours, you know what to do…’
‘I don’t think Sally and I can last that long without coming to blows,’ Phil replied, with a wink. ‘So you’d better get your arse back here in one piece, OK?’
‘Do my best…’ Charlie muttered, the hatchway finally closing.
‘You seem to be making a habit of this, Sally,’ he heard Phil whisper, as he crept along the side of the cart.
‘Screw you!’ came her hissed reply, just as he stepped out from behind the cart into full view of the Dead.
‘Crap!’ Charlie said under his breath, realising any hope of sending Tom back to the safety of the cart had immediately disappeared, as he saw the man give chase to a recently reanimated corpse that had targeted the battling young man.
Somehow the young man had managed to keep the Dead at bay up until now but when he saw the ruined and bloody fresh corpse running towards him, he panicked. Kicking out at the legs of a decrepit Dead woman, he knocked her to the ground and with a break in the wall of the Dead encircling him suddenly presenting itself, he jumped over her and ran with all the strength his ailing muscles could muster to an open doorway swinging back and forth in the wind. But the freshly animated cadaver would not let his prize slip from his lifeless hands so easily and even as his slower Dead brothers and sisters turned to follow the fleeing young man, he pushed past them; knocking some of them to the wet muddy ground with his speedy passing.
‘Tom!’ Charlie shouted, watching his crazed friend charge after the fresh corpse as it pursued the young man through the open doorway. ‘Tom, wait!’
No sooner had Charlie called out to him than he realised his stupid mistake. For with two tasty meals suddenly slipping beyond their grasp the Dead had only one thing to now focus their ravenous attention on… him.
‘Oh, shit!’ he muttered, taking an involuntary step backwards as one by one the Dead fixed their Dead milky eyes upon him.
***
>
With her feet thundering across the wooden floorboards of the empty dining hall, Liz tried to ignore the scattered of broken and blood splattered crockery littering the floor. She tried not to see the bloody handprints smeared across the wall by a shattered window and most of all she tried to blot out the tortuous choking screams coming from behind her; coming from Tyrone.
Skidding to a stop by the tall wooden doors, Liz slowly pushed one of them open just enough for her to see the hallway beyond. Just like in the dining hall, the corridor was dotted with the bloody signs of attack, struggle and even if the victim had managed to escape, ultimately death. For as her gaze flitted from one pool of clotting blood to the next, she noticed the half chewed remnants of what looked to be a finger and with this Liz knew that even if its owner had somehow fought off their cadaverous attacker they had been bitten and with that bite their fate was sealed.
Despite the constant moaning of the Dead back in the kitchen Liz suddenly heard the soft ‘creaking’ of hinges moving. Glancing back to the rear of the hall she saw the kitchen door was slowly being pushed open and she knew no matter what lay in the bloody hallway it had to be better than what was about to pour through those doors, so readying herself for possible attack she slipped out into the corridor. When nothing immediately charged at her, Liz let go of the breath she had been holding and as quietly as she could let the closing door slip back into place behind her. Stepping gingerly around the pools of blood and torn chunks of flesh, she tried to balance her necessary caution with the need to put as much distance between herself and the Dead horde as quickly as possible. So, moving at a brisk a pace as she dared, Liz made her way to the end of the corridor where it joined another similarly empty corridor and a staircase rising up to the first floor.
Placing a foot on the first step, Liz tilted her head to look up the staircase when suddenly the loud ‘bang’ of a door being violently thrown open sounded from along the adjoining corridor. With her head snapping back in that direction, she was met with a pair of milky Dead eyes glaring back at her; it was, or rather had once been, Parker. For the briefest of moments Liz took in the Dead man’s bloody mouth and chest, the fatal arrow still lodged through his throat and the way his face was contorted into a mix of savage hunger and demonic glee. Then slowly the Dead man began to open his mouth and with thick bloody drool dripping from his teeth he let forth a low guttural moan. Liz could tell she had but seconds before he charged and as she broke eye contact with his hungry corpse what she glimpsed over his shoulder made her stomach twist and her breath catch. For just behind him, eager to continue in their own hunt for living flesh, were the shadowy figures of at least another dozen more of the Dead.
Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead Page 30