‘Just get to Jackal,’ Matt whispered urgently to Alice and Avery. ‘Move!’
The moment he spoke, the blood chilling noises from the tent paused.
‘Go!’ he said, urgently pushing Avery behind him, readying himself to fire on whatever was to pull itself from the tent.
Backing up slowly, step by step, all Matt could hear was the hammering of his heart and the sounds of other feasting Dead around him. With a dull click, the door to the Jackal opened and closed behind him, telling him Alice had made it. Taking another step backwards, Matt froze. A bloody hand, stripped of much of its flesh and a few fingers, pushed aside the tent opening to reveal a vision of death with nothing but hunger in its eyes. Matt had known the soldier the Dead man had once been. A single patch of his gore encrusted hair the only thing that made him identifiable. He might not have considered the man a friend in life but he had not wished such visible butchery of the man in death. With nearly all of the skin ripped from his face and the flesh torn from his cheeks and neck, it had been a mercy he had been unconscious during his attack. With no eyelids left to speak of, the Dead man had a wide penetrating stare and as he locked his eyes onto Matt, a flash of menacing glee flitted across them. Matt took another shaky step backwards, knowing the creature would charge him at any moment, but then a second animated corpse began to push itself out of the tent eager to follow the thing whose teeth had helped it cross over into a world of the hungry Dead.
‘Shit!’ Matt said realising things had just got twice as bad.
However, the Dead hadn’t finished playing their hand just yet and as Matt turned to join Avery to sprint the last few meters to the Jackal, he watched as an unnoticed Dead solider suddenly appeared from his right. With a hungry moan escaping its savaged lips, the Dead man barrelled into Avery, pulling him to the ground. With a cry of basic animalistic terror, Avery began to fight for his life. With his hands slipping on the soldiers blood soaked chest, Avery fought to keep the Dead man’s snapping jaw away from him. But even in death, Avery was no match for the large muscular soldier on top of him and he knew his moment had come. When a dribble of blood filled drool began to fall from the tongue that writhed only a hair’s breadth from his face, all he could feel was a deep sense of regret. He simply hadn’t been given the time to make amends for the horrors he had been forced to participate in and he knew that this stain on his soul would now follow him forever.
‘Doc!’ Matt cried, jabbing the butt of his rifle at the Dead man’s head.
With a crack, the cadaver’s head snapped to the left, taking his jaws mercifully further away from Avery’s flesh and giving him the slimmest of chances now to save his life. Seeing what might be his only opportunity, Avery thrust his hands up under the soldier’s jaw and with a strength fuelled by fear, he yanked the soldier’s head further to the side, smashing it hard against the metal bumper of the Jackal.
‘Let go, now!’ shouted Matt,
Trusting the man who had already saved his life once, Avery did as he was told. For a split second, with its head wedged against the metal frame of the vehicle, the Dead soldier was still. Then, as it began to turn its head back to Dr Avery’s living flesh, Matt brought his boot forcefully down on the creature’s neck. With an audible snap, the neck vertebrae shattered and cartilage tore. Matt once again pulled his knife quickly from his belt to stab down on the crown of cadaver’s skull.
‘Get up!’ Matt shouted, pulling Avery from under the now still corpse.
The two Dead men that had been pulling themselves out of the tent now fixed their attention solely on the fleeing group, and with a sudden burst of speed gave chase.
‘Get in!’ cried Matt, throwing open the back door for Avery, while he ran to get in the driver’s seat.
Avery didn’t need to be told twice and threw himself head first onto the rear seat that would normally have held the man responsible for manning the rear machine gun. With a quick glance to make sure Avery was on board, Matt began to flip switches on the control panel. Almost instantly, the Jackal roared into life and jerked forwards, the sudden movement almost knocking Avery out of the vehicle.
‘Hold tight,’ Matt shouted, pressing his foot down hard on the accelerator.
From behind him, Avery gave a fearful scream. One of the Dead soldiers from the tent had latched onto his leg just as the vehicle had lurched forwards and even now as the Jackal thundered out of the car park, it tried to claw its way up his leg.
‘Avery!’ screamed Alice, turning back to see the Dead man trying to pull himself into the Jackal.
‘Fuck off!’ Avery shouted, kicking out at the corpse’s head with his free leg.
With a ‘crack’ Avery’s boot smashed into the Dead soldier’s face, rendering his nose a bloody pulp and his teeth mere broken shards. Then as the Jackal jolted over a bump in the driveway, the Dead man rose in the air momentarily only to slam back down again on Avery’s leg. Suddenly, out of the blue, the animated corpse was inexplicably ripped from sight. Its legs, that moments ago had been flailing uselessly down the side of the Jackal as it tried to pull himself in, had gotten caught under the Jackal’s large tyres and in the split second it took for the wheel to turn, his Dead body was torn from sight.
‘Go! Go! Go!’ screamed Alice, banging her fist on the dashboard, seeing more of the shadowy Dead running in their direction.
Matt did as he was told, and with a roar, the Jackal left the car park behind. For a second, he thought he was going to lose control when the tyres hit a large patch ice on the snow covered road, but he yanked the steering wheel violently in the opposite direction and control was his again.
‘Shit,’ Matt finally said, letting go of a deep breath.
‘Are you okay, Avery?’ said Alice, looking back at the obviously shaken man. ‘Did it? Did it bite you, Avery?’
‘What?’ Avery replied, shifting his attention back to Alice. ‘Erm… no, no, I’m fine. It didn’t bite me. Is this is how you live your day to day life, Alice? Shit! Blackmore messed with the wrong people this time.’
With his words, a sudden realisation hit Alice.
‘Fuck!’ she said, ‘What about everyone else? My friends in the holding truck… they’re still back there.’
‘Calm down,’ Matt began, swerving the Jackal around the corpse of a woman lying in the road. ‘They’re safely locked in, probably unconscious thanks to Doc’s cocktail and I don’t think the Dead have the wherewithal to unbolt the door. we’ll find somewhere to hold up for the night and when the Dead have slowed down, we’ll go back and get your friends in the morning, okay?’
‘Okay,’ Alice replied, knowing he was right. ‘They’ll be okay until…’
However, her words were cut short as another labour pain shook through her.
‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ she screamed, her hand automatically snapping over to grip Matt’s arm.
‘God, you’ve got a grip on you, woman,’ Matt said, smarting as the pressure on his arm increased.
Alice just glared at him sideways, panting through the pain.
‘You want to swap?’ she asked through gritted teeth.
‘I think we need to find somewhere as soon as possible,’ Avery shouted through to them in the front. ‘That baby wants out and if you’re having another contraction already, it’s not going to wait long.’
‘Crap, that’s all we need,’ Matt said to himself, peering into the darkness looking for a suitable stop.
Almost immediately, the light from the Jackal’s headlights flashed briefly across a broken pain of glass.
‘There!’ said Matt, pulling the Jackal to an abrupt stop and reversing back.
If it hadn’t been for the reflection of their headlights, the small house would have gone by quite unnoticed. Set just off the side of the road, the house that must have been a farmer’s cottage at one time was a riot of evergreen ivy and large boxwood bushes. Apart from the one broken glass pane in the small front window, the house looked in relatively good condition and more
importantly, it still had a front door. So many houses and buildings had been broken into either by hoards of the Dead early on when the plague first struck or by scavengers years later.
‘I think we’ve found our room for the night,’ Matt said shutting of the engine.
A stark silence suddenly struck them. Without the comforting rumble of the engine, the countryside was eerily quiet.
‘We need to get her inside before we attract any of the Dead,’ Avery said, grabbing the bag of medical supplies and one of the rifles.
‘Well, let’s just hope there’s none inside,’ Matt replied, helping Alice down from the Jackal and handing her over to Avery.
Despite her best efforts to keep quiet, the pain of her contractions was fast becoming too much for Alice to bear. Her panting had quickly taken on a grunting quality and as she gripped tightly onto Avery’s arm, she prayed he had packed something in the bag that could help her.
‘Avery,’ she managed to say through her clenched teeth as another wave of contractions flowed through her.
‘We need to hurry,’ Avery said to Matt.
‘Hurrying can get you killed,’ Matt said to himself, as he pushed aside a waterfall of ivy that covered part of the front door.
Clicking on a small torch sitting mounted on the top of his rifle, Matt angled the beam through a small dusty glass panel set in the door.
‘Let’s see if anyone’s home,’ he mumbled, watching the narrow beam of light bouncing of the dusty furniture within.
The fact that the furniture inside was still upright and neatly positioned was a good sign. Often, one of the first things to be moved during an attack of the Dead were the bulky pieces of furniture. Usually sofas, sideboards and tables had been used to blockade windows and doors in the futile attempt to keep the Dead at bay. More often than not this did little except create a temporary prison for those inside, buying them a little time until, by their sheer numbers, Dead eventually broke through anyway. So to see a small faded floral print sofa facing a television gave Matt hope that the Dead might have passed over this home. Satisfied the house wasn’t holding any deadly surprises, Matt took a step back and kicked hard at the door. With a brittle snap of decaying wood, the lock gave way and the door swung in half way where it stopped suddenly with a squeak when the bottom of the warped door scraped the tiled floor.
‘Stay close,’ Matt said, quietly stepping through the door.
The doorway opened directly into a small musty smelling living room, still littered with the pointless everyday knick-knacks of a life long gone. The light from Matt’s torch fell on a small coffee table on which a neatly stacked pile of celebrity gossip magazines sat next to a dust covered television and DVD remote controls. Matt’s torch then slowly panned up across the fireplace, its mantle dotted with framed photographs and small porcelain figurines.
‘I think this place is clear,’ Matt said, swinging the beam of light through an open doorway to an equally tidy kitchen. ‘Let’s get upstairs and find you a bed.’
Turning to the small staircase on his right, Matt began to lead their cautious ascent. With every other step creaking loudly when Matt put his weight down on it, by the time he reached the top step anyone upstairs, living or Dead, would surely have been prepared for his arrival. Thankfully, apart from some mice annoyed by the sudden intrusion, the group found upstairs to be as abandoned as the rest of the rest of the house.
‘Bedroom in here, Doc,’ Matt said, peeking through the doorway. ‘I’ll check out the front room.’
Avery led Alice over to the bed, leaving her for a moment as he opened the curtains, filling the room with radiant moonlight and then he pulled off the duvet and sheets.
‘Avery, I don’t care if they’re a bit dusty,’ Alice said, leaning against a cupboard.
‘This is going to be difficult as it is,’ he replied, glancing back to her as he opened the wardrobe. ‘We don’t want you or the baby getting an infection from the rat or mouse urine that’s more than likely all over that bedding.’
‘Oh,’ she answered, knowing she would have been none the wiser without Avery pointing it out and would have happily slumped down onto the bed in the state she had found it.
With the moonlight now flooding the small bedroom, Alice could see a photo of a smiling couple in a frame beside the bed. For a moment, her mind drifted, wondering what had become of the happy couple, but she was soon brought back to reality by the contraction she could feel building inside her.
‘Shit!’ she spat, clutching at her stomach. ‘Avery, I need to get out of these trousers… now!’
‘Ah ha!’ Avery said, pulling a pile of neatly folded sheets from the cupboard and giving them a quick sniff to check if they smelt of damp or mould. ‘Not exactly laundry fresh but better.’
‘Avery!’ Alice snapped.
‘Just breathe, Alice,’ be began, unfolding a mix of pastel coloured and floral printed sheets. ‘It’s too early to push just yet. Let me get the bed ready, and then I’ll give you something for the pain.’
‘Just fucking hurry,’ Alice said, leaning back against the cupboard while the pain of the contraction rippled through her.
Matt found the room at the front to be dark shadowy bathroom, not surprisingly nothing but a dry hiss escaped the tap when he gave it a turn.
‘Oh well,’ he said quietly to himself, turning the tap back off again.
Now that he knew the house was empty and safe, he didn’t want to alert anyone or anything of their presence unnecessarily, so with a click, he turned off the torch. A beam of light in an otherwise dark countryside would be a dead giveaway and they had enough going against them as it was without advertising their bolthole. It was then that he remembered the front door was still ajar, so he made his way back along the landing to the staircase. He was half way down, when he heard the distinct scrape of a foot on the tiled floor below him. Although he was positive it wasn’t one of the newly Dead from the camp that had found their refuge, it didn’t give him much comfort to think of the slow Dead lurking in the shadows either. He debated turning his torch back on but decided against it. If one of the Dead had found them, the last thing he wanted was more of them being drawn to the light, particularly with Alice in labour.
With an annoyingly loud creak, Matt finally stepped down off the last of the stairs and into the still living room. Without his torch, he could now see the thin beams of moonlight that struggled to force their way through the dirty cracked windows to form small pools of cool light on the tiled floor. Suddenly, he caught a streak of reflected light out the corner of his eye, but before he could react, a long blade sliced through the air to hover just under his chin.
‘Where the fuck is Alice?’ a young woman’s voice from the darkness came.
***
Twenty minutes earlier and Liz had been waiting patiently in the cart for Imran and the others to return from the camp, hopefully with their friends in tow. She looked over at Anne and Justin asleep, bundled up together beneath a blanket and smiled to herself. It had been simply miraculous that they had found them both alive and with Liz’s own rescue added to this list of the miraculous, they were certainly in God’s debt. She just hoped their favour would last just that bit longer and let them get the rest of their friends back too.
Delilah suddenly made a snorting noise and began to stamp one of her hooves in irritation. Moving over to look through the front slit, Liz tried to determine what was affecting the usually steady mare.
‘Damn,’ she said quietly, as the bright headlights of a large vehicle appeared round the corner.
It was one of the armoured vehicles from the camp and it was traveling at quite a speed along the lane towards them. Instantly, thoughts that Imran and the others had been discovered flooded her mind and she turned to shake Jen awake.
‘Jen,’ she said urgently.
‘What? What is it?’ Jen asked, startled and a little disoriented to be woken up.
‘Company,’ was all Liz could say as the brig
ht headlights broke over the cart, sending a thousand tiny beams of light through every crack and seam of the wooden cover.
However, the roaring engine did not stop and they were not discovered. Whoever was driving had either not noticed the cart with the two horses nestled in the shadows of the pine trees, or they had other, more important things on their mind.
‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ came a shout from the vehicle as it sped by.
‘Alice,’ Liz whispered.
Whoever had just thundered past them had had Alice with them.
‘Jen, I’ve got to go after that vehicle,’ Liz said, reaching for her sword.
‘But Imran said to wait here,’ Anne butted in, tears already filling her large eyes. ‘He said to wait…’
Liz cupped her sister’s face in her hand.
‘Whoever just went past has Alice with them,’ she began looking into her sister’s eyes. ‘I’ve got to get her back, Anne. Jen will look after you till Imran and the others come back. I promise it’ll be alright, okay.’
Lanherne Chronicles (Book 2): Five More Days With The Dead Page 28