“Get away from the fire,” Ben said. He lifted the branch he’d been stabbing the flames with and held it away from him. The end of the wood was covered in white ash but as it cut through the air it glowed red beneath.
A beat of wings brushed past them and she felt the movement of air. “Maybe it’s bats,” she said, without really thinking what she was saying.
“Bloody big ones,” he said, waving the wood around. “Get over to the steps.”
Slowly she backed away, unwilling to look at anything other than Ben and the last remnants of light produced by the fire. As she did, something flew towards her, fast and low, wings outspread. From its shape it was obviously a seagull, mouth open but silent, and it gave no indication that it would stop. Instinctively she ducked. The bird missed the top of her head by only a matter of inches.
“Move!” Ben yelled but she was already sprinting blindly towards the rocks in the hope that they would give shelter. The sand shifted under her feet, making it hard to run until eventually she stumbled, lost her balance and fell headlong to the beach.
She tried to turn but as she did so she saw the bird swoop down on her again. Then Ben lunged at it, swiping it with the branch and knocking it to the ground. Lisa was pushing herself to her feet when she realised the bird had fallen close to her hands, broken wings beating weakly. Ben stepped closer and pressed the hot wood into the small body. It thrashed around silently. Lisa could see it was only bone and feathers but it was covered in what appeared to be oil, and as Ben held it pinned to the sand it burst into flame. Then she heard the beat of wings again, this time louder and more insistent. More of them were coming and now Lisa could make them out. Gulls and cormorants, all ragged travesties of what they had once been, wheeling around them, diving and swooping at their heads and bodies.
Lisa ran, hearing Ben right on her heels, and did not stop until she had reached the comparative safety of the cliff. She crouched down low and pressed herself against the weather-worn rock, trying to make herself as small a target as possible.
She could do nothing as Ben fought the birds off. Some of them flew straight into the cliff face and fell in crumpled heaps to the rocks below. Ben swung the branch wildly as they flew at him. The end was now well alight and Lisa wondered how much longer it would last. It wasn’t much of a weapon but it was better than nothing. If it went out, they’d be almost defenceless.
Birds fell to the sand, where they lay ablaze and thrashing around. A gull hit the rocks and dropped beside her. Lisa kicked it across the sand, her foot caving in its empty ribcage, until it landed on one of the already burning carcasses. Without compassion she pinned it down with a rock until it too burst into flames.
Finally the attack ceased, with only two or three birds still circling high above.
Ben dropped the charred remnants of the branch, and then eased himself onto a rock.
“Fuck,” he said breathlessly. “That was close. But I think we’re okay now.”
He nodded across the beach. Lisa followed his gaze.
The sky had definitely lightened.
“Dawn,” Ben said. “That means we should be safe. Until tonight, at least.”
Lisa didn’t even want to think about that. Getting this far had almost drained her last reserves of strength. She doubted she would survive another night like it.
And how many more after that would she have to face?
She stared at the sunrise, wondering what the day would bring. In the distance a dark cloud moved across the sky against a backdrop of a red glow.
Lisa felt uneasy watching it. She stood slowly, trying to figure out what was making her so anxious. Then she realised the cloud was moving swiftly towards them, against the direction of the sea breeze.
“It’s not over,” she said.
“Huh?”
But there was no time for explanations. She reached down to grab Ben’s arm, hauling him roughly to his feet. He paused only long enough to snatch up the half-burnt branch before allowing himself to be half-led, half-dragged up Jacob’s Ladder, away from the beach. By the time they were halfway up the old stone steps she could see that the dark mass would be on top of them in a matter of minutes. But it was far from being a cloud. Rather, it was a great flock of birds; and Lisa had no doubt that they were as dead as the ones that lay broken and smouldering on the rocky beach below.
Ben must have seen them, too. “We’ve got to find shelter. Quickly.”
“The church,” Lisa said, gasping for breath, as they reached the top of the cliff. There was a light on inside the weathered building and another in the porch.
“Move it,” Ben said.
From the top of the steps a path led to a small gate set in a dry stone wall. It swung open freely and together they stepped into a small churchyard where old white tombstones had stood for centuries. Lisa looked over her shoulder. The mass of birds was growing rapidly closer but they were safe for another few moments.
The narrow, uneven path led away from the church first, passing between the gravestones before taking them on to the main door. As they hurried, Ben cried out and went sprawling, face narrowly missing one of the gravestones.
“You all right?” Lisa asked.
“Twisted my ankle now.” He managed to get up but when he put his weight on it his face contorted in pain. “It’s no good.”
Lisa slipped an arm around his back. “Lean on me,” she said.
They moved along the path as quickly as they could, Ben hopping on his good leg and Lisa staggering under his weight. The light in the porch grew steadily brighter but still seemed cruelly out of reach. Over the sound of the breeze Lisa began to hear the beating of many wings. Ben must have heard it, too, for he suddenly stopped.
“Go on ahead,” he told her. “See if there’s anyone inside.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she said.
“I know you’re not. Just go and bang on the fucking door.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said. But she had taken no more than a couple of steps when something snagged her own ankle, sending her headlong to the ground.
“What the hell –”
She tried to move but her ankle was caught in something, probably entangled in the unkempt vegetation that grew at the side of the path. She reached down to her ankle to free it. But instead of finding the tangle of greenery she had expected, her fingers touched something hard with a slick coating. She pulled her hand away in disgust, at the same time jerking her leg violently. The grip on her ankle only tightened.
Then Ben was kneeling beside her. “Not you too.”
“I’m okay,” she said. “But my foot’s caught in something.”
“Let’s have a look.”
She watched helplessly as Ben fought to release her, a grim look on his face, until finally, with a sudden snap, she was freed.
“What the hell was that?” she asked. It hadn’t sounded like vegetation.
“You don’t want to know,” Ben said.
Lisa massaged her ankle briefly, then stood. But as she rose to her feet she saw shapes slowly rising from the ground on either side of the path, pushing themselves up even through the hard-baked earth, arms outstretched towards her and Ben.
“Come on!” she yelled. She couldn’t leave him now.
Ben shook his head. “We’ll never get through them.”
“We have got to,” Lisa said.
“Wait a minute.” Ben suddenly dropped down to his knees and at first Lisa thought that his ankle had given way beneath him. Then a dazzling light flared in the darkness. Ben shoved the end of the branch into the lighter flame and held it there until it glowed red. The breeze made it flicker alarmingly, but finally it ignited. Without bothering to stand, Ben reached over and thrust the burning end into the overgrowth at the path side. It crackled, glowed then burst i
nto flames. The fire quickly devoured the tinder-dry greenery. In a matter of seconds flames engulfed the ground around the graves and licked at an age-stooped tree. Soon it was ablaze too.
Lisa watched as the remains of the long dead were consumed. Tattered rags of clothes and decayed flesh combusted. But they kept going, pulling themselves out of the earth and staggering across the fiery ground until at last they collapsed into heaps of blackening bones. Lisa began to cough as smoke wafted across the graveyard, stinging her eyes, making it hard for her to see. Then she felt Ben’s hand close around hers, leading her from the heart of the inferno towards cleaner, fresher air.
One by one, other corpses rose from the ground closest to the church, away from the fire, showers of dirt falling from them as they stood unsteadily on decaying legs. Ben, limping badly but somehow managing to ignore the pain, stabbed at them with the still-burning branch, just about holding them off until the church entrance was in sight. As they stepped into the apparent security of the porch, Ben pushed her towards the door, while he stood defending their position.
Lisa tried the handle but it didn’t budge. The door was locked.
“Help!” she yelled, hammering on the wood, not knowing if anyone was inside but giving it everything she had all the same. “Come on!”
She glanced back over her shoulder, and knew right away it was hopeless.
The dead were converging on the church, a dozen of them if not more.
Above them the sky, which had been growing brighter, was turned almost black again by the birds that blocked the approaching dawn. One of them swooped down towards the porch. Ben raised the pitiful remains of the branch to fend it off but it veered away at the last second, as if afraid of the light.
Lisa pounded her fist on the door but again there was no response from within.
The ragged army maintained their slow approach until they were close enough to be seen. They were no more than walking skeletons held together by shreds of decaying flesh and scraps of funeral clothes. Their faces had only a thin coating of black skin drawn tautly across their skulls. Jaws hung slackly with nothing to hold them in place. Several appeared to be missing them altogether. The fire behind them made it even more reminiscent of a scene from hell. Bony hands reached out as they closed in on the church, even though they could not possibly have seen what they were reaching for, their eye sockets having long been emptied by ravaging worms.
Ben backed away from them until he had joined Lisa at the doorway. He tried the handle, then rammed his shoulder against the wood, which did not move. When he looked at her she could see the defeat in his eyes. “No way out of here,” he said.
The dead, having reached the porch, now stood just outside it, unmoving.
Lisa studied them. Was there time for one last, desperate throw of the dice?
“We could make a run for it,” she said.
“What?”
“I think we can get past them if we put our heads down and run,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “What have we got to lose?”
Ben grimaced. “I can’t. Not on this ankle. But you go.”
“No way. Either both of us go, or neither or us goes.”
But it was too late, in any event. Lisa, one eye on the dead, suddenly saw their ranks part to allow Alison to step from behind them. She fell back against the door, only the solid wood holding her upright.
Alison stepped into the porch, halting a few paces away from them. The light was not kind to her. Lisa could now see that the monstrosity that had been her sister was stitched not by thread but by scuttling lines of insects. Thousands of them swarmed over the parts of her that had been torn apart in the woods. Lisa imagined countless tiny mandibles biting deep into her body, fixing the severed head and limbs to the torso. As she watched, too numb to react, another dark wave erupted from a deep wound in Alison’s chest and attached itself to her neck. Reinforcements, Lisa thought, clamping one hand over her mouth as gorge rose in her throat.
“You cannot run from us now,” Alison said. She held out her hand towards Lisa. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be. Join us now.”
“Run,” Ben whispered.
Lisa shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Forget me. I can take care of myself.”
“I meant I can’t move. I’m too fucking scared, Ben.”
The next thing she knew, he had grabbed her and pushed her from the door.
“Now run!” he yelled. “And don’t stop until you’re out of here.”
But before Lisa had chance to move, before she could even reply, Alison lunged forward with a speed her dismembered body seemed incapable of.
Lisa caught a blur of motion as her sister’s arm swung round at her.
The blow, when it came, struck with the force of a hammer. Searing pain filled her head and she heard bone crunch at the same time as she heard Ben cry out. Her vision flickered and she was dimly aware of the feel of cold stone beneath her. She tasted blood in her mouth and tried to spit it out, but her body would not respond.
The pain worsened, until it was all she knew.
A light, brighter than anything she had ever seen, flared in her brain.
And then, mercifully, there was nothing but darkness.
“Roads are quiet today.”
The words carried a peculiar resonance. Lisa knew she had heard them before but she had no idea where or when. They struck her as being of particular importance, though for the life of her she could not explain why.
She felt a hand touch her elbow. “You okay?”
“What?” she said, momentarily forgetting where she was.
Then she forced her attention back to the road. There was a busy junction ahead. This was no time to be daydreaming.
“You looked miles away,” David said.
Lisa turned to face him and frowned. Something about her situation felt, if not exactly wrong, then certainly not right. Again she did not know why that should be. She felt as if she had just snapped out of a nightmare, the details of which she could not recall, and was not yet able to distinguish between dream world and waking world.
“It should be me sitting there,” David said suddenly. He sounded petulant, almost vicious, which was surprising to say the least. Not only was David the most easy-going man Lisa knew, he was the one who had asked her to drive him to work that morning. A solicitor caught over the limit the night after a black tie dinner would make great copy for the local press. She put his mood down to a hangover.
“But I thought you wanted –”
“Forget what you thought,” David spat, face red and contorted with anger. “You know nothing, you fucking little bitch.”
The unexpected ferocity of his tone made her flinch. The worst of it was, she knew she had done nothing wrong. His outburst left her confused and hurt.
“David, what is it? Why are you being so nasty to me?”
He laughed, a single savage bark. “Think you know nasty? Let me tell you what’s nasty. Being dead, knowing you should be alive. Watching the living and knowing they should be dead.” He slammed one hard on the dashboard so hard that Lisa jumped. “You have no idea what nasty is until you’ve had your place in the world of the living taken from you. Stolen from you!”
“Stop this, David.” For the first time since they’d met she sensed violence in him and had no idea how to deal with that. It came as a shock to find that she had shifted sideways on her seat, away from him. “You’re frightening me.”
David grinned at her. “This is nothing compared to what’s about to happen, Lisa. This is where the really scary stuff begins.”
“What do you mean?”
“Take a look,” he suggested, nodding his head at the windscreen.
Lisa turned back to the road. A scream tore free from her l
ips when she saw that she was right on the junction, where her road crossed four lanes of rush-hour traffic. Her foot stamped on the brake pedal but it was too late.
The Peugeot, tyres screeching in protest, shot across the fast-moving streams of traffic, swerving violently. From all around she could hear a cacophony of squealing brakes and blaring horns as car after car veered around her. Lisa braced herself for an impact that never came and, for a moment, she was certain they were going to make it. But just as she was about to emerge on the other side of the junction, the bright morning light was eclipsed by shadow.
Everything seemed to slow down, giving Lisa enough time for one last, desperate look at her husband. David stared right back at her, that cold lunatic smile still plastered across his face. The window beyond him suddenly filled with the blackly grinning grille of a lorry. Lisa heard glass shatter and metal rend, as loud as the end of the world. The noise, like the images, was played slowly, so that it sounded like the agonised death cries of some mighty animal. She saw David’s lips move and, despite the horrendous blast of sound, she could hear what he said.
“You can’t outrun fate. The King of all the dead will have what is his.”
Then time returned to normal speed.
The impact threw her violently against the door. Her head slammed into the side window with enough force to crack the glass. Only semi-conscious, she dimly heard a sound like a coconut being split open, and then warm liquid spattered across her face and neck. David was crushed up against her, sending her head smacking against the window again, this time so hard that it shattered. Lisa felt the airbag inflate uselessly at the same time as the windscreen imploded. She was too stunned to even try to avoid the sudden spray of glass that showered over her. Something that felt like a white-hot needle gouged a searing track across the side of her face. Her eyes opened wide and she cried out in agony and terror.
Lisa could not move, crushed between David and the door. All she could see was the world spinning crazily through the shattered windscreen. Then it lurched to one side and Lisa’s stomach turned as the car was flipped onto its side. There was one final roar of noise, like the gates of hell opening, and then nothing. Nothing except darkness and pain, unimaginable pain.
King of All the Dead Page 10