‘Look, let’s deal with one problem at a time shall we?’ Imran said, realising there was nothing more they could do here. ‘If raiders are in the area, the Convent is well protected. They won’t have a hope of getting in, and I think we should get going to the Penhaligan’s if we want any chance of getting there before nightfall, don’t you?’
‘Hmmm,’ was all Phil could say, as he stood to follow Imran out of the classroom, still examining the strangely new knife in his hand.
‘Well, come on then, Toby,’ Imran said, tapping the side of his leg, ‘Can’t just leave you behind, boy.’
Instantly, the dog jumped to his feet and with his tail wagging furiously, the three of them left behind the two corpses of Mr and Mrs Jackson, who were finally brought together again in death.
‘Well?’ Duncan asked them, as they climbed back into the cart. ‘Oh,’ he continued as Toby jumped in after them.
Duncan knew the old man had loved the foundling puppy, so the worst must have happened for him to be coming with them now.
‘Someone finally took matters into their own hands and offed Mrs Jackson,’ Phil replied.
‘What about Jackson?’ Duncan asked, already knowing the answer.
‘Either they did Jackson as well or his wife finally being taken from him was more than he could cope with, so he hung himself,’ Imran added, pulling out a small amount of cooked chicken meat for Toby from one of the supply sacks.
‘So what now?’ asked Duncan.
‘Now, we continue with the plan,’ said Imran. ‘We go to the Penhaligan place and hope there’s someone left at the Substation alive when we get there tomorrow afternoon.’
Duncan didn’t need to be told twice. He didn’t relish being on the road at night, so the sooner they got to their next stop, the better as far as he was concerned. So, with a gentle flick of the reins, he urged Delilah into motion; leaving behind them just another home in this world of the Dead where death had paid an unwelcome visit.
***
‘She’s coming round,’ Sarah said looking over at a worried looking Patrick holding Jasmine in his arms.
As the darkness slowly released its hold on Helen, she forced her consciousness upwards towards the pounding in her head and the muffled voices around her. With relief, she grasped onto the pain that threatened to send her tumbling back into oblivion. The pain told her she was alive and if she was alive, then she had somehow managed to survive the fall from the pylon. With a painful intake of breath, Helen finally opened her eyes. Looking around the dimly lit stable, past J-Man, Sarah and Leon, her eyes fell on a concerned Patrick with Jasmine.
‘We made it?’ the whisper barely escaping her lips.
Still fighting his own dizziness, Patrick crawled over to Helen, tears brimming in his eyes.
‘We made it,’ he said, as he leant forward.
Kissing Helen gently on the forehead, his tears of relief fell freely. Trying to push herself up to take Jasmine, Helen winced with pain as her cracked ribs made themselves known.
‘Shit!’ she winced through gritted teeth, ‘I think I’ve busted some ribs.’
‘Rest back down,’ Sarah said, gently easing her shoulders back down. ‘We’re safe for now, so rest while you can.’
‘Are we the only ones that made it?’ Helen asked, her eyes drifting to the steel door rattling, the Dead on the other side pounding against it.
‘I’m afraid so,’ replied Leon, the faces of so many missing friends running through his head, ‘and if we don’t come up with some sort of plan to get out of here, we’re in big trouble.’
‘What’s happening outside, J-Man?’ Patrick asked.
Pushing past one of the Substation’s pigs, J-Man jumped up onto a feed box so he could look through the high horizontal window that ran three quarters of the width of the wall. Outside, most of the Dead had congregated in front of the stable doors, their burnt and broken hands clawing relentlessly at the impervious steel; desperate to get to the living flesh denied them.
‘There’s more than a dozen of the Dead at the doors, so we’re out numbered,’ J-Man said. ‘By the time they wind down, it’ll be pitch black out there, man.’
‘We won’t stand a chance fighting even the slow ones in the dark,’ Patrick said, knowing that because the doors had to open inward, they would be swamped by the animated corpses as soon as they tried to escape.
It didn’t help that only J-Man, Leon and him would be able to fight with any effectiveness.
‘I think we should wait until morning,’ he continued. ‘At least that’ll give us a fighting chance.’
‘The door will hold that long, wont it?’ Sarah asked, as the Dead continued their attack.
‘It has to,’ Leon muttered, knowing their lives depended on it.
Unknown to Patrick and the others, above them on the roof, Gabe held Chloe in his arms, shivering. The heavy grey clouds, that had threatened snowfall all day had begun to release their burden slowly.
‘Just what we need,’ Gabe grumbled to himself, looking up at the silently falling white flakes.
Already, the snow had started to settle around them quickly. It was going to be a cold night for them both, but Gabe was determined they would survive. After fighting and winning against the Dead for so many years, he would be damned if hyperthermia took him from this world. Pulling Chloe up, they began to walk back and forth along the roof.
‘We need to keep moving, Chloe,’ he said, glancing down as the Dead continued their wild assault on the stable door.
He knew he and Chloe didn’t stand a hope in hell against the hungry Dead below them at the moment. It would be hours before their frenzied attack would wind down, making the Dead slower and giving them perhaps their only chance to outrun them.
‘We’ve just got to wait until morning,’ Gabe said, rubbing her arms to keep her warm. ‘We just got to hold on till then, okay?’
‘And then what?’ Chloe asked, needing Gabe to say something, anything, to give her the hope she needed.
‘Then… then we get out of here,’ was all Gabe could think of to say.
It wasn’t much, but Chloe held onto Gabe’s brief words and their promise of survival. Her story would not end this way. With Gabe’s help, she would get out of this. She would survive.
***
Blowing onto his hands, the young man tried to get some warm blood flowing to his freezing fingers. The snow started to come down with gusto over an hour ago and already it was settling around him. Every so often, he would shake his shoulders, dislodging the flakes that threatened to settle even there. Not for the first time that night, he cursed his bad luck at pulling ‘watch’ on a night like this.
‘Well?’ a familiar gruff voice came from behind him, his tone indicating only good news was welcome or there would be trouble.
‘The cart hasn’t come back yet, Sir, sorry,’ the young man replied, desperate to keep his voice from shaking.
‘I don’t want your apologies, Blackmore. I want reliable Intel on what we can expect down there,’ he replied, lifting up a pair of night vision binoculars.
Looking through the lenses, the gauges electronically adjusting to focus on their target, the man knew that with this one, they could possibly fill their quota.
‘And how many of the Dead?’ He continued, not taking his eyes off then next target.
‘Just six so far. They seem to have been keeping the area pretty clear,’ Private Blackmore replied, looking up at the man stood next to him.’ Permission to ask a question, Sir?’
‘What is it, Blackmore?’ The man asked, an aggravated tone dripping into his voice, as if the concerns of those in his charge were beneath him.
‘Will we be engaging the civilians tonight?’ He asked, hoping it would mean he wouldn’t be spending most of the night lying face down on the freezing earth.
‘No, we need as many as we can get,’ the man replied, ‘We’ll wait until first light and move in. Perhaps the cart will be back by then, as long as that m
eets with your approval of course, Private Blackmore.’
‘Yes, Sir, sorry Sir,’ was all Stephen Blackmore could think of to say.
His commanding officer was a harsh man, unnecessarily strict and didn’t give a monkey’s ass about the grunts under his command. Getting the job done was always the prime objective. If any of the squadron fell during the process, so be it. Like everyone in the squadron, Steve hated the man as much as he feared him. He threw the lives of his men away like chess pieces, sacrificing the pawns to ensure the completion of the mission. If it wasn’t for the Special-Ops goons that backed up his commands, Steve knew the squadron would have taken control long ago. It didn’t matter that the man was his father. Steve Blackmore had seen enough of ‘Dad’ in action to know he was a bastard, unstable and unfit for command.
With a ‘tut’ of disgust for his son’s lack of backbone, Staff Sargent Graham Blackmore, decided to continue on his rounds of the men on watch.
As the binoculars were dropped next to him and the heavy retreating footsteps of his commanding officer left him alone in the darkness, Private Steven Blackmore of the Queens Dragoon Guards third squadron gave his cold fingers one last warming breath before returning his attention to his rifle sight. Looking at the large stone building, he realised that whoever had chosen the old Convent for a home had certainly chosen wisely. It looked as if they had a pretty good thing going here. Much better than him and his fellow squaddies were used to, that was for sure. Well, that was all going to end for them come morning. They would move in, process the civilians and that would be that, another mission, another empty building left behind. The civilians would be rescued from their lives among the Dead.
‘God help them…’ Steve said quietly to himself.
***
DAY 2
Imran could hear them in the house. The Dead were in here somewhere, he was sure of it. He could not only hear their dry moans but also the reeking stench of decay hung heavy in the air making it difficult to breathe. Standing in a window of early morning light at the top of the large winding staircase, Imran looked down at the entrance hall of the Penhaligan home. The once grand hallway, with its checkerboard style marble floor and exquisitely carved mouldings, was now covered in years of dust and debris. A world of spiders lived out their whole existence catching well-fed flies in the webs that now claimed as their own the large central hanging chandelier. However, this decay was not what caught Imran’s attention. There, scuffing their path through the thick layer of dust, were two sets of bloody footprints. As Imran placed a foot on the first stair to descend the staircase, a wave of moaning rose from below to greet him.
With his heart beating heavily in his ears, Imran fought to fill his lungs with air. With each sharp intake, he became more and more convinced the fetid odour all about him was coating his mouth and tongue with a putrid layer of death. Taking another two steps down, again, Imran fought to catch his breath. It seemed that the further he descended the less breathable air there was. Death had somehow removed the life giving oxygen from this house and replaced it with little more than vapours from an open grave.
Reaching for the banister to steady himself, Imran gulped for air uncontrollably. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Imran knew he should fight to slow his breathing. If he hyperventilated and passed out, he would plunge blindly down the staircase to the dead that surely waited for him below. Managing to calm himself slightly, Imran reached behind him for his bow. In shock, his hand grasped nothing but air and came back empty. With his bow inexplicably gone, Imran could feel the panic rising again, threatening to overwhelm him completely this time. Then, as if to show his own body that he was its master, he clenched his fists tightly until his fingernails began to dig sharply into his palms. He concentrated on this pain to block out all else that his body was forcing upon itself. He willed his breathing to slow and the panic began to subside.
Once he was calm again, he reached down and pulled a large knife from the sheath tied about his ankle. At least now, he wasn’t defenceless. Step by step, he forced his feet to move, each pace taking him closer to the Dead somewhere below him. After what seemed like an eternity, his foot finally touched upon one of the dusty marble tiles sending a multitude of spiders and other insects scurrying into the shadows. Now that he was on the ground floor, the moaning of the Dead was louder and interspersed with a strange knocking sound. Hoping that, perhaps the Dead were somehow trapped, Imran scanned the large hallway for danger. With nothing here but the dusty remnants of a world long gone, he knew he would have to follow the trail of bloody footprints to reach his quarry and readied himself for the inevitable attack that was to come. Placing one foot in front of the other, he cautiously mirrored the path the Dead had taken. As the stairs began to rise up to the first landing on this right, the bloody trail led to the archway created beneath them. Imran suddenly stopped, not understanding what he was seeing. The footprints of the two Dead corpses that had been a clear path to follow seemed to stop abruptly, midway through the arch.
‘What?’ He managed to whisper, not understanding how the Dead could simply manage to disappear.
It was then that a frantic knocking sound demanded his attention. Slowly he looked upwards to the source of the sound. There, banging furiously against the wall supporting the grand staircase’s ascent, were two sets of bloody and cracked feet. Reluctant to draw his gaze away from the dark smears each foot was leaving behind with each jerking movement, Imran knew he had to look upwards at the two Dead men hanging above him. Slowly, bloody feet became gore encrusted trousers, then the torn and ripped flesh of torso’s came into view, until finally the two gaunt but recognisable Dead faces were looking down to meet his gaze.
‘No…,’ Imran said, taking the smallest of steps backward, as the shock made stars dance at the corners of his vision.
There, with nooses about each of their necks were Phil and Duncan. Someone had strung up their Dead corpses. The hangman’s ropes had been tied to the bannister high above them but even now, Imran could hear the splintering of wood as it strained to support their weight. Excited by Imran’s living presence they began to reach desperately down to the flesh they so craved to consume. With the frenzy now upon them, the two Dead men kicked wildly to release themselves; each movement straining and cracking the wood that held them in place. Then, as Imran looked up at the two Dead men that had been his friends, they seemed to go strangely still and in unison, their Dead mouths slowly opened but instead of the usual moan escaping their bloody lips, just one hissed cold word drifted down to Imran.
‘Ssssorry!’
Then with a loud snap, the banister holding them broke and the two Dead men plummeted down towards him, snapping and snarling for the Imran’s flesh.
‘No!’ Imran screamed, his hands flying up to protect himself, but instead of being seconds from death, he found himself sitting upright on the floor of the room they had chosen to spend the night.
Opposite him was sitting Phil, a startled expression on his face.
‘Jesus! You made me jump!’ said Phil, ‘Bad dream by any chance?’
‘Ermm, what? Yeah, sorry,’ Imran managed to say, his heart still racing wildly in his chest, as he reached down to calm a furiously barking Toby.
Imran rubbed his face to clear the last images of his dream from his mind.
‘Where’s Duncan?’ Imran asked, untangling himself from his blanket.
‘Gone for a piss,’ Phil replied, as he took Imran’s blanket from him, neatly folded it and placed it with the others.
‘Could use one, myself…,’ Imran began to say but at that moment, the door was knocked forcibly open.
‘What? What is it?’ Duncan said, hobbling into the room, swinging a length of pipe in front of him, while his trousers and underwear hovered just above his knees.
‘Look, I like you just as a friend, Duncan, okay?’ chuckled Phil, laughing as he glanced at the half naked man.
‘Fuck! I thought you were getting eaten in here,�
� said Duncan, putting the pipe down so he could pull up his clothes, ‘I heard Imran shout and came running.’
‘Sorry,’ Imran said, smiling, as the flustered and slightly embarrassed Duncan finally tucked in his shirt, ‘Bad dream, that’s all, but thanks anyway.’
Late last evening, just as the falling snow had decided to do its best to become a blizzard, they had arrived at the manor house the Penhaligans had once made their home. As the Penhaligans had never had a horse, there was no stable or shed large enough that could offer protection from the elements for Delilah. So, after drawing the cart within a metre of the wall of the house, Phil had used some lengths of wood and a tarpaulin, to rig a cover for the poor beast. Imran had hoped there would be survivors from the Substation there to greet them, but as they searched room after empty room of the Penhaligan home, he soon realised either survivors had not made it this far yet or they were trapped somewhere in the Substation compound, awaiting rescue. Of course, there was always the third option. That nothing but the Dead awaited them at the pylon.
‘How deep is the snow outside?’ Imran asked, taking a chunk of grainy bread from the supply sack.
The light coming through the window told him the snow had settled last night without him even having to look and they could probably expect more that day. The weak morning sun reflecting up off the blanket of snow had a certain un-definable quality to it, somehow flat and harsh, yet still holding a hidden beauty within it.
‘Like the flash from a polished blade,’ Imran thought to himself, as he pushed aside the dusty old curtains.
The exposed pane of glass that met him was covered in a thin sheet of ice, swirling in amazing patterns across its surface. Leaning forward, Imran breathed warm air onto a patch and began to rub away the ice with his hand. Outside, he could already see the first few flakes drifting slowly down from the heavy-laden clouds above. The coverage, at only ten or so centimetres, wasn’t as deep as he had first feared. Their journey to the Substation would be slow but manageable. Roads could be difficult enough to travel at the best of times now and a deep snowfall would make it almost impossible to manoeuvre through the myriad of hidden obstacles.
Five More Days With The Dead (Lanherne Chronicles Book 2) Page 6