‘Is everyone okay?’ Phil called, jumping down from the back of the Lanherne cart and walking over to J-man and Patrick, as he pulled on a pair of work gloves plainly too small for his large hands.
‘Yep, I guess Jasmine was just the dinner gong they were waiting for,’ Patrick said, looking around at the collection of corpses littering the road while he gently patted Shadow’s neck, expelling the last of her jumpy nerves.
‘Well, we’d better shift these to the side of the road,’ Phil said, kicking the still form of a Dead man missing much of the flesh from one of his arms. ‘We’ll collect Imran’s arrows and Leon’s knives as we go. Do you have any gloves?’
‘Always come prepared,’ Patrick said with a smile, pulling a similar pair of gloves from his back pocket. ‘Do you know how many arrows we’re looking for? Don’t want to leave any behind, because I know how long Imran takes to make them.’
‘Erm,’ Phil began to say but was cut short by an urgent shout from J-man.
‘Phil! The hatch!’ he cried, pointing frantically to the Lanherne cart.
Spinning to look behind him, Phil threw himself into action. There, having silently pulled itself up to the open hatchway was the top half of a Dead child. The pitiful creature had lost its legs and much of the flesh from its pelvis, leaving a gaping hole through which rotting bone and organs trailed. Already its small Dead hands were reaching up to latch onto Duncan’s back, desperate to pull itself up to the flesh almost within reach.
‘Duncan!’ Phil shouted, still six strides away from being of any help.
At the sound of his name, Duncan turned just as the small blackened fingers grasped hold of his jacket, his movement inadvertently pulling the mutilated cadaver closer to him.
‘Jesus!’ Phil heard Duncan scream, as he fell backwards into the cart, trying to escape the Dead thing pulling itself up his body.
‘Move out of the way so I can’t get to it!’ Came Gabe’s shout over Chloe’s screams.
By the time Phil reached the cart, Duncan was on his back, struggling to dislodge the snapping creature.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ Phil growled, grabbing what was left of the child’s pelvis.
With one mighty tug, Phil yanked the small decaying body from Duncan, swinging it over his shoulder in an arc and releasing it mid-air. With a crack, the child connected with the snowy road a few meters away. His breath pluming in the chilly morning air, Phil watched the bisected Dead child flip itself over and begin to pull itself along by its cracked and blackened claw like hands. As, hand over hand, the child pulled itself closer to Phil, determined to get to the flesh it craved, he could feel nothing but pity for the tragic thing before him. Phil walked forward to meet the Dead child halfway.
‘Sorry, little one,’ he said softly under his breath, and then with one stamp, he brought his boot firmly down on the child’s head, its skull breaking with an audible snap under the pressure of his weight.
‘Seventeen,’ he said, turning back to Patrick after a brief pause, as if nothing had happened ‘Imran will need back seventeen arrows.’
‘Seventeen,’ Patrick said with a smile. ‘Hear that, people, we need to find seventeen arrows and a dozen of Leon’s knives among this crap. The sooner we find them, the sooner we can get home.’
It wasn’t until he’d said it that Patrick realised he had already accepted what was left of the Substation group would be absorbed into the Lanherne community, permanently. Together, they would become a newer and stronger group, pooling their skills and resources, benefiting all. These people, who before now had only met a handful of times over the last two years, had risked their lives coming to their rescue and he made a promise to himself that he would repay this debt to them, no matter how long he had to wait.
Twenty minutes later, all but one of Leon’s knives had been found, Imran had retrieved his arsenal of arrows, barring two broken beyond repair and the bodies of the Dead had been hauled to the side of the road.
‘Patrick, Phil, come look at this,’ Imran called as he stood by Delilah, keeping an eye out in case any more of Dead were headed their way.
Swinging the last of the Dead between them, Phil and Patrick let go on the count of three, sending the corpse of what had once been a nurse, over the roadside hedge to join the pile of bodies already there.
‘What is it?’ Phil asked, hoping they weren’t about to be surrounded again.
‘Look at the snow,’ Imran indicated, pointing to the junction where the road they were currently on joined another that would lead through the village to the Convent. ‘Call me crazy but can you see tyre tracks?’
‘Shit!’ said Phil, jogging to the junction with Patrick close on his heels.
‘Not just any tyres,’ said Patrick, his head following the marks in the shallow snow, up and down the road, ‘but big ones, and from the looks of them, more than one vehicle too.’
‘This road leads right to Lanherne,’ Phil added, nervously scratching his beard. ‘Can’t tell if they’re going to or coming from, but this spells trouble either way.’
‘Trouble?’ Patrick asked, ‘Why? Perhaps it’s some sort of rescue.’
‘On the way to get you, we found Jackson’s Dead wife with a new looking army knife rammed in her skull. I think it was just too much for the old man to cope with so he hung himself,’ Phil replied, turning to walk back to the carts. ‘I think we better get moving.’
Patrick agreed. It couldn’t be just a coincidence that the electricity was suddenly surging, the evidence of petrol run vehicles and a new army knife, all turning up at the same time. Whatever was going on, they needed to find out before any more innocents died.
Despite their need to get home as soon as they could, progress was still painfully slow through the snow-covered lanes. Phil had already made it clear they could break Charlie’s golden rule about dealing with any Dead they came across. They simply couldn’t afford to stop. The tracks indicated person or persons unknown had not only found the Convent but also been there, so they needed to assess and deal with the situation there before it was too late. As they travelled through the snowy village Phil prayed to God, whom he doubted was listening anymore, that nothing bad had happened to anyone at Lanherne while he was away. Already, the guilt was eating away at him, twisting his insides.
‘We should have gone straight back when we found the knife,’ he said under his breath, guiding Delilah past the rusty snow covered wreck of a car. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid… all my fault’
‘Hey, we made that decision together, Phil,’ said Imran, placing a reassuring hand on the large man’s shoulder. ‘It’s no-one’s fault. Let’s just see what’s happening before we beat ourselves up about it.’
Around them, the snow had started to fall again, lightly at first, a few dancing flurries momentarily swirling about Delilah’s head before being whisked away by the cold breeze. However, by the time they passed through the village and reached the wide gate at the mouth of the lane, the weather had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. What had started as a few random wispy snowflakes had developed quickly into a thick heavy snowfall that covered their tracks in mere moments of their passing. Phil, struggling to see more than a metre in front of Delilah, knew he would have to rely on the mare’s instincts to get them up the lane and to the gates safely. She had made this trip countless times and knowing a warm stable was almost within her reach, she would not steer them wrong.
‘Lucky it’s just one long lane,’ Duncan said, looking through one of the cart’s spy holes at the blizzard of snow being whipped about in the wind. ‘At least we won’t lose Patrick behind us.’
‘Can you see them behind us though?’ Phil asked, turning to look at Duncan. ‘I don’t want them falling too far behind. Our tacks will fill up pretty quickly in this snow and Shadow doesn’t know this road like Delilah.’
‘Yep, they’re right on our tail,’ Gabe answered. ‘I can just about see her through the snowfall. Patrick’s steering her to follow our route exactly
.’
‘Good,’ said Phil quietly to himself, as he peered through the front slit into the swirling snow outside.
Suddenly, through the falling curtain of snow, a large shadow began to emerge and take shape. Fuzzy at first, any definition was lost among the twisting eddies of the falling snow, but then it slowly began to form. With each step, Delilah pulled them closer. The walls of Lanherne loomed larger, a signal their journey among the Dead was almost at an end. When Lanherne finally materialised completely before them, Phil swore at what he could see. There at the base of the high wall were at least twenty of the Dead, all pawing uselessly to get in.
‘Right, we’ll have to clear the Dead before they’ll open the gate,’ Phil said, pulling Delilah to a stop just outside the gate. ‘Imran, can you fire accurately in this?’
‘My aim’s not going to be great but I’ll do my best,’ he replied, already reaching for his quiver of arrows.
‘Okay, Gabe, if your ankle’s not too bad, I’m going to need you to run back to Patrick and get Leon and J-man while they Dead still haven’t noticed us,’ Phil continued, turning to hand Delilah’s reins to Duncan.
‘Right,’ Gabe replied, reaching past the sleeping sow to grab a length of heavy pipe hanging from the cart wall.
‘Be careful,’ said Chloe, her words snatched away by the wind as Gabe quickly closed the hatch behind him.
Pulling a whining Toby up onto her lap, Chloe moved one of the spyhole covers aside to make sure Gabe made it to the other cart safely. Absentmindedly, she stroked the anxious dog’s black floppy ears to calm her already thumping heartbeat while she watched Gabe hobbling his way through the blizzard back to Patrick. Thankfully, Patrick saw his approach and was already jumping down from the cart, with Leon and J-man close on his heels, their weapons ready for action. She watched as Gabe shouted something in Patrick’s ear, gesturing back to the wall to make his point clear. With a nod, Patrick said something briefly to Sarah and Helen in the cart before closing the hatches on them. The four men then braced themselves against the freezing wind to make their way to join Phil and Imran.
Standing in a defensive line behind the gathered oblivious Dead, the five other men waited for Phil’s signal. Phil pointed to Imran and Leon to begin. It made sense that the archer and the knife thrower should take down as many as they could before the Dead became aware of their presence. Only then would the others join in with hand-to-hand combat. Imran’s initial arrow, blown off course by the wind, finally found purchase deep in the shoulder of a large Dead man. Luckily, with his heavier knives, Leon was having better luck. Already two corpses slumped lifelessly in the snow, a knife lodged deep in each of their skulls, as Leon reached for a third knife. Imran had better luck with his next shot. Aiming slightly higher than his target to compensate for the wind and falling snow, Imran let the arrow fly. With a thud, another unnatural existence ended, the large Dead man finally falling to ground to join his already felled companions. It was at that point that a Dead teenager, his mottled skin tinged green with a creeping mould, turned his head slightly and caught sight of the living behind him. With a low hungry moan, he reached a broken hand beseechingly towards them before stumbling away from the wall towards the flesh he so craved.
‘Now!’ Phil shouted, rushing forward before any more of the Dead became aware of them.
Like a barbarian, Phil charged forward, smashing the skulls of two of the Dead with a double swing of his club, following the movement through with a hefty kick at the legs of a third. Even over the roaring wind, the buckling legs gave way with an audible snap of brittle kneecaps. Turning, Phil then stamped down hard on the Dead woman at his feet, her skull cracking under his foot. With her head now horribly misshapen and putrid fluid oozing across her face, the Dead woman still tried to claw up along Phil’s leg. Knocking her back to the floor, Phil swiftly delivered a second stamp to her head. This time, her already weakened skull was no match for the force being applied to it and with a crunch, Phil’s boot sent her brain splashing across the trampled down snow. Without so much as a pause for breath, Phil turned his attention to another of the Dead reaching for him and began his onslaught again.
Gabe and J-man were working smoothly as a team, taking down the Dead quickly with minimal contact. Despite his ankle, Gabe darted under outstretched arms, his pipe swinging, to smash at emaciated ankles and kneecaps left and right. With nothing to support them, the animated cadavers, toppled comically to the ground only to meet the full force of J-mans spiked club when they tried to right themselves.
Patrick, fighting alongside Phil, matched him in his the ferocity of his attack. To give himself room, Patrick kicked violently out at the chest what had once been a young black man, knocking him back against the Convent walls. His once rich ebony skin, now the pallid colour of death, had been torn from much of his weathered body in strips. A few misshapen tattoos on what was left of his forearms still stood out in contrast against his ashen skin. With a powerful overhead swing, Patrick aimed to bring his length of pipe down on the man’s skull. However, at that moment, the Dead man jerked forward, causing Patrick to miss his killing mark completely. Instead, as the pipe connected with the Dead man’s head, it sloughed decaying skin and flesh from the cadavers face. Rancid tendons attaching the jaw to the skull tore free under this attack, leaving the Dead man’s lower jaw to hang uselessly to one side. Oblivious to the fact that he would never bite anything ever again, the Dead man continued to reach for Patrick desperate to fill his mouth with warm bloody flesh. Swearing at himself for his mistake, Patrick used the momentum of his failed swing to bring the pipe back up in a looping arc. This time the pipe smashed into the Dead man’s temple with a loud crack. For a spilt second, the Dead man was still. Then as he was shoved aside by one of his hungry brothers in death, his corpse crumpled to the ground, never to rise again.
One by one, the animated bodies fell beneath their blows until the last, a withered thing that may have been an old woman in life, departed this earth with one of Leon’s knives lodged in the back of her head.
‘Shit, man,’ said J-man, leaning over to catch his breath, ‘must be getting old.’
Phil reached for the bell to alert those inside of their presence but before his hand could reach the cord, he could hear the cranking of the winch mechanism within.
‘Right, inside,’ Phil began, waving the men in as the gate began to open. ‘Duncan will bring our cart in. We check for any Dead hanging on underneath before the inner gate opens, then we repeat the process with the second cart. Gabe, go give Sarah the heads up, will you?’
With a nod, Gabe ran back outside to let Sarah know what was happening. Phil turned to check out who was on watch duty. Whoever was working the winch was bundled up in multiple layers of coats and scarves, fighting to keep out the cold, so he was unable to tell whom it was. It wasn’t until the figure jogged back along the walkway to the second winch, that Phil recognised Bryon’s tell-tale limp.
‘Shit,’ Phil said to himself.
Not only was it a bad sign that Bryon was on watch but in his urgency to get them inside he was already opening the inner gate without the normal checks being done first.
‘Imran,’ Phil called, ‘check the cart as Duncan rolls it in… I think the shit’s about to hit the fan.’
Leaving Imran to do the safety check, Phil pushed himself through the already opening inner gate to find a frail looking Sister Josephine there to meet him.
‘Oh, Phil, thank God!’ Sister Josephine wept as she threw herself into his arms. ‘They took them… they took them all!’
***
With little success, Liz tried again to find a comfortable position on Samson’s back. She had been riding for hours and the baby was letting her know of its discomfort with a series of sharp kicks.
‘Come on,’ she said quietly to her bump, ‘give Mummy a break. I’m trying to get back your auntie Anne, okay?’
Reaching up with one hand, she grabbed a low hanging tree branch and pulled
another strip of cloth from her bag with the other. She had been repeating this at every road junction, leaving behind her a Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb trail for Imran and the others to follow. The going would have been relatively easy, despite the discomfort, if it weren’t for the fact that at every turn, she was met by two or three of the Dead stumbling through the snowy hedgerows, attracted by the sound of the passing convoy. Each time she had to stop to deal with them, the convoy got further and further ahead of her, but she knew she couldn’t leave the Dead to follow on her tail. She would have to stop at some point to allow Samson to rest and certainly didn’t want a hoard of hungry Dead corpses coming up behind her while she waited for Imran to arrive. Best to deal with them when they were still in a manageable number, even if it did mean letting the convoy get further away from her. Luckily, the previous night’s snowfall allowed her to follow them at a distance, their tell-tale tyre tracks were clear to see.
Letting the branch go, the blue strip of cloth now fluttering in the wind, Liz looked up at the heavy clouds above her and wondered if she was in for another snowfall. Then, as if the universe had read her mind, she watched as the first flurry of dusty snowflakes spiralled down towards her. Behind her, the scrap of fabric suddenly snapped loudly back and forth as the breeze increased in strength.
‘Oh, great,’ she said to herself, as she gave Samson the nudge with her heel for him to move again.
Slowly, at first, these initial dancing flakes merely increased the speed of their merry pirouettes as they fell, but before long, the lacy specks were replaced by larger heavier cousins, which barrelled their way through buffeting winds from the clouds above. As the falling snow developed into a full-blown blizzard, a bloom of panic began to grow within Liz. She knew if the convoy’s tracks were filled by the falling snow, the chance of losing them became almost a certainty. She needed to shorten the gap that had developed between her and the convoy if she was to stand a chance of staying on their tail. So with another kick of her heels, Samson broke into a canter. Pushing Samson to increase his speed on unknown roads like this was a fine line she dared to walk. Left with only her judgement and a fair amount of guesswork, she guided him around the worst of the potholes and prayed he didn’t lose his footing and throw her. She now raced past the Dead, shambling alone or in small groups, knowing she would just have to take the risk and leave them in her wake. Now was not the time to deal with them. With the weather against her, her time was running out.
Five More Days With The Dead (Lanherne Chronicles Book 2) Page 16