Lanherne Chronicles (Book 3): Last Days With The Dead

by Stephen Charlick

  ‘Steve,’ Patrick said, running towards him, ‘get outside and see if they need help, use the gun if you have to.’

  Steve nodded and began to run to the stone staircase.

  ‘Leon, Imran, Phil,’ Steve called to the three men as he ran past them, his military training automatically kicking in, ‘with me!’

  Without question, the three men followed. Phil, dressed only in his underwear, didn’t even wait to put on any clothes. With the length of pipe already in his hand, he had all he needed to deal with whatever they found outside. While Imran, who had automatically grabbed for his bow and full quiver the moment the explosion had woken him, was already sprinting down the corridor after Steve. Leon, with one of his arms already hooking through the sleeve of his vest of knives, quickly pulled something from the pocket of the jeans he had hastily slipped on.

  ‘Here,’ he said to Bryon, handing him a lighter, ‘get some of the lamps lit.’

  It was a rare occurrence that they used any of the valuable oil lamps, they all knew that once the oil was used, it would be unlikely they would be able to refill them again.

  ‘Will do,’ said Bryon, reaching for one of the oil lamps that hung unused on a hook.

  Pulling off the glass cover, Bryon flicked the wheel on the disposable lighter. With a flash of sparks, the flame lit, and with his hand cupped to save it from any draught, Bryon tilted the lamp so the wick was in the flame. After a few sputtering attempts, the wick finally burst into life, filling one end of the corridor with welcoming light.

  ‘What do we...’ Bryon began, turning round, but his words abruptly stopped as the light fell through the open door of Alice’s room.

  ‘Alice,’ he cried, running to her door, ‘No!’

  Instantly, Liz was pushing her way past people to get to the woman she loved as a sister.

  ‘What?’ she exclaimed, pausing in the doorway to see Bryon resting the lamp down beside the puddle of blood that surrounded Alice’s still body.

  ‘No!’ she screamed, throwing herself into the room.

  ‘Get Avery!’ she heard someone call from the doorway behind her, as she knelt in a pool of Alice’s warm blood.

  ‘I’ve got a pulse,’ Bryon said with relief, looking up at Liz, her eyes wide with worry. ‘It’s weak but it’s there...’

  Liz gripped Alice’s hand fiercely, wishing with all her heart that she would open her eyes.

  ‘We need to stop the bleeding!’ said Bryon, looking about the room for something suitable.

  ‘Here,’ said Penny, stepping into the room to pick a clean folded towelling square off a pile by the door, ‘use this.’

  Taking the square of fabric, Bryon folded up into a tight wad and after ripping aside Alice’s bloody T-shirt, pressed the wad firmly to the hole in her shoulder.

  ‘Where’s Avery!’ he shouted to the stunned faces of the people standing in the doorway. ‘We need Avery, now!’

  ‘J-man’s gone to get him,’ replied Patrick, his worried expression diminishing the effect of his calming tone, ‘he’ll be here any second.’

  ‘It’ll be alright, Alice,’ Liz whispered, kissing her friends bloody knuckles, ‘it’ll be alright.’

  Behind her, she heard Penny make a small gasp. Turning her head briefly away from Alice, Liz could see Penny standing over the cot that Charlie slept in.

  ‘He’s not here,’ Penny said, turning back to look at her and then over to Patrick, ‘Charlie’s gone? They’ve taken him.’

  ***

  Outside, Steve skidded to a halt, taking in the scene of burning debris and scattered rubble.

  ‘Forget that,’ shouted Phil to Damien and Rich, who had come down from the walkway and were frantically trying to put out the fire that had already taken hold on the side of the pig sty, ‘we need to block that fucking hole!’

  Even as he said the words, the shambling figure of a Dead woman pulled herself through the gap in the wall where the side gate used to be.

  ‘Got it!’ called Imran, dropping his quiver at his feet so he could take aim.

  With a twang of his string, the arrow shot from his bow, landing just above the Dead woman’s right eye. For a second, she rocked back and forth on her feet and then as her ruined brain finally released its hold on her decaying body, she collapsed to the ground.

  Inside the pigsty, the pigs could smell the smoke and were starting to panic. Rich, who had abandoned trying to douse the flames with buckets of water from the water barrel, pulled open the sty door, and let the pigs out. In a stampede of snouts and trotters, the five pigs and half a dozen piglets, darted out of the burning sty and began to dart around the courtyard’s patchwork of vegetable plots.

  ‘What do we do?’ called Rich, coughing as he inhaled some of the thick black smoke.

  ‘Imran, Leon! Get up on the walkway and make sure no more of those bastards get through,’ Phil shouted, looking round for something they could use to block the breach.

  ‘I’ve got an idea!’ called Steve, running over to one of the carts. ‘Help me push it nearer to the wall.’

  As one, the men ran to the back of the boxed cart and began to push with all their might. Moving the cart the ten or so meters over to the breach, would have taken seconds for any of the three horses at Lanherne, but for the four men, it seemed to take an age. The explosion surely must have roused all the Dead in the surrounding area, and with each turn of the cart’s large wheels, Steve expected them to be overrun. Only the reassuring whisper of arrows and knives flying through the air from the walkway above, calmed his concerns. He knew Imran and Leon would keep the Dead at bay, they had to, their lives depended on it.

  ‘What the fuck happened, anyway?’ grunted Phil, as the cart finally became level with the hole in the wall.

  ‘There was just this explosion out of the blue and then by the time we got here, all that was left to see were the tail lights of two motor bikes as they sped away,’ replied Rich, wiping the sooty sweat from his forehead.

  ‘Hey, aren’t the Dead just going to be able to crawl under this?’ asked Damien, crouching down to look beneath the cart.

  ‘Now, we tip it over,’ Phil said, nodding to Steve to confirm that had been his plan, as he positioned his grip under the cart’s carriage, ‘the carts’ roof will block them out.’

  Once each of the men had a firm grip in the bottom of the cart, they slowly began to lift one side off the ground.

  ‘Come on, you Bastard!’ Phil shouted, the blood pumping in his ears as he strained with the others to lift their side of the cart higher.

  Suddenly, Cam, Sarah, Duncan, and William, appeared next to him and seeing what needed to be done, each found a space to grab hold on the cart. Immediately, the cart lifted higher from the ground.

  ‘On the count of three, push,’ said Phil, through gritted teeth.

  ‘One, two… three!’

  Amid the grunts of effort, the cart slowly rose higher and higher, until the perfect angle was finally reached and gravity began to work in their favour.

  ‘Get ready!’ grunted Phil. ‘Step back, it’s going to…’

  Then, with a crash, the cart tipped onto its side, blocking the hole.

  ‘It’s not tight with the wall,’ said Cam, looking at the fist-sized gap between the cart’s roof and the wall, ‘but nothing can get through, we’re safe.’

  ‘Thank fuck! Now we deal with the fires!’ directed Phil. ‘Everybody grab a bucket of water, Sarah, you try to catch the piglets and put them in the stable, they’re likely to get trampled on out here.’

  ‘On it,’ she replied, darting after one of the small piglets as it ran by.

  ‘I’m going to give the Convent a once over,’ whispered Steve to Phil, as he retrieved the handgun he had stuck in the waistband of his jeans, ‘make sure there’s only us left in here.’

  ‘Good idea,’ nodded Phil, dipping his bucket into the water barrel, ‘be careful, Steve.’

  Bucket by bucket, the group darted back and forth to the water bar
rels positioned about the courtyard, until finally, with a spluttering fizz, the last smoky embers were extinguished.

  ‘Fuck!’ said Phil, throwing his empty bucket away from him as he dropped to sit on the ground. ‘I’m getting too old for this malarkey.’

  ‘You look alright to me,’ said Sarah, dropping down next to him and patting him on his muscular thighs, ‘you’re in great shape for a man your age.’

  ‘Why, Sarah,’ Phil said comically, acting as if he only just realised he was sitting there in just his underwear, ‘you tart, flirting with me at a time like this…’

  ‘You should be so lucky,’ she laughed, poking him in the ribs, ‘and anyway, you’re not the only one with a bit of eye candy to snuggle up to at night.’

  ‘And how’s it going with Cam?’ Phil said, pushing himself up from the ground with a grunt and dusting some dirt off his backside.

  ‘It’s…’ Sarah began to answer, a secret girlish smile creeping across her face.

  ‘Phil! You need to come,’ interrupted J-man running up to him, ‘Alice has been shot…’

  ‘Get Avery,’ said Phil, already sprinting for the Convent entrance.

  ‘Avery’s been hurt too,’ J-man called after him, causing the man to skid to an abrupt halt.

  ‘Is, he?’ said Phil, the colour draining from his face as terrible thoughts and images flashed into his mind.

  ‘God, No,’ J-man quickly replied, seeing that Phil had feared the worst, ‘he had a pretty bad crack to the head, he was just coming round when I went to fetch him for Alice.’

  Phil’s large body visible shook with relief and he rubbed his face vigorously with his hands trying to clear the horrific thoughts of losing Avery from his mind.

  ‘Pheww,’ said Phil finally, blowing away the last rush of adrenalin that still fizzed through his veins, ‘and Avery’s with Alice now?’

  ‘Yes,’ J-man replied, ‘but he’s still a bit shaky, so he’s getting Bryon to be his hands.’

  Phil’s eyebrows creased in concern. Up until Avery had joined them, Nadine had been their only source of medical knowledge. It puzzled him a little that Bryon should be stepping up to help Avery instead of her.

  ‘Where’s Nadine?’ he asked, turning back to J-man, his hand resting on the convent door.

  J-man simply shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Bryon was just there, I suppose,’ he replied.

  With that, Phil slowly nodded and went inside. Something was wrong, he knew it, and not just the explosion and Avery and Alice’s injuries. He prayed he was just jumping to conclusions, but with Nadine strangely missing, he somehow knew there was still more bad news to come that night.

  ***

  ‘Now use the antiseptic spray,’ Avery was saying to Bryon as Phil appeared at Alice’s doorway.

  ‘What’s the situation outside?’ Patrick asked quietly, placing a hand on Phil’s soot streaked shoulder.

  ‘What? Oh, we’ve blocked the breach in the wall and the fires are out,’ Phil replied, unable to take his eyes from the scene in the room.

  ‘It’s not a bad as it looks,’ Avery said, noticing Phil staring at the blood covering one side of his face and shoulders, ‘head wounds always bleed a lot, and baring infection, Alice should be okay in the long run. There’s a clean exit wound on the back of her shoulder and miraculously no major arteries or veins were hit. The bullet nicked her shoulder blade, which will be painful for a while, but it’ll heal eventually.’

  ‘But there’s so much blood?’ Phil said, looking at the pool surrounding Alice.

  ‘Just looks like a lot spread out like that,’ Avery replied, wincing as Liz gently pulled the wadded up bloody towel away from his head to look at the wound. ‘Probably only a pint or two at most,’ he continued, giving Liz an annoyed look, ‘she’ll be a bit delicate for a day or so, but she’ll come through. She’s only unconscious now because she fainted from the shock.’

  ‘I take it we’ve got Melissa and Lucy to thank for all of this?’ Phil asked, turning to look at Patrick.

  ‘Mary,’ Patrick corrected, crossing his arms to stop himself from punching a wall, ‘the bitch’s name is actually Mary, Mary Donaldson. Sister Rebecca recognised her.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Phil, realising just whom they had let into their home, ‘I take it this was a revenge thing for killing that man of theirs last year?’

  ‘No,’ said Liz, ‘they took Charlie. I think that was their plan all along.’

  ‘What! If they hurt that boy, I’m going to kill those incestuous freaks! I swear!’ Phil growled, his gaze falling back to Alice’s pale face.

  ‘So, with the explosives and Charlie kidnaped, it certainly looks like the Donaldson’s have made some very well equipped friends.’ Patrick continued.

  ‘Captain Cardin,’ Avery whispered, the colour suddenly draining from his own face, ‘my, God, how did they know Charlie and Alice survived the ambush?’

  ‘We can work that out later,’ Phil began, ‘first; we’ve got to get Charlie back. If the Donaldson’s have him, at least we got an idea where they’re headed.’

  ‘Yes but…’Liz started to say, but stopped when over Patrick’s shoulder, Steve appeared from the shadows with blood over his chest and arms.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, fearing the words he would say, but still needing to hear them.

  Steve’s gaze flicked towards Bryon, and instantly, Liz knew. Bryon and Nadine had been such close friends, ever since they had joined the convoy that eventually arrived at Lanherne, and Liz knew he would take this news badly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bryon.’ Steve said softly, looking at the man kneeling in the lamp light while he applied a bandage to Alice’s shoulder.

  ‘What?’ Bryon whispered, noticing for the first time Steve’s blood covered chest and somehow knowing what he was going to say.

  ‘It’s Nadine,’ Steve continued, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Bryon stared silently back at Steve, his eyes filling up with heavy tears. For a few minutes, no one said anything. Finally, Liz reached out her hand to touch Bryon’s shoulder, but with a strangled sob, Bryon turned to Avery.

  ‘What now,’ he managed to say even as heavy tears fell from his eyes, ‘what do you want me to do now for Alice?’

  ‘It’s alright, Bryon,’ Liz said, reaching to take the bandages from him, ‘I can finish up here, it’s alright.’

  ‘No, it’s not fucking alright!’ Bryon snapped back. ‘They’ve taken Nadine from us, I’ll be damned if I let these Fuckers take Alice too.’

  Wiping his tears away on the back of his sleeve, Bryon coughed and let out a shaky breath.

  ‘I said, what now, Avery?’ he repeated, fighting to keep the quiver from his voice.

  ‘Now that it’s safe to move her, we should get her up onto the bed,’ Avery replied, shakily pushing himself off Alice’s bed.

  ‘Whoa, take it slow,’ Liz said, reaching out to take Avery’s arm, ‘you’re still a bit wobbly on your feet.’

  Waving away her concerns and the worried look on Phil’s face, Avery slowly stepped over Alice’s unconscious body and sat down on a fold away chair that had been propped in the corner of the room.

  ‘Patrick, Phil,’ he said motioning to the two large men, ‘would you mind doing the honours, gently does it.’

  Once they placed her softly down onto the bed, Phil perched his large form on the edge of the small creaking bed.

  ‘We’ll get him back, Alice,’ he whispered, brushing a blood caked lock of hair from her face, ‘I promise.’

  ‘Right, I think we’d better call everyone to the Refectory hall,’ said Patrick, nervously running his finger along his scar as he watched Phil. ‘Avery, can you stay to look after Alice?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but Bryon better stay with me, in case my knock to the head is worse than I thought.’ Avery’s eyes flicked to Bryon telling Patrick he was just keeping Bryon here to keep him occupied.

  There would be time for Bryon’s grief when they had gotten Charlie
back safely, they didn’t need people getting distraught when there were things that needed to be done.

  ‘Right,’ said Patrick, silently thanking Avery. ‘Steve, can you spread the word about the meeting, I’ll go see if Sister Rebecca can rustle up something warm to eat, we’ll not be going back to sleep tonight.’

  With a nod, Steve turned to leave, but Patrick caught his elbow.

  ‘Make sure Nadine’s body is taken to the Chapel… use a sheet or something to wrap her in,’ he whispered, glancing back into the room, hoping Bryon hadn’t heard him.

  ‘Yeah, course, and I’ll have a quick wash before I come to the meeting,’ replied Steve, looking down at his blood smeared arms and chest, ‘people don’t need to be seeing this.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Patrick.

  As he watched Steve turn and walk away, his form slowly disappearing into the darkness along the corridor, Patrick could hear Avery behind him talking softly to Bryon.

  ‘Why don’t we clean her up a bit,’ he was saying, ‘she doesn’t need to wake up covered in crusted blood, it’ll only upset her.’

  ‘It’ll take more than a bowl of water to make this right,’ Patrick thought to himself, ‘a lot more.’

  ***

  Later, Patrick looked out at the worried and confused faces of the people of Lanherne. They had all turned to him as he rose from the bench and walked over to stand in front of the large map on the wall. If they expected from him, words of comfort or solace, they were to be disappointed. All he had for them was grief and ill tidings. Once again, those who had nothing in their hearts but malice and greed, had infiltrated Lanherne. They had taken the hospitality and hope offered to them and trampled it under foot, leaving nothing but death and sorrow in their wake. All, accept Chloe, who Patrick asked to stay with all the children in his bedroom, Avery, Bryon, and Alice, had gathered in the Refectory hall, their worried and whispered conversations crating a palpable tension in the room.