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

by Stephen Charlick

  ‘Shit,’ replied Patrick, nervously rubbing his scar.

  ‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves a break,’ interrupted Phil, suddenly pulling Samson to an abrupt halt by the side of the domed greenhouse, ‘the door’s ajar. We can get in.’

  ‘Thank, God.’ said Imran, jumping down from the cart, his bow already pulled taught to give the others cover as they piled out.

  As Liz landed on the weed-choked cobbles by Imran’s side, she deftly clicked free her blade from the sheath on her back and looked over at the partly open doorway.

  ‘Don’t know if that’s a good sign or not.’ She said, gesturing to the almost skeletal remains of a man with his skull caved in. ‘The door’s lodged open with the corpse of one of the Dead , which could mean there’s more inside, but then, at least someone had the wherewithal to smash his skull in. So perhaps it’s already clear.’

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough, Liz.’ said Phil, grimly slipping one of their precious hand guns into the waist of his trousers.

  ‘It could get hairy in there,’ said Patrick, noticing Phil’s gun before turning to the only two members of the group with any real military training. ‘Steve, Karen, I’m going to need you both to give those bastards some incentive to give us the baby once we save their arses. Understand?’

  ‘Understood,’ said Steve with a nod, swinging his rifle from his back, ‘whatever it takes, we’re not leaving without that child.’

  ‘Right, let’s do this,’ said Phil, looking from one face set with grim determination to the next.

  Stepping forward, he effortlessly kicked aside the withered remains of the corpse and slowly pulled open the door. Karen and Steve darted through the open doorway and immediately dropped to one knee, their rifles up and ready should any of the Dead be lurking within striking distance.

  ‘Clear,’ called Steve back to the others, ‘doesn’t look as if anyone’s home.’

  As the others stepped into the dome, each with their own weapons ready for attack, they were struck by the sudden rise in temperature.

  ‘Jesus, it’s hot in here,’ grumbled Phil, his face already becoming flushed from the heat.

  ‘Guess it was designed to stay at a certain temperature,’ said Liz, looking along the narrow path bordered by huge sprouting aloe plants and colourful protea plants just coming into bloom. ‘This is supposed to be copying the Mediterranean climate after all, right? But how come everything hasn’t just died off after all these years?’

  As if to answer her, a hissing sound suddenly came unexpectedly from one of the flowerbeds to their right.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the water pumps were solar powered,’ said Patrick, glancing at the water being sprayed from pipes running along the pathway, ‘it would fit with the Green ecological ethos of this place.’

  ‘Yeah, alright Teach, let’s get going,’ said Steve, his attitude all business as he moved forward, while his rifle was swinging back and forth in anticipation of unwanted company.

  As the group began to move along the path, Liz suddenly turned back to the door they had come through.

  ‘Phil, catch the door!’ she said, already seeing the doorway beginning to swing shut behind them.

  ‘What?’ he replied, quickly spinning round.

  But they were too late, as with a loud ‘click’, the security door locked, shutting them inside.

  ‘Damn,’ she said. ‘Well, let’s just hope there’s another way out or we’re screwed.’

  ‘We’ll deal with that problem when it arises,’ said Patrick, stepping over the skeletal remains of a human arm, ‘let’s just get that child first, then we’ll figure a way out of here.’

  Liz glanced at Imran and raised her eyebrow questioningly. Each of them instantly knew what the other was thinking. Charlie, the father of Alice’s Charlie, had drilled into them both over and over again that if you found yourself in a hostile situation, one of the first things you should do is know your escape route. If you didn’t, you weren’t really helping anyone at all, just moving from one crappy situation to the next and would probably end up getting yourself and everyone else killed in the process. But Liz and Imran knew now was not the time to argue, and with the sound of intermittent gunfire still drifting to them from the front of the dome, they knew time was running out.

  Moving as swiftly as they dared through the twisting and overgrown pathways, the group soon found themselves in the wider open area just inside of the main entrance. Just as Liz had described, parked in front of the doors was a mini forklift truck, effectively preventing the doors from opening and the soldiers making their escape.

  ‘Right, let’s shift this thing, the battery will be dead after all this time, so we’ll have to push it,’ Patrick said to Phil, the two men running to the rear of the vehicle. ‘Karen, Steve, get ready.’

  The two soldiers nodded their understanding and took up their positions with their rifles aimed at the doorway.

  With the noise from the soldiers outside firing on the horde of the Dead and the underlying moaning of their hungry attackers, Liz only noticed by chance that the man, who had been trying to smash his way in, had stopped his hammering on the cracked panel and was watching her. For a second, their eyes met, and Liz saw nothing but mistrust and a cold calculation staring back at her. But then in the blink of an eye, the connection was lost, as the man turned swiftly away from her to smash the skull of a Dead woman in the grass who was pawing impotently at his leg.

  ‘Shit! This thing’s fucking heavy,’ growled Phil, as he strained beside Patrick to shift the forklift out of the way.

  Suddenly, Imran darted forward to the cab of the vehicle and jumped in.

  ‘Try now,’ he shouted, leaning to look back at the two men, ‘the hand brake was on!’

  ‘Fucking marvellous,’ said Phil, muttering under his breath, as the wheels slowly began to turn.

  ‘Get ready!’ shouted Patrick, when the back set of wheels finally moved past one of the doors far enough for it to open.

  They all knew this was the precise moment that would decide just how things were to go down. Either they would gain control of the situation, disarm the soldiers and get the child back that was hopefully Charlie, or the soldiers would simply turn their fire from Dead targets to living ones, and in that case, there would be casualties, if not fatalities on both sides.

  With the task complete, Phil and Patrick abandoned the vehicle and turned to meet whoever or whatever was about to come through the doorway. The door had just started to move when Phil pulled the handgun from his waistband, and sidestepped behind the door so he could stand unseen by those coming in.

  ‘Lucy! Get inside!’ shouted one of the young soldiers, using his own body as a shield between the girl and a Dead man reaching for them from the grassy verge.

  He pushed Lucy, who was now holding the child tightly in her thin arms, behind him, through the open doorway and into the dome. The soldier briefly glanced from Lucy over to Liz, before turning to fire at the Dead man who had now fallen onto the path in front of the open door. Unlike the soldier who had tried to smash his way into the dome, Liz saw nothing but thanks and relief in the young man’s eyes. But this was the man who Liz had seen holding the child in his arms earlier, and as such, she knew he would be one they needed to convince, if they wanted a chance of getting the child without bloodshed. Even in the few seconds she watched him, she could tell he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the young girl holding the baby. Perhaps, just like Steve and Karen, he had found himself on the wrong side of this fight purely by circumstance, and like them, just needed to be given the opportunity of a different way to live.

  ‘Grimes! Sinclair!’ cried the soldier, between bursts of fire, ‘Back up! The door’s open!’ Back up!’

  Walking backwards into the dome, the first solider was joined by two men, each firing with more than an edge of panic into the Dead crowd now only a few metres from the doorway. One of them had short red hair and was so tall and bulky that he gave eve
n Phil a run for his money, while the other was a lot shorter and was wearing a pair of cracked glasses. Over their bobbing heads, Liz could see there were only two other soldiers still beyond the safety of the doorway, a woman and the man she had seen earlier.

  ‘Pelling!’ shouted the man, spinning to his left to shoot a Dead child in the face, ‘Pelling!’

  But Liz could tell this ‘Pelling’ woman was beyond hearing the man call her name. Charlie had told her about this, he had seen it during his own time in the army long before the Dead came. Unstable men, tired and battle weary would lose themselves in this rhythm of death. The repeated ‘move-aim-shoot’ dance of battle, would chip away piece by piece at their fragile hold on sanity, until they were lulled into a deadly hypnotic trance with little chance of return. Somehow, Liz knew the man could see this too, and even as he turned to kick out at a Dead man stumbling towards the woman, she knew he would leave her behind.

  ‘Pelling!’ he shouted again. ‘Fucking move it, we’re leaving!’

  Liz thought she detected a pause in the woman’s firing and sure enough, her head began to turn. But it was too late and even as she locked eyes with Liz, her gaze filled with fear and regret, the man was closing the door behind himself, blocking her from sight. In her final glimpse of the woman, Liz saw her begin to lower her rifle, resigning herself to her fate.

  With a ‘clang’, the metal door finally slammed closed, shutting off the woman with her death screams from sight, if not from mind. Instantly, Dead hands began to pound against the door, reminding the man to slide across the thick internal block.

  ‘Drop it!’ said Phil, pressing the barrel of the handgun tight against the back of the soldier’s head.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Ridge, raising his hands as he carefully turned around to face the group before placing his rifle at his feet, ‘A rescue party from Lanherne, I presume. My, you are far from home, and all for nothing, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Liz, her eyes drifting over to Lucy with the baby held tightly to her chest.

  ‘And look, if I’m not mistaken, we have the deceased Private Blackmore here too, looking remarkably healthy for someone who’s meant to be rotting in the belly of a corpse,’ Ridge continued. Noticing the two members of the Lanherne group wearing army fatigues, he said, ‘And you, I don’t know your name, but you work in the Comm’s centre back at the base, don’t you? So what the fuck are you doing here?’

  ‘Just putting things right, Sergeant.’ Karen replied coolly.

  ‘I said what did you mean?’ Liz repeated, fearing the worst. ‘What did you mean when you said we came all this way for nothing?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the soldier who stood by Lucy, his eyes filled with genuine regret, ‘there was an accident…’

  ‘Andrews!’ snapped Ridge, spittle flying from his lips in anger.

  ‘What sort of accident?’ growled Phil, jabbing the barrel hard into the side of Sergeant Ridge’s temple, ‘Come on Arsehole, what sort of accident?’

  ‘Phil…’ warned Patrick, knowing the man was on the edge of either braining the sergeant, or shooting him.

  ‘I’d answer him if I were you, Sergeant,’ added Steve, his eyes briefly flicking to the two other men, who thankfully didn’t seem about to jump to aid their commanding officer.

  ‘May I?’ Ridge asked, calmly gesturing with his hands to the black straps of the holdall.

  Phil simply nodded, knowing he would sooner shoot the smug man than be forced to talk to him again.

  Slowly, Ridge slipped the straps off his shoulders and held out the bag with one hand. Without even knowing it, Liz began to walk forward slowly. She somehow knew what tiny tragedy the bag held. She knew what she would see when she finally pulled back the zip, and that even though it tore at her heart, she still had to see it with her own eyes.

  ‘A bridge collapsed,’ Ridge began, staring intently at Liz as her hand rose to take the bag from him, ‘the boy drowned. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Simple as that,’ Liz repeated, choking back the words as she cradled the bag to her chest.

  ‘But at least we now know the anti-virus works,’ Ridge continued, oblivious to the grief Liz and the others from Lanherne were feeling, ‘he didn’t come back.’

  ‘You fucking idiot!’ snapped Imran, desperate to hold Liz in his arms and take away the pain she was clearly feeling. ‘We knew that already. We’re all cured, we have been for months. None of us can come back now, not even you, you callous shit!’

  ‘What?’ said Ridge, confusion creeping into his voice.

  ‘He’s telling the truth,’ added Steve, ‘you’d have known yourselves if you weren’t all wearing those pulse detectors.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Sergeant Ridge replied, ‘you’re talking…’

  ‘But we saw a young girl yesterday,’ interrupted Grimes, looking at Patrick, ‘she could’ve only been dead for a few hours. We even thought for a second she was alive, but she’d been bitten, she had come back as one of them.’

  ‘I’m not a scientist, I can’t explain that,’ Patrick began, raising his voice over the sound of the Dead pounding on the door, ‘but I know we’re cured, the virus in Charlie mutated and went airborne. We’ve had deaths at the Convent and they didn’t come back, they were cured.’

  When he mentioned the deaths, Patrick couldn’t help but look at Lucy who seemed to be staring at Liz, as she slowly pulled back the zip of the bag with trembling fingers.

  ‘As were Lucy’s family,’ he continued, ‘they didn’t come back either.’

  ‘We’re cured?’ asked Sinclair, the look of childlike hope at odds on the large man’s features, ‘we’re really cured?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Patrick.

  ‘Oh, God,’ sobbed Liz, suddenly dropping to her knees with the open holdall in front of her.

  Liz looked at the tiny body of the boy that had been so callously thrown into the bag and what she saw broke her heart. She saw the tiny blue tinged fingers that would never again cling tight to their loving mother, the tiny cold ears that would never hear the whispered tales of a mother’s love, and the cold dead lips that would never again smile at their mother and fill her with countless joy. She saw all of these and turned to Lucy.

  ‘Oh Lucy…’ she said, whipping away a tear that she had shed for the girl’s lost childhood and lost child.

  ‘Please,’ Lucy said, shaking her head, her eyes brimming with tears, ‘Please don’t take him from me.’

  ‘Lucy?’ said Andrews, kneeling down next to her.

  ‘You swopped them over after the accident, didn’t you,’ said Liz, gently collecting the bag in her arms and pushing herself up from the ground to walk over to the young girl. ‘It was your baby that drowned wasn’t it? Not Charlie at all.’

  ‘He took everything from me,’ Lucy wept, pointing an accusing finger at the Sergeant, ‘he made us come to you. He made us take him from you. He promised not to hurt my family but he lied… he lied… he left them to die… he lied.’

  ‘Let me take Charlie, Lucy,’ Liz said softly, ‘his mother needs him.’

  ‘But I’m his mother,’ she replied her words barely a whisper.

  ‘No, Lucy,’ Liz continued, ‘no, you’re not. This is your baby here, remember?’

  Confused, Lucy looked at the baby in her arms and over to the small blue tinted face visible in the open bag.

  ‘My baby?’ she said softly, reaching out a hand to touch the tiny blue face.

  Despite what the young girl had done, Liz couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She was still just a child and had simply been unfortunate enough to be caught up in a situation well beyond her control. Egged on by her mother’s desire for revenge and the false threatening promises of the Sergeant, she had been forced to do some terrible things, but as Liz watched the broken girl finally realise her baby was truly gone, all thoughts of retribution melted away.

  ‘I… I wanted to call him Daniel,’ Lucy whispered, as her heavy tears silently f
ell.

  ‘Take him, Lucy…’ said Liz, her gaze flicking briefly over to Andrews, relieved to see her own pity mirrored in his eyes, ‘Take… Daniel…’

  Lucy lifted her head and looked from Charlie to Liz and then back down to her own baby, a look of uncomprehending despair on her young face.

  ‘My baby, my baby’s dead,’ she whispered, half statement, half question.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Lucy,’ was all Liz could bring herself to say, she knew no words would ease this child’s pain.

  ‘Here, let me take him so you can say goodbye to Daniel, properly,’ said Andrews, gently easing Charlie from Lucy’s grasp.

  Lucy’s tear filled eyes slowly rose to meet Andrews’ concerned gaze.

  ‘Daniel…’ she replied, her arms falling away from Charlie as Andrews finally took hold of him.

  Liz gave the soldier a brief smile of thanks and gently passed the still infant into Lucy’s arms. Lucy delicately traced a finger along the dead child’s blue cheek before leaning forward to kiss him softly on the forehead.

  ‘My baby, my Daniel,’ Liz heard Lucy whisper to her dead baby, ‘don’t worry, Daniel. I’m here, mummy’s here.’

  Liz couldn’t bear to look at the heart breaking scene any longer, so standing up, she turned to Phil who had quietly walked over to Andrews to take Charlie from him, and was now standing with Imran and Patrick.

  ‘So what now?’ she asked, feeling suddenly drained as she joined the three men most important to her in the world.

  ‘Now we find a way out of here,’ Phil replied, looking up from the happy child in his arms.

  ‘But what about him?’ she continued, gesturing over her shoulder to Sergeant Ridge.

  ‘Lucy,’ she heard Andrews say behind her.

  Something in the way he had said the girl’s name, made Liz turn. Lucy was now silently standing in front of the Sergeant, looking up at him with her dead child still held gently in her arms.

  ‘Lucy?’ Liz repeated, wondering just what was happening in the girl’s tormented grief stricken mind.