Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (12 page)

‘What? Just because you’re in charge you don’t get to work like the rest of us underlings?’ she called, breaking him from his dark thoughts.

‘What?’ Charlie began, blinking away the images of death and loss he had conjured up.

‘Yeah, you heard the girl… shift it, man,’ said Phil, slapping Charlie’s backside as he walked past to pick up a sack of mixed vegetables to get them out of the rain, ‘Or you might have an uprising on your hands…’

‘You keep your uprising to yourself or I’m telling David,’ Charlie called back.

At this Phil simply turned, looked at Charlie and burst into a deep rolling laugh.

‘You should be so lucky,’ he laughed, chucking the heavy sack to Charlie, who only just managed to catch it.

Liz looked from Phil to Charlie and as they continued their harmless banter, she smiled to herself. She was glad the mood of the group was finally lifting. Despite what she had said to Charlie, she was sure there would be enough troubling times ahead of them before they got to the unknown Saint Xavier’s Academy, so they might as well start off as high spirited as they could, it surely couldn’t last.

***

‘There. That should do it,’ said Tom, snapping the cap back on the aerosol can of red paint.

They were just about to leave and with the two carts loaded with everything they could possibly carry; there had been just one last thing they needed to do before bidding the Carmichael Institute a final goodbye.

‘You’ve spelt ‘breached’ wrong,’ called David from the open hatchway, as he read what Tom had spray-painted on the wall next to the closed gates.

Tom looked at the slightly wonky red words he had painted, his lips subconsciously moving as he read to himself: ‘CROPS INSIDE- HELP YOURSELF- CAREFUL WALL BREECHED’.

‘It’s ‘ea’ not double ‘e’…’ David continued, waving away the simple mistake. ‘Never mind they’ll get the point.’

‘Yeah, if they’re hungry enough they won’t give a damn how it’s spelt,’ added Tyrone, moving aside as Tom pulled himself up into the cart and out of the falling rain that had refused to lighten up.

The survivors had divided themselves between the two carts, trying to house inside of each equal amount of skill and strength, just in case the worst happened. With David, Tom and Tyrone in the cart being pulled by Snow were also Sally, Paul and Phil. While Star pulled behind her Charlie, Michael, Cam, Carmella, Fran, Liz and Anne. With only one set of maps Charlie had gone over the route with Phil time and time again, scribbling down the road names and danger points he would need to traverse on his own should the two carts get separated.

‘Right,’ Charlie began, standing on the lip of one of the side hatches as he called back to Phil. ‘Try not to let too much distance get between us and as usual we’ll deal with the Dead when we can… but we’re not taking any unnecessary risks, not on this trip. We’re travelling on unknown roads and I don’t want any stupid heroics… if there’s too many of them we’ll just have to let them pass… no-one’s dying on this trip or I’ll want to know why… OK!’

Phil knew that much of what Charlie had just said was really aimed at Tom, but even so he still gave Charlie the ‘thumbs up’ signal through the front viewing slit.

‘You hear that?’ said Phil over his shoulder to Tom. ‘No stupid risk taking or Charlie will have my balls, OK?’

‘Charming,’ mumbled Sally, rolling her eyes as she pushed aside one of the spyhole covers in the cart wall.

Ignoring her comment, Phil waited for Tom’s acknowledgment.

‘Tom!’ he repeated.

‘Yeah, Yeah… I heard him,’ he mumbled unconvincingly.

With a sigh, Phil turned back and gathered Snow’s reins up in his hands, knowing Charlie’s orders had probably fallen on deaf ears as far as Tom was concerned. It didn’t take long for the cart in front of them to begin to move off and just as he had been told, Phil soon gave a flick of Snow’s reins to keep the distance between them under a few metres. With a lurch, the cart suddenly jolted forward and as Snow began her long plodding journey that would eventually take them to Saint Xavier’s and the hope of a new life, the group of survivors knew their time at the Carmichael Institute was truly behind them forever.

The Institute had been built eight or so miles from the outskirts of a small town called Tavistock. The old market town, nestled on the twisting banks of the river Tavy, was now an odd mix of intricately carved old grey stonework buildings and more utilitarian modern additions. As the town had blossomed from the original hotchpotch collection of shacks and inns that had surrounded a now ruined medieval Abbey, it had benefitted firstly from the nearby tin mines and then later, as the tin had been exhausted, copper. With a large market square the town had also been blessed with the nearby sheep farmers who came down from Dartmoor to ply their trade of livestock and wool. This bustle of commerce and the needs of the every-day rural people had kept the town alive for centuries but, as was the way of the world, even this was not to last. The coming of the Industrial revolution and the slow but steady departure from rural areas to the towns over the next hundred years had consigned the town’s prosperity to nothing more than a thing of the past. This left the modern people of Tavistock having to rely on perhaps the most lucrative but most flighty trade of all, the tourist. So with a known population of Tavistock already hovering around the twelve thousand mark and taking into account the added influx of tourists, it was not surprising that Charlie was reticent to venture too far into the town whose streets were surely swarming with the Dead.

‘It’s a pity Daniels didn’t do more to clear the Dead around here,’ whispered Charlie, as Star pulled the cart past one of the many rusting wrecks that had been pushed deep into the overgrown roadside thickets.

‘Perhaps it was on his to do list?’ mused Liz, adjusting Anne who was sat on her lap.

‘More to clear the Dead?’ Fran butted in, listening to the hushed conversation between Liz and Charlie. ‘I’ve been to Tavistock… we were sent on a scouting party to see just how bad it was… half of us didn’t make it back. Tavistock may only be a small town but believe me those Dead bastards are everywhere…’

‘Sorry,’ said Charlie, realising his error, ‘I know he was your friend, I didn’t mean to bad mouth him… I… I’m just worried about us getting through safely… that’s all.’

‘But we’re not actually going through Tavistock proper, are we?’ whispered Liz, her arms tightening slightly about Anne’s waist. ‘You did say we were going to by-pass it?’

‘Well… yes, technically we’ll by-passing the town,’ Charlie continued, ‘but the turning we need to take still gets us too close to the red zone for my liking…’

They had all seen the precious maps Charlie was using to navigate their way through the landscape ravaged by the Dead. Over each printed page a myriad of hand drawn symbols and notes had been added, each indicating a specific danger or obstacle to be overcome or avoided. A fallen tree here, a road blocked by mangled traffic there, anything that the reader would need to be aware of was dutifully added whenever encountered. But it was the lightly shaded ‘red’ zones that signalled the real danger. Here the Dead by their sheer numbers held total sway. This was their space and to venture into it meant you had either run out of sane options or were simply crazy. Like a Venus flytrap they would wait, motionless in the streets until one of the hapless living happened to wander among them and then nothing would stop them. Even if you managed to escape their bloody grasp, their unholy attention had been piqued and now nothing would deter them from claiming their pound of flesh. They would blindly drag their rotting carcasses in the direction they had seen the terrified living flee, becoming the wandering Dead, a scourge of ravenous death creeping across the land.

‘Just how close?’ asked Fran, her worried gaze flitting briefly back to Carmella.

‘Here,’ Charlie replied, holding up a folded section of map.

‘May I?’ she asked, taking the map to study it herself.

Pushing aside one of the spyhole covers near her shoulder, Fran manoeuvred the paper in her hands into the beam of light. With her fingers tracing the wriggling line indicating the road they were on, she followed its path to Tavistock and the horde of the Dead that awaited them.

‘Wait,’ she suddenly said, remembering something, ‘you didn’t come this way when you came to the Institute did you?’

‘No,’ said Liz, not liking the way Fran was nervously chewing her lip, ‘we approached from the other direction…’

‘And we need to go down this turning, right Charlie?’ Fran continued.

‘Erm… yes, that’s the one,’ Charlie replied, glancing over his shoulder at the spot Fran was pointing at. ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

‘There’s a bus,’ she said, slowly handing back the map as she visualised the scene she remembered from her doomed scouting party. ‘It’s right on this corner… well most of it is, the rest is hanging over the bridge into the weir.’

‘Fuck!’ grumbled Charlie, taking back the map to study the roads and lanes again. ‘Can we get past it?’

‘I think so,’ she replied, ‘It’ll be a tight squeeze and there won’t be much room to spare… but we should be able to get past if we’re lucky.’

‘I don’t like the sound of us relying on luck,’ said Michael from the back of the cart, ‘and if we’re in a red zone it’s not as if we’re going to be able to get out and guide the horses if something does go wrong.’

Charlie looked back at Michael and knew he was right. If something did go wrong the situation could spiral out of their control far too quickly and Charlie wasn’t sure he was willing to take that risk.

‘Fran you’re the only one who’s been there,’ he said, looking at the young woman he barely knew. ‘Are you sure we can get past… I don’t want to risk lives on just a ‘maybe’… you need to be sure.’

It had been a long time since the ill-fated trip to Tavistock but Fran could conjure up the horrific images of men and women screaming in agony as they were set upon by the Dead. She could still picture the shattered windows of the shops, the burnt and twisted wrecks that littered the streets and the overwhelming stench of death that hung heavy in the air. She can see herself now, as if watching a film from above, running, fighting and killing her way to safety. And yes she remembered being with her sister and the few others that survived the attack crouching by the mangled rear of the bus, its trapped Dead passengers clawing at the windows to be free.

‘Yes,’ she finally said, the image of the bus fresh in her mind. ‘Yes, we can do it.’

Charlie searched the young woman’s face for any signs of doubt or hesitation and was thankfully left wanting. Charlie knew there were no certainties in this world anymore but if Fran believed they could make it past the crashed bus then he would just have to rely on her judgement. They had little choice not to.

‘Good,’ he finally said, turning back to face the road. ‘So we stick to the plan…’

And with that the decision was made.

For the next hour they travelled in silence, the only sounds the rhythmic ‘clip-clop’ of Star’s hooves on tarmac, the creaking of the cart’s wheels as they turned and the gentle patter of rain against its roof. It would take them a little over two hours before they started to encounter the Dead in any large numbers and for the moment the survivors were enjoying the brief peaceful calm before the dangerous storm to follow.

Looking through a spyhole, Fran watched the passing world of Nature’s greenery carrying on regardless of the fate that had befallen Man. Roadside hedgerows and thickets, growing unchecked and unhindered for the last five years had taken advantage of this respite from human control to spill out into the road, claiming it as new territory. While at their bases a riot of grasses, weeds and wildflowers inched their way ahead of their slower growing cousins, eager to colonize this new ground for themselves. In the once farmed fields beyond the hedges young tree saplings were buffeted in the winds and meadow flowers bloomed, reclaiming the worked soil back as their own. But it was not only the flora that had grasped this chance to flourish at the expense of Man’s disastrous demise. Rats, foxes and wild packs of dogs eagerly snatched decaying flesh from Dead limbs while in the skies above them birds grew fat on the multitude of insects that happily feasted on the sudden abundance of rotting flesh. In fact even as she watched the world pass by a large flock of chattering starlings burst forth from a vast hawthorn bush in a flurry of iridescent jewel-like black feathers. For a few moments she watched their amusing display as, despite the rain, they showed their displeasure by swooping in and darting around Star and the cart she pulled. But the cart soon left the birds behind them and the section of the outside world she was shown through the spyhole reverted back to a million nameless shades of rain dappled green. Turning away from the spyhole, Fran softly asked Carmella if she needed anything. Receiving only a forlorn shake of her head in reply, she looked over to Cam where he was talking in hushed whispers to Michael. There was something about this man that niggled her, not something worrying, not at all, but more like something strangely familiar that she couldn’t pin down. 

‘What?’ his raised eyebrows gestured, catching her not so discreetly studying his face.

‘Do I know you?’ she asked, her voice the usual whisper of those who travelled the roads among the Dead. ‘I mean… I know your name… but why do I already know your face?’

‘Oh, don’t start him off,’ whined Michael, comically dropping his head in his hands.