Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (13 page)

But it was too late. Cam, pulling a hunting knife from a strap on his thigh, flipped it handle end up and held it to his mouth.

‘This is Cameron McDonald, reporting from inside a cart with far too many people in it somewhere just on the outskirts of Tavistock… back to you, Jenny, in the studio,’ he said, his tone suddenly taking on a strangely precise and serious manner.

For a moment her eyes narrowed in concentration as she fought to find Cam’s face hidden in her memory; and then all of a sudden it was there.

‘Shit! Of course you did reporting for the BBC didn’t you…,’ she said, clicking her fingers in realisation. ‘Yeah, you were right there on the front lines… I remember you were with the soldiers when they started trying to control the Dead situation in Manchester…’

‘Yep,’ Cam replied, slightly nodding his head with a smile, ‘that was me… unfortunately.’

‘Fuck! That must have been so awful,’ Fran continued, the horrific scenes she had watched on television suddenly flashing to mind.

‘Hmm,’ Cam replied, the brittle smile dropping from his lips.

Manchester had been the third largest city in the UK and in the space of a few days the Dead had claimed it as their own. Cam, assigned to report from the ever expanding front lines, had watched the armed forces open fire upon the citizens of Manchester. In their desperate attempt to halt the spread of the Dead, panic had overridden reason, and they ended up gunning down the living and Dead alike. But nothing could stop this plague of death that had descended upon the world and even as the soldiers lost control, they were torn apart by the corpses of the very people they had sworn to protect.

‘I remember you were one of the first to question all that bullshit the government was spouting,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You told it how it really was…’

‘Not that it did much good in the end,’ said Cam, with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘Millions still died… horribly.’

‘Hey, you saved a lot of people’s lives,’ said Fran, reaching across the cramped confines of the cart to take his hand. ‘You gave them the heads-up they needed to defend themselves… you gave them a chance…’

Fran’s gaze lingered on Cam’s face watching as he visibly pushed the terrifying images back into the dark corners of his mind.

‘I guess so,’ he whispered, looking from the woman’s delicate fingers now wrapped about his own, up into her wide hazel eyes.

As their eyes locked amid the shadows of the cart, something indefinable and unexpected passed between them. Fran could not deny the basic attraction was there, despite Cam being almost twenty years her senior, but it was more of a shared understanding of what each had gone through that connected them. A deep empathy drew her to him and made her want to find out more about this man before her with the friendly clear blue eyes, greying matinée idol good looks and welcoming smile. Suddenly the cart jolted to one side as one of the wheels bumped in and out of a pothole and the moment between them was broken. With the blood flushing to her cheeks, Fran let her fingers slip slowly from Cam’s hand despite her reluctance to break their connection.

‘So…So did you ever interview anyone famous?’ she managed to say, hoping the deep shadows of the cart hid her uncharacteristic blushing.

Cam looked at her, taking in each detail of her face. That she was beautiful was undeniable but there was something else about her that called out to him. She was truly a woman for this new age of Man. A mix of strength, resilience, beauty and compassion, she had battled against the Dead, grieved for the lost and yet still held hope within her for a better life. He somehow knew this was a young woman who would never give up or fold beneath the weight of the troubles forced upon her. She would strive to survive and more than that she would strive to live.

‘Err…What?’ he whispered, abruptly shaken from his thoughts by her question, ‘Err… I… I suppose so. Mainly people in politics though, no-one very exciting… I didn’t really have the finesse to milk the egos of the Hollywood elite.’          

Fran simply nodded slowly in reply, keen for him to keep talking but unsure what to say next. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was laughing at herself for being like this. To be acting like a tongue tied schoolgirl while the Dead waited ahead of them was ridiculous to her, yet she was unable to help herself.

‘YAWN!’ said Michael, theatrically waving his hand in front of his mouth.

‘Hey, you may have heard it all before but Fran hasn’t,’ said Liz, giving Michael a look that told him to shut up.

Liz had noticed the way Cam had been looking at Fran even before they had left the Institute and if the two of them managed to find a little company with each other, good luck to them. When you could lose someone at any time, you couldn’t afford to hang about and thanks to the Dead, long courtships were simply a thing of the past. Perhaps when they got to Saint Xavier’s, the couple would have the time and space to get to know each other properly. She certainly hoped so. In fact, once she was sure Anne was safe, Liz wouldn’t mind getting to know someone herself.

‘But we...’ Michael began to say but his words were cut short by Charlie’s urgent hush for silence.

With hand signals he told those in the cart that eight of the Dead had appeared to their right and were shambling towards them. Assuming they had pushed their way through the hedgerows out onto the road, Liz quietly moved aside a spyhole cover to see for herself. As they sat in silence, Star snorted her displeasure as one by one the walking cadavers brushed past her, the overwhelming stench of their decaying flesh burning her nostrils. They all knew if they were quiet the Dead would pass them by oblivious to the presence of the living flesh they craved and sure enough as Liz watched through the spyhole a Dead man dragged himself into view through the falling rain. Beside her, she could hear Carmella’s breathing begin to quicken and sparing a worried glance at the pregnant woman she saw terror dancing wildly behind her wide eyes. It was only when Anne reached out a small hand to comfort the woman that Carmella seemed to be able calm herself. With her eyes now clamped tight, Carmella held onto the Anne’s tiny hand as if her life depended on it and as her lips moved in silent prayer she waited for the Dead to pass. Looking back through the spyhole, Liz found the first Dead man had already moved on only to be replaced by the sorry corpse of another that appeared to have both of his arms missing. With a turn of the cart’s wheels he too then disappeared from view, only to be replaced in turn by another and another.

Normally, this small group of the Dead wouldn’t have given the survivors any cause for concern, in fact they would have been on them as soon as they dragged their stinking carcasses into view but now with no safe haven to fall back to, they were trapped by the limited protection their carts provided. Travelling on unknown roads, through unknown dangers and with only a guess at just what lay beyond the wild elderflower and bramble bushes, the survivors simply couldn’t take the chance. Charlie had been right; they couldn’t stop, not this time. This time the unfortunate Dead would have to rely on some other hapless soul to grant them the peace they deserved.

Within a few more turns of the cart’s wheels the Dead had shambled on their way, unaware of the bloody feeding frenzy that had just slipped through their decaying fingers.

‘Right, they’re well past the second cart now,’ whispered Michael looking through a spyhole drilled into the back wall of the cart at the retreating Dead.

‘Carmella… it’s safe now… we’re all safe…,’ whispered Liz, trying to pry the tightly clenched white knuckled hand from Anne’s squashed fingers.

Looking from Carmella to Anne’s tearful eyes, Fran knew the young girl’s fingers, trapped in Carmella’s vice like grip, must be causing her some considerable pain but she had grown up among the Dead, she knew never to cry out, no matter what.

‘Carmella!’ said Fran with a little more force.

Snapping her eyes open, Carmella looked in horror at the pink little fingers in her grasp.

‘Oh Anne! I’m so sorry, il mio bambino…’ she said, her voice barely a shaky whisper.

Cupping the young girl’s face in her hands Carmella wiped away a tear that had managed to escape down Anne’s cheek.

‘I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…’ she continued, the words almost lost as she choked back a sob.

‘It’s OK, Carmella,’ Liz hushed, trying to bring the woman back from plummeting into a fit of hysteria, ‘Anne’s OK, she knows you didn’t mean it… don’t you Anne?’

With her swollen fingers now jammed in her mouth, Anne simply nodded as Carmella continued to frantically apologize.

As if the heavens themselves had decided enough was enough, a slow rumble of thunder began to build in the grey sky above them, promising to turn the light drizzle outside to a more substantial down pour. Almost immediately the gentle patter of drops on the wooden roof over their heads was transformed into a constant urgent drumming.

‘That’s all we need,’ grumbled Charlie under his breath.

Using his sleeve to wipe an unexpected sheet of rain that had suddenly been blown through the viewing slit into his face, Charlie took another quick glance at the folded map. From the squiggle of lines dotted with square blocks, he knew that within two turnings the fields and hedgerows that had been their welcome traveling companions since leaving the Institute would soon begin to fall away. First one lonely cottage would come into sight, emerging from the surrounding greenery, only to be joined by another further along the road and then another. Then they would appear in twos and threes, huddled together by the side of the road, gaining companionship from each other in their isolation. Then, almost without warning the cottages and bungalows would give way to larger family homes, allowing them in turn to dominate either side of the road with their uniform terrace appearance. It was here Charlie knew the real danger would begin. These homes, making up the outer suburbs of Tavistock, were once filled with the sounds and goings-on of everyday family life but now surely the only sounds would be the shuffling of Dead feet on rotting threadbare carpets while desperate moans echoed through dark dilapidated rooms. 

Nothing but death lay beyond these once neatly painted front doors and Charlie knew it. So it was no surprise to him half an hour later that as Star was pulling them past the wreckage of two mangled cars, their occupants long gone, he was met by the signs of a devastated humanity all around him. Everywhere he looked windows had been reduced to nothing more than gaping maws of shattered glass, their jagged shard like teeth revealing only the tattered remains of countless forgotten lives. Only a few of the houses they passed still had front doors on them and those that did inevitably hung broken and splintered on rusting hinges, a testament to the rampaging Dead that had forced their way in. The streets, still littered with the dropped possessions of those that had tried to flee this uninvited death, had been transformed into a wasteland of rusting twisted metal and rotting flesh. Even now the walking corpses shambled among the debris of their former lives, occasionally disappearing from view as they stumbled over some long forgotten piece of the past.

On the road and pavements ahead of them at least seventy of the Dead awaited them. A few, their attention at some point perhaps caught by a starving dog or cat that had darted in and out amongst them, still forced their decaying limbs into to action, knocking into their Dead brothers and sisters in pursuit of this long departed meal. Others stood with their heads tilted upwards, their film covered eyes following the flight of birds overhead, unable to understand or comprehend why these small fast moving things so full of life were being so cruelly denied them. As if to prove the point, a fat crow deciding to brave the downpour, suddenly dived from its perch on a nearby tree to pluck a morsel of rotting flesh from a drenched Dead woman’s shoulder. No sooner had the Dead woman noticed the living creature that had appeared so unexpectedly, than the bird had snatched a chunk of her flesh and retreated to enjoy its stolen meal in peace

‘There’s so many of them,’ whispered Liz anxiously into Charlie’s ear, as another deep rumble of thunder sounded above them.

‘Well, it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better,’ he replied, glancing over his shoulder to see the mix of apprehension and fear in Liz’s eyes. ‘I just pray Star and Snow don’t get too spooked by them all…’

As trusty and reliable as the two mares were, the survivors could only expect so much from them. It was completely understandable being surrounded by so many of the Dead, with their torn shuffling bodies and overwhelming stench of death, that the mares would inevitably reach a tipping point and panic. Charlie knew that if the horses lost control, bolted or worse broke free entirely, the chances of the survivors seeing another day dawn would be grim. Even if the carts miraculously stayed intact they would surely be stranded, becoming tiny islands of the living in a sea of the hungry Dead. There would no escape for them. They would either slowly starve to death or die trying to escape on foot. Either way, they would be lost.

‘And is she going to be alright?’ Charlie said in a hushed voice, nodding back to Carmella.

Liz looked back at the woman nervously chewing her fingernails and knew, of all of them, Carmella was their weakest link. It wouldn’t take much to tip her over the edge and in her ensuing panic she would surely alert the hordes of cadavers around them of their presence. If that happened Liz dreaded to think of what would become of them all.