Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (26 page)

‘You’d b… b… better hurry unless you w… want to sh… sh… shower in the d... dark,’ Stammered Kai, when they finally reached the small corridor where the group’s rooms were located.

‘They’re set on a timer,’ added Lauren, pushing open the bathroom door to flick on the light switch.

‘Yeah, Kyle told us about that,’ said Charlie.

‘Yes… he would’ve,’ continued Lauren, stepping into the bathroom that mirrored the outside convenience with its deep mahogany wood and blue and white painted tiles. ‘And when the water shuts off after the two minutes you need to hit the reset button, here…’

‘A hot shower!’ Sally exclaimed with almost girlish glee, as she pushed her way past Charlie and Lauren to drop to the floor to hurriedly unlace her boots.

‘Two minutes,’ reminded Charlie, with a smile.

‘I know, I know,’ she replied, excitedly kicking her feet free of her boots.

Leaving Sally, Liz and Anne to shower in private, the men of the group waited patiently on the other side of the heavy door arguing amongst themselves just who would be next to experience the novelty of something once so everyday as a running shower.

‘Is there any news on our friends?’ Cam asked Kai, as he waited for his turn in the bathroom. ‘We haven’t seen or heard anything from Fran or Carmella since this afternoon… has she had her baby yet, do you know?’

‘S... Sorry, n… no,’ he replied, from his perch on the stool at the end of the hall, ‘but I’m s…sure she’s s…safe with F…Freya.’

Cam glanced over at Phil, neither of them liking Kai’s choice of words.

‘Safe?’ Cam asked, pushing himself away from the wall.

‘I j… just m…meant that she’s r... r... read a lot about having b... b... babies,’ said Kai, as quickly as his nervous stammer would allow.

Cam was about to question him further when he felt Tom slap him on the shoulder.

‘You’re up!’ he said, water still running down his chest despite the obviously damp towel tied about his waist.

Sparing another concerned glance back at Kai, who had suddenly found something interesting at his feet to look at, Cam slowly nodded his thanks to Tom and followed Phil into the bathroom. Whatever was going on here, he didn’t like it. Cam was fast agreeing with Liz, something was wrong at Saint Xavier’s academy and the sooner they left the better.

***

‘God, I needed that…’ sighed Sally, a few minutes later sitting in the small room she was sharing with Liz and Anne; running her fingers through her damp hair.

The room, previously the term time home for two of the school’s teenage boarders, was furnished with two single beds, two wooden desks each with its own chair, a small free-standing chest of drawers and a built-in wardrobe; while across the walls were plastered a myriad of fading posters advertising long forgotten bands and more than likely now deceased busty female celebrities.

‘Yeah, OK, I’ll give you that,’ smiled Liz, tucking Anne under some worn woollen blankets, ‘the shower did feel pretty amazing… but…’

‘The glass is always half empty for you isn’t it?’ tutted Sally, shaking her head, ‘Yeah, so they’re a bit heavy handed with the control here… there are worse things out there than a bit of structure.’

‘Structure!’ said Liz, bemused that the woman on the opposite bed could be so blind to what was really happening at Saint Xavier’s. ‘They run this place like a prison.’

‘Oh, stop being so dramatic,’ said Sally, rolling her eyes, ‘they’re safe here, aren’t they?’

‘It’s not about…’ she began to reply as she pushed herself from the bed to reach down for her jacket that had slipped to the floor.

She was about to continue when she noticed the edge of a piece of folded paper was protruding from one of the pockets.

‘What the?’ she said to herself, pulling the paper free and unfolding it.

As she read the words written on the folded paper, Freya’s face suddenly flashed into her head. It was clear to her now the young woman had seen her chance and passed her the note when she was checking for bites earlier.

‘What… what is it?’ asked Sally, looking from the paper in her Liz’s hand to her worried face.

‘Trouble,’ she simply replied, and then with the sound of a key turning in the lock, the lights suddenly went out.

***

Chapter 5

‘I can see the head, Carmella!’ said Freya, looking up from between the panting woman’s knees; a large smile on her face. ‘I can see your baby’s head. Almost there now… it won’t be long.’

When the lights had gone out half an hour earlier Freya had quickly produced a collection of fat stubby candles from a bag by her side and then lit them one by one. So while the three women waited to welcome Carmella’s baby into the world, their shadows danced and moved across the walls of the teacher’s bedroom while the flickering candle light bathed them in a soft orange glow.

‘Aarragh!’ screamed Carmella, as the urge to push again became overwhelming.

‘You’re doing great,’ soothed Fran, wiping Carmella’s forehead. ‘You’re doing great…’

‘
Ho bisogno di spingere! Ho bisogno di spingere!’ cried Carmella, squeezing tightly on Fran’s hand.

‘English, Carmella... in English!’ said Fran, worried that something was wrong.

‘Push! I must push!’ Carmella translated, biting her lip as she threw her head back in exhaustion.

‘Hang... hang on, Carmella,’ said Freya, knowing that the woman was down to the last reserves of strength. ‘Try to pant through it... we need to let the head slip through without pushing or you’ll tear.’

With a choking scream born of pain, fear and total helplessness, Carmella covered her tear filled eyes with a shaking hand and began to pant.

‘I know... I know...’ urged Freya, placing her hands around the top of the baby’s protruding head to support its weight. ‘Just a little longer, Carmella... you’re doing great... we’re almost there...’

With only the knowledge she had read to go by, Carmella’s labour had been longer and a great deal more exhausting than Freya had expected it to be. Putting this down to the fact it was Carmella’s first child, she had spent many of the anxious hours up to this point praying her own labour would be a simpler and less traumatic affair. She remembered when she had been forced to help her own mother bring her sister into the world that it had been a relative quick affair; there had certainly been a lot less screaming that was for certain. But then of course in that instance she had done little more than been a hand holder, her mother knowing what to expect having already been through childbirth before.

‘Whoa!’ cried Freya, the baby’s head suddenly popping out.

‘What?’ shrieked Carmella and Fran in unison.

‘No... No, everything’s fine... the head’s out, Carmella,’ Freya reassured, a wide grin spreading across her flushed cheeks, ‘I can see your baby’s face... now we just need to...’

Slipping a finger under the baby’s chin to make sure the umbilical cord wasn’t wrapped about its neck, Freya knew now was the time Carmella could safely give in to her need to push.

‘Right, I need you to give one last big push,’ she said, hoping Carmella could find some hidden reserves of strength to take the final step to bring her baby truly into the world. ‘Come on…one last push...’

‘You can do it, Carmella,’ encouraged Fran, brushing aside sweat soaked curls from the woman’s face. ‘You’re almost there!’

Screaming with pure determination, Carmella bore down with everything she could muster and then with surprising speed, the infant was slipping from her to begin its own independent existence.

‘I’ve got him! I‘ve got him,’ laughed Freya through her own tears of relief as she eased the baby from Carmella onto the mattress. ‘It’s a boy, Carmella... beautiful baby boy!’

As Fran laughed and cried at the miracle she had witnessed, Freya carefully cleared the mucus from the infant’s nose and throat.

‘Il mio bambino, mi permetta di vedere il mio bambino,’ wept Carmella, holding her hands beseechingly to Freya.

This was one phrase Freya had no need to be said in English and as the infant in front of her took his first sharp breath, she breathed a sigh of happy relief; everything was going to be alright.

‘Let me just...’ she said, reaching for the string and sharp scissors she had left on chair next to her to cut the umbilical.

‘There!’ she said to herself, finally severing the physical tie between mother and child forever. 

Gently lifting the infant, Freya, eased the child into Carmella’s waiting hands and helped guide him onto the weeping woman’s chest.               

‘
Il mio bellissimo bambino ... il mio piccolo Vincenzo,’ she wept, totally enraptured by the baby in her arms. ‘Il mio bel Vincenzo...’

‘He’s beautiful, Carmella,’ whispered Fran, wiping away her own tears of total emotional exhaustion. ‘So beautiful...’ ‘And you’re calling him Vincenzo, yes?’ she continued, hearing Carmella mention her lost husband’s name amid other Italian words she could only guess at.

‘Si... I mean, yes,’ she replied, tearing her tearful eyes from her newborn son to look at Fran. ‘I will name him Vincenzo... it is right.’

‘Yes, it is right,’ echoed Fran, leaning forward to kiss Carmella gently on the forehead, ‘very right...’

Awkwardly pushing herself up from her kneeling position at the foot of the bed, Freya arched her aching back.

‘Now we just have to wait for the placenta to come out and then we’re all done...,’ she said, smiling down at Carmella with her baby.

‘Thank you, Freya,’ said Carmella, gently running a finger across the soft downy crown of her baby’s head. ‘Thank you for my baby... for my Vincenzo...’

‘Nothing to it,’ Freya smiled in replied, her hands instinctively moving to encircle her own unborn child, ‘anytime... I…’

And then with a sharp knock at the door, Freya was interrupted by the sound of a male voice calling her name.

***

‘What did it say?’ asked Sally, the darkness subconsciously turning her words to little more than a hushed whisper.

Scrunching the piece of paper in her fist, Liz jumped from the bed and felt her way to the door.

‘We’ve been locked in…’ she muttered, trying the door handle.

‘Liz, what did the note say?’ Sally repeated, knowing whatever it was she wasn’t about to hear good news.

‘Not safe here,’ Liz replied, turning to the shadowy form on the bed she knew to be Sally. ‘Just those three words, not safe here… Freya must have slipped the note in my jacket after she had checked us for bites.’

‘Why didn’t she just tell us herself?’ asked Sally, ‘I mean, does it mean she’s not safe or we’re not?... She could’ve been a little less cryptic…’

‘Does it matter?’ said Liz, stepping away from the door to make her way across the dark room to the small single window. ‘And anyway Kyle was right outside, wasn’t he,’ she continued, pushing aside the thick curtain. ‘If she’s that worried or scared, she couldn’t take the risk that he would hear her warning us, she did the only thing she could.’

With the dark cloud cover obscuring what little moonlight there was, opening the curtain did little to brighten the room but it was enough for Liz to see the look on Sally’s face. She was clearly more worried than her irritated words or tone indicated.

‘Even with us locked in I wouldn’t put it past Zak to post a guard at the end of the hall,’ said Liz, thinking aloud, ‘and if we shout through to Charlie and the others you can bet your arse whoever’s on guard will get the rest of them before any of us could get out… we wouldn’t stand a chance.’

‘So what the hell are we going to do?’ asked Sally, nervously chewing on a fingernail.

‘We aren’t going to do anything,’ she replied, stressing the word ‘we’ and she turned back to the small window to see if there was a way down. ‘I’m getting out of here… If I can find Freya and get to her to help, she can distract the guard long enough for Fran and I to overpower him… and then we can all get out of this place before Zak and his goons are any the wiser.’

‘Lizzy…’ came Anne’s worried voice from the huddle of blankets on the bed.

‘It’ll be alright,’ whispered Liz, trying fill the words with more confidence than she felt. ‘We’ll be alright… I just need you to wait here with Sally. OK?’

‘But… but I don’t want you to go… you… you might not come back,’ said Anne, her words breaking with emotion.

‘Oh, Anne,’ sighed Liz, gathering her sister in her arms, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here but… but if they had meant to hurt us they would have done it by now wouldn’t they?’

‘But…’ Anne continued, burying her head into Liz’s chest.

‘No buts,’ Liz interrupted, kissing the mass of slightly damp blond curls on the young girl’s head, ‘I have to make sure Carmella and her baby are safe, haven’t I? You like Carmella and Fran, don’t you? We don’t want anything bad to happen to them, do we?’

‘No,’ said Anne, with the slightest reluctant shake of her head.

‘And Sally will be here to keep you safe…’ Liz continued, pushing Anne away from her to look into her wide blue eyes.

Anne looked from her sister to Sally sat on the opposite bed. Even at her young age she knew Sally was not one of the fighters of the group but she agreed with Liz, she didn’t want anything bad to happen to Carmella and her baby.

‘OK,’ she whispered, giving Liz the smallest of nods.

Giving Anne, one last reassuring smile, Liz reached down to her ankle and pulled free the sheathed knife she had strapped there.

‘Here,’ she said, passing it handle first to Sally. ‘You’d better take this… just in case.’

Taking the knife from Liz as though the object was completely alien to her, Sally gingerly placed it on the pillow next to her.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve fended off enough unwanted advances in my time to know how to make a man think twice about laying his hands on me…,’ she whispered.

‘If it really comes to it, make just enough noise that Charlie and the others will know something’s up but not so loud that you’re obvious about it,’ said Liz, opening the window as quietly as she could. ‘It may buy them some time to come up with something…’

‘Got it,’ she replied, moving to the other bed to uncharacteristically place an arm around Anne, though just who was comforting who was clearly debatable.

‘Right…’ Liz muttered under her breath slipping the strap of her sheathed sword over her shoulder before clambering up onto one of the small desks so she could climb through the window.

With one leg hooked through the small window, Liz took a deep breath to steady herself and turned back to Sally and Anne.

‘Wish me luck,’ she simply whispered to the two huddled figures partly hidden in shadow.

Without waiting for a reply and knowing it was now or never, Liz began to pull herself through the open window. Beyond the confines of the small room Liz found the cold wind that howled about her to be a lot fiercer than she had expected and as she latched her fingers onto the window frame to lower herself down to the stone ledge, she hoped she wouldn’t have to go far before she found another way back inside.

‘Good luck…’ she heard Sally whisper, her face suddenly appearing above her in the open window.

With all of her concentration on getting her feet on the ledge below her, Liz ignored the scrape of the rough stone windowsill against her palms and the gust of cold wind that blew past her ruffling her short dark hair. Instead, she willed her feet to find safe purchase again and when seconds later she felt the toe of her right boot come into contact with the ledge she breathed a thankful sigh of relief. Then as she lowered her left foot to join it she spared a brief glance back above her to see Sally giving her an encouraging ‘thumbs up’.

As the cold grit of the bricks dug into her cheek, Liz fought to steady her rapid breathing and the seemingly loud pounding of the heart in her chest. Panicking now would be fatal and with people depending on her, she simply wasn’t going to let that be an option. She knew if she was to have any chance of doing this, she needed to calm herself down and quickly. After all, the stone ledge she was on was ample wide enough for her to edge along but with the ground three floors below her and with nothing to hold onto, it was hard to concentrate on this one rational fact.

‘Step… by… step,’ she muttered nervously to herself, pushing her chest as close to the brick work as she could as she slowly inched one arm out across the wall.

Slowly letting her right foot shuffle along the ledge, the fingers of her outstretched right hand seemed to find purchase in even the smallest of dips in the ancient brickwork. Offering more psychological support than anything that could realistically prevent her from falling, these tiny finger-holds helped her to blot out the distinct possibility that at any moment she could plummet to the ground below. Yet with each gust of chilling wind that buffeted past her, she would freeze her painfully slow progress and with her fingertips digging desperately into the crumbling wall she would shut her eyes tight, praying that the moment would pass. Yet each time the wind subsided she could move again, her left foot slowly following the right once more; allowing her hand to inch just that bit further along the wall to the corner where she knew a sturdy looking drainpipe offered a safe way down to an adjoining slanted roof.

‘Just a bit… further…’ she panted, stretching her fingers to the limit as the drainpipe eventually became achingly within reach.

And then suddenly she was felt the cold hard metal beneath her grasp and as her fingers latched onto an intricately carved bracket she knew the worst was over.