Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (34 page)

He couldn’t put his finger on it but something about what he was seeing itched at the back of his mind. Looking from one decaying corpse to the next he tried to pin down just what it was about the rain soaked scene before them wasn’t quite right, yet still it eluded him.

They had only left Saint Xavier’s a little over half an hour ago and even in that short time they seem to have been dogged at every turn. Travelling on roads that had seen little movement on them during the last five years, apart from the footfall of the Dead or Zak’s men, they had been met with one annoying obstacle after another. If it wasn’t a crashed or stalled wreck restricting their passing, it was a storm felled branch that needed to be moved. If it wasn’t a large group of the Dead pressing against the sides of the cart as they slowly pushed their way through them, it was huge water filled potholes that belied just how deep they really were and threatened to damage a wheel as the cart suddenly lurched to one side. All these problems, that on foot were easily clambered over or walked around, had proven nigh on impossible for a bulky cart to manoeuvre past yet each time they had somehow managed it.

‘Just looks like every other drenched group of corpses to me,’ whispered Phil, unsure just what had spooked Charlie so.

‘Yeah,’ Charlie mumbled under his breath, beginning to question his own instincts.

‘No need to look for more trouble where there isn’t any, Charlie-boy,’ Phil continued, giving Charlie’s shoulder a friendly pat.

‘I guess…’ Charlie began and then he noticed a figure sitting in a parked car, pathetically pawing at the window.

‘There!’ he said a little too loud, instantly regretting his volume as twenty set of cloudy Dead eyes slowly turned to locate the source of the sound.

‘Shit, Charlie! What the fuck!’ hissed Phil, shocked that the man so normally under control could make such a stupid mistake.

‘Sorry, sorry, I know,’ Charlie said in an urgent whisper, ‘but look…’

‘What? What is it?’ muttered Tom, squashing himself next to Phil’s bulky frame to look through the front viewing slit.

‘That Dead bloke in the car,’ Charlie replied, pointing to a battered vehicle.

‘What about him?’ asked Phil, not seeing what was so special about just one more corpse trapped in a car.

‘Can’t you see?’ whispered Charlie. ‘It’s the windows, they’re clean on the inside… well, clean-ish.’

‘So?’ said Tom.

‘So, there hasn’t been any traffic on this road for years…’ Charlie began, turning to look at his bemused travelling companions, ‘so if this bloke died in the car it should have happened years ago and if that’s the case…’

‘The windows would be filthy,’ Phil added, realising just where Charlie was going with his observation, ‘they’d be covered in smears of decaying mush… and flies.’

‘Exactly,’ whispered Charlie, briefly turning back to look at the rain dappled car. ‘Which means he’s hasn’t been in there for long… and as the Dead don’t shut themselves in cars… just who did?’

‘But why?’ muttered Tom, staring intently at the Dead man behind the glass, ‘I mean, what’s the point of going to the trouble of trapping one corpse when you leave the rest happily wondering about? Unless he’d turned unexpectedly and they bundled him in…’

‘I don’t…’ Charlie started to say when he stopped, leant as close to the viewing slit as he could and peered at the Dead man’s face through the rivulets of rain water running down the driver’s door window.

‘What?’ whispered Phil.

‘I… I think I’ve seen him before,’ mumbled Charlie, trying to see past the distorted slack and pallid features of the Dead man to picture just how the face may have looked before death.

It wasn’t until the Dead man shifted slightly in his seat that Charlie caught a glimpse of a green strip of fabric tied about the creature’s left arm. In that instant the face of a young man flashed into his mind, a young man who had once briefly looked at Charlie with nothing but gratitude and relief in his eyes, gratitude for saving his life.

‘Shit,’ hissed Charlie. ‘We’re going back!’

For Charlie had recognised the Dead man trapped within the abandoned car, it was the young man who only yesterday had been fighting for his life alongside the teenage girl outside the gates. Apparently Charlie’s intervention had not spared the young man from Zak’s harsh punishment, merely delayed it. Zak had obviously been determined to see his sentence on the man brought to its desired conclusion and if that had been the case, this was murder; plain and simple.

‘What do you mean we’re going back?’ whispered Phil. ‘What about this plough thing we’re supposed to be getting?’

‘Screw that!’ Charlie replied, trying to gauge if there was enough room for Star to make a turn. ‘I remembered who that corpse is, it’s the bloke we saved from getting his arse eaten off yesterday.’

‘So Zak and his cronies got their way after all,’ growled Tom. ‘Those poor bastards were sentenced to death no matter what happened…’

‘Yep,’ Charlie continued, ‘clearly Zak’s been bullshitting us, right from the start. Killing this bloke aside, he clearly can’t be trusted and I’m not leaving the others in the hands of men I can’t trust, not even for a day. We’re going back and we’re all getting out of that place today…’

‘What about Carmella and the baby?’ asked Phil, knowing travelling among the Dead with a baby would be difficult at best, at worst it may prove fatal.

‘We’ll deal with it… somehow,’ Charlie replied, looking back at the two men. ‘Are… are you both with me on this?’

For a brief moment there was silence in the cart while Tom and Phil contemplated what Charlie was proposing.

‘OK,’ Phil eventually said, with a sharp nod.

‘Yeah, I’m in,’ agreed Tom, mirroring Phil’s nod.

With a smile of gratitude spreading across his face, Charlie turned back to the road ahead of them and began to look for a wide enough section to manoeuvre Star around.

Just what sort of reception they could expect from Zak and his guards upon their ‘empty handed’ return, Charlie was unsure; but one thing he was certain of, one way or another their brief stay at Saint Xavier’s academy was at an end.

‘Star, let’s go get our people,’ Charlie muttered, giving the mare’s reins a sharp flick.

***

Up on the roof of Saint Xavier’s Cam and Michael battled against the gusting winds and heavy rain to pump the water from the tank on the lower level to the main reservoir on the roof. Kai, who at the moment was acting somewhere between a supervisor and the role of babysitter, was managing to shelter from the worst of the weather under a large plastic poncho; his two conscripted workers were not so fortunate.

‘Tell me again why we’re doing this?’ grumbled Michael, adjusting the collar of his already water clogged jacket to a position higher up his neck. ‘Especially in this weather!’

‘Oh don’t start,’ said Cam, pausing briefly to push his wet hair away from his eyes. ‘we’ll probably be doing this all day… I don’t think I can cope with the rain and you bitching about it at the same time.’

‘Wouldn’t it make more sense to have tanks that you could just take the lids off and let the rain fill them up in weather like this?’ shouted Michael over the howling wind to the young man from Saint Xavier’s.

Realising one of the men was talking to him, Kai gave up his pointless fight to keep the wind from catching the bottom of his waterproof, pushed himself away from the small roof access door and with a brief glance to make sure the length of timber was still wedged between the door and its frame, jogged over to them.

‘S… Sorry?’ he said, cupping his hand around his ear in an attempt to shield it from the wind.

‘I said, why don’t the lids come off the tanks and then the rain can fill them up,’ Michael repeated, pushing down on the pump handle while the handle in Cam’s hands rose.

‘I did p… p… point that out to K…  Kyle once,’ Kai replied, the mix of his stammer and the wind making it difficult for Michael and Cam to catch every word he was saying. ‘B… but he didn’t th… th… think it impor… important.’

‘Oh, right,’ said Michael, nodding politely to avoid Kai having to repeat himself.

It was clear to Kai that the man hadn’t heard him and in his answer he was just being polite. So to prevent an awkward situation he simply played along, shrugging his shoulders and giving him an ‘I know’ type smile in return. For a while Kai watched the two men working but he soon felt a little uncomfortable just standing by as the Michael and Cam worked in the rain, so he turned, pulled his waterproof tighter about himself and began to walk over to the carved balustrade that ran the perimeter of the roof. He had barely taken two steps when the briefest drop in the howling wind allowed him to catch Michael asking Cam for confirmation on what he had said. With a smile twitching his lips, Kai began to prod pointlessly at a large patch of lichen growing on the stonework. He had just picked off a tiny patch of the slow growing plant when an odd sound carried on the wind caught his ear. Confused as to what it could be, Kai tilted his ear to the wind to see if the sound would come again. Sure enough it did but as to its source he had no idea. It was only when peered forward over the balustrade that he realised what it was; in an instant his blood had turned to ice and the smile faded from his lips. For there, trampling their way through the vegetable patches and making a beeline for a screaming figure that had already been tackled to the ground were thirty or forty of the Dead.

‘Fuck!’ Kai managed to say, his terror seeming to override his stammer.

‘The gates!’ he cried, turning to look in wide eyed horror at Cam and Michael.

The two men had seen this look countless times over the last five years and instinctively knew what Kai meant; the gates were open and the Dead had breached Saint Xavier’s. Without even stopping to see for themselves, they both darted for the access door. As they disappeared through the doorway Michael grabbed the hefty piece of timber lying against the doorframe to use as a weapon.

‘No!’ shouted Kai, spurring his legs into action as he watched the door, caught by the wind, slowly swing shut.  

***

‘Wait!’ cried Fran, grabbing Liz’s sleeve as they ran, while behind them the moans of the Dead still echoed.

‘What is it?’ asked Liz, glancing nervously over the young woman’s shoulder, ‘I’ve got to get Anne to the cart before the Dead catch up with us… Porrow, Baxter and Parker, they’ll have come back by now and they’re going to be able to move a lot faster than the others… it’s the only way to keep her safe.’

‘I know, but this is the way I was taken yesterday to get to Carmella,’ panted Fran, pointing down a branching hallway to a small staircase. ‘It’s just up here and along to the left.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Liz, knowing they had more chance of staying alive if they kept together. ‘This place is like a warren, you get lost and…’

She left her statement unfinished, they both knew what could happen if she was wrong.

‘I know,’ Fran continued, trying her best to ignore the calls of the Dead that seemed to be getting louder and more importantly closer with every second. ‘But this is the way I need to go, I’m sure of it… and to get outside you’ll need to carry on down here, past a large room with big windows, it looks as though it was once a biology lab or something, then take the left turn and then the second left again… that should take you out into the gardens.’

Liz anxiously chewed her lip, looking from Fran to Anne held in Sally’s arms, her wide eyes full of fear.

‘I’m not leaving her,’ said Fran, slowly shaking her head, ‘I promised…’

‘OK,’ Liz finally said, knowing their window of escape was closing fast. ‘You get Carmella and her baby and get to the cart as quickly as you can.’

‘What about the others?’ asked Sally, uncharacteristically thinking of the missing members of their group. ‘We can’t just abandon them, they’ve no idea the Dead are here…’

‘From the blood I saw on Porrow I think they’ll already know the shit’s hit the fan,’ replied Liz, knowing the man had killed at least one person before his fatal trip to the basement, ‘but once Anne is safe I’ll try to find them.’

‘And if I come across them I’ll tell them the cart is the collection point,’ said Fran, already turning away from the two women to make her way down the side hallway to the stairs.

‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ she added, looking over her shoulder.

‘Just stay alive!’ Liz called after her, worried she could so easily never see her relatively new friend again.

‘Do my best!’ called Fran, breaking into a jog.

Hoping Fran’s ‘best’ was going to be enough, Liz turned her attention back to her own survival.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ she said looking to Sally, ‘and try to keep behind me… just in case, OK?’

‘No arguments here,’ Sally muttered, falling into a jog just a few steps behind Liz with her deadly sword in her hand.

Following Fran’s hasty directions, Liz led Sally and Anne past the room with the high windows and on to the left turning. Just as she rounded the corner, Liz glanced back the way they had come.

‘Christ!’ she spat, seeing the horde of Dead women had already dragged their decaying bodies into view at the far end of the hall.

Suddenly a brutalised and gore covered figure angrily pushed its way through the Dead throng of women, knocking the less stable of them to the floor. Almost instantly it locked its Dead gaze upon Liz and letting forth a loud guttural growl, it began to thunder towards her. It was, or rather had once been, Baxter.