Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (36 page)

Already the Dead man had latched his hungry gaze upon the two approaching women, raising his filth covered hands almost beseechingly for a taste of their flesh as he stepped forward to greet them.

‘Come on, you sack of shit!’ screamed Liz, desperately waving her arms to keep the Dead man’s attention solely on herself so to allow Sally to dart past him.

Taking another shuddering step towards her, Liz couldn’t help but notice that apart from his pallor and the first signs of mould blooming across his exposed chest, the Dead man seemed relatively fresh. Just how he had managed to maintain his vast weight over the last few years while most lived in near starvation or just where he could have come from she couldn’t guess but one thing was certain he had clearly only died sometime in the last two or three months. 

‘Don’t enter the cart from this side,’ shouted Liz, shelving the conundrum of the fat Dead man for another time while Sally sped past her to duck just beyond the cadaver’s out stretched arms. ‘Go to the side or back where the Dead can’t see you get in.’

If the whole situation hadn’t been so tragic, pitiful and terrifying, Liz may have found it funny the way the Dead man looked back and forth as if trying to decide which bounty of living flesh to follow. As it was, Liz needed him to choose her, so pouncing forward she swung the tip of her blade at one of his hands trying to focus his attention. With the razor sharp edge of her sword slicing through the sagging grey skin about his hand, the corpse’s flesh didn’t stand a chance and within seconds there was a hand shaped lump of lifeless flesh falling to the ground.

‘Come on!’ she hollered, slashing her blade through the air to slice away a chunk of the moulding skin that hung loosely about his neck.

Liz knew she had to finish this; for with more of the Dead ambling through the gates with very second, she simply didn’t have the luxury of time to waste on this Dead goliath. Glancing about her she noticed a large plastic water barrel behind him, its water surface jumping wildly from the onslaught of the heavy rain drops crashing into it. Careful not to lose her own footing on the muddy path, she ducked under the Dead man’s now handless arm and wrapped the fingers of her free hand about the lip of the barrel. Once she was sure of her grip, she pulled with every ounce of strength she could muster. For the briefest of moments Liz feared she had made a terrible mistake and the weight of the water in the barrel was going to be too much for her but then with unbelievable relief she felt it begin to tilt towards her. The Dead man was just turning once more to face the living flesh he craved to consume when the barrel reached its maximum tipping point and with a ‘whoosh’ the water erupted over the muddy path. Just as Liz had hoped, the force of the rushing water on the already slippery path together with the large cadaver’s eagerness to get to her, combined to send him crashing face down on the ground. Seeing this was likely to be her only chance, Liz sprang forward with her blade held high. Jumping onto the Dead man’s back and trying her best to ignore the sickening feeling of his putrid skin tearing beneath her feet, she stabbed down with her sword. With the blink of an eye the back of the Dead man’s head succumb to force of Liz’s attack and her blade continued on with its journey, destroying the unnatural brain within. A brief final shudder shook through the corpse beneath her feet and Liz knew the man had at last found the peace of his true death.

‘You’re welcome,’ she muttered, quickly pulling free her sword from the now lifeless corpse’s skull.   

With a quick glance about her for more of the Dead within striking distance, Liz jumped back down to the path and ran to the cart.

‘Sally, are you in there?’ she called, sprinting to the side facing away from the open gate and the horde of Dead still ambling through it.

‘Yes, we’re here,’ she heard Sally call in reply.

‘Well, sit tight,’ said Liz, quickly releasing Snow’s tether from one the support post of the outside toilet block, ‘I’m going to hitch up Snow and then find the others, OK?’

‘You just need to keep quiet so the Dead don’t know you’re in there,’ she continued, her words competing with the drumming rain on the roof of the cart as she lead the dappled mare into position.

Running from one side of Snow to the next, Liz hastily attached the various buckles and straps to secure her in place but with the adrenalin pumping through her system making her fingers shake the whole task took a little longer than she had hoped. Eventually though she was slipping the bit into the mare’s mouth and making sure the reins flowed through the front viewing slit.

‘I’ll send the others here as I find them… this will be our collection point,’ she called through to Sally while the woman pulled the rest of the reins through to take up the slack. ‘And don’t open any of the hatches unless they’re part of our group, do that and you’ll end up being swamped or worse…’

‘Understood,’ she heard Sally whisper from inside.

‘And… and if anything should happen to me…’ Liz began, knowing nothing could be guaranteed especially that she would return.

‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ Sally hissed, interrupting her. ‘Fuck, if you can’t beat these Dead bastards, what hope if there for any of us?’

Liz knew Sally meant well but with so many of the Dead, both the old and newly turned, now within the grounds of Saint Xavier’s simply surviving the next few minutes seemed almost impossible.

‘Anne… I… I love you, never forget that,’ she said, feeling a tightening of emotion about her chest.

‘Lizzie,’ she heard Anne quietly sob in reply.

‘And be good for Charlie,’ Liz continued, knowing she had to leave now or she might just lose her resolve, take the easy option and climb into the cart herself.

‘And tell him I love him too,’ she shouted, forcing her legs to take her away from the cart and the safety it provided, back among those battling for survival.

Making a beeline for Tyrone, her sword seemed to fall again and again; for with each step she took she slashed at the Dead hands reaching for her, leaving a littering of lifeless severed limbs to fall to the ground in her wake.

‘Tyrone! Look out!’ she cried, pointing to the unnoticed small Dead child that had crept up behind him and was about to latch its blackened teeth onto the young man’s leg.

‘Fuck!’ he hissed, spinning round just in time to smash aside the child with the flat edge of the spade he still held tightly in his hand.

Now that Tyrone had literally been snatched from the jaws of death, Liz could concentrate on the small group of Dead that had been drawn to him, or rather to his flesh.

‘Where’s Paul?’ she hollered over her shoulder as her blade whispered through the air to remove the head of a Dead teenage girl whose filthy torn shirt exposed the blackened remnants of flapping skin where her right arm used to be.

‘Inside,’ Tyrone simply replied, using the sharp edge of his spade to decapitate the struggling Dead child he now had pinned under his boot. ‘He took some of the veg to the kitchens before all hell broke loose out here,’ he continued, turning briefly to Liz as his spade finally broke through the child’s vertebrae to make contact with the earth beneath. ‘At least he’s safe for now.’

‘No, they’re inside already,’ she managed to grunt, kicking out at the legs of an elderly Dead woman with fresh blood and bits of stolen flesh smeared over her slack features.

‘And where’s…’ Liz began to say as she stamped down hard on the crone’s skull.

But Tyrone was already off and running toward the main building.

‘Tyrone!’ she cried after him, noticing some of the Dead had already turned to follow him. ‘Wait!’

Giving the Dead woman’s skull one final stamp, Liz gave chase.

Knowing they stood a better chance of finding Paul and getting him back to the safety of the cart if they stuck together, Liz called for Tyrone to wait for her again but in his blind panic he heard none of this. The need to get to his younger brother had totally consumed him and as he ran all he could hear were the imagined screams of Paul as the Dead tore into him.

Sprinting along a narrow path towards the section of the building he knew to be the kitchens Tyrone was passing a patch of tall runner beans plants when suddenly a figure, bloody and savage, broke through the greenery; crashing into him.

‘Tyrone!’ screamed Liz watching as the two figures, one living and one very much Dead, fell to the ground in a tumble of thrashing limbs.

With the writhing figure on top of him, Tyrone felt his hands slip across a chest already slick with spilt blood and in that instant he knew he had but seconds before snapping gore covered teeth finally met their goal, namely his flesh. 

‘Jesus!’ he managed to gasp, desperately trying to at least get his hands under the Dead man’s chin to keep his head away from him.

But the Dead man had only recently been killed and in his new state of being he was agile, he was quick and he was wild. In fact with the burning hunger fuelling his rage his attack on Tyrone was almost feral in its ferocity. He lunged again and again, determined to taste Tyrone’s warm flesh and each time he was only just kept at bay.

‘Shhhiitttt!’ Tyrone yelled, as the Dead man’s claw like fingers suddenly raked down the side of his face, causing a row of bloody welts to appear.

‘Tyrone! Push him back!’ he heard Liz shouting from somewhere behind him. ‘Push him back…’

‘Now!’ she screamed and placing his life in her hands, Tyrone thrust the Dead man as hard and a far away from him as the straining muscles in his arms would allow.

He had barely managed to fully extend his arms when a flash of silver followed by something dark flew over his head, pulling the thrashing cadaver abruptly away from his chest. Sitting up, Tyrone saw Liz kneeling next to the Dead man who now lay slumped to one side in the mud, his gaping mouth of broken and shattered teeth alarmingly lodged around the hilt of Liz’s sword while the rest of her blade was protruding smeared with blood out through the back of his ruptured skull.

‘Did he get you?’ she panted, turning to look at Tyrone.

‘No… no, I don’t  think so,’ he managed to say, unable to drag his eyes away from the sight of Liz slowly pulling the full length of her sword out through the Dead man’s ruined head. ‘He just… he just scratched me that’s all.’

‘Good,’ said Liz matter-of-factly, giving her blade a sharp flick to remove some unnamed bloody gore. ‘Well, come on then.’

Grabbing the spade that had been knocked from his grasp during the unexpected attack, Tyrone jumped to his feet.

‘We’ve got to get to the kitchens!’ he said, pointing to a set of large windows facing them before breaking into a more cautious jog alongside Liz.

Glancing across Saint Xavier’s vast vegetable allotments Liz noticed there were only two other living survivors among the many moving shapes she saw. One, a young terrified woman, had made the fatal mistake of backing herself up against the tall boundary wall. Even now an ever increasing circle of the Dead advanced on her, drawn to her living flesh like a moth to the flame. Armed with only a garden rake the young woman was doing her best to keep them at bay but Liz knew her efforts would ultimately prove pointless. The stream of blood running down her right arm told her the woman had already felt the searing pain of Dead teeth upon her skin and with that, her fate had been sealed. The other person still alive and battling to stay that way was a short man with a shock of ginger hair; he at least, as far as Liz could tell, was faring a little better. At his feet two fresh bloody headless corpses had fallen to the swing of his machete blade and even now he was attacking the decayed cadaver of another Dead man, hacking at him with wild abandon. But Liz could see from his movements that his panic and fear were about to overwhelm him and without any self-control she sadly believed he was as doomed as the poor woman by the wall.

‘There… there he is!’ shouted Tyrone, relief and joy causing his words to break with emotion.

Sure enough, Liz too could see Paul through one of the large rain dappled windows. Standing with his back to them he was methodically stacking jars on a shelf, completely unaware of the horrors and carnage that had breached the walls of Saint Xavier’s. Suddenly a second figure appeared in the room and Liz felt her stomach tighten with dread.

‘No, no, no, please no,’ Tyrone begged, breaking into a faster run.

The Dead woman, her long dank hair plastered to the greying and mottled skin on her face, slowly turned to look at Paul. Instantly she began to shuffle towards him, her lifeless limbs dragging her one painfully slow step at a time to the flesh she craved. Still a good thirty metres from the kitchen window Liz could tell the Dead woman would reach Paul before they did and she prayed the teenage boy would turn in time to save himself.

‘Paul! Paul! Paul!’ Tyrone desperately screamed as he ran, despite knowing his deaf brother had no chance to hear his warning.

They were ten metres from the window now and the Dead woman had already closed the gap between herself and the living flesh she longed to rip into. Paul, still oblivious to her presence, reached up to place a jar of preserved fruit on the shelf while behind him the Dead woman slowly tilted her head forward, her mouth opening wide. Tyrone, screaming in utter despair, did the only thing he could think of and threw the heavy spade at the window. Almost as if in slow motion Liz watched the garden tool, still splattered with the dark blood and gore of the Dead, briefly cross her field of vision as it spun through the air towards the large pane of glass. Inside the kitchen the Dead woman’s mouth drew closer to the flesh of Paul’s exposed neck while from her sides bloodied hands rose, claw like, ready to latch on to his shoulders. Finally sensing someone behind him, Paul slowly began to turn his head just as the spade connected with the window. With a ‘crash’ glass exploded into the room, showering broken shards across the floor and the long metal counter surfaces. But as far as Paul was concerned it proved to be too little and far too late to save him; for even as Paul’s gaze flitted across the Dead woman’s slack features, his eyes widening in shock and fear, she clamped her teeth down hard onto his neck. With Paul’s strangled cry competing to be heard over the moaning Dead outside, Tyrone threw himself through the broken window, the jagged shards in the frame that sliced into his palms barely even registering through his panic ridden desperation.