Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (38 page)

‘Right, Phil I need you to stay here with Sally and Anne,’ Charlie finally said, shaking the sickening and perverse images from his mind.

‘But…’ Phil began to argue.

‘There’s no time for a debate, Phil,’ he snapped, ‘I need you to keep them safe, OK’

Phil looked at Charlie and knew there would be no moving him on this issue. If it had just been Sally in the cart perhaps he would have wanted Phil to come with him but with Anne to consider he knew Charlie couldn’t risk her being left unprotected.

‘Sure, Charlie,’ Phil finally said with a nod.

‘You’d better get in now while you have the chance,’ said Charlie, knowing it was only a matter of time before one of the Dead noticed them.

Nodding, Phil clambered up into the cart.

‘I’ll see if I can get through to Tom and send him back here too,’ said Charlie, using his ice pick to close the hatch. ‘Just sit tight and if we ‘re not all back within a few hours, you know what to do…’

‘I don’t think Sally and I can last that long without coming to blows,’ Phil replied, with a wink. ‘So you’d better get your arse back here in one piece, OK?’

‘Do my best…’ Charlie muttered, the hatchway finally closing.          

‘You seem to be making a habit of this, Sally,’ he heard Phil whisper, as he crept along the side of the cart.

‘Screw you!’ came her hissed reply, just as he stepped out from behind the cart into full view of the Dead.

‘Crap!’ Charlie said under his breath, realising any hope of sending Tom back to the safety of the cart had immediately disappeared, as he saw the man give chase to a recently reanimated corpse that had targeted the battling young man.

Somehow the young man had managed to keep the Dead at bay up until now but when he saw the ruined and bloody fresh corpse running towards him, he panicked. Kicking out at the legs of a decrepit Dead woman, he knocked her to the ground and with a break in the wall of the Dead encircling him suddenly presenting itself, he jumped over her and ran with all the strength his ailing muscles could muster to an open doorway swinging back and forth in the wind. But the freshly animated cadaver would not let his prize slip from his lifeless hands so easily and even as his slower Dead brothers and sisters turned to follow the fleeing young man, he pushed past them; knocking some of them to the wet muddy ground with his speedy passing.

‘Tom!’ Charlie shouted, watching his crazed friend charge after the fresh corpse as it pursued the young man through the open doorway. ‘Tom, wait!’

No sooner had Charlie called out to him than he realised his stupid mistake. For with two tasty meals suddenly slipping beyond their grasp the Dead had only one thing to now focus their ravenous attention on… him.

‘Oh, shit!’ he muttered, taking an involuntary step backwards as one by one the Dead fixed their Dead milky eyes upon him.

***

With her feet thundering across the wooden floorboards of the empty dining hall, Liz tried to ignore the scattered of broken and blood splattered crockery littering the floor. She tried not to see the bloody handprints smeared across the wall by a shattered window and most of all she tried to blot out the tortuous choking screams coming from behind her; coming from Tyrone.

Skidding to a stop by the tall wooden doors, Liz slowly pushed one of them open just enough for her to see the hallway beyond. Just like in the dining hall, the corridor was dotted with the bloody signs of attack, struggle and even if the victim had managed to escape, ultimately death. For as her gaze flitted from one pool of clotting blood to the next, she noticed the half chewed remnants of what looked to be a finger and with this Liz knew that even if its owner had somehow fought off their cadaverous attacker they had been bitten and with that bite their fate was sealed.

Despite the constant moaning of the Dead back in the kitchen Liz suddenly heard the soft ‘creaking’ of hinges moving. Glancing back to the rear of the hall she saw the kitchen door was slowly being pushed open and she knew no matter what lay in the bloody hallway it had to be better than what was about to pour through those doors, so readying herself for possible attack she slipped out into the corridor. When nothing immediately charged at her, Liz let go of the breath she had been holding and as quietly as she could let the closing door slip back into place behind her. Stepping gingerly around the pools of blood and torn chunks of flesh, she tried to balance her necessary caution with the need to put as much distance between herself and the Dead horde as quickly as possible. So, moving at a brisk a pace as she dared, Liz made her way to the end of the corridor where it joined another similarly empty corridor and a staircase rising up to the first floor.

Placing a foot on the first step, Liz tilted her head to look up the staircase when suddenly the loud ‘bang’ of a door being violently thrown open sounded from along the adjoining corridor. With her head snapping back in that direction, she was met with a pair of milky Dead eyes glaring back at her; it was, or rather had once been, Parker. For the briefest of moments Liz took in the Dead man’s bloody mouth and chest, the fatal arrow still lodged through his throat and the way his face was contorted into a mix of savage hunger and demonic glee. Then slowly the Dead man began to open his mouth and with thick bloody drool dripping from his teeth he let forth a low guttural moan. Liz could tell she had but seconds before he charged and as she broke eye contact with his hungry corpse what she glimpsed over his shoulder made her stomach twist and her breath catch. For just behind him, eager to continue in their own hunt for living flesh, were the shadowy figures of at least another dozen more of the Dead.

‘Shit!’ she gasped, instantly knowing she had only one route of escape left open to her; the staircase.

Turning, she bolted up the steps two at a time, all the while hearing Parker’s stampeding footsteps along the corridor below her as he gave chase.

‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’ she continued to mutter, almost throwing herself across the small landing where the staircase changed direction.

Ahead of her she saw a doorway. If she could just get through it unseen by Parker’s cadaver, Liz knew there was a slim chance that the Dead man would simply carry on up to the next floor. Admittedly the chance was slim but it was a chance she was willing to take. So, as she bounded up the last few steps she spared a quick glance over the bannister, just in time to see Parker’s ravenous corpse place its foot on the first of the stairs below her, Liz darted back to the door on the landing and as silently as she could, slipped through it.

Making sure the door made no noise as it closed behind her, Liz looked along the long and empty dim hallway with its own series of closed doors. Waiting briefly until she was sure the way ahead of her was clear, she broke into an urgent sprint. But running up the stairs must have tired her out more than she thought for she was only halfway along the hallway before she began to feel the uncomfortable beginnings of a stitch in her right side.

‘Fuck,’ she grumbled under her breath, trying to ignore the pain in her side so she could at least make it as far as the corner before she paused.

With the moaning of the Dead seemingly coming from every direction, Liz’s fear won out and despite the tight stabbing pain in her side with each step, she eventually reached the corner. Pausing only to suck in much needed oxygen, Liz stood slightly bent over with her arm against the wall for support. It was only when she looked up that she caught the briefest glimpse of the back of a woman stepping through an open doorway into one of the rooms. Even though she had only seen her for a split second, there was something familiar about her, something that itched at the back of mind.

Pushing herself away from the wall, Liz slowly edged along the hallway. Keeping her back to the wall and her blade held low, she soon reached the open doorway and cautiously stole a quick glance into the room.

Much of the room was bathed in deep shadow, save for a few beams of weak light breaking through chinks in the partly drawn curtains, but Liz could clearly see a figure seated at a wide desk, it was Zak. With his head tilted over the back of his chair exposing the pale skin of his throat, his lolling mouth open and his arms hanging limply at his sides, she could have been forgiven for mistaking him as one of the Dead but the open phial with its white crystalline powder spilling across the desk in front of him told another story. Whatever Kyle had concocted for this brother, Zak had wilfully given himself over to the blissful high it induced and in this high he had wrapped himself in a welcomed ignorance; ignorance of the death and destruction about him. Oblivious to the lives of those in his charge being stolen by grasping hands and bloody teeth, he was totally unaware of the Dead woman only now stepping from the shadows to look down upon him.

Instantly Liz covered her mouth to smother the choking sob that threatened to erupt from her. For as the woman she now knew to be Dead stepped through a dull beam of light, she saw to her dismay it was Carmella. Wearing only a long T-shirt drenched in blood and matted with gore, Carmella’s slack face had become little more than a smear of crimson. Her slow painful movements told Liz the poor woman had died sometime during the night but not only that, from her appearance it was clear she had since risen from her brief oblivion to feed upon the flesh of the living. With her eyes widening in horror and disbelief, Liz fought to make her limbs move. Zak may have been a willing puppet in the horrors his brother forced on those at Saint Xavier’s but he didn’t deserved to die, not like this. But even as she finally regained control of herself she realised it was too late. Already Carmella’s corpse was bending over Zak, her mouth opening wide to reveal blood covered teeth as she drew closer to his exposed neck and in that moment Liz knew there was no way she could prevent this inevitable horror taking place. So with a heavy heart she silently stepped past the open doorway, praying that whatever Zak had taken would keep him wrapped in its arms of blissful oblivion and prevent his return to the bloody and terrifying reality that awaited him.

As she made her way silently along the corridor, past a musty smelling study room, Liz wondered if Fran had found Carmella’s room empty upon her arrival or had the hungry cadaver been there, ready and waiting to taste her bloody flesh as she stepped through the door; and with these horrific images filling her mind, Liz made a decision. With Carmella and presumably her baby now joining Tyrone and his brother on the list of those taken from them by the Dead, their small group seemed to be getting smaller by the minute and with Cam and Michael still unaccounted for and with no idea where to start looking for them, just what did she hope to achieve by aimlessly wondering about like this? She had just made up her mind to take the next staircase she came across back down to the ground floor when she turned the corner and came face to face with Kyle.

***

‘Catch him!’

‘Yes, get the bad man, Daddy. Get him!’

The urgent voices of Tom’s family whispered at the back of his mind, demanding their retribution, demanding vengeance for their deaths. And when he heard their whispered pleas he would smile; for with their ghostly requests some tiny part of them was back with him once again.

‘Hurt him, hurt him like he hurt me, Daddy,’ he heard his eldest daughter plead, as he ran along a corridor in pursuit of the recently deceased man.

‘Don’t let the bad man get away, Daddy,’ came the voice of his youngest.

‘I’ll get him, Girls,’ he replied, hurtling round a corner, ‘Daddy will get him for you…’

Tom sprinted along a hallway already tarnished by the Dead. Even as he sped past with his sickles poised for attack, his eyes took in each detail showing testament that the Dead had been here; a splash of deep crimson, a smeared bloody hand print, a lump of something wet and indefinable, all told him the Dead had come this way; and then of course there was the smell. A mix of fresh blood, fear and shit it trailed behind the newly reanimated Dead man like a tell-tale cloud of death in his wake and Tom would follow it to its source and remove yet one more unnatural abomination from the world.

Ahead of him Tom suddenly heard the hysterical screams of the fleeing young man; his Dead pursuer had obviously caught up with him and was now claiming his prize of bloody flesh with gusto.  

‘Catch him Tom, catch him for us!’ his wife whispered urgently in the back of his mind.

‘And kill him, Daddy!’ his two daughters begged with almost gleeful insistency. ‘Kill him.’

Charging around a corner Tom skidded to an abrupt halt; only a few metres ahead of him two men were on the floor, one living and one Dead. Sitting astride the young man’s back, the fresh cadaver had pinned his thrashing and screaming meal beneath him and struggle as he might the battle weary young man with the ginger hair simply no longer had the strength to shake off his hungry attacker. The Dead man’s bloody face suddenly darted forward, his mouth a gaping chasm of death, to rip free another strip of skin and muscle from across the man’s shoulder blades and as he pulled back, taking his mouthful of flesh with him, an arc of blood splashed up across the wall. With Tom’s gaze flicking from the splatter of freshly spilt blood to the slab of exposed and glistening bone, he felt his fists begin to tighten about the handles of his blades.

‘Kill him!’ his wife and children demanded in unison and with those words Tom leapt forward.

Even as he closed the gap between them, Tom’s arms automatically crossed; turning the two sickles into the deadly blades of a huge pair of scissors. Then with a roar tinged with anger, grief and rage, Tom uncrossed his arms. One second the Dead man was savouring the raw and bloody stolen flesh in his mouth and the next his head was tumbling to the floor. The now headless body swayed back and forth momentarily as if unsure what to do and then as true death claimed it, it flopped to one side.