Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (41 page)

Liz watched Zak open his mouth, a thick drool of dark bloody spittle falling slowly from his lips, and then, as if in slow motion, the torn and exposed muscles on his neck began to tense as he prepared to pounce. At the same time, seemingly of its own accord, the hand down by her side began to turn the handle. Suddenly with what seemed to Liz’s ears to be a very loud ‘click’, the lock released from its mechanism. Unfortunately Liz had not been the only one to hear the internal bolt of the lock sliding back; for even as Liz willed it not to be so, Zak slowly turned his head to look at her.

For what seemed like an eternity their eyes locked, neither of them moving. But then slowly Zak’s upper lip began to rise, an animalistic snarl transforming his face into a savage mask of wild hunger and then with a feral like growl building in his throat, he stepped purposefully towards her. Without thinking Liz flung open the door beside her, threw herself inside and slammed it shut behind her.

‘Shit!’ she spat, noticing the key was absent from the lock.

With her weight against the door, Liz glanced about the room and was surprised to find she had been here before. Purely by chance she had found her way back to the room she had sneaked into the previous evening and although it wasn’t ideal, at least she knew the roof offered her some means of escape. Suddenly, in his desperation to get to her, Zak’s cadaver slammed himself against the door; the force of the blow knocking her slightly away.

‘Christ!’ she gasped, throwing herself back into position.

Frantically looking across the room, its forlorn and forsaken disposition hardly improved by the weak daylight, Liz saw that although the heavy curtain had fallen back into place it was moving slightly back and forth in the damp breeze coming through the open window. Behind her Zak’s cadaver continued his angrily assault on the closed door, each pounding of his fists jarring it unnervingly. But then the tempo of his hammering changed, becoming both faster and more random and in that instant Liz knew he had been joined by the two Dead women.

‘Time to go,’ she muttered, awkwardly slipping her sword back into the sheath on her back while trying to hold the wildly rattling door in place.

Waiting until just the right moment, Liz took a deep breath and then darted across the room. She had only just made it as far as the wide desk when the door behind her flew open, spilling her bloody assailants across the floor. Of course having only recently died, the thing that had once been Zak was up on his feet with a growl before the decaying brains of the two Dead women with him had even processed the fact they were no longer upright. Liz knew she had but seconds before he was on her, so pushing herself past the heavy curtain she made a dive for the open window. But Zak’s corpse was not going to let her escape that easily and even as Liz tried to clamber through he made a grab for her leg.

‘No!’ she screamed in dread as his Dead fingers latched around her ankle.

Already half through the window, Liz used the outside of the frame for leverage.

‘Get the fuck off me!’ she cried, kicking her leg wildly in the attempt to shake free or at least keep him from sinking his teeth into the flesh of her calves.

But Zak would not relent, his need for her flesh was all too powerful and even as Liz struggled with him the two Dead women in the room clumsily rose from the floor, hoping their own needs would be sated.

‘Fuck!’ Liz shouted, realising her situation was about to get a lot worse.

Whatever she was going to do she needed to do it now before Carmella’s and Fran’s corpses joined in the affray. So deciding to literally take the bull by the horns, she reached back through the window and grabbed a fistful of Zak’s bloody sleeve. With a scream of determination Liz suddenly pulled the Dead man towards her and keen to get closer, Zak’s cadaver thankfully obliged. With their combined momentum working in her favour he followed her out through the window, tumbling out onto the rain slicked tiles and as the Dead man fell past her Liz relinquished her hold of him. Feeling she was about to follow Zak’s slide down the side of the roof, Liz made a desperate grab for the heavy curtain whipping back and forth in the wind. With the heavy wet velvet brushing through her fingers, Liz feared she would fall but just at the last second she managed to grab a fistful of the heavy cloth. With a tug the curtain suddenly took her weight, sending a stab of pain through her shoulder as she jarred to an abrupt stop. Panting, she tilted her head to look below her just in time to witness Zak’s corpse disappearing over the edge of the roof, a mass of angry flaying limbs.

‘Good riddance,’ she muttered, using the lifeline the curtain had thrown her to pull her feet back up under her.

By this time the two Dead women had managed to make their way to the window and although they reached out their blood covered arms, their gore smeared faces almost pitiful in their desperation, Liz knew they simply didn’t have the coordination to climb up out of the window after her. So with a few seconds to catch her breath, Liz shielded her eyes against the driving rain and looked out across the gardens of Saint Xavier’s. What before had been a neatly tended patchwork of fruit bushes and vegetable patches had been transformed in a matter of hours into a wasteland of the Dead. Everywhere she looked had been tainted by the Dead and their passing. Precious crops had been trampled underfoot and what little remained of those seemed to be littered with decaying severed limbs or the stolen flesh of their victims.  But worst of all, it appeared the multitude of the Dead had not finished with Saint Xavier’s, for even as she watched more continued to shamble through the open gates, drawn onward by the hungry cries of their Dead brethren.

Turning her gaze away from the gate Liz glanced over at the small toilet block and was relieved to see the cart and Snow were still in place but what she saw next to them twisted her stomach with fear and panic. Charlie, the man who had come into her life as the world had fallen apart, the man that had risked his own life countless times to save her and her sister and the man that she had come to think of as her father, he was surrounded by the Dead and fighting for his life. Even as she watched, a fearful sob building in her chest, Charlie spun, stabbed and kicked out at the Dead encircling him. She had to get down there and as soon as possible. No matter how good a soldier Charlie was he could only hold out against such prolonged attack from so many of the Dead before the inevitable happened. It was time to repay her un-payable debt to this man; it was time she saved him as he had saved her.

All of a sudden from the room above her she heard a harsh animalistic growl breaking through the moans of the two Dead women. Tearing her eyes from Charlie she looked back up at the open window to see Freya’s corpse being angrily pulled back from the window. Kyle had returned from his brief slumber of death and drawn by the hungry calls of Carmella’s and Freya’s cadavers he had found the object of his desire, Liz or rather her flesh.

‘Shit!’ Liz said under her breath, as Kyle’s blood splattered face appeared above her. ‘Time to go…’

Unlike Carmella, who even now was also being pushed aside by Kyle’s agile and angry corpse, Liz knew Kyle would have no trouble climbing through the window. So releasing her hold on the curtain and using the wall for support, Liz began to edge her way across the roof to the corner of the building where she remembered from last night that a drainpipe sturdy enough to hold her weight that led down to the ground.

She had only managed two tentative side-steps across the slippery roof tiles when the savage thing that had been Kyle almost threw himself out onto the sloped roof. She had hoped he would go the same way of his brother but by unfortunate chance his left hand was still hooked onto the window ledge, supporting him.

‘Oh, come on!’ she spat, cursing the corpse’s luck as she took another careful step.

With a guttural growl building in his chest, Kyle’s hunger overrode any possible sense of survival that still lingered in his lifeless brain and releasing his handhold, he reached out to her. But in that instant Lady Luck turned her face away from this unnatural abomination to glance favourably down on the young woman trying to make her desperate escape. For as a hard gust of wind suddenly whistled past them, it caught hold of the snapping curtain; wrapping it about the cadaver’s head and shoulders. In his anger, Kyle’s corpse fought to free itself of the wet material and as he thrashed his arms about, gravity and the sloping wet tiles finally took control. One minute the Dead young man was there, his growls only slightly dampened by the thick fabric, and then the next there was the sound of curtain rings snapping and Kyle’s body plummeted towards the edge of the roof, taking the flapping curtain with him.

Dismissing Kyle from her thoughts Liz inched her way to the far corner of the roof, determined not to lose her footing. Every so often the wind would buffet and jostle her, threatening to send her tumbling but each time she pressed herself against the cold wet stonework and waited for it to lull. She had just reached the drainpipe when she heard the unexpected hollering of male voices. Glancing hopefully over her shoulder she was relieved to see Cam and Michael running to Charlie’s aid and yelling at the Dead to draw their hungry attention away from him.

‘Thank Christ!’ she muttered, knowing that Charlie at least now stood a chance.

With the fingers of one hand hooked around an intricately carved bracket supporting the drainpipe, Liz briefly readjusted the strap of her sword across her chest, swung her legs over the side of the roof and began her descent. Below her the battle between the living and Dead continued. Michael was using what looked to be a long length of timber to knock the Dead to the ground, while Cam darted forward to smash their skulls with a length of pipe already dripping with gore. With their help Charlie had managed to push back the encroaching horde of the Dead, giving himself some much needed space between himself and their grasping claw-like hands.

Liz let herself drop the final metre or so from the drainpipe, her boots landing in the soft wet earth of a herb bed at the base of the wall. This far away from the Dead the clean rich aroma of rosemary, mint, chives and thyme competed with each other, filling the air around her with a freshness that seemed to flush the scent of death from her nose. Taking a second to fill her lungs with the fresh air, Liz clicked her sword free from its sheath and readied herself. Already two of the Dead had noticed her arrival and were shambling slowly towards her. Of the first, a decrepit old woman, she knew she had nothing to worry about; having lost both of its arms at some point, all it would take was a sharp kick to its knees and the creature would be out of action. The second corpse on the other hand posed a little more of a challenge. The Dead man had been a giant in life and death had done nothing to diminish his stature. At well over six foot tall his mountain of decaying flesh dwarfed Liz but she was not to be deterred. So after wiping the rainwater from her face in the crook of her sleeve, she strode purposefully out to meet him; all the while keeping an eye out for Zak, Kyle and any other of the freshly turned.

Liz eyed her giant foe up and down, taking the measure of him as he took another shambling step towards her. He had clearly been some sort of guard when alive, the word ‘security’ emblazoned across his chest still visible beneath a swathe of nameless grime, but just how he had died, Liz couldn’t tell. With no obvious bites or injuries it was a mystery but as he let forth a hungry moan and reached out his large bloody hands towards her, Liz realised it was irrelevant. All that mattered was that he was Dead and she was not, and she intended it to stay that way, it was as simple as that. So Liz stopped, took a moment to adjust the position of the sword in her hand and then taking a single step back, she broke into a run straight for him. Seemingly oblivious to what was about to happen, the large Dead man didn’t stand a chance and as Liz came within reach of his grabbing hands she threw herself into the air, almost climbing up his wall-like chest. With a sickening ‘crack’ the tip of her blade tore suddenly through the underside of his jaw, up through the roof of his mouth and into his brain. For a moment the man’s bulk seemed to keep him upright but then as whatever had kept his Dead limbs moving dissipated he crumpled to the floor amid a row of trampled cabbages, taking Liz with him.

Grateful that the Dead man hadn’t fallen forwards and trapped her beneath him, Liz placed a knee on his chest for leverage and pulled free her sword from his now lifeless head. Trying to ignore the feeling of the man’s rotting skin sloughing free under the pressure of her knee, Liz noticed a small name tag still pinned to the stinking and pus covered ‘security’ T-shirt.

‘Sorry… Gary,’ she muttered, reading the faded name on the badge.

She was just pushing herself off his lifeless bulk when a gore and mud caked hand latched onto her wrist from below. Shocked that one of the Dead had managed to sneak up on her unnoticed, she couldn’t help the uncharacteristically girlish shriek that escaped her lips. Snatching her arm sharply out of the Dead man’s grip, Liz looked into the hungry and muddy face of Zak. He had obviously broken his back in the fall from the roof and had pulled himself fist over fist through the mud and ruined vegetables in pursuit of her.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Zak!’ she snapped, moving so Gary’s lifeless body lay between them. ‘Why won’t you just… Fuck off!’

With the last word she thrust her blade through his right eye and into his brain, granting him the nothingness of true death. With a shuddering of his Dead muscles, Zak’s cadaver finally became still and as she pulled her sword free of his skull his lifeless corpse slumped to join the body of the truly dead security guard at her feet.