Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (42 page)

‘Liz!’ shouted Charlie, pushing aside a Dead man dressed in the rotting remnants of a policeman’s uniform to run over and pull her into a fierce fatherly relief filled hug. ‘Thank God, you’re OK,’

‘Well, you know me,’ she mumbled into his chest, returning his heart felt embrace.

‘And the others?’ he asked, finally releasing her. ‘Did you find the others?’

‘Yes…’ she replied, her voice seeming to fade away. ‘I… I found them…’

Charlie instantly knew from her tone what she meant and with his shoulders slumping in utter remorse, he pulled her close again.

‘Shit! Well… well, at least you’re safe… you got out alive,’ he whispered, softly kissing the top of her head as his thoughts drifted to the unimaginable.

‘Charlie!’ Michael suddenly shouted, pointing with his blood covered length of timber to the gate where another wave of the Dead were slowly ambling through. ‘We need to get out of here!’

‘Time to go,’ he said, releasing her to shake the dark thoughts from his mind.

‘Yep,’ she agreed, her eyes flitting from one slack hungry face to the next, each burning with a ceaseless compulsion to seek out the living, ‘time to go… again.’

Breaking into a sprint they ran to the cart, dodging the reaching and moaning corpses, taking out any that came too close.

‘Get in the cart!’ Charlie shouted, already pulling open one of the side hatches. ‘We haven’t got time for subtlety… get in!’

‘But?’ Michael began, knowing the Dead would see them.

‘The only chance is to outrun them,’ he replied, grabbing Liz to push her inside and into the welcome arms of her worried sister. ‘We’ll double back for Star later… but we’ve got to get out of here.’

Realising Charlie was right, Michael clipped a reaching Dead child on the side of the head with his pipe and once he was sure it wasn’t getting up again, stepped over its lifeless body and clambered into the cart after Liz.

‘Where’s…,’ began Cam, looking over Charlie’s shoulder for the missing members of their group.

But as he glanced back at Charlie the look he saw there spoke volumes. With a heavy sigh, he wearily lowered his bloody weapon and swearing under his breath, climbed into the cart.

‘Go!’ shouted Charlie, the moment he had pulled the hatchway closed behind him.

‘Yah!’ Phil cried, cracking Snow’s reins.

With a lurch, Snow jolted forward, charging towards the open gate with a thunder of hooves, leaving broken and scattered cadavers in their wake. With Phil giving Snow’s reins another snap to spur her onward, the survivors, reduced in number and low in morale, finally sped past the walls of Saint Xavier’s.

‘Don’t…’ said Charlie, slowly reaching over to grab Liz’s hand just as she moved to push aside one of the spy hole covers. ‘They’re gone, Liz… don’t look back.’

With the realisation that they were at last safe, the nightmares of Saint Xavier’s receding behind them with every turn of the cart’s wheels, Liz looked back at Charlie with tears in her eyes and slowly nodded.

‘There… there was nothing I could do,’ she whispered, the sob building in her throat breaking her words as she buried her face in her hands.

‘I know, darling,’ he replied, pulling her close to him. ‘I know…’ 

Once she had at last shed her tears of loss and overwhelming relief, Liz told the others what had really been going on behind the walls of Saint Xavier’s and then, with more tears threatening to fall, just what had become of their friends.

‘I’m sorry,’ she finally said to Cam, knowing there had been a spark of something hopeful between him and Fran. ‘I… I couldn’t save her…’

Cam ran his fingers through his wet hair and silently nodded. Tom, Fran, Tyrone, Paul, Carmella and her baby, all had been taken from them by the Dead and no words could change that. Once again they had lost people they cared about and some they were just getting to know. The Dead had claimed them all, conscripting them into their lifeless army, just as they had countless others and countless yet more to come. For such was the way of the world now and if they were to ever to build a new life in it they had to accept the undeniable truth that such was the way of the Dead.

***

Epilogue

Trapped on the roof, Kai looked down through the domed glass roof. The young woman and the man below him fought valiantly for their lives but he could see this was a battle they had no hope of winning. Backed against the wall with the Dead horde creeping ever closer, he knew they had but minutes before they were overwhelmed and torn to pieces. Glancing frantically about the roof, Kai searched desperately for something that could save them. When his gaze flitted over the hose pipes leading to the large water tank an idea began to take form. It was a slim chance but with time running out for the man and the young woman, it was worth a shot. So, running over to the hand pump he began to frantic unscrew the metal connecting cap that attached it to the hose.

‘C...Come on,’ he growled, his fingers straining to loosen the tightly screwed fitting.

Suddenly with an ear piercing squeak the connector moved, breaking the tight seal. Slowly at first and then faster as it began to spin in Kai’s fingers, releasing the hose with each rotation; until with a ‘thunk’ the hose detached itself from the pump, falling to the roof. Grabbing up the hose by its metal end, Kai ran over to the large water tank and began to re-attach it to a valve at its base. Spinning the connector section as fast as he could it only took seconds to join the two parts together, leaving only the other end already attached to the top of the tank to undo and his plan would be complete. Running to the small ladder bolted to the side of the water tank, Kai began to climb. With the sound of his boots banging against the metal runs echoing across the empty roof, he prayed he would be in time. Once again he strained to release the screwed connecting section, the effort forcing deep red chunks of rust digging into his palms.

‘Fuck!’ he growled, as a shard of rusting metal sliced through the flesh of his thumb.

But knowing the small cut was nothing compared to the bloody terror about to befall the two people fighting to survive, Kai renewed his efforts and as he yelled in determination he was rewarded with a quarter turn of the connector.

‘Y...Yes,’ he stammered, as the connector continued to move in his hands.

Once the end of the hose was free from the tank, Kia quickly clambered back down the ladder and ran over to the domed roof. In the few seconds he had been occupied, the plight of the young woman and man had deteriorated to almost certain death and even as he watched the woman screamed as she struggled to keep the snapping jaws of a Dead woman away from her face. Kai knew it was now or never, so with as much force as he could muster he swung the metal end of the hose at the glass dome. With a ‘crash’ it connected, shattering the glass and sending it raining down on the Dead below him.

At the sound of the breaking glass, Tom looked up and locked eyes with a figure who had appeared unexpectedly above them. He had no idea just what the young man had intended to do but he knew the shards of broken glass now lodged in the Dead horde had done little to deter their savage attack and as he slashed out at the grabbing hand of a Dead woman he accepted that it may not matter anymore. The Dead horde was too large for them to handle and with no escape this time, finally their luck had finally run out. With a sense of timely acceptance flowing over him, Tom realised at least he would be with his wife and daughters soon.

‘No, Tom,’ he suddenly heard his wife’s ghostly voice in the back of his head. ‘Not yet…’

Suddenly out of nowhere there was a hissing sound and the Dead woman in front of him was pushed to the floor. But she was not the only one; a stream of gushing water was knocking more and more of the Dead off their feet, giving Fran and himself some precious life-saving space.

‘G...Get ready!’ the young man above them shouted. ‘It w…won’t last long!’

Almost as he said the words, the pressure of the water stream began to decrease.

‘C…climb up!’ he cried, throwing the end of the hose suddenly down to them.

Not waiting to the told twice, Tom slipped his sickles in the channels on his back and cupped his hands together.

‘Fran!’ he panted, noticing some of the Dead were already pushing themselves up from the slippery floor. ‘I’ll boost you as high as I can… you’ve got to climb!’

Dropping the gore covered marble trophy, Fran nodded and placing her foot in Tom’s interlocked fingers, leapt as high as she could. With a cry of effort, she latched onto the thick hose and wrapping the length below her between her legs, she began to climb.

With Kai bracing his feet against the metal frame of the broken dome, he took the strain of the woman’s weight on the hose. It looked as though his plan might just be working and as her delicate but blood covered hands suddenly appeared over the lip of the frame he reached down with one hand to help her up.

She had barely pulled her legs up onto the roof before she spun and screamed down to the man still down with the Dead in the hallway.

‘Tom!’ she cried, sobs of fear catching in her throat, ‘Hurry!’

But in saving Fran, Tom realised he may have left it too late to save himself; already many of the Dead were back on their feet, their arms once again reaching out for him.

‘Fucking climb!’ Fran screamed from above him, breaking Tom from his dark thoughts.

With the Dead so close his hands itched to feel his sickles back in their grasp once again but Tom knew his wife and daughters had other plans for him. So after kicking a Dead man in the chest that had got too close, he grabbed hold of the hose and began to pull himself up.

‘He’s not going to make it!’ cried Fran, frantically looking back at Kai as she realised Tom wouldn’t be able to get beyond the reach of the grabbing Dead hands in time.

‘H…help me!’ Kai demanded, beginning to step backwards, pulling the hose with him.

Seeing what he was doing, Fran jumped up and wrapped her hands about the hose and began to pull with all the strength left in her shaking muscles.   

Below them, Tom kicked wildly as one by one the Dead clawed at his legs, desperate to stop the living flesh they craved from escaping. Yet as each second passed he rose higher and higher until at last he was miraculously beyond the reach of the baying mob of the Dead and the lip of the roof was within his arm’s reach.

‘Tom!’ Fran sobbed, wrapping her arms about him as he pulled himself up onto the roof.

‘W…We need t…to find another w...way down,’ stammered Kai, interrupting Fran’s emotional reunion.

At the sound of his broken words, Fran released Tom, turned and pulled Kai into a fierce hug.

‘Thank you,’ she choked. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you…’

‘Yeah,’ nodded Tom, with a grin of relief spreading across his face, ‘thanks, I guess we owe you one.’

Minutes later, after a precarious descent down one of the drain pipes at the rear of Saint Xavier’s, Kai, Fran and Tom found themselves running back through the vegetable gardens to the wall where Tom knew Star and the safety of the cart waited for them on the other side.

‘Kai will give you a leg up,’ said Tom, finding himself once again crouching behind the patch of tall runner bean plants watching the Dead shambling aimlessly about the grounds, ‘the roof hatch is open, just get in as quickly as you can, OK?  I’ve got an idea where Charlie and the others are headed; hopefully we can catch up with them on the road.’

With a nod, Fran placed her foot in Kai’s interlocked fingers and was boosted up over the high wall.

‘Right, your turn, Kai,’ said Tom, about to slip his sickles back in their channels so he could help the young man over the wall.

‘Tom!’ Kai suddenly shouted, his stammer uncharacteristically absent as he frantically pulled the man towards him just as a fast moving Dead man burst through the greenery.

Spinning in Kai’s grasp, Tom lashed out with the sickle in his left hand, the curved blade slicing cleanly through the ruined flesh of the Dead man’s neck. For a second the body’s momentum seemed to let the decapitated cadaver take a few more stumbling steps but then in a crumple of Dead limbs it collapsed to the ground and was still.

‘C…couldn’t have happened to a nicer b…bastard!’ growled Kai, looking in disgust down into Kyle’s still roaming and hungry Dead eyes.

‘Come on, son,’ said Tom, gently pulling Kai away from Kyle’s head, ‘leave him like that… it’s what he deserves…’

‘He deserves so much w…worse,’ Kai muttered, turning away while Kyle’s head continued to impotently open and closed its mouth.

‘Yeah,’ Tom agreed, finally helping Kai over the wall, ‘he does… they all do.’

And with that, Tom and Kai joined Fran in the cart and set out on their journey to find Charlie and the others
. But unknown to Tom his assumption about Charlie’s destination was wrong, very wrong and although their own lives would be filled with times of love, horror and hardship, they would never see their friends again. 

***

I hope you enjoyed ‘To Escape the Dead’, why not follow these and many more characters in their battle to survive among the Dead in the ‘Lanherne Chronicles’

Book 1: Six days with the Dead

Book 2: Five more days with the Dead

Book 3: Last days with the Dead