Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (6 page)

Chapter 2

As her blade whispered through the air Liz casually noticed the Dead woman in front of her was missing three of the fingers of her right hand; yet this was in fact the least of the Dead woman’s injuries. With only a dried leathery strip of curling skin on her shoulder, she was actually missing her whole left arm. Offering barely any resistance, the razor sharp edge of Liz’s blade sliced effortlessly through tendon, withered muscle and bone, sending the Dead woman’s mutilated hand dropping to the road. Of course this did little to stop the Dead woman in her compulsive advancement toward the flesh she craved, towards Liz. But now with only the severed stump reaching for her, Liz could take her time to exercise a clean killing blow. With a flick of her wrist her sword sliced through the air yet again, the arc of the blade bisecting the woman’s face just above her jaw bone. Almost instantly the Dead woman’s moaning stopped and her remaining arm fell lifeless to her side. For a split second she seemed to waver back and forth, unsteadily on her feet but then, as gravity took control, her ruined body fell to join the hand at Liz’s feet. Liz watched as the top half of the cadaver’s head bounced along the cracked road surface, finally coming to rest by a large patch of dandelions that had taken root just near the curb. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure Charlie, Cam and Tom had the other Dead under control, Liz walked over to what was left of the decapitated head. Even though the Dead woman was effectively out of action and no longer a danger to anyone Liz refused to allow the remaining abomination to carry on its un-natural existence. Trying to ignore the roaming film covered eyes that followed her every movement, she placed her foot on what was left of the corpse’s face and thrust down with her sword. Its tip easily punctured the skull to tear through the decaying brain housed within and as she removed her foot to walk away she knew the cadaver’s eyes would never look upon the living again.

Hidden in their carts, the group had managed a few hours of stressful nervous sleep and had awoken at dawn to find a small group of the Dead dotted along the road around them. With the smell of smoke and a light mist hovering about them, Cam, Charlie, Tom and Liz had left the safety of the carts to dispatch the ambling cadavers as quickly as they could. Knowing people would want to relieve themselves or at least stretch their legs after a cramped and uncomfortable night trapped in the cart, Charlie made sure the job was exercised with almost military precision. They had each chosen their mark from the closest of the Dead and advanced on them, their weapons ready. Charlie had taken on the largest and freshest looking of the approaching Dead, a hulk of a man in tattered army fatigues. Darting under the Dead soldier’s outstretched arms, Charlie spun and swiped savagely across the back of the corpse’s legs, severing the tendons and sending him tumbling to his knees. With a smooth well practiced motion, he used the momentum he had gathered to spin again, this time stabbing the knife at his wrist deep into the back of the Dead man’s head. With a kick, Charlie released the man’s corpse from the impaled knife and stepped over the body, already dismissing it from his thoughts.

Looking over, Charlie could see Cam hammering the skull of a female cadaver with his length of heavy piping. She was already on the ground and even as he watched, Cam’s blows gave her the oblivion of true death. Tom, on the other hand, was attacking the Dead with his usual whirling dervish abandon. With his two curved sickles he spun, ducked and slashed, severing limbs and decapitating heads with lightning speed. Unlike Liz, Tom only eliminated the immediate threat the Dead posed. His sickles, old-fashioned curved blades intended more for cutting grass rather than decaying flesh, were far more fragile than Liz’s sword and embedding them into a skull ran the risk of them snapping in two; it wasn’t a risk Tom was willing to take. So as usual, while the bodies fell Liz followed behind, her sword stabbing out their unholy existence.

‘Right. All clear!’ called Charlie, as he stepped over the severed remains of a Dead man, who had fallen to Tom’s blades, to knock on the wall of one of the carts. ‘You’ve got five minutes and then it’s back inside while we start the clear-up from last night’s fuck up,’ he continued, pausing to help Carmella down from the cart.

‘What a waste,’ whispered Carmella, staring forlornly at the still smoking blackened shell of the Institute.

Charlie looked over his shoulder at the ruined building and shook his head. Any slim hopes he had harboured of being able to stay and rebuild the Institute quickly faded. During the night the fire had raged through the building and the structural damage was such that one side had been reduced to little more than rubble. This in itself was bad enough but as the masonry collapsed and scattered across the grounds the trees closest to the building had been felled, causing a domino effect that had breached the outer wall. With a large break in the old west wall it would be impossible to keep the Dead out now. The Carmichael Institute could no longer offer them the sanctuary they needed and Charlie knew it was time to find a new home.

‘We’ll find somewhere else,’ he said, turning back to Carmella, his hand on her shoulder, ‘somewhere you can have your baby… somewhere safe.’

Carmella’s hands instinctively moved to her belly, encircling her unborn child protectively and forced a worried smile to her lips.

‘Now go with Liz,’ he continued, his own smile mirroring hers. ‘We won’t have long before more of the Dead come.’

Knowing that what Charlie had said to be true, Carmella nodded and went with Liz and the other women to quickly relieve themselves while they still had time.

‘Right, so how are we going to play this?’ asked Michael a few minutes later, tapping a crowbar absentmindedly against his leg.

‘Well, it looks like this is just a clear and salvage mission now,’ began Charlie, looking at the assembled group of dishevelled survivors, ‘and as we’re a bit low on weapons I think Liz, Tom, Michael and myself should be the ones to clear the Institute…’

‘What? But…’ started Phil, surprised he wasn’t going with them.

‘No, Phil I want you here.’ Charlie interrupted, ‘Unless we find any more survivors inside, which I doubt, there’s about thirty or so of the Dead still in there…’

‘All the more reason for me to come with you then,’ Phil argued, ‘you need me.’

‘Please, Phil, we don’t have time for this.’ Replied Charlie, glancing up and down the road for any signs of more approaching Dead, ‘What I need is for you to be here… I need you to make sure everyone else is safe and if anything happens to us…’

Charlie didn’t need to finish his train of thought; Phil and the others all knew what he meant. If they were to meet their deaths within the next few hours, it was to be Phil’s priority to keep the others alive and lead them to a new safe home.

‘I understand,’ he said solemnly, looking over at Anne as she worriedly followed the conversation of the adults from her perch on the lip of one of the side hatches.

For the length of a heart beat no-one spoke, each realising it could quite possibly be the last time their little group of survivors were together in their entirety.

‘Right,’ said Tom, breaking the moment, ‘it’s not going to get any better the longer we wait… let’s get this party started.’

As the others began to divide themselves between the two carts, Liz pulled her sister tight into her arms.

‘I love you… You be a good girl for Phil and the others,’ she whispered into a head of blond curls. ‘Charlie and I will be back soon… I promise.’

‘I’m relying on you,’ she said turning to Phil as he took Anne from her arms.

‘Hey, you’ll be back soon enough,’ he replied with a wink. ‘You promised and we’re going to hold you to it… aren’t we Anne, hey.’

Anne silently nodded her head.

‘See… we’ll be fine,’ he continued.

‘Arsehole,’ she whispered, reaching up to kiss Phil on the cheek.

‘Just get going,’ he replied, giving her rump a friendly slap with his free hand. ‘Go find us something to eat… Girl, I’m starving!’

‘I’ll do my best,’ said Liz, reaching behind her to click free the sword on her back from its sheath.

With that Liz turned to join Charlie, Tom and Michael standing just inside of the open gate.

‘Here,’ said Cam, suddenly running up to Michael with a wickedly sharp looking hunting knife in his hand, ‘you’d better take this… just in case.’

‘Cheers, mate,’ Michael replied, taking the knife from his friend with a nod.

With everyone else already hidden safely inside the two carts, Cam darted back, pulled himself up through the open side hatch and turned to watch his four friends disappear from sight beyond the high walls to meet what awaited them.

‘Good luck,’ he mumbled, pulling the hatchway closed.

As he slid the internal bolt closed, Cam turned to Vincenzo, Carmella and Fran, their faces half in shadow.

‘Let’s get some light in here, shall we?’ he whispered, moving aside some of the disks covering the spy holes cut into the walls of the cart.

But his cautious whispers would prove to be too little, too late. For as he had climbed back into the cart his movements had not gone unnoticed and already four of the Dead were slowly dragging their decaying bodies along the road toward the place they had seen the living flesh hide itself.

***

With the gravel crunching slightly underfoot as they walked, Charlie, Liz, Tom and Michael left behind the safety of the carts to begin the ‘clean up’ of the Dead.

‘Heads up!’ said Charlie, pausing as he scanned the grounds before them. ‘Three to the left already… and another five on our right.’

‘Do we split up or wait for them to come to us?’ asked Liz, re-adjusting the hold on her blade.

‘Split up,’ Charlie began, eyeing the shambling corpses as one by one they slowly took notice that the living that had suddenly appeared among them, ‘Tom, Michael you go left… Liz, with me…’

‘See you in a minute then…,’ replied Tom, already swinging his sickles eagerly at his sides, keen to end the unnatural existence of the Dead men and woman slowly making their way towards them, ‘just holler if you can’t handle your five, OK.’

‘Just don’t get yourself bitten, Smartarse,’ smiled Charlie, as Tom and Michael ran off to engage three of the walking cadavers.

‘Which do you want?’ asked Liz sizing up the four Dead men and a Dead woman ambling in their direction as fast as their stiff limbs could carry them.

Of the four male corpses there was little to differentiate between them, they were all of similar height and body weight. While the woman on the other hand, whose neck and chest had been reduced to little more than a mass of torn flesh, was short with a slight frame and build.

‘I’ll take the one in the overalls,’ replied Charlie, pointing with his wrist knife to a man on the far left of the group who had a series of mouth sized chunks missing from his face and neck, ‘and then the one behind him dragging his leg… You take the woman and the Dead man in the blue trousers,’ he continued, nodding towards the woman and the corpse of a man who seemed to be only missing an ear.’

‘Right,’ began Liz, giving her blade a quick swish through the air to loosen up her wrist, ‘that leaves the one at the back… we should be done before he catches up, so whoever finishes first puts him down.’

‘OK, let’s do this,’ he replied, swinging his length of lead piping up onto his shoulder as he stepped forward.

Within twenty seconds they had walked close enough for each of them to engage their chosen corpses. With a grunt Charlie swung the pipe through the air, his long reach enabling it to connect hard on the right temple of ‘overalls’ man. Knocked off balance but not yet out of action, the cadaver fell to the floor only to immediately begin pushing himself up again. In the brief respite the attempt to right himself gave him, Charlie was already moving onto the Dead man with the limp. One hard kick to his already weakened knee that shattered bone and tore cartilage and Charlie was darting forward ready to finish this corpse’s short lived afterlife. With a sickening wet cracking sound the knife at his wrist plunged through the man’s forehead and after a minute twist to make sure the brain inside was truly ruined, the job was done. Even though this had barely taken seconds ‘overalls’ was back on his feet and already reaching for Charlie again.

‘Sorry mate,’ Charlie mumbled, knocking aside a blood caked hand just shy of touching his shoulder. ‘Not today!’

Another loud ‘crack’ and the length of pipe connected just under the Dead man’s chin, violently snapping his back his head and shattering many of his teeth in the process. The blow must have dislodged the corpse’s skull from the top of his spine for even as Charlie stepped closer to make the killing blow he noticed the cadaver’s head was sat at an odd tilted back angle. Staggering backwards from the impact, ‘overalls’ was now forced to look down his nose, or rather past the gaping hole where it used to be, to see the living flesh he craved. Just how dislodging the skull hadn’t severed the spinal cord, Charlie had no idea but with ‘overalls’ still advancing towards him he knew it really didn’t matter; he had to end this. So after taking a precious second to take aim, Charlie darted forward. With a hefty punch at the underside of the Dead man’s exposed chin, Charlie’s wrist knife easily tore through the dead skin and flesh. Feeling just the slightest pressure as the knife tip initially connected with the base of the Dead man’s skull, Charlie used his strength and momentum to force the blade home. For a second the Dead man’s jaw continued to move impotently up and down, scraping bone against the hard steel but as whatever had brought this man back from death dissipated Charlie pulled his blade free to let the now truly dead weight fall to the ground.