Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (7 page)

As swift as Charlie had been at dispatching the Dead, Liz was faster. Glancing over he saw that the Dead man and woman had been reduced to little more than a collection of gore splattered severed limbs and in fact Liz was already advancing on the last remaining male cadaver. Even as he watched, she reached the shambling shell of the man and without even breaking her stride her blade was effortlessly slicing through the air. First a lifeless arm fell to the floor, then a hand and then, with a flash of reflected light breaking through the morning mist, Charlie saw the Dead man’s head tumble to join its departed appendages. Even though technically Liz was not his real daughter, he thought of her as such and her display of skill had caused a bloom of pride to swell within him. Using what knowledge he possessed he had at least given her a fighting chance in this world, a chance that she had not only grasped with both hands but had excelled his every expectation. She had taken his lessons and had practiced, developed and honed them until the very blade itself had become part of her. Sometimes when he watched her fighting even he wondered just where Liz ended and the blade began, such was her skill with the weapon that kept the Dead at bay and inevitably gifted the true death that had been denied them.

‘Clean work as ever, Girl,’ smiled Charlie, walking over to Liz.

‘Thanks,’ she replied, flicking her wrist to dislodge a stubborn lump of congealed blood from her sword.

Eventually the offending clot slipped from her blade to land with a satisfying ‘splat’ against an old battered bucket. Just then Michael and Tom jogged over, leaving the three crumpled corpses behind them as lifeless as nature intended them to be.

‘Well that’s eight down,’ said Michael, gingerly picking a flap of bloody skin from the end of his crowbar. ‘So… what’s the plan now?’

‘It’s a pity there aren’t more of the Dead in the grounds,’ said Tom. ‘Putting them down at close quarters inside the Institute is going to be risky…’

‘We get them to come to us,’ Charlie replied, taking the few precious moments of respite to wipe gore from the knife on his wrist. ‘We enter through the kitchens and wait for them there. There’s only one way in from the main building through a set of double doors and assuming some of them were incinerated by the fire there can only be twenty or so still left mobile.’

‘And unless they’re all packed in the dining hall, which seems unlikely, we should be able to deal with them one by one as they come through,’ added Liz.

‘Right, so that’s the plan then,’ continued Charlie, looking from one face to the next, ‘unless anyone can think of anything better?’

Liz, Tom and Michael each shook their heads, entrusting Charlie’s experience in the armed forces when it came to such tactical manoeuvres.

‘Let’s get busy then,’ nodded Charlie, turning and jogging over to a set of unbroken ground-floor windows facing them.

So not to trample them underfoot, Charlie skirted left and then right; zigzagging his way through the patches of carrots, beans and beetroot that had been planted. If the stores within the Institute had been ruined they may just be relying on these meagre vegetables to keep them alive. Reaching the building he crouched low just under the windowsill and with his back against the wall he looked out over the grounds; shadowy movement in what was left of the woodland suddenly catching his attention.

‘Two more coming this way from the tree line,’ he said, nodding in the direction of the trees.

‘Two less to meet inside,’ said Tom, who had just crouched down next to him. ‘I’ll deal with them.’

With that, Tom was off, running at full speed toward the two shambling figures. The walking cadavers had obviously been caught among the trees as the fire had spread from the building, their now blackened and burned bodies obliterated to such a point it was difficult to tell which sex they had once been. Silently and with deadly speed Tom met the first of the Dead head on, his sickles already slicing through the air, eager to end their unholy parody of humanity. Barely stopping as he sped past the first corpse, the sickle in his right hand tore through the burnt flesh of the creature’s neck, sending its head tumbling. Just where the head ended up Tom didn’t care, he still had work to do and vengeance to reap. With the second cadaver a few steps ahead of him, Tom crossed his arms at the wrists and as he finally stepped within striking distance he pulled his arms violently back apart, the sickles in his hands instantly transforming into deadly scissoring blades. With the brief sound of crispy skin and burnt flesh slicing, the cadaver barely had chance for a final fetid breath to escape its lungs before its head was being separated from its shoulders. Panting, Tom looked down at the now headless corpse crumpled at his feet.

‘Another one,’ he whispered, the smiling faces of his long dead wife and girls suddenly coming to mind.

At times Tom would hear the whispered pleas of his wife and daughters, their voices as clear as if they stood next to him. They asked for retribution, they pleaded for vengeance and they demanded death. He would gladly honour their requests, each time paying tribute as body after body fell to his blades. Tom knew his wife and daughters were gone but still their voices called out to him and it somehow gave him comfort. Something was wrong with him, of that he was certain, but the simple fact he knew his sanity may have slipped from his grasp gave him solace; for surely only the truly mad are unaware of their state of mind. So he kept these whispered voices to himself, wrapping these ghostly memories about him, pleased to pay silent recompense to his lost family with each of the Dead he dispatched.

Behind him a short whistle broke him from his thoughts. Turning, he saw Liz crouched by the back door that led to the kitchens, urgently waving him over.

‘More to come,’ he whispered, giving the headless corpse one final glance before running back to the others.

‘You OK?’ asked Charlie, when Tom joined them. ‘You seemed to drift off a bit out there…’

‘Yeah, fine… let’s get this done,’ Tom replied, brushing off Charlie’s concerns.

‘I need you to be OK, Tom,’ Charlie interrupted. ‘No bullshit… I’m… we’re relying on you… If something’s...’

‘I fucking said I’m OK… OK!’ Tom snapped, a kernel of worry suddenly taking seed.

If he had really zoned out for so long that they had noticed, perhaps his hold on his sanity was more tenuous than he thought.

Charlie looked at Tom, his gaze somehow searching for signs of instability within his eyes.

‘OK,’ he finally relented, with a nod.

‘Well… looks like the kitchen’s empty,’ said Liz, ducking back down from the quick peek she had just taken though the window, ‘I think we’re good to go…’

‘No point in us sitting here on our arses then,’ said Charlie, pushing himself up from the ground with a grunt. ‘Now… I wonder if the door’s open?’

Realising Charlie would be forced to put his length of pipe down to try the door handle, Liz stepped forward.

‘Here, let me,’ she said, pressing down the handle.

With a soft ‘click’ of the lock, the door unexpectedly opened.

‘Ready?’ she whispered, looking back at the three men.

With unanimous nodding, Liz gently pushed the door inward using only the tips of her fingers. Any hope of silently entering the building soon evaporated with the sharp creak of the door’s unoiled hinges heralding their arrival. Liz inwardly cursed their bad luck. She had hoped they could at least properly check out the kitchen before alerting any of the Dead in earshot of their presence. Knowing there was nothing they could do about it now, Liz moved to push the door but when it was almost fully open it suddenly became wedged against something. Stepping slowly into the kitchen Liz peered behind the door, ready for the Dead should one be waiting for her.

‘It’s OK,’ she whispered, dismissing the severed arm that now had two of its fingers wedged under the door.

‘Well at least the fire didn’t reach this far,’ said Michael, giving the door a hard yank to release it from the jammed fingers so they could close it behind them, ‘although that smell…’

They all knew what he meant. Hovering under the bitter smell of smoke was the definite sweet odour of cooked flesh, human flesh.

‘Must be coming from further in the building,’ whispered Tom, ignoring the smears and bloody handprints along one side of the long metal kitchen table as he edged past it.

It was clear someone had met their death here. Splashes of blood, chunks of hastily torn flesh and two sets of ominous bloody footprints leading out of the kitchen the only testament to what had really happened.

‘Looks like it was going to be rabbit stew for dinner today,’ mused Michael, lifting the lid off one of the large pots sat on a counter next to five skinned wild rabbits.

‘Michael!’ snapped Charlie. ‘Focus.’

‘Sorry,’ he replied, gently replacing the lid and joining the others stood by a set of double doors.

The fire may not have raged this far into the building but the smoke certainly had. All along the top of the closed double doors, wispy licks of smoke damage bled upwards towards the ceiling.

‘Too much soot on the other side of the glass,’ whispered Tom, trying to see through one of the small glass panels set into each of the doors. ‘Could be one of the Dead the other side, could be twenty…’

‘Only one way to find out,’ said Charlie, stepping up to the doors.

Using the length of the pipe in his hand he pushed at one of the doors, opening it slightly. Even through the narrow gap they could see that smoke still hung heavy in the air inside the dark dining hall. Through one of the soot streaked windows a few shards of light struggled to break through the dense gloom of the room, highlighting the swirling eddies of smoke moving on unseen air currents.

‘We can’t go in there,’ whispered Liz, covering her mouth with the back of her hand, ‘we won’t last minutes with all that smoke…’

‘Agreed,’ said Charlie. ‘So we stick to the plan… get them to come to us.’

Without further discussion he pushed the door fully open, its base scrapping noisily against some unseen debris on the floor. With a ‘click’ the door locked into its ‘open’ position and Charlie began to push open the other door, never taking his eyes off the dark shadows lurking in the smoke filled room.

‘Come and get it!’ he shouted, banging his heavy pipe against the second door the moment it was secured open. ‘Fresh meat for the taking!’

Almost immediately, among the random popping of still smouldering debris, the distinct sound of shuffling feet could be heard. Then suddenly without warning, emerging from the billowing smoke, the broken silhouettes of three blackened figures came into view. As the smoke parted for the walking cadavers the four survivors could finally see what awaited them. Of the three figures only one seemed to have been completely spared the ravages of the blaze. It was Daniels. Sally had been right when she had said Daniels had been torn apart, the gaping cavity where his intestines had once been was testament to her words. His two Dead compatriots must have at some point caught the full force of the blaze, their chard and burnt limbs cracking to ooze liquid body fat with each movement. How their brains hadn’t already been completely destroyed inside their shells of burnt flesh, Charlie had no idea but such was the tenacity of whatever force kept their lifeless limbs moving.

‘I’ll take out Daniels,’ said Charlie, stepping forward to meet the man whose vision of a new beginning had gone so terrible wrong in the space of one night. ‘Liz, Tom deal with the other two… Michael, watch our backs.’

‘On it,’ replied Tom, eagerly spinning the sickle in his right hand.

Liz spared a second to throw Charlie a worried glance. They had discussed this before. Whereas for her and Charlie dispatching the Dead was a necessary task to ensure their safety, Tom, fed by his need for vengeance, had made it personal. He had twisted the need to survive into a need to destroy and that was dangerous. With death around every corner you needed to deal with the Dead with a cool head, calculating each move to bring about the desired end. It was too easy for Tom to be caught up in the moment, lost to his emotions and that’s when mistakes could happen, deadly mistakes. Emotion simply had no place when you were as drastically outnumbered by such a foe as they all were.

‘Take the one on the right,’ said Liz, finally nodding to Tom as she stepped past Michael, her sword raised high behind her, ready to strike.

With the smell of torched flesh burning in her nose, Liz kicked aside a piece of burnt wood resting at her feet and waited for the unfortunate Dead thing to come to her. Of course Tom had already darted forward, all too keen for the sickles in his hand to be bathed in the blood of the Dead once again. With the cracking and creaking of limbs almost destroyed by raging fire, the Dead man in front of her reached out a hopeful but blackened claw towards her. Taking a small step back, Liz casually noticed that a golden wedding ring had somehow managed to stay lodged on one of his destroyed fingers. Instantly dismissing thoughts of who this man may have been or what life he may have once had, Liz coolly sliced her blade through the air, removing the reaching claw and arm at the elbow. Oblivious to his missing limb the Dead man continued in his stumbling advancement to the living flesh he craved but Liz was ready for him and almost instantly her blade was whispering effortlessly through the air again. With only the slightest resistance, her blade sliced through the ruined flesh, tendon and cartilage of his neck, finally separating his head from his equally burnt shoulders; and as his body fell lifeless to the floor Liz’s eyes followed the head as it came to rest by a stack of scorched chairs. Glancing over at Tom, a strange look of satisfaction on his face as he stood over the crumpled body of the second Dead man, Liz knew she had time to give her now headless Dead man the oblivion of true death he deserved. Stepping over his body Liz looked down at the head that even now sought impotently to bite into her boot. Placing her foot against the head to steady the rocking, she placed the tip of her sword above the shrivelled burnt remains of his ear.