Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (8 page)

‘Sorry…,’ was all she could think of to whisper as she sent the thing before her on his final journey to meet his God.

With that she stabbed down and after the brief crunching of broken bone, the roaming eyes in the head were at last still.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, turning to watch Charlie trying to move Daniels’ now lifeless body.

‘Waste not, want not,’ he simply replied, slipping one of the corpse’s arms from something that looked like a cross between a bullet proof vest and a utility jerkin. ‘Lucky we’re the same size…’

Slipping the vest over his head, Charlie began to do up the side-straps. It was only when it was on that Liz truly understood why Charlie had ‘robbed’ the body of Daniels of his clothes. Secured in channels across the chest and back were three wickedly sharp looking ice picks.

‘Damn, there’s one missing,’ said Charlie disappointedly noticing the empty channel on his chest.

‘Here it is,’ said Tom, coughing while he yanked the missing pick from the ruined skull of an un-noticed body half hidden by a scorched table.

‘Thanks,’ Charlie replied, taking the missing pick from Tom to test the reassuring weight of it in his hand, ‘Yep, this’ll work for me…’

‘No more of the Dead seem to be coming…,’ said Liz, puzzled why more hadn’t answered their call.

‘Perhaps the doors at the other end are locked?’ suggested Michael, darting back into the kitchen only to return moments later with a grubby looking tea-towel. ‘I’ll check…’

Tying the towel over his mouth and nose to block out the worst of the smoke, Michael manoeuvred around the three fallen bodies and using one of the long tables to guide him, made his way through the smoke filled room to the door he knew lay at the far end of the dining hall. At any moment he expected to feel Dead hands upon him, grasping compulsively for his flesh as they appeared from the swirling smoke around him.

‘What do you see?’ called Tom from behind him.

‘Fuck all,’ Michael mumbled to himself, blinking away the stinging smoke from his eyes.

‘I’m almost at the door!’ He continued, calling back as the hand keeping contact with the long table told him he had reached its end.

Leaving the security of the table behind him, Michael stepped forward making the four strides that would take him to the double doors. Sure enough, by the second step, the smoke parted revealing the doors ahead of him. Slowly he reached out, his fingers gingerly wrapping about one of the handles. Pausing, he could’ve sworn he heard a scratching sound but as more smouldering embers popped and crackled to his right he wrote it off to some unseen debris settling to the floor. 

‘I’m at the door…’ he called back to the others, steeling himself to pull open the door.

He was about to open it when the scratching sound reached him again, unnerving him. This was no debris, of that he was certain this time.

‘I think… I think there’s something on the other side,’ he said, his voice barely reaching the others.

‘Michael, be careful,’ called Liz from behind him.

‘Hmmm,’ he mumbled in return, his fist tightening about the crowbar in his hand.

Taking a deep breath through the stale smelling tea-towel to steady himself, Michael pulled open the door.

‘Fuck!’ he yelled as a blackened hand fell through the open door and latched onto his ankle.

Instantly, as the adrenalin coursed through him, his gaze followed the blistered hand up along a chard sleeve to the severely burnt face of a woman looking up at him, her mouth slowly opening. Instinctively he drew back his arm to smash the skull of the woman looking up at him. It was then that she spoke.

‘K…K… Kill m... me,’ she panted. ‘P… Please k... kill me…’

***

‘Vincenzo!’ whispered Carmella, her fingers nervously tightening about her husband’s wrist.

‘Non preoccuparti, Carmella. Tutti saranno ben,’ he whispered back, trying to calm his wife’s justified fears while the sound of Dead hands banging against the walls increased.

‘Cam, we must do something… it is not safe,’ he continued, switching back to English.

The Dead had seemingly appeared out of the blue shortly after Charlie and the others had disappeared beyond the walls of the Institute. What had started with one set of Dead hands clawing impotently at the walls of the cart had, within the spate of a few minutes, turned into a full-on assault.

‘They appear to only be at the back and one side,’ Cam whispered back, the fear in his eyes belittling his calm tone. ‘There’s at least eight out there and we need to deal with this before their calls attract even more…’

They all knew this was how many of the living finally met their end. Afraid to deal with the Dead until they had to, many left it simply too late. All it would take was one of the Dead to catch sight of the living and they would pound ceaselessly to get to them until the very flesh fell from their bones. Their activity and desperate moaning calls would always attract more of their Dead brethren and so the problem would increase until, by their sheer number, the Dead would prevail.

‘Let me help,’ said Fran, unhappy to entrust her life in the hands of these two men she barely knew. ‘Just give me a knife…’

‘You’ve nothing on your feet,’ replied Cam, peering at her feet which he could tell had been left blistered and bloody after her flight from the burning Institute the previous night. ‘All it takes is for you to stand on a bit of broken glass or a sharp stone and they’ll be on you…. and anyway, once Vincenzo and I are out there I’m sure Phil and the others will come to help.’

‘Fran, please… you will keep Carmella safe for me,’ Vincenzo added, his words a statement rather than a request.

With her fingers subconsciously reaching down to tentatively trace the series of cuts and burns on the souls of her feet, Fran finally nodded. As much as she wanted to deal with the Dead herself, Cam was right, if she were to stumble it could result in terrifying and deadly consequences.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘but if you’re going to do something, do it now…’

‘Agreed. Vincenzo, you ready?’ Cam asked, his hand hovering over the bolt on the side hatch.

‘Si, Cam,’ he simply replied with a stern nod.

Giving Carmella’s hand a final squeeze and a kiss before moving as close behind Cam as he could, Vincenzo knew if he was to secure the safety of his wife and unborn child he had no option but to do this.

‘Here…’ said Cam, turning to pull a knife from a box under one of the benches and handing it to Fran. ‘Just in case…’

Fran looked from the large serrated blade in her hand back up into Cam’s clear blue eyes.

‘Good luck,’ she replied, holding his gaze.

Raising his eyebrows and forcing a smile to his lips, Cam turned and silently pulled the bolt across. Almost instantly the inside of the cart was bathed in cool morning light as the two men quietly lowered themselves out onto the road. Fran instinctively moved to the open hatch and pulled it closed, securing the bolt once again.

‘It’ll be OK,’ she whispered turning to Carmella, the pregnant woman’s tear filled eyes highlighted by a shard of light coming through one of the spy holes.

‘Si,’ she sadly whispered in reply.

Outside, the moaning of the Dead was enough to chill the strongest of resolves but the two men knew they had no choice; the Dead had to be silenced. Sparing a quick glance over his shoulder, Vincenzo hoped Phil and the others in the second cart were about to join them when Cam suddenly placed a hand on his shoulder, making him jump. Using hand signals, Cam told him they would edge to the end of the cart and grab the first of the Dead. Hopefully if they were quick and quiet they could pull one of the Dead round to their side unseen by any of the others. Well, that was the plan anyway.

Now that Cam stood ready to pounce, his gaze locked onto a Dead hand that had hooked around the corner merely centimetres from his face, his resolve in the plan began to evaporate. He knew that for every second he waited the chances of the plan working decreased, so with a quick shaky intake of breath, he made a grab for the hand. With Cam’s fingers tightened about the cold cadaver’s wrist he felt the mould covered skin begin to stretch and tear under the force of his pull and then suddenly, quicker than he expected, he was face to face with the corpse. For a second the Dead man looked at him, his decaying features transforming into a look of surprise, a look far too human for Cam’s liking. Then, without thinking, Cam tugged on the Dead man again, pulling him towards him and beyond the sight of any of his Dead comrades. Keen to be closer to the living flesh that consumed his very existence, the Dead man willingly obliged. With his milky gaze fixed on Cam the cadaver was oblivious to the foot stuck out to trip him and as he fell to the road in a heap of tattered rags and emaciated limbs Vincenzo’s club was already flying through the air to smash down onto his skull. With a wet ‘crack’ the Dead man’s skull split, sending dark putrid decaying brain matter splashing across the road surface.

Panting, Vincenzo looked up at Cam and a brief nervous smile twitched at his lips. Brief, for as his eyes flicked over Cam’s shoulder he saw another two of the Dead had inadvertently followed their cadaverous brother and with them his smile was gone.

‘Cam!’ he managed to say as the first of the Dead, a woman, reached out a filthy claw to grab his friend.

Spinning his head around, Cam’s reaction was a fraction too late and as the hungry cadaver lunged toward him, its slug like tongue lolling inside a blackened gaping maw, he knew he had neither the space or time to swing his crowbar to save his life. So he did the only thing he could think of, he threw himself backwards to the ground, taking the Dead woman with him. Landing hard on his back and knocking the air out of him, Cam struggled to keep the Dead woman’s snapping jaws away from his face. Above him he could hear the sounds of running footsteps coming from the second cart and Vincenzo fighting with the second Dead figure just to his left. Suddenly the Dead woman’s weight was lifted partially off of him and he felt a sudden spray of something wet and stinking splash across his face. Fighting the urge to vomit, he swiftly pulled himself out from under the Dead woman’s body just in time to see Fran yanking the hunting knife free from the back of the now lifeless woman’s skull.

‘I told you to wait inside,’ he panted, wiping the stinking gore from his face with the back of his sleeve.

‘You’re welcome,’ she sarcastically replied, reaching out a hand to pull him up.

‘What? Yeah… thanks,’ was all Cam could say, noticing Vincenzo already had their second Dead visitor on the ground, frantically reducing its skull to a pulp of torn skin and smashed bone.

Foolishly engrossed in his work the young Italian had made a fatal mistake; he had turned his back on the Dead. Unlike Cam it was clear he wasn’t going to be given such a lucky escape. Almost as if in slow motion, Cam watched as a Dead man with much of the flesh missing from one of his arms, dart forward, open mouthed to the back of Vincenzo’s neck. Behind the falling Dead man, Cam could see Phil already reaching to grab hold of the back of the Dead man’s jacket, hoping to prevent the tragedy but it was to be too little too late. With a look of pure terror suddenly twisting the young man’s face, Dead teeth savagely bore down into him. Cam watched helplessly as the skin on Vincenzo’s neck puckered under the pressure of the Dead man’s bite and then began to tear. By the time Phil’s fist had made contact with the back of the Dead man’s jacket the damage had been done.

‘No!’ cried Cam, the world suddenly speeding up again with the spray of bright red blood erupting from Vincenzo’s neck.

‘Fuck!’ shouted Phil, violently throwing the Dead man to ground to stamp on his head. ‘You fucking piece of shit!’

Rushing over to Vincenzo, Cam fell to his knees in front of the terrified young man only partially aware of the sounds of Tyrone and David finishing off the last of the Dead on the other side of the cart.

‘You’ll be alright! You’ll be alright!’ he repeated over and over, his shaky hands trying to stem the heavy flow of blood from Vincenzo’s neck.

But even as he said the words, Cam knew it wouldn’t be alright, Vincenzo’s time was running out. Already he had slumped to the floor, gasping for breath as his terrified body started going into shock from blood loss.  

‘What… what can we do?’ he said, looking up into Phil’s resigned face.

Phil knew what need to be done, they all did. They had all been here before and all knew what would shortly happen to Vincenzo’s body.

‘We…,’ he began but his words were cut short by Carmella’s hysterical screams.

Almost throwing herself from the cart the young pregnant woman saw what little was left of her world falling apart before her very eyes. Running to be with Vincenzo, Carmella missed her footing on a patch of gore and suddenly went down hard with a ‘thump’.

‘Carmella,’ said Fran, rushing forward, concerned for both the woman and her unborn baby after such a fall.

But Carmella could not be consoled. Screaming Vincenzo’s name, her face contorted by grief and fear, she pushed Fran away who was trying to help her to her feet. Almost on her hands and knees she pulled herself to her husband, desperate to be with him, desperate for the truth of what she was seeing to be lie.

‘Vincenzo, Vincenzo,’ she sobbed cradling his head in her lap as he gasped for air, ‘
per favore non lasciarmi
…
per favore non lasciarmi
, Vincenzo… per favore… per favore…’