Five More Days With The Dead (Lanherne Chronicles Book 2) (11 page)

Their options were limited and she knew it.

‘Just don’t get yourself killed, okay,’ she finally said, looking back up into Gabe’s face.

‘They won’t get the chance
,’ Gabe said, forcing a smile.

‘Patrick!’ Gabe called down
. Now that he had the plan sorted in his head, he just wanted to get it over with, ‘I’m going to lower myself down off the roof, run like crazy to get to the fence and climb it. Chloe can then give you the heads up, when enough of them have moved away to follow me. How’s that for a plan?’

After some m
ore mumbled talking from within, it was agreed that this was their best chance.

‘Ready?’ Gabe said to Chloe.

With a sad nod, Chloe began to shout and holler, as she waved her arms over the edge of the roof. They were well out of reach of the Dead hands below, but it distracted and enticed them long enough for Gabe to begin lowering himself down one of the other sides without getting his legs chewed on. Hanging from his fingertips, Gabe panted as the adrenalin coursed through his small body. Glancing down, he knew he should be able to make the last two metre drop easily. Then out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement. One of the more badly burnt Dead had been slow to react to Chloe’s calls from above and had been rewarded with Gabe for its diligence. Fixing its Dead gaze upon the living meat lowering itself into view, the burnt corpse began to shuffle towards its prize.

‘Shit!’ said Gabe, his fingers slipping from the roof edge, dropping him to the ground below.

As he landed, his right foot twisted and collapsed beneath him, a blast of pain shooting up his leg.

‘Fuck!’ shout
ed Gabe, reaching for his ankle and praying that it wasn’t broken.

Broken or not, he knew he had to get moving. Already some of the other Dead had noticed their burnt brother’s moans and had begun turning in his direction.

‘Fuck!’ said Gabe, using the wall to pull himself upright as he tested a fraction of his weight on his ankle.

Again, pain shot up his leg but he knew he would have to ignore it if h
e wanted to live. With a thrust, he pushed himself away from the wall. Already the burnt cadaver was reaching for him, its blackened crispy skin cracking with each movement revealing its dark bloody flesh beneath. Hobbling away from the wall at a lot slower pace than he would have liked, Gabe ducked under the waving burnt arms only to be confronted by a Dead woman less than a metre in front of him.

‘Shit
,’ he said to himself, quickly changing his direction as she reached her blood covered hands towards him.

Wit
h a brief glance up to the roof, he could see Chloe still shouting to distract the Dead but his very presence meant more and more of them were beginning to ignore her. One by one, the Dead had turned away from the stable and focused their cannibalistic hunger upon Gabe. Ducking out of reach of another of the Dead, Gabe began to hobble painfully slowly to the fence. With each step, excruciating pain would blossom in his ankle causing his breath to falter but it was by far the lesser of two evils. If the Dead caught up with him, he would soon know pain beyond belief.

Chloe watched from above as Gabe began to make his way to the fence
. He was limping terribly and already the Dead were only a few paces behind him. Tearing her eyes away from him to check the door of the stable, she could see there were still four of the creatures lingering, perhaps the memory of the escaping flesh hiding within too strong for them to give up on.  A sudden cry from Gabe tore her attention back away from the door; he was on the ground. Chloe screamed.

‘Patrick!
NOW!’ she yelled, panic making her dig her fingers into the concrete of the roof lip so hard three of her finger nails split and bent backwards.

Unaware of the blood
pouring from her fingers, Chloe watched in horror as two of the Dead stood over Gabe, their arms and bodies already covered in last night’s congealed stolen blood. Below her, J-Man, Leon and Patrick charged out through the metal stable door and immediately began to hack and club at the hungry cadavers in their path. One by one, the Dead fell under their swift powerful blows but Chloe knew they would never reach Gabe in time to save him. She watched as Gabe kicked desperately at the Dead man looming over him, knocking him backwards slightly only for the second corpse to reach forwards to take its place.

Gabe looked up at the creature above him and screamed. The spasm of pain that had caused him to slip in the icy mud would be miniscule in comparison to what he was about to experience. He prayed he would leave this dead world before he was forced to watch his organs being ripped out,
handful-by-handful to be stuffed into the hungry mouths around him. At that moment, the animated corpse threw itself down onto Gabe, a frenzy taking hold of it now that living flesh was so near. Instinctively, Gabe raised his arms to keep some life-saving distance between himself and the snapping jaws so keen to rip into his flesh. However, his hands could find no purchase on the gore covered cadaver and they slipped about the beast’s shoulders and chest. Eventually, born more of luck than skill, one of Gabe’s hands slipped upwards and grabbing his only chance, Gabe gripped the Dead man just under the chin. But even this action was ultimately pointless because over the struggling and snapping creature’s shoulder Gabe could see another of the Dead almost within reach and behind that, another three. His time had come to an end. Instantly, his focus returned to the burnt and torn face, merely centimetres from his own. He looked past the snapping and snarling mouth that housed filthy and broken blood covered teeth, past the torn cavity, where the nose should have been and up into the milky, blind eyes of this Dead thing that would end his life. He wondered if this thing, that up until yesterday had been a friend, knew that he would be an instrument of his death or was the outcome purely incidental. This thing’s teeth would soon become his father and his mother and just like his real birth, he would enter his death and new un-life terrified, screaming and bloody.

Then, almost instantly,
the Dead man on top of him stopped, inexplicably frozen in his frenzy. It wasn’t until Gabe could tear his eyes away from the strangely still face that he could see the long arrow lodged deep in the Dead man’s head. With an effort, he managed to push the cadaver off of him just in time to see another arrow fly past his shoulder and strike the next Dead thing that had been reaching for him. Stunned, Gabe could only watch as the thing crumpled to its knees and then finally toppled face down into the cold mud. He was then snapped back to the now by the loud warrior roar coming from a huge man running past him, swinging a lethal looking club left and right as he went. The Dead fell quickly under his blows. Leaving only torn skin and shattered bone in his wake, such was Phil’s skill in terminating them permanently. 

‘Get up, Gabe!’ Came a voice from above him.

Looking up, Gabe could see Imran’s calm face taking in every detail of the battle with his bow taut and ready to fire.

‘Are you bitten?’ Imran said, glancing briefly down at the boy in the mud.

‘What?’ Gabe managed to ask, a little stunned that the group from Lanherne had appeared from nowhere to come to his rescue.

‘Are you bitten?’ Imran repeated, raising his bow to take aim on the approaching shambling figure of a burnt Dead woman.

‘No, no, I’m not bitten,’ Gabe whispered, not believing his luck.

Imran let his arrow fly
and within the blink of an eye, it appeared lodged in the woman’s temple, killing her.

‘Good,’ Imran said, smoothly reaching for another arrow from the quiver on his back
. ‘So are you going to lie in the mud all day?’

Imran gave Gabe his hand and pulled him upright.

‘Thanks,’ Gabe said, resting some of his weight on Imran’s shoulder.

As the last of the animated corpses fell to Phil’s onslaught, the onl
y sound drifting across the Substation compound was the heavy panting of the fighters trying to catch their breath as their bodies combated the effects of the surge of adrenalin that had been pumped through them.

‘
Thanks, big man,’ Leon said to Phil, hacking up some phlegm to clear the taste of death from his mouth, ‘God, do we owe you…’

‘No problem, Leon
,’ Phil replied, tapping some fleshy remnants from the end of his club ‘Don’t tell me it’s just you three left?’

‘No, Helen,
Jasmine and Sarah also made it. They’re in the stable,’ Patrick said, walking over to Phil and slapping his shoulder in thanks, ‘Oh, and Chloe too, on the roof.’

Looking over to the
roof, they could see a still distraught Chloe, her hands tightly gripping the lip of the roof. Where her fingers curled onto the concrete streams of blood from her split fingernails had run down, staining the grey wall.

‘Better get her down from there
,’ J-Man said, walking over to the stable.

‘No
,’ Patrick and Phil said in unison.

‘
First, we check the rest of the compound,’ Patrick said with a nod at Phil, knowing that was what he was going to suggest too.

‘Absolutely,’ Phil added, smiling
, ‘But if I were you, I might let the Mrs in there know you’re okay.’

‘Good idea
,’ Patrick smiled, running over to the closed stable door and giving it a knock.

‘So how did you know?’ J-Man asked the new arrivals, plonking himself down on an over turned water barrel.

‘The lights flared for a few seconds at Lanherne,’ Imran said, helping Gabe, hop by hop, over to join the group, ‘and Duncan figured you were on a direct path from the hydro-electric plant near the coast.’

‘He figures that’s the most likely candidate
,’ Phil added, using a knife to remove a particularly wedged on scrap of scalp from between the nails on his club.

After Imran
sat Gabe down by the stable, the small group began their search of the compound for any more of the Dead. They eventually found one more sorry creature pulling itself slowly along the ground, trailing its shattered limbs behind it. Its back had been crushed under the hooves of Shadow the previous evening and only the massive damage that had been inflicted upon its body had prevented it from joining its Dead brethren at the stable. Once this corpse was finally put to rest, Patrick looked up at the pylon. It had been their home for so long and it pained him that it had ultimately been the implement of their destruction.

‘We’re not checking up there,’ Patrick said, gesturing to the pylon
, ‘We’re not risking any more lives. We don’t know if the electricity is off for good again or what? If there are any of the Dead trapped up there… tough.’

He got no arguments from the rest and as they walked over to the stable to alert Helen and
Sarah, it was all over, Patrick looked up at the pylon one last time.

‘You want it as a tomb
then it’s all yours,’ he whispered.

***

Earlier that morning, Private Steven Blackmore, dressed in full combat gear, was sitting in the canteen tent with a few of his platoon, forcing himself to eat yet another unappetising MRE pack. He knew it was meant to be some sort of pasta in a rehydrated tomato sauce but as always, there was the background metallic tang of something artificial about it. It didn’t help that most of the packs they had left were well past their prime and the truth was that only those packs whose contents had been freeze dried all those years ago were even edible at all now. As usual, the men kept their heads down and put up with it. They had learnt hard and fast that those mouthing off to those in charge were usually given the worst detail and in a world of the walking Dead, ‘worse detail’ could get you killed.

‘Man, I can’t wait to get back to base,’ said the man sitting next to Steve,
unenthusiastically with a plastic fork poking at his own MRE packet.

‘Tell me about it,’ Steve said turning to his friend, Private Matthew Jennings
. ‘Never thought I’d be looking forward to the slop we get there but this pasta tastes like shit.’

Like himself, Matthew Jennings had become a solider by situat
ion rather than desire. Matt’s mother had been one of the original doctors sequestered at the base during the initial outbreak and like all those who had been pressed into service; she took her immediate family with her; namely Matt and his sister Karen. His mother’s speciality in molecular biology had seen her whisked away from her work in the pharmaceuticals lab and taken under escort to collect Matt and his sister. Apparently, Mum had had a few secrets she had been keeping from her children, namely that she had also worked for the government on some hush-hush projects; a few of them quite suspect. So when Matt’s mother had turned up at his school with his sister holding her hand and armed soldiers on either side of her, he had been more than a little surprised. Scared and a little confused, Matt had left midway through his history class to follow his mother out of the classroom and out of the school, not realising that he would never see any of his classmates alive again. Within the space of an hour, a sixteen year old Matt had found himself boarding a jet with a mixed group of doctors, scientists and army personnel, and on his way to an island government base that officially didn’t exist.