Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (3 page)

‘Hand me Anne so you can climb up,’ Tyrone called, reaching down to Vincenzo.

‘Lizzy,’ said Anne, her large blue eyes mirroring the fear they all felt.

‘It’s OK,’ Liz began, glancing from the barricade back to her sister, ‘I’ll be with you in a second.’

Her gaze flitted from Anne to Vincenzo and with a nod, something passed between them. If something went wrong and Liz didn’t make it, she knew Vincenzo and the others would look after her sister. Before another word could be said Tyrone reached back down through the hole in the ceiling and plucked the five year old from Vincenzo’s arms. With one more worried glance at the doors, Vincenzo followed suit. 

‘Carmella,’ he said, urgently holding his arms down to help his pregnant wife.

Sitting on the edge of the desk, Carmella swung her legs round so that she sat on the table. Then, if a little ungracefully, she pushed herself first up onto her knees and then to her feet. With her husband encouraging her in Italian, she reached up to the hands above her.

‘It’s not going to hold much longer!’ shouted Phil, as the door began to crack under the ferocious onslaught from the Dead on the other side. ‘Hurry!’

‘Your turn,’ Liz mouthed to Paul, touching his arm so he knew she was talking to him.

Jumping onto the table just as Carmella’s legs disappeared into the darkness above him, Paul was at least denied the horrific sound of wood splintering that suddenly signalled their time had run out.

‘Go!’ shouted Charlie, waving Liz up onto the table top.

Knowing they had but seconds before the Dead were upon them, Liz didn’t need to be told twice and after swiftly clicking her blade back into its sheath she jumped into the table.

‘Phil, David!’ she cried as she stood on the chair to grab hold of the helping hands reaching down to her. ‘Come on!’

Just as her head rose into the loft space and she left the hospital ward behind her, there was ominous crash of furniture being pushed aside and she fleetingly saw David running toward the table.

She had barely lifted her legs up into the loft space when David’s head appeared and he began to pull himself up.

‘Phil!’ she heard Charlie cry, ‘There’s too many of them, come on!’

As the heavy thudding of Phil’s spiked club connecting with skulls reached her over the nightmarish growling of the Dead, Liz looked back down through the hole just in time to see Charlie running to his aid.

‘Charlie!’ she screamed, terrified as the man who had become her father disappeared from view.

But within seconds he reappeared again, leaping up onto the table and using the momentum to hurl himself towards the gaping hole. Liz had to quickly throw herself backwards to avoid the blade attached to his stump from stabbing her as his remaining hand latched onto the nearby joist. Then, quicker than she thought possible for a one handed man of his size, Charlie pulled himself up into the loft.

‘Phil!’ David and Liz both cried in unison, horrified to realise the man had not been immediately behind Charlie. 

Then with a scream of rage, Phil suddenly appeared by the side of the table below them. With his club swinging wildly at the Dead around him, skin tore, bones shattered and blood flowed as the Dead fell beneath his onslaught. But it was a battle he knew he ultimately had no hope of winning and seeing the only opportunity he was likely to have, Phil kicked out at the corpse of a Dead woman knocking her back into the reaching arms of her Dead brethren. The Dead woman’s face had been a ruin of torn flesh and exposed bone but she was quick and she was hungry and even while Phil clambered onto the table she was determined not let this prize of flesh slip so easily from their grasp. Just as Phil stepped up onto the chair the Dead woman’s arm shot out to grab for his leg. Perhaps it was the torn flap of skin hanging from her savaged forehead or some unknown god looking down favourably on Phil but her hand missed his leg entirely and latched onto the chair by mistake. Not that this in itself didn’t have repercussions, for as the Dead woman used the chair to pull herself closer it began to buckle under Phil’s feet. With a sickening ‘snap’ one of the chair legs suddenly broke lose, tipping Phil forward.

‘Phil!’ shouted David, almost throwing himself back down through the hole.

‘David, No!’ cried Charlie, grabbing David by the back of his jacket just in time to pull him back from the edge of the hole.

If the worst was about to happen, David certainly didn’t need to see it.

Below them Phil fought for his life. No matter how many of the Dead his spiked club consigned to the oblivion that had been briefly denied them, more and more seemed to be arriving at the gaping doorway, drawn by the calls of their Dead compatriots.

‘Fuck!’ Phil growled, as the edge of his club clipped and tore free the lower jaw of a Dead man he knew had been called Ian.

With the Dead man’s jaw out of action, Phil suddenly had an idea. Grabbing the front of the Dead man’s shirt, Phil roared with effort as he physically lifted the still struggling corpse from the snapping group below him and up onto the table. He knew he would likely get only one chance to get this right and committing himself to his fate, he dropped his weapon. If he wanted to give himself any chance of this working he needed to have both his hands free. Before the club had even hit the table surface Phil had kicked the back of the cadaver’s knees and as the Dead man began to buckle in front of him, Phil swiftly pushed his head forwards so the corpse fell to his knees. This was the moment Phil had hoped for and it was likely to either save him or sentence him to a horrific death. Using the dead man’s slumped body as a springboard, Phil launched himself off his back and up to the hole in the ceiling that offered not only hope but also a chance to live.

With a thud his arms suddenly collided jarringly with the joists and knowing this was to be his only chance, he scrabbled frantically for a hand hold. Then as Dead hands grasped for his wildly kicking legs more hands, hands of the living, grabbed hold of his arms.

‘We’ve got you, Phil!’ called Tyrone, as he and David began to pull Phil up into the loft. ‘We’ve got you!’

For Phil, every second it took for him to clamber up through the ceiling seemed to last an eternity, the searing pain of teeth biting into the flesh of his legs expected at any moment. But the Dead did not find purchase upon him and before long he sat panting, looking down at the horde baying for the flesh denied them.

‘Fuck, that was close!’ he said, reaching out in the darkness to take David’s shaking hand in his.

‘Almost through, I think…’ Came Tom’s voice, as he continued to smash away at the tiles.

Then, without warning, there was a crashing sound and the loft space above the ceiling was suddenly flooded with a pale moonlight.

‘Hang on,’ said Tom, continuing to smash away at the now loose tiles, ‘I’ll make it a bit bigger.’

With a clatter many more roof tiles slipped from their positions and fell to the ground below, smashing. Now that there was a sizable hole in the roof a cool night breeze drifted through the loft space, unfortunately bringing with it more horrific sounds of carnage and bloodshed.

‘So what are we going to do now?’ asked Tyrone, wiping the sweat from his forehead on the crook of his elbow. ‘Wait up here until they slow down and we have a chance of killing the bastards… or do we try to make it to the carts?’

‘There’s too many of them down there,’ began Charlie, raising his voice to be heard over the constant growling of the Dead below them. ‘They’ve seen us come up here and now they’ll bay at that hole until the flesh rots on their bones… unless they see something else to draw them away.’

Each of them knew that when Charlie said ‘something else’ he really meant ‘someone else’ and unless the Dead were tempted away by the promise of more readily available flesh to feast upon, nothing would move them from under the hole in the ceiling.

‘Anyway, they’re so tightly packed down there we wouldn’t be halfway to the table before we got our arses eaten off,’ added Phil, glancing back down at the Dead as they reached for him with blood covered limbs.

He was about to turn away when something worrying caught his eye. Beneath him two Dead men, a Dead woman and what looked to be Dead girl who had much of the flesh missing from below her waist, had managed to pull themselves up onto the table. Even as he watched the girl latched onto the back of one of the larger Dead men and with hooked fingers, broken and covered in congealing blood, she began to pull herself upwards. Oblivious to the Dead girl climbing up his back the man continued to reach for the living flesh just out of his reach but if the girl manage to pull herself to his shoulders Phil knew she might just be able to latch onto the edge of the hole to pull herself up. He could see the scenario playing itself out in his head. With the knife strapped to his calf he would give the girl the peace of true Death only for her corpse to fall and then be used as a stepping stone for the other Dead below him. Before long another would manage to somehow get within reaching distance and so the mound of corpses on the table would grow until nothing could keep them from clambering into the loft space with them.

‘No, we need to get out of here…’ continued Phil, looking away from the ravenous corpses to the worried faces of the group. ‘Going down there isn’t an option.’

‘Right… Out it is then,’ said Tom, smashing away at a few more of the loose tiles.

Hunched over against the eaves of the roof, Charlie carefully stepped from one joist to the next to join Tom by the opening. Peering down he was relieved to see the moss clogged guttering only less than a metre away from him and to their left, tantalisingly close, the corner of the roof with a sturdy looking drainpipe running to the ground.

‘Think we can get down that?’ he asked, looking back at Tom.

‘Most of us, yes,’ he replied, glancing over his shoulder before continuing, ‘but what about Carmella?’

‘Carmella will climb down if that is the only way,’ came the young Italian woman’s voice from behind them. ‘I… I will not let my baby die here…’

‘Carmella,’ interrupted Vincenzo, turning his wife’s face to look at him, ‘do not speak of such things, all will be fine. We will get to the carts and leave this place of death behind us. We will find a new home… I promise.’

Tom and Charlie shared a knowing look. They both knew Vincenzo was making promises he simply could not keep. For nothing could be promised in this world of the Dead, especially a future.

‘OK… Now we just have to hope there’s not too many of the Dead down there waiting for us…’ mumbled Charlie, leaning forward trying to get a better look at the dark grounds of the Institute around them.

The Carmichael Institute with its long winding drive way, small woodland that ran along one of its high boundary walls and the rolling lawns, that had been turned into a patchwork of vegetable gardens, had seemed an ideal place to build a sanctuary against the Dead but with those very Dead now stalking its shadows the survivors realised getting out alive may prove impossible.

Suddenly, as Charlie planned the order they would descend, a man broke free of the small woodland to his right. With his head spinning left and then right the man paused before sprinting from the trees as if the hounds of hell were on his heels. Unsurprisingly a second figure, a woman bloody and ravaged, abruptly pushed through the tree-line a few seconds after him. Taking only a moment to latch her Dead sight on the fleeing man, the Dead woman bounded after him. Stupidly the man turned his head to see how far his pursuer was behind him and it proved to be his undoing. Without looking where he was going he ran straight into a low water trough that ran along a patch of runner beans and cabbages. With a crash the man went down, a tangle of limbs and bean poles. As quickly as he tried to right himself, the Dead woman was quicker and before he had even got to his knees she was on him. Almost launching herself at the terrified man, the Dead woman dived for the exposed flesh of his neck. With a scream that ripped through the darkness, Charlie and Tom watched, unable to help or tear their eyes away, as the Dead woman slowly drew back her head. The further she pulled back, the higher the man’s screams rose in pitch. But skin and flesh can only withstand so must abuse and as his screaming suddenly turned to a wet choking sound, the Dead woman finally tore free her prize. Greedily chewing on the stolen flesh, her hands continued to dart forward to rip and tear at the man’s neck, such was her need to consume the bloody flesh in front of her. The man’s struggling began to weaken and as his blood rained down upon them both, baptising him into a world of Death and horror, he mercifully died. The Dead woman forced one more chunk of flesh from the man’s chest into her mouth before stopping. For a moment it looked as if confusion flitted across her Dead features, unable to  understand why the tantalising flesh that moments ago had enraptured her so now held no interest at all. But her slowly decaying brain could no longer process or manipulate such a quandary before her, so pushing herself up from the man’s blood splattered death bed among the cabbages, she ran off in search of the living.

‘Jesus,’ whispered Tom, looking at the man’s still and ruined body below them.    

Both men knew what would happen next and sure enough within a few minutes of his death, the murdered man’s right hand suddenly began to spasm as if a bolt of electricity had shot through it. With his blood covered fingers seemingly to clench and unclench of their own accord, his left leg also began to twitch, kicking out against one of the broken bean poles. Then without warning the man abruptly sat up. Seeing the world for the first time through his milky film-covered eyes, the Dead man seemed to look about almost as if searching for something. A cry of pain from somewhere in the grounds and his head snapped sharply to the right. Somehow the Dead man knew this signalled the presence of something he needed desperately, something that would quench the burning hunger that raged at his very core. Pushing himself shakily to his feet, it took a moment for whatever had caused his corpse to reanimate to fully take control of his dead limbs and after only the smallest of uncertainty with his first step, the man was off.