Five More Days With The Dead (Lanherne Chronicles Book 2) (38 page)

‘His pulse box thing is gone,’ Leon whispered, pulling aside the man’s blood drenched collar
, ‘and no gun either.’

‘Right, no time to be subtle now
,’ Phil said, standing away from the Jackal. ‘Steve, just start the engine and drive this thing out of the way. If the Dead attacked the camp, we need to get this done as soon as possible.’

Agreeing with Phil’s urgency, Steve began to
flip the switches that would start the mechanical beast, but nothing happened. Repeating the procedure just in case he had done something wrong, Steve tried again, but still nothing.

‘Come on, you piece of crap,’ Steve mumbled as he tried a final time to no avail
. ‘Shit!’

‘You’re going to have to push
it, after all,’ Steve whispered back to the four men. ‘It’s out of action.’

Not waiting to be told twice, the men braced themselves against the rear of the Jackal and straining, began to push. At
first, their boots slipped on the compacted snow making it seem impossible, but then, ever so slowly, the vehicle began to move forward. Once the momentum had been built up, the weight of the vehicle, the slight slope of the driveway began to work in their favour, and before long, the Jackal was wedged deeply in the roadside thicket. Jumping out of the driver’s seat, Steve ran back to the other four, wiping his blood-covered hand on his trouser leg. He was a metre away from them when he saw a shadow separate itself from the darkness and run at full speed towards Patrick.

‘Look out!’ he cried, as the figure threw itself at Patrick’s back.

But unlike Steve, Patrick spent the last eight years with the Dead and even as he felt the body impact against him, he was using the momentum to throw himself forward. The Dead man didn’t stand a chance. This was one meal that would be denied him. As Patrick landed in the snow, he twisted in the Dead man’s grip and thrust his hand sharply up into the ravaged flaps of a torn throat. Latching onto the man’s trachea, Patrick began to push the face with hungry snapping jaws away from him. When the struggling Dead man was at arm’s length from him, Phil stepped forward, grabbed what was left of the man’s hair and yanked his head even further back. With a cracking sound, the Dead man’s vertebrae ground together until with a snap something gave way. It was then that Phil pulled a long hunting knife from his belt and stabbed down on the crown of the man’s skull. Instantly, the unnatural life left the Dead man’s limbs and he slumped to the ground.

‘Thanks
,’ said Patrick, taking Phil’s offered hand, to help pull him up.

‘This doesn’t look good,’ said Steve
. ‘Whoever just buggered off in the other Jackal has made sure no one from here would be following them… well… no one alive anyway.’

‘We need to get that holding truck out of here, now
,’ Imran added, looking around in case more of the Dead soldiers appeared.

‘Right,’ said Steve
. ‘Leon and I will go to the Med lab to get the pregnant woman and my mate, Matt.’

‘Alice,’ Imran whispered
, ‘her name is Alice.’

‘Oh,
okay… sorry,’ Steve replied. ‘Leon and I will go get Alice and Matt. You three, try to get the holding truck started.’

With a
nod, the men split up and darted off into the shadows.

Steve and Leon walked with caution through the camp towards the Med lab. With each
step, they expected the gore covered Dead to attack, hungry and merciless. All about them, the once pristine white snow bore the tell-tale signs of the recent carnage that had descended on the camp. Great swaths of the snow were now splashed with spilt blood and dotted with unidentifiable chunks of flesh.

‘Jesus
,’ murmured Leon, as he stepped over what looked like part of someone’s hand.

Each time they heard movement, the pair would freeze, their hearts hammering loudly in their chests as they peered desperately into the shadows, afraid the instrument of their death was lurking just out of sight. From at least one of the small
tents, they could hear something noisily gorging itself and they knew it wouldn’t be long before this act of feeding would increase their danger by one more Dead soul.

Steve tapped Leon’s shoulder and pointed to the Med lab.
Unbeknownst to the pair, in Matt’s haste to escape the camp, he hadn’t ensured the door had closed properly behind him and even now, it swung slightly ajar in the cold breeze, making a clicking sound each time the lock failed to connect. Glancing quickly over to the Holding truck, Steve could just make out Phil climbing up into the cab while Imran and Patrick walked round to the back of the long vehicle.

‘Shit
,’ Steve mumbled, noticing the bloody handprints over the Med lab door.

Looking over to Leon,
whom stood ready, his feet apart and a sharp gleaming knife in each hand, he knew now was a good a time as any. So, reaching slowly forwards, Steve’s hand closed over the blood splattered door handle, stopping the door mid-swing. Taking a deep breath, Steve pulled the door towards him, revealing the bloodbath within. The once sterile and shining surfaces now dripped with clotting blood and stinking viscera. Whatever had happened here had left the Med lab looking more like an abattoir than a medical facility. The Dead had had a feeding frenzy and the two bodies that had been on the bunks seem to have had much of their flesh and internal organs violently ripped from them. At least these two had still had the safe guard of the pulse detectors on their necks to prevent them from coming back. One of the corpses had an arm that was just about still hanging to its torso by a few threads of muscle and on it. Steve could see the medical insignia that identified the body as that of one of the doctors. Which one, Steve had no idea. Such was the mutilation the person endured at the hands of the Dead.

The second body was clearly that of a man and had faired fractionally better than his comrade.
However, with his back arched painfully upwards and his skinless face a mask of horror; it was clear this man had been aware in his final moments of the hands that plunged deep into his stomach ripping free a tasty morsel. Steve prayed that this was not Matt, but it was hard to tell. So, stepping over chunks of various organs he couldn’t name, he moved closer to the body. Staring down at the bloody remains, Steve tried the fit the image of Matt onto the corpse’s face. The body was approximately the right size and what was left of the skin was the right colouring, but without a face and scalp, it was impossible to tell.

‘Your mate?’ Leon whispered, stepping gingerly over a lump of something on the floor.

Once again, Steve looked down at the body, turned back to Leon and shrugged his shoulders.

‘I don’t know
,’ Steve replied softly.

‘
Well, at least he didn’t come back, man,’ Leon said, shaking his head.

‘Not much of a consolation
,’ Steve thought to himself, averting his eyes from what looked like a partly chewed ear on the floor.

It was then that Steve noticed the third body in the lab. Slumped in a corner and covered with a sheet, this corpse showed no signs that it had been attacked by the Dead. When Steve pulled the sheet back to reveal Dr Morris with a thin, but fatal, slash across his throat, he knew the scalpel blade he’d tossed Alice had at least managed to even the score a little. Perhaps Alice and her baby had even managed to escape this slaughter
. He hoped so.

‘Come on let’s…’ Steve began, turning to Leon as he stood.

Stepping through the doorway was Clarkes, or rather, what was left of him.

‘Look out!’ Steve shouted, as Clarkes lunged clumsily towards Leon.

Spinning to meet the danger head on, Leon let one of his knives fly from his fingertips. Before the knife had even met its target, he was reaching for its replacement from the channels sewn into the front of his jacket. However, just as the knife was about to hit home, Clarkes slipped slightly on the wet floor, causing the knife to land harmlessly deep in his cheekbone.

‘Fuck!’ snapped Leon, taking a small step back from the Dead man reaching for him.

Clarkes had been a real A-grade bastard in life and deep down, Steve was not sorry to see what had become of him in death. The wounds inflicted on the man during his attack had obviously caused him to bleed to death. Much of the flesh from his throat up to and including his bottom lip was now gone, together with the all-important arteries and veins.  A ragged tear of skin and bloody flesh ran from the corner of his mouth to just under his ears, exposing his blood smeared jawbone that was dotted with lumps of sickly yellow fat. In fact, if not for a few remaining tendons keeping it in place, Clarkes’ jaw would surely have fallen away from his face entirely. With a cry, Leon suddenly launched himself at the Dead solider, his blades gripped tightly in the hands he held high above him. With a ‘thunk’, Leon’s fists connected with the side of Clarkes’ head and for a split second nothing happened. Then, as the knives ripped through his Dead brain, the arm that had been reaching for Leon fell uselessly to his side. Piece by piece, Clarkes’ brain began to shut down and within a few seconds, his body collapsed to the floor, truly dead this time.

‘Let’s get out of here
,’ Leon said, removing each of his knives from Clarkes’ head with a swift tug.

‘Yeah,’ Steve agreed
. ‘Alice and her baby aren’t here. Let’s hope the others have had better luck.’

Stepping over Clarke’s body to leave the Med lab, Leon suddenly pulled Steve down into a crouch.

‘What?’ Steve whispered, looking about him for more danger.

Leon silently pointed over to the
holding truck where two, very much alive, soldiers stood with their rifles pointed at Imran and Patrick. Standing by the two unexpected arrivals, Hills and Streiber, was also a woman. She had clearly been on the wrong end of a good beating and even from where Steve sat, hidden from view; her vacant glassy expression told him that she had been forced to endure more than she was capable of coping with.

‘Shit!’ Steve muttered, wondering what to do now.

***

‘And Steve said it’s pretty standard to drive…’ said Phil to himself, as he climbed into the holding truck cab and looked at the alien controls.

Like Steve and Leon, Phil, Imran and Patrick had crept through the camp thinking that at any moment the Dead would lunge at them from the shadows. Thankfully, despite the mournful calls that drifted to them on the breeze, they had only encountered the bloody evidence of their passing. As Phil was the only one who had driven anything larger than a family car, it was decided he would drive the holding truck. Now that he was sitting there trying to figure out what the various dials and levers were for, he realised there was a world of difference between this monster and the old butcher’s van he used to drive.

Outside, Imran and Patrick had gone to the back of the truck to check on the civilians. Relieved that the door was still bolted from the outside, the pair hoped their friends, safely locked away, had been missed by the Dead that had brought such rampaging slaughter to the rest of the camp.

‘Keep watch and I’ll check out inside,’ Imran whispered to Patrick. ‘Fingers crossed…’

Slowly,
Imran pulled back the bolt and swung open the door. Holding the door wide, an oblong of silver moonlight seamed to spear the darkness within. Stretching across the floor of the truck and partway up the end wall, it highlighted the body of a man with one arm raised above him. It was only when Imran looked closer that he could see the raised arm was actually handcuffed to a ring on the wall above. Imran did not recognise this man but from what Jen had told them, the convoy had been collecting people for the last few days. Whoever this poor soul was, he had surely been stolen away from those he loved just like the rest of the Lanherne group.

Stepping into the truck, Imran let his eyes become accustomed to the dim shadows and it was then
that he could see the people for whom he had been searching. Like the unknown man, Cam, William, Damian and Rich, together with another male stranger, had all been restrained with handcuffs. The women and children of the group were also thankfully there. Nicky sat slumped against Rich with a floppy looking Samantha in her drooping arms, while Penny was lying on the floor, her hand reaching out to Alex who was lying motionless nearby. Little Jimmy, Samantha’s brother, had also collapsed on the floor near Bailey, for all intense and purposes looking like a pair of puppets with their strings cut. There was also another woman on the floor, Imran did not recognise her either, but as her hand seemed to be stretching towards one of the unknown men, he assumed she was the woman Jen had told him about that had decided not to try to escape but stayed with her husband. Imran’s first thought was that they were all dead and at any moment, they would jump up on mass and attack. But as he stood there, the bow in his hands ready to consign his friends to the oblivion their deaths deserved, he realised there didn’t seem to be any signs that these people were dead at all. The soldiers would not have killed them. They had spent too much time collecting this precious cargo and even if they had not been fed and watered, surely it hadn’t been long enough for any of them to die of thirst. Stepping further into the shadows, Imran knelt down next to Penny.

‘You better not bite me, girl
,’ he muttered, moving his head slowly down to her chest.