Six Days With the Dead (20 page)

‘
Right, let’s finish this,’ he said, as he began walking over to the woman still slipping each time she tried to right herself.

With a hefty swing of his boot, Charlie kicked the woman under her chin, snapping her head back violently. The woman, who was now lying on her back,
hardly had time to look up at Charlie before his ice pick struck home again and she was gone. Liz had walked over to the one legged man, testing her shoulder where she had landed on it. With no foreplay or niceties her blade sliced through the air and with a crack her blade punctured the skull and the diabolical brain inside. Now that the danger had passed, she turned and watched Charlie place his boot on the face of the burnt creature. With a firm yank he pulled Imran’s arrow free and placed it with the others he had collected. Liz then bent down to the fallen policeman to reclaim the arrow, when she noticed he was still wearing his utility belt.

‘
Hey Charlie, anything on here we could use?’ She said, tapping the belt with her foot.

Co
ming over he examined the contents.

‘
Well, his extendable baton is gone and handcuffs with no keys aren’t much good really,’ he said putting aside the handcuffs. Opening a small snap fastened pocket on the belt he smiled. ‘But this may be useful though,’ he said, pulling free a small canister. With a quick shake to see if it was full, he tossed it to Liz, ‘Here you can have it, it’s pepper spray.’

‘
Just what a girl always wanted,’ she said, catching the small can.

Unbuttoning one of the pockets on her comb
at style trousers, Liz stored the canister to look at later.

‘
That was quite a large group of the Dead for such a remote country lane,’ Charlie said,  scratching his stubble on his chin with the back of his hand ‘I hope this doesn’t mean the Donaldsons have been slack in clearing the Dead out of the woods, otherwise I’m in two minds as to whether to go at all.’

‘
Yeah, but you can’t just go right past without warning them about the raiders. It doesn’t matter how weird they are, they don’t deserve to die,’ Liz said, though she could tell from Imran’s posture that he agreed with Charlie, ‘You’re meant to agree with me’ she continued, giving Imran a quick poke in the ribs.

‘
What? I never said a word,’ he replied, squirming away from her ‘and I am allowed an opinion you know’ Looking over his shoulder he carried on, ‘I say we leave the in-breeders to themselves. God, I pity the raider that tries to pick a fight with that lot, they’re all completely nuts.’

‘
That’s not the point and you know it,’ Liz said ‘There are children living there, and no matter how the adults have decided to live, you can’t damn the kids at the same time.’

‘
Look, we’ll see how the land lies when we get to the forest,’ Charlie butted in, to stop Liz and Imran bickering, ‘and if it’s bad, then we just move straight on to picking up the O’Brien’s.’

‘
Fine.’ Imran said, irritated.

He loved Liz with all his heart but, she was so stubborn sometimes it made him want to shout.

‘What Liz said is right, those kids have just been caught up in the world their parents have chosen for themselves, I’m willing to bet they’ve had no say in the matter,’ Charlie said, after a few minutes of thinking, ‘though I think that at some point we’re going to have to do something about the Donaldson adults. What? I don’t know, and I’m sure the kids will fight as hard as their parents to hold onto their way of life, but it’ll be better for them in the long run to be away from there.’

Realising there was no point discussing it any further until they were act
ually at the forest that grew around the Donaldson home, the three of them fell silent again.

****

The overgrown fields either side of them soon gave way to a light woodland, as over the next hour, Delilah pulled them through the small winding lanes. The trees here were still relatively young, with high grasses and brambles growing at their bases. Liz could see small breaks and pathways trampled through the grasses and hoped they were animal runs rather than signs that the Dead roamed freely through the woods. As the forest turned denser and older, the dappling sunlight that reached the forest floor became weaker. The large branches above them, competing for canopy space, were full of life. Songbirds flitted through the tree tops catching insects, while squirrels chased and barked at each other, defending territory. Here lush ferns and large spongy mosses carpeted the forest floor, soaking up any light filtering down. The lane soon became narrower, brambles and nettles spilling out from the wood, in some places they brushed the sides of the cart as they past.

‘
Let’s hope nothing’s blocking the lane up ahead,’ Charlie said, looking through the front slit. ‘It’s a long way to lead Delilah backwards before we get to a turning’

Then quite su
ddenly, and with an explosion of leaves, a small speckled deer leapt through the ferns on one side, landing just in front of them. For a split second the fragile creature froze, looking at the strange visitor that had appeared in her home and then bounded off through the undergrowth on the other side. She disappeared into the forest as quickly and silently as she had arrived.

‘
That looks promising,’ Liz said, happy to see the small doe, ‘Surely that means there’s not that many of the Dead about.’

‘
Not necessarily,’ Charlie replied ‘deer are small and quick, not the easiest thing to catch with just your hands, even harder if they’re Dead hands. And as they’ve never been used to dealing with people, like the cattle were, they’re not just going to stand there and wait to be eaten’

‘
Ever the optimist,’ Liz said under her breath with a smile.

Within half an hour of travelling through the shadowy lane, they saw a break on one side in the tree lined verge. Attached to a wide rusting gate was a cr
eeper covered old sign post. Its paint was peeling and worn but they could just about make out the words ‘Silver Valley Lake’. Just beyond the gate, a gravel path led a little way before being swallowed up by the ferns and small saplings. They would have to use the areas with less dense coverage as a guide to the route the path had originally taken.  

‘
Right this is it,’ Charlie said ‘Imran, you’re with me. Oh, and your bow won’t be much good here so take a club or something.’

Imran reached for a heavy looking section of pip
e hanging on the wall

‘
Hmm, not much finesse but I guess it’ll do the job,’ he said, testing the weight in his hand.

Liz flipped open the top hatch and gave the area a scan. With the trees on both sides she could only see for a few metres before her sight
was blocked.

‘
Well, it looks clear, but then the Dead could be right behind every tree, so that’s not saying much.’ Liz said, popping her head back down to look at Charlie and Imran.

‘
Great,’ Imran said, with a sigh, ‘come on big man, lead the way.’

Char
lie tutted before jumping down from the cart to look around. Out of the confines of the cart, the air was cool in the tree shaded lane. Golden shafts of sunlight broke through the canopy high above them, lighting small pockets of the dark wood. Insect and flying beetles, their iridescent bodies reflecting in the sunbeams, filled the air with life. A blackbird flew down from a nearby Chestnut tree to land on the gate post, his song a musical alarm showing his annoyance at their intrusion. Flitting off as Charlie walked over to the rusty gate, he continued to call from the safety of a high perch. Charlie, standing by the closed gate noticed a plank of wood  lying on the floor. Kicking it over with his boot, he realised it was actually a second sign that at some point had fallen off the gate.

‘
Friendly bunch the Donaldsons,’ he said, reading the sign that had the words, ‘Visitors not welcome- You Were Warned’ painted in badly formed letters.

‘
This just gets better and better,’ Imran said, swinging one leg over the gate.

‘
Just be careful,’ Liz said, worried that somewhere in the forest, Dead teeth ached to rip into their living flesh.

With a serious look on his face, Imran
’s eyes bore into her. He did not need to say the words, she knew he loved her and would do everything he could to get back to her safely. Jumping down onto the small gravel section that remained of the side road, Charlie removed one of his ice picks, readying himself for the tense walk before them. Within a few steps, the gravel gave way to grass, and then sooner than he had expected, to the ferns and large mounds of spongy moss that carpeted the rest of this wild forest. With a glance over his shoulder at the lone figure of Liz standing by the cart with her sword unsheathed, Charlie and Imran stepped forward into the shadows.

As Liz watched the two men she loved most in the world disappear into the forest, she wished them luck and cursed the strange Donalds
on family for choosing such an inaccessible home. It was one thing to do what you could to keep out the Dead but to totally shut yourself off from the living too was just bizarre. Not for the first time she thought of the children the Donaldsons had there, and was determined they should do something about the situation sooner rather than later. When they returned to the Lanherne Convent she would ask for a community meeting to discuss the Donaldson problem.

Liz, standing with her back to the cart, stretched. Her legs were stiff from sitting all morning and her shoulder st
ill ached a little from her fall earlier, so she was glad to be out of the cart again. The cool breeze whispering through the canopy covered lane was certainly a pleasant change to the stuffy cart interior. Pouring some of their water into a small bucket, she went to give Delilah a drink. Liz stroked the soft velvety muzzle while Delilah quenched her thirst.

‘
There you go, you needed that didn’t you girl,’ Liz whispered, patting Delilah’s forehead.

Once Delilah had finished, Liz pulled out a few of the bu
rrs that had attached themselves to her main and then went to sit in the open hatch to wait for Charlie and Imran to return. With her legs swinging out of the hatchway, her sword in her lap and her head resting on the frame, she watched the patch of forest beyond the gate where the men had entered. Slowly closing her eyes she let her ears become accustomed to the sounds of the forest. Listening without seeing sometimes helped you concentrate on your surroundings, Charlie had said once. When she was still young, Charlie had even taught her how to locate someone in the dark when all she could focus on was their steady breathing. So with her eyes closed she let the sounds around her be the only things to fill her senses. She could hear Delilah’s slow heavy breathing, the swish of her tail as she flicked away un-wanted flies and the slight movement of her hooves on the lane’s surface. From the forest she heard the squirrels scampering, jumping from limb to limb, while the angry blackbird had now changed its song and was singing to its mate somewhere to the left. Insects of various sorts buzzed through the cool forest air, and she could even hear the distant soft sound of running water from somewhere. She sat like this for ten minutes listening to the life and Nature all about her, all carrying on regardless of the fate that had befallen Man. Most importantly though, there were no sounds from the desperately moaning Dead. 

And then with a shrill call the blackbird was back on alarm. Liz
’s eyes flicked open to scan the trees before her for movement. Sure enough stumbling between the trees to the left of the gate was a Dead woman. Dressed in what appeared to be a blood stained and rotting vest and shorts the woman had a large section of her neck missing, torn out and eaten by her attacker, no doubt. Liz watched as the Dead woman kept losing her footing on the uneven mossy floor, falling down, only to slowly pull herself back up again. Even from where she sat, Liz could see the decaying skin on the woman’s hands and arms was ripping on the bark each time she pulled herself upright, while beetles scurried about on her grey mouldy flesh. She had not yet noticed Liz sitting in the cart and she was in two minds as to whether to just let her go by. But realising Charlie and Imran would only have to deal with her on their way back she thought it best she got rid of her now.

‘
Hey, over here,’ she called to walking corpse.

Slowly the dead woman, with one rotting hand resting on a tree turned to look at Liz. When she saw Liz
’s living flesh only a short distance away, she instinctively reached for her with her free arm. It was pitiful to watch the Dead woman release her hold on the tree and continue stumbling towards Liz. Just when Liz thought the woman had regained her balance, she would fall again, tripping on something unseen in the undergrowth.

‘
Oh, for God’s sake, I haven’t got all day,’ Liz said, jumping down from the cart and walking over to where the Dead woman was once again pulling herself slowly upright.

It wasn
’t until Liz was closer that she realised the reason the woman was so unsteady on her feet, was that one of them was missing. The blackened and shattered stump ended just above the ankle of her right leg. Fragments of bone protruded from the torn flesh, as insect larvae burrowed happily through the rotting skin. With the woman only an arm’s reach away now, Liz held her blade high ready to strike. The Dead woman moaning in desperation and hunger, launched herself away from the tree towards Liz. Dead hands suddenly fell to the floor as Liz’s blade swung through the air severing flesh and bone. The woman finding Liz now out of reach, lost what little balance she had and fell face down to the floor. Turning her head so she could look up at the flesh she desired so much, the Dead woman was unaware that the blade plunging down towards her would sate that need eternally. Once it was done, Liz pulled her blade free of the woman’s rotting brain and turned to go back to the cart. But she stopped mid-turn, shocked. Standing behind her was a thin middle-aged man. He was dressed in dirty jeans, a stained T-shirt and Liz could see there were lice moving in his beard and hair. The fact that he had crept up on her while she was dispatching the Dead woman wasn’t what alarmed her, no, it was the bat swinging towards her head with speed that shocked her. In the split second before the bat connected with her skull, she noticed the smug smile on his face. Then as a flash of light and pain shot across her vision, her head was knocked sideways. Her blade fell from her hand and skidded across the lane, as her hand instinctively came up to the side of her head. Swaying on her feet, Liz pulled her hand slowly away from her head. She just managed to register that it was now wet with blood, before darkness swept her away into unconsciousness and she fell to the ground alongside the dispatched Dead woman.