Six Days With the Dead (43 page)

The man with Sonya, who must have been Adam, wa
s average looking, his height being the only thing to distinguish him. Being even taller than the Reverend, his long gangly limbs would have made a veritable feast for the Dead if they had found him hanging on the pole but he too wore his scars of survival with pride. In his late forties, his thin sandy hair was patchy in places and grimy looking stubble covered his chin. Adam loped rather than walked towards them, an intense look on his face. The two children following behind him, tripped over themselves to keep up with his wide strides.

‘
Another of the blessed?’ Adam said, bending forwards to inspect Anne close up. Like the Reverend, his eyes bore into Anne with an intensity that unnerved her. It was as if he could look through her eyes, straight to her soul and inspect it for sinful imperfections.

‘
She is to be judged later,’ Marcello said, urging Anne to carry on walking, ‘Ruth and Nathan are to judge an infant first. We are all to go to the lake and keep vigil.’

When they got to the lake, Marcello told
her to get into the small tethered row boat. Gingerly she placed one foot in and once the rocking had subsided, she finally managed to clamber aboard. Turning so she sat facing the shore, Anne watched the other members of this insane community line up for their vigil. Charlotte, Sonya and Adam were soon joined on the rocky shore by the gardener she had seen earlier and another man. Six stolen children were positioned in front of them and told to kneel. Tearful and obviously afraid, they did as they were told. Then as if on some unspoken signal, all five of the adults fell to their knees and began to pray. With their palms raised to the heavens and the scars on their wrists a sign of their obedience to their God or, perhaps more importantly, to Ruth, the acolytes swayed back and forth, giving themselves over to their trance like devotion. With a glance to his fellow acolytes, Marcello joined Anne in the boat and taking the wooden oars in his hands, began to row them across the lake to the island. When they were almost across, Anne looked past Marcello, and caught Alex’s gaze. He looked over the expanse of deep water to her, his large blue eyes were filled with heavy tears that threatened to spill over and at that moment a chill of realisation went through Anne. Alex was not crying for himself or the situation he was in, but for her. Whatever she was about to go through had suddenly become more terrifying and as the boat began to scrape along the rising stone shore of the island, she knew it was too late to do anything about it. Anne’s fate lay somewhere in the cavern beyond the dark tunnel and already the sounds of the Dead echoing through the darkness, had turned her insides to ice.

‘
Come,’ Marcello said, jumping from the boat.

Walking ankle deep in the cold wa
ter, he went to the front of the boat and began to pull it ashore, ready for their return journey. Once he was satisfied the boat wouldn’t drift off, he grabbed Anne’s hand and pulled her over the rocky shore towards the tunnel. Even as they approached the tunnel entrance, Anne could smell the dry, rotting smell of the Dead, and she tried to pull away from Marcello, desperate not to enter the chamber beyond.

‘
You will be one of the chosen, rejoice,’ he said, yanking her arm as they were swallowed by the darkness.

‘
But what if I’m not chosen,’ Anne whispered to herself.

Anne had been pulled through the darkness for what seemed like forever, but in reality was less than a minute, when thankfully she began to see the faint dancing light coming from around the n
ext corner. The smell of the Dead was becoming unbearable now, making Anne gag uncontrollably and from the sound they were making, she knew the Dead were already in arm’s reach of something they wanted to eat. Turning the corner, what little hope Anne had left evaporated with a scream. There, in the centre of the torch lit chamber, was a stone pit in the floor, inside which, clamoured a dozen Dead children in various states of decay. Standing by the lip of the pit next to a wooden post, was Ruth. With her eyes closed, she lost herself to her twisted devotion while she held aloft the still infant in her arms. Sensing their arrival, Ruth slowly opened her eyes.

‘
Manacle her to the post,’ she said to Marcello, indicating the post to her left.

‘
Yes Ruth,’ Marcello said, pulling Anne around the pit to the post.

Pushing herself away as far as she could, Anne looked down at the dozen hungry Dead faces that reached
, black and decaying hands, desperately up to her while Marcello roughly manacled her to the post. Anne knew instinctively that Ruth had murdered these children. She had stolen them away from those they loved, leaving nothing but death and the Dead in her wake and brought them here terrified and alone. All of them were her age or younger and had been brought here to be killed purely because of that.

‘
You may go now, Marcello,’ Ruth said, ignoring him the moment she spoke, to lose herself again in her whispered prayers.

Silently Marcello left the chamber, leaving Anne to her fate, without so much as a second g
lance. It was then that Anne noticed the Reverend sitting silently on his knees, holding a battered bible to his chest. From the look on his face, Anne thought he considered the book to be the most important thing in the world. But then he opened his eyes and his gaze fell upon Ruth. No, this murderess, this woman who hid her perverse desires behind a God’s will, she was the centre of his universe. Suddenly, Ruth stopped praying and with a nod she met her husband’s gaze.

Taking a deep breath
the Reverend gently placed the bible down on the uneven rock floor. Using only the tips of his finger, as if he were touching some delicate blossom, he ran his finger along the edge of the pages. His eyes never left Ruth’s stare and when she again nodded, his hand stopped immediately. With an uncharacteristic gentleness the Reverend looked down at the bible in front of him and opened it at this chosen point. Again his finger began to move slowly about the page, until with a second nod from Ruth, he stopped. Leaning forward the Reverend read the words where his finger had stopped.

‘
And Jesus said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are God’s,’ he whispered in voice full of wonder, as he looked up at his wife.

Upo
n hearing the bible verse that had been so divinely selected, Ruth slowly closed her eyes. As Anne and the Reverend watched, Ruth turned her head this way and that, her brow creasing with concentration, as if she was listening intently to the heavenly whispers that lurked deep within her madness. Then as if everything had suddenly become clear, she opened her clear blue eyes, the reflected torch light, adding demonic flames to their depths   and spoke.

‘
Praise the Lord our God, he has spoken to this unworthy vessel and told me what lurks within that what cannot be seen. He has told me of the stain of Man upon this infant’s soul. Unworthy of the life our Lord had bestowed upon him, he shall be damned for all eternity, to exist yet not live, to feed but not nourish, to be consumed forever with a hunger that only the denied solace of God may quench.’ 

Anne began to shake her head back and forth, she had a horrible idea where this was going and despite desperately not wanting to watch, she was unable to tear her
eyes away. Terror had denied her the ability to turn her head away from what she knew was about to happen.

‘
This child is Damned!’ Ruth said.

Without a moments thought, Ruth dropped the baby to the hungry Dead children below her. The tiny bo
dy was pounced upon immediately and disappeared in a mass of reaching Dead arms. Thankfully, before it could let out a single strangled cry, the Dead children tore the poor infant to pieces and greedily began to stuff baby sized limbs and entrails into their mouths. Anne let out a scream born of pure terror and disbelief. She desperately tried to block out the nightmarish bestial sounds coming from the pit, as the Dead children fed on the body of Emma O’Brien’s baby. Within minutes, all that was left of the doomed infant was the small crochet blanket it had been wrapped in, which Ruth folded in her arms and tossed to Anne as she walked past her.

‘
We will be back later for your judgement. I suggest you pray to God, begging for forgiveness of your sins,’ Ruth said, reaching for the torch on the wall.

Crouching as far from the pit as she could, Anne pulled the small blanket to her chest and wept. She wept for
Mrs O’Brien’s unnamed baby, whose life was taken before it had barely had a chance to begin. She wept for the children in the pit whose lives had been so pointlessly snatched away from them, and then as Ruth and her husband walked back through the tunnel to the lake, leaving her in total blackness, she wept for herself.

****

After an hour on the road, Liz, Imran, Charlie and Alice had passed through the village of St Mawgan without encountering any of the Dead. They had bypassed their usual visit to Jackson, wanting to get far as they could without stopping. Knowing their route would mean they would be leaving charted territory within another few hours, they needed to make good time while they could. There would be enough troubles ahead of them to delay their journey, without adding another one needlessly.

‘
There must be another way round it,’ Liz said, examining the map for the tenth time since they left Lanherne. ‘I know they think they have some sort of Divine protection but the Reverend doesn’t strike me the type to drive though a red zone if he didn’t have to.’

When Lars had initially shown them the route
they would need to take to reach the Carnglaze Caverns, much had been debated about the red-zone already marked on the map that they would need to travel through. The most direct route to the caverns would either take them along the A30 motorway or at least across it and they didn’t need the shaded red area on the map to tell them this area would be swamped by the Dead.

‘
Well, we’ll be moving into unknown territory,’ Charlie said, guiding Delilah into a turning off the main road. ‘Had we known there was an outpost in this direction, we may have come this way more often. Let’s just hope the motorway is the only obstacle we’ve got to deal with. I don’t think we’ve got the time to waste, doubling back on ourselves, if we choose the wrong route.’

Liz was sure
there had to be a way to the caverns that skirted around the many blocked roads and hot spots. The Reverend and Ruth wouldn’t go to all the trouble of kidnapping children, for them only to not be able to get back to their home safely.

‘
There had to be a way,’ she thought to herself, as she once again scrutinised the map, hoping the route would somehow magically jump from the page before her eyes, if only she looked at the map a certain way. It was then that an idea began to piece together in the back of her mind.

‘
Charlie, if the Reverend and his wife took Alex, why wasn’t he with them when we ran into them?’ she asked, as she trying to pin the idea down.‘Surely that means they must have kidnapped him and taken him back to their home before setting out again on a new hunt for children?’

‘
Well, yeah that makes sense. I don’t know how that helps us though?’ he replied, wondering where she was going with this.

He just wanted to keep her thoughts grounded. It was far too easy to jump to conclusions when
you were desperate and scared. Assuming an answer was the right one just because it was the only one you could come up with, could be dangerous and the way the world was now, could end up getting you killed.

Liz knew there was something just dancing on the edges of her mind. Something that would become obvious the mom
ent she managed to get a grip on it. She turned the map this way and that, looking for inspiration. She scanned the areas around the Penhaligan home and the seaside home of the O’Briens, hoping the solution would show itself. She traced the roads from both of the locations back to Carnglaze Caverns, both of which forced them along a long section of motorway that would be un-passable.

‘
Come on, come on, come on,’ she said to herself, sure the answer was staring her right in the face. ‘Come on, they didn’t fly there, there must be a way.’

The moment she said it, she could feel the idea becoming solid. Obviously the Reverend and his wife didn
’t fly to the Penhaligan’s or the O’Brien’s but there’s nothing to say they had to get there by cart, or rather by road. Immediately Liz began pushing aside the spy hole covers to let in more light, so she could see more clearly.

‘
What? What is it? have you thought of something?’ Alice said, moving aside so Liz could lie more of the map flat on the floor.

Scanning the map
through new eyes, Liz’s finger darted from location to location.

‘
Got it!’ she said excitedly. ‘They used the train tracks. They didn’t go by road at all for some of their journey... Look!’

Charlie stopped Delilah and turned round to watch Liz follow the r
outes the Reverend and Ruth could have taken.

‘
See, the train line branches off here to go to Cawsands Bay and then back up here there’s a branch line that’s only a few miles from the Penhaligan home,’ Liz said, looking from one face to the next for confirmation that her idea was plausible. ‘And look, the train line runs parallel to the motor way for quite a long section before it crosses it by a tunnel or bridge at this point.’