Six Days With the Dead (46 page)

Delilah pulled the cart level with the Dead teenager Imran had put down. Climbing out onto the roof and sitting on the edge of the cart, Imran lent across and with a foot against his head for leverage, yanked the arrow free from the still corpse.
Knocking his leg against the side of the cart as a signal for Charlie, Imran stayed sitting out on the roof while Delilah pulled them down the road to the next quiet hanging corpse. Before he removed the arrow from this one, Imran took aim at a Dead woman hanging by her wrists on the next telephone pole.

‘
Gotcha!’ he said under his breath, as the arrow flew and found its target effortlessly.

Satisfied that they would now not be seen by any of the hanging Dead, Imran reached over to the cadaver hanging next
to him, the arrow buried deep in his eye-socket. Imran’s hand had barely closed over the end of the arrow to wiggle to it free, when the Dead man suddenly jerked its head towards him, its teeth snapping wildly at flesh it could no longer see. Luckily for Imran, the blinded corpse had only been relying on its hearing. If it had seen him, he certainly wouldn’t have missed Imran’s tasty fingers so close to his Dead mouth.

‘
Shit!’ Imran said, kicking himself away from the corpse.

Realising that this noise was
making the plan to keep the Dead quiet a bit pointless, Imran quickly pulled his hunting knife from the sheath on his ankle and drove it home through the top of the Dead man’s skull, finally putting the corpse to rest.

‘
From now on, I think I’ll give them a poke before I let my hands get too close,’ Imran called to Charlie in the cart, re-sheathing his knife.

That had been stupid and far too close a call for Imran
’s liking. A few centimetres to the right and the Dead man’s jaws would have clamped down on his fingers, and it would have been ‘goodnight Imran’ forever.

‘
God, I have to be more careful…’ he thought to himself.

Imran climbed back into the cart and waited for Delilah to pull them level with the next hanging Dead woman, who now had his arrow lodg
ed in her skull. Once again he fired another arrow at the next hanging corpse, before retrieving the one from the woman. Thankfully, they managed to get all the way along the road with no further mishaps, leaving a trail of the hanging Dead, silenced forever, behind them.

‘
Looks like we’re leaving the road,’ Charlie said, looking at the hanging corpses leading down a gravel side road.

‘
It’s like some macabre Hansel and Gretel bread crumb trail, leading them home,’ Alice said, looking up at the mouldy cadaver in front of them.

Liz looked up from the map and pushed it in front of Charlie, her finger mar
king the location of Carnglaze Caverns.

‘
If we’re here, then the caverns are just down this lane,’ she said, following the small line on the map that led them to Carnglaze and hopefully Anne, ‘see?’

‘
Hmm, you’re not wrong,’ Charlie replied, briefly double checking the map. ‘Right, let’s weapon up. We’re going the rest of the way on foot. Imran can you kill that Dead man, no point in having them alerted we’re coming sooner than necessary.’

As Imran did as he was told, Alice and Liz began stuffing various objects in a rucksack that they may need. All the ammo for the guns, a small medical kit, the binoculars, some wire cutters and an assortment of knives w
ere hastily thrown in. Once it was full, Alice slipped it onto her back and after making a few adjustments so it was comfortable, she was ready to go. 

‘
Try not to use the guns unless we’ve no options left,’ Charlie said, flicking open the barrel of his handgun to check it was loaded for the third time. ‘They’ll only alert everyone there that we’ve arrived, not to mention any of the Dead that happen to be within earshot.’

Stepping out onto the gravel lane, Liz took a breath to steady her nerves. She was cer
tain that Anne was but a few hundred metres down this lane and it took all her control not to break into a run to get to her. But she knew they would have to play a very careful game, who knew what setup the Reverend and his wife had here, and with Anne’s life in their hands, they couldn’t afford to make any rash decisions.

The gravel lane sloped downwards with the side of a hill
rising on its right hand side. The other side of the lane was covered with a light woodland of young ash and birch trees and it would be through here that the group would follow the path to the cavern. From here on in, there would be no talking, communication between them would be strictly limited to hand signals. Crouching low, the four made their way just inside the tree line along the lane. When the next pole with its cadaver came up, Charlie gave Imran the signal. Standing to his full height, Imran took aim and fired. His arrow flying from his bow before the Dead had a chance to register the living flesh that had appeared before it. The lane began to slowly curve around the growing hill and after dealing with another four of the Dead, they could finally see the chain link fence of the Reverend’s compound coming up.

‘
We follow the tree line round, till we’re in front of the compound,’ Charlie whispered to the others, as his eyes scanned back and forth along the lane. ‘We can’t see what’s what from here and I don’t want us going in blind.’

Liz and Imran immediately began slowly stalking through the thin woodland with Alice and Char
lie taking up the rear.

‘
Can you hear them?’ Alice said in barely a whisper, her tight grip on her bat making her knuckles turn white ‘there’s more of the Dead and they sound excited’

‘
You don’t have to do this,’ Charlie said taking her chin in his hand, ‘you can keep an eye on Delilah if you like.’

‘
You don’t get rid of me that easily,’ she whispered back, her tone slightly angry as she began to move off after Liz and Imran.

Charlie was proud of Alice, of all of them
, she was the only one who didn’t have to be here. Liz and himself were here for Anne, while Imran had come to avenge his brother’s death, so Alice coming here was purely because she loved him too much to let him go alone. He didn’t know if it was the most beautiful or the most stupid thing anyone had ever done for him, but he was sure glad she was with him. Shaking his head at the stubbornness of the beautiful woman in front of him, Charlie followed after her through the tree line. They soon came to a stop and crouched down among the ferns looking out over the compound before them.

The wire fence encircled a compound mainly given over to vegetables, which at the moment were being tended to by a middle aged man. Luckily the man was engrossed in his weeding and had h
is back to them. The high chain-link fence surrounding the compound wouldn’t be a problem, thanks to the wire cutters they brought with them, but the seven Dead figures writhing and moaning on the poles might prove to be a bit tricky. If they stepped out from the cover of the tree line, the Dead would go frantic and surely alert the man gardening of their presence. Charlie signalled for Imran to take out the Dead one by one. Hopefully they could then get through the fence before the man noticed them and raised the alarm. With the writhing Dead desperate to get to the living man behind them, Imran had to time it just right otherwise he could very easily miss his target. Using a birch tree as cover, Imran stood up and took aim at the first of the Dead. It had been a young woman, her once curvaceous and admired body, now ravaged and torn. Imran watched the way she moved her head back and forth, trying to discern a pattern to her movements. After a time the Dead woman would realise she would not be able to reach the living man behind her from one side, so her head would swing wildly to the other side to start the fruitless exercise again. Once Imran had noticed this, it was simply a matter of timing. So with a dull thud, the woman was finally put to rest, as Imran’s arrow plunged deep into her skull. The next in line was another woman, this one was emaciated to the point where it looked as if her grey mouldy skin was the only thing keeping her bones together. She had obviously been hanging there for some time, as her movements were slow, even for the Dead. With pathetically strained movements, she craned her head sideways, always trying to catch a glimpse of the living man she knew was behind her. When her position was just right, Imran let fly another silent arrow. This time it sunk deep into her temple just at the side of her eye. Her desperately hungry moan instantly died on her lips, as her last unnatural breath escaped her body. 

Imran repeated this for the next two hanging Dead, each time ge
tting the killing shot removing two more abominations from the world.

‘
Shit.’ Charlie whispered under his breath.

The man who had been gardening had turned and was now working his way up another row of vegetables, which unfortunately meant he was now facing in their direction. Then sud
denly the man paused and began scanning the tree line with a confused look on his face. It was only when he walked up to the poles to look up at the Dead, did Charlie realise the man had noticed the drop in volume from his hanging Dead sentries. The man looked up at one of the now quiet Dead women, Imran’s arrow firmly embedded in her skull and faster than Charlie thought possible, he turned and began to sprint away from the fence towards the cave entrance.

‘
Take him out Imran,’ Charlie said, his voice harsh and commanding.

He knew what he was asking of Imran. To take the unnatural life of the Dead was one thing, but to shoot a fleeing living man in the back was quite another matter altogether, but it had to be done. For the briefest moments, Imran caught C
harlie’s gaze and knew he needed to do this if they wanted to get Anne back alive. With a nod, Imran broke cover from the tree line and darted to the fence, a new arrow already in place. Placing the tip of the arrow between the wire holes so it would fly true, he sighted the back of the escaping man’s head, took a deep breath and released his hold on the string. With a sickening crunch the metal tipped arrow shattered the back of the man’s skull and continued on its journey through his brain and out through the area just above his cheek bone. The man’s body seemed to carry on running unguided by a brain for another two steps, before collapsing to floor, forever still.

Liz, Alice and Charlie had already joined Imran at the fence and even before the man had fa
llen to the floor, Liz was snipping away at the wire with the cutters. They had to get in there as soon as possible, they really didn’t want any of the other members of this twisted community to come out and find one of their number lying face down among the runner beans with an arrow in the back of his head.

‘
Almost there,’ Liz said, a few minutes later, her breathing heavy.

The wire had been tougher to cut than she thought but determination had given strength to her arms and even though her hands now ac
hed, she pulled aside the hole in the fence so the others could pass through. She had barely begun wriggling through herself, before Charlie and Imran darted off to drag the man’s corpse out of sight. Pulling the body by its legs, they stashed it behind the Reverend’s cart before anyone had the chance to see it. Alice scanned the compound nervously, as she waited for Liz to pull herself fully through the fence. As soon as she was free, the two of them silently ran in a low crouch to join Charlie and Imran hiding by the cart.

‘
So what now?’ Alice asked, her heart pounding loudly in her ears as they crouched hidden from sight. ‘Do we just charge in or what?’

‘
No, we can’t risk them killing Anne, just because they’re cornered and anyway we don’t know how many we’re up against. So…’ Charlie’s words where cut short by the sight of a startled man stepping into view from around the cart.

‘
What the?’ the short Italian looking man said.

From the look on his face, he clearly wasn
’t expecting to see them there. Anything else he wanted to say went unsaid, as Charlie’s large form barrelled into him, knocking him to the floor. As the air was knocked out of the foreign man’s lungs, Charlie swung his large clenched fist at his chin, knocking him out cold with the first strike.

‘
Take his feet and put him with the other one,’ Charlie said to Imran, as he pushed himself upright.

Imran grabbed hold of the unconscious man
’s feet and pulled him behind the cart, leaving him motionless alongside his dead companion. Of course what the group could not know was that the man Charlie had just knocked out, who had proved himself worthy before God by hanging for a day and a night to a pole, this man was actually slowly dying in front of them, completely un-noticed. When Charlie’s fist had connected with Marcello’s jaw, the forces that had jolted through his skull had ruptured a tiny blood vessel in his brain and even now as Charlie went over their plan, Marcello’s brain was slowly shutting down piece by piece.

Liz withdrew her sword from its sheath, ready for the battle she knew would commence as soon as they entered the cave. They had decided
as a group, that they would have to kill any adults they came across. Even though they may not have had a direct hand in the atrocities the Reverend and his wife had caused across the Cornish countryside, their very acceptance made them guilty. Put simply, they were too dangerous a group to allow them to scatter, un-punished.