Autumn: Aftermath (28 page)

There was a sudden scramble as people disappeared into other rooms in the caravan and hid under beds. Lorna crouched under a melamine table in a cluttered dining area and listened as Kieran went outside. She could hear him talking, and she could hear Melanie’s voice too.

“Nah, I’ve checked in here,” he said, “it’s empty. They must have got away in that truck.”

“Jas is going mental. He’s scaring me, Kieran.”

“He’s been scaring me since it all kicked off this morning. Stick with Paul and Will and you might be okay.”

“You sure they’re not in there?”

“I’m telling you, Mel, this caravan’s empty. I was going to try around the cesspit next. Thought I heard people around there just now.”

Lorna heard footsteps moving away, then Kieran returned to the caravan. She poked her head above the table and he beckoned her out. She hissed for the others to come out from their hiding places too.

“So where’s this other exit?” Lorna asked. “I’ve never seen it.”

“How did you get in?” Howard asked Harte.

“We came in over the wall. Harry, the guy who just took off in the truck, was into rock climbing and all that stuff. The rope’s probably still there if you fancy it.”

“No need for that,” Kieran said. “There is another way.”

“Why should we believe you?” Lorna said. “You’ve been up Jas’s backside for days. You’re just bluffing…”

“I know how it must look, but I was just covering my back, that’s all. It seemed to make sense to stick close to the guy who was making most noise.”

“We can argue about this later,” Harte said. “Where’s this way out?”

“I’ve been here since the start,” Kieran explained. “I found this place on the morning everyone died and I decided to stay here. I didn’t think you could get anywhere much safer than a bloody castle.”

“So? Get to the point.”

“So ere only a few of us here to begin with, and we thought we’d got the place completely sealed off. But we were just sitting there one day, and Jackson appeared from out of nowhere.”

“How?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He found another way in. He got in through the bloody dungeons.”

“Okay, so how do we get out?”

“The exit’s at the back of the gift shop. Follow me and I’ll show you.”

42

Kieran led the others across the courtyard in darkness. Harte had b
arely taken two steps out of the caravan when someone grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. It was Michael.

“Thought you might have been on that truck.”

“No such luck,” Michael replied. “What’s going on?”

“The guy up front is Kieran,” Harte explained. “He says he knows another way out of here.”

“And can we trust him?”

“Don’t see as we have much choice right now.”

The small group—four men and two women now—walked across the courtyard rather than ran, taking a wide, indirect route to avoid Jas, Ainsworth, and the others, most of whom were gravitating around the van now blocking the gate. The door to the gift shop had been left open by Bayliss and Melanie when the sudden movement of the truck had abruptly interrupted their lovemaking.

“Who the fuck’s this?” Kieran asked as they crowded into the gift shop, Michael bringing up the rear and closing the door behind him.

“I’m Michael,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you too.”

“Michael’s the dad-to-be from the island,” Harte explained.

“Then what are you doing here, you muppet?”

“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” he replied. “Now where’s this exit?”

“In here, somewhere,” Kieran said unhelpfully as he began searching through the few boxes of supplies which had been left in the gift shop. He found what he was looking for on a shelf—torches. It didn’t matter that they were novelty kid’s torches made in the shape of castle turrets, as long as they worked. He handed them around, then distributed packs of batteries from a wall display behind a long-unused till. Lorna was the first to get hers working. She shone it around the various faces.

“Michael, this is Howard, Caron, and Kieran.”

“And you’re all that’s left here now? Harry got the rest of you away?”

“As far as we can tell. I think everyone’s accounted for.”

“Too late now if they’re not,” he mumbled as he went deeper into the shop. “Now what exactly are we looking for?”

“Some kind of door, I guess,” Kieran explained. “All I know is that Jackson got in this way.”

“And you never bothered to look for it before?”

“There wasn’t any need. No one was trying to get out of the castle until your lot turned up in your bloody helicopter.”

“Fair point.”

They split up and scoured the walls of the cluttered room. In the months since the castle had first been used as a base by survivors, the gift shop had been used for a variety of reasons. Bayliss and Melanie’s love nest apart, people had dumped rubbish here, used it to store less useful items which had been scavenged (Michael noticed a couple of flat-screen TVs) and, judging from the smell, someone had used this place in favor of the chemical toilets too.

“There are catacombs and dungeons here, you know,” Caron said suddenly.

“What?” Michael asked.

“Ignore her,” Howard said, “she’s half-pissed.”

“I might well be,” she continued, “but I’m not stupid. I tell you, there are dungeons and all sorts under this place.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I’ve spent hours and hours pretending to clean the museum, remember? I saw some displays.”

“And you didn’t think to mention this?” Lorna said in disbelief.

“I didn’t think it mattered. Like Kieran said, we weren’t planning on leaving until a couple of days ago.”

“Wait,” Michael said, “this guy Jackson. You said he came
into
the castle through here?”

“Yes,” Kieran replied. “Why?”

“Because if that’s the case he probably got in this way.”

Michael flashed his torch at a door he was standing next to. It had a large
NO EXIT
sign in the middle of it. They’d all glanced at it, but the penny hadn’t dropped. They’d been looking for a way out, not a way in. Jackson had been coming the other way. His entrance was their “no exit.”

“Must be it,” Kieran said, reaching for the emergency access bar right across the middle of the door. He pushed it down and the latches opened. Mchael slipped his fingers around the edges and between them they pulled the door open. A blast of cold, musty air hit them. Michael shone his torch into a small room which looked like it had been carved out of rock.

“We need to get moving,” Howard said nervously. “I think they’re coming this way.”

“Go for it,” Michael suggested. “Even if we just end up hiding in here for a couple of hours, it’ll do.”

He led them down into the confined space; Harte and Kieran close behind, Howard, Lorna, and Caron bringing up the rear. The temperature felt ice-cold.

“Fuck me!” Harte cursed. “Jesus!”

Michael turned around quickly to see what it was that Harte had seen. It made him catch his breath too. A painfully thin, ghostly white body was shackled to the wall. Lorna sighed.

“Harte, you’re bloody useless,” she said. “It’s a bloody dummy.”

“How was I supposed to know? Christ, what kind of place has fake dead bodies chained to the walls?”

“Castles with dungeons,” Caron said. “I told you I saw displays. It was part of some kind of ‘be a smuggler’ attraction, I think.”

“Be quiet and keep moving,” Michael said, leading them toward another door.

“Go through?” Kieran asked, pointlessly.

“Unless you’ve got a better idea?”

Kieran tried the door and it opened. He cautiously entered a narrow passageway which sloped downward and which curved away to the left. He kept walking, suddenly a reluctant leader, shuffling his feet along the ground, unsure of the slope. This passage too appeared to have been carved out of the rock and supported with rudimentary brickwork. The miserable light from their torches now illuminated only a fraction of the narrow space around them, just a patch of the walls and the low ceiling. It felt almost unbearably claustrophobic; even sound felt restricted and trapped here, echoing quickly, unable to escape. Kieran’s already slow pace slowed further as nerves set in. He held his torch in one hand and groped his way forward with the other.

“Shh…” Harte said suddenly, grabbing Michael’s shoulder. “Stop!”

They immediately froze, walking into each other and bunching up in the narrow confines. They all became completely still, their collective breathing the only sound.

“What is it?” Lorna asked anxiously. He shone his torch into her face.

“I thought I heard something.”

“You think Jas is following us?”

“I thought I heard it too,” Kieran said. “It wasn’t behind us, it was up ahead.”

“Just keep moving,” Michael said, squeezing through and taking the lead. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

Kieran was about to follow when he stopped. There it was again. A definite noise.

“Wait…” he said.

“He’s trying it on,” Howard said. “Fucker’s brought us down here and told Jas to follow. I’m betting it’s a bloody dead end up ahead.”

“And do you think I’d want to get myself trapped too? Get real, Howard. No, I swear, there’s something down here.”

“I’m going back,” Caron started to moan, trying to get past Howard and get back up the slope. “We never should have come here.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Michael told her, the tone of his voice immediately silencing her. “Whatever’s down here can’t be any worse than your friends back in the castle.”

“You reckon?” Harte mumbled.

“It’s probably just rats or something like that,” Howard said, doing his best to find a rational explanation for the noise but causing more panic in the process. At the mention of rats Caron began to wail with fear. Lorna felt her starting to move again and she grabbed hold of her.

“Get off me!” she screamed, trying to beat her off.

“Leave it out, you silly cow,” Lorna cursed, pushing Caron up against the damp, cold wall and preventing her from getting out.

“Will you two keep it down,” Michael ordered from the front. He started moving again, following the curve of the passage around until it opened out into another, much larger space. He paused in the entrance to the chamber. There were colorful displays hanging on the walls, and another dummy had been chained to the rock for its sins. Harte and Kieran stood on either side of him. Harte took another couple of steps forward, then froze.

“Fucking hell!” he yelled. “Bodies!”

“It’s all right,” Michael said quickly, loud enough for those behind to hear him. “It’s just another dummy.”

“No, it isn’t,” Kieran said, grabbing his arm and turning him around. “Look.”

Harte’s torch had picked out a single corpse which began walking toward him. Keeping the light focused on the creature’s grotesque face, he desperately searched his pockets for anything he could use as a weapon.

“There are more of them,” Kieran said. “Oh fuck, there are loads of them.”

Michael watched in abject terror as more and more bodies emerged into the light. Drawn like moths to the torchlight, they staggered ever closer.

“What do we do?” Caron asked anxiously, sandwiched between Michael, Kieran and Harte on one side, Howard and Lorna on the other.

“Go back,” Harte said, already trying to move away. “We need to get ourselves back behind one of those doors we came through.”

“But they’re just going to keep coming,” Lorna said, stating the obvious. “Fuck this, we might as well head all the way back out and take our chances with Jas and the others.”

The dead continued their approach. There were at least five of them now that Michael could see, maybe even more behind. He didn’t want to look, but at the same time he wished their torches were brighter. The thought of what he couldn’t see in the shadows beyond this chamber was even more frightening than what he could. How many more were there?

The farthest forward of the corpses seemed to have locked onto him now, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as it raised its haggard face to look directly at him with mournful, sunken eyes. Someone clumsily knocked into him from behind, and he grabbed at the walls in panic, desperate to find something to hold onto. And still the corpse came …

“Use this,” Howard said from close behind him. Michael looked around and the other man shoved a screwdriver into his hand. “Found it in the gift shop. Thought I’d bring it along just in case. Now kill the damn thing!”

Michael still didn’t attack. It had been a long time since he’d seen one of the dead in this kind of condition: nowhere near as decayed as those outside the castle, still capable of moving with relative strength and speed … This was like those they’d cleared off the island when they’d first arrived there. But that was months ago …

Michael knew he had no option. The rest of these pathetic shysters weren’t going to be any help. Despite his still-considerable bulk, Howard had managed to force himself away and was now cowering back in the passageway with Lorna and Caron. Lorna was hanging onto Caron’s arm. Caron was trying to drag her back toward the castle. He knew that if he wanted out of here, he’d have to take control. He gripped the screwdriver like a dagger and then, still holding the torch in his other hand so he could see what he was doing, he ran toward the approaching corpse, screaming with rage.

The creature stopped. Michael stopped too, mid-attack, surprised by its unexpected and very definite response. It staggered back a couple of unsteady steps and raised its arm like it was trying to defend itself. The bloody thing seemed to be cowering from him.

“What the hell’s going on?” he said as he moved forward. The corpse moved farther away, clumsily backing into the others which were hovering behind it now. “Look at this thing. This isn’t right.”

“Who cares,” Howard yelled from a safe distance away. “Finish them! Just get rid of them.”

Harte found his nerve and moved toward the dead, determined to do what Michael wouldn’t, but Michael shot out his arm and held him;k.