Last Days With the Dead (15 page)

‘Kill her!’ said Steve. ‘It’s not Mary, Christ! Whoever this is, her mind’s gone; no one should have to suffer like this. Just put the poor bitch out of her misery.’

But the decision was taken from the
m, as with a choking cry, the woman thankfully died.

‘Jesus!’ whispered Patrick, laying the woman’s torn body to the ground and stepping back.

‘So what now?’ asked Steve, unable to tear his eyes away from the wretched woman’s corpse.

Suddenly
, the sound of an arrow flying through the air behind them caught their attention.  Turning, they saw across the street a Dead man, his face and chest covered with a thick layer of fresh gore, falling to the road with one of Imran’s arrow’s lodged deep in his skull.

‘More company coming!’ Imran called to them from the top of the cart
. ‘Better get your arses over here.’

Without waiting to be told twice
, the three men left the eight murdered members of the Donaldson family and sprinted back to the cart. By the time Imran had let fly two more arrows at the approaching Dead, they were safely out of sight.

‘So do we continue to the Donaldson’s home?’ whispered Imran, as he watched through one of the spy holes
at the six walking cadavers mill aimlessly past them in search of the source of the screams that had caught their attention.

‘We don’t have mu
ch choice,’ mumbled Patrick, ‘where else can we start looking?’

‘Fuck
,’ said Phil, suddenly struck by the importance of what they had just seen, ‘you know what this means, don’t you?’

‘What?’ replied Patrick, glancing back to Phil while he gave Delilah’s reins a flick to start her moving again.

‘They didn’t come back,’ Phil began, ‘none of the Donaldson’s came back, they were just dead as in really forever dead. The new virus must have cured them of the Death-walker virus too.’

‘But surely they wouldn’t have been in contact with Charlie long enough for the virus he has to make any effect?’ Imran asked, replacing his quiver of arrows to their hook on the wall.

‘But Avery said it went air-born, they didn’t need contact with him at all,’ Phil continued, excitedly, ‘the new virus is already out there, they were already cured before they even got here.’

‘Christ
,’ said Steve, ‘so does that mean everyone can now die? I mean, is it just local or everywhere? How fast do you think this thing could travel the globe?’

‘Who knows?’ replied Phil, shrugging his shoulders.

‘And the thing is, with everyone on the base wearing the pulse detectors that shoots a bolt in your brain if it reads no life-signs,’ continued Steve, ‘the stupid bastards never get the opportunity to see that  when someone dies now, they’re not going to come back, they’re   probably already cured and don’t even know it.’

‘Which would explain why they haven’t given up on getting Charlie and the virus he carries back to the base,’ added Patrick, urging Delilah round the rusting remains of a crashed Mini.

‘And I doubt they’re just going to take our word for it,’ Added Imran.

‘No
, neither do I,’ mumbled Patrick.

***

Karen had been running through the woods for only fifteen minutes, but to her, it felt like eternity. The dawn rays that surely had turned the dark night sky to a blaze of reds and pinks, had yet to break through the thick green canopy above her, causing her to stumble on unseen branches, roots, and debris. Thick, dark, mossy mounds that bloomed between the trees, helped to soften her footsteps as she fled, but still, she was conscious of every sound she made. In the branches above her, countless birds heralded the new day, filling the air with their song. Their joyous serenade was at odds with the twilight world filled with shadows and half-light, through which, she ran, but it gave her a small modicum of comfort. It reminded her not everything in this woodland was a creature of decay and death, life still blossomed, regardless of Man’s fate.

With every snap of a twig or rustle of leaves
, she would freeze, her heart hammering loudly in her chest, as she expected one of the Dead suddenly to appear and attack. She knew she needed to get out of the forest and onto a road, only then would she have any chance of working out where she was, and which way she actually needed to go. She could still hear the moans of the Dead echoing through the trees, drawn to the sounds of the crash and her fight with the Dead man, but so far, she had been lucky and had only caught brief glimpses of dark ominous shadows moving through the trees some distance away.

She had just stumbled upon a light br
eak in the trees, whether it was some sort of deer run or the last remnants of manmade path through the forest, she had no idea, but it offered her hope. With a little more light now filtering down onto the track, Karen pulled the map from her jacket and opened it up. Placing her back against the base of a moss-covered tree for protection, she searched the map, trying to locate the point where Matt had said they could reach before the fuel ran out. The map, a snapshot of a world that no longer existed, showed much of the area should have been a patchwork of arable farmland. She knew this land, no longer controlled by man, would now have been reclaimed by nature, but looking about her, she could see the wood in which the helicopter had crashed was made of old trees, far too tall to have sprung up in only the last eight years. With relief, she realised that this at least limited the crash site to one of four marked woodland areas already shown on the map, each of them ranging from three to seven miles from Lanherne.

Suddenly
, she heard a branch snapping to her right, followed by a flurry of angry birdsong, calling an alarm. Looking along the small track, she saw the figure of a woman picking herself up from where she had fallen. Karen was about to call out to her when the woman righted herself and stepped into a pool of weak sunlight filtering down through the canopy. A large chunk of flesh was missing from the woman’s face, and even from a distance, Karen could see the yellowing bone of her exposed jaw. The woman was one of the Dead. Karen slowly moved her hand down to the gun she had placed by her leg when she had opened the map. Feeling a little better with the weight of the gun in her hand, Karen watched the Dead woman. The woman’s animated corpse seemed to be rocking back and forth on her heels, as if unsure which way she should continue. As quietly as she could, Karen pulled her knees up to her chest and pressed her back even tighter against the tree, praying the Dead woman would not turn in her direction. Further off in the forest, Karen heard the distant forlorn moaning of another of the Dead. Instantly, the Dead woman snapped her head in the direction of the deathly call and with lumbering steps, she plunged through the trees on the opposite side of the track, disappearing from sight.

Letting go of the breath she had been unaware of holding, Karen tried to calm her racing heart. She knew she needed to try to keep her head. If she panicked, she would make a mistake
, and mistakes out here could likely end up with her being just like the poor creature that had shambled off through the trees. With a few more calming breaths, Karen returned her attention to the map. Each of the marked woodland areas appeared to be no wider than a mile across at their deepest part, and with each lined either with roads or fields, she knew if she followed the track she had found, she would eventually find her way free of the trees and could finally begin her journey to Lanherne in earnest. Going left or right was the only decision she needed to make now. Folding up the map and pushing herself up away from the base of the tree, she noticed a large iridescent stag beetle merrily tramping its way across the track, oblivious to her presence.

‘She went that way.’ She mumbled to the beetle, thumbing in the direction the Dead woman had gone.

Karen turned left and began a light jog along the track. With no obvious dangers ahead or behind her, she figured she might as well put as much distance between the crash site and herself as she could, while she could. The sooner she found a road, the better, and if any of the Dead did see her jogging past, she hoped she would be long gone before they had a chance to react. Now that she was moving with some speed, it only took another ten minutes before the trees began to thin, and when she finally broke free of the woodland, it was almost with a surprise. One moment the trees were her constant stoic sentinels, and the next she was stumbling through into a field of waist high spring flowers and grasses. Instantly, she ducked down into the grass to avoid being seen by anything with the taste of bloody flesh on its mind.

Crouching in the grass, Karen listened for any movement or deathly moaning that would indicate she had been seen. Thankfully, the only sounds that greeted her were those from a multitude of buzzing insects, the birds in the trees
, and the faint distant barking of a dog. She hoped the dog wouldn’t prove to be another problem she would have to deal with. She had been told of groups of wild dogs reverting to an almost wolf like existence, hunting in packs to bring down and feast upon the living and Dead alike. Cautiously, Karen raised her head above the level of the grass.  To her left and right were more fields, but ahead of her, was a small dilapidated cottage, partly hidden by a riot of ivy and wisteria. Knowing no one would build a cottage in the middle of a field, Karen was relieved to see a break in the meadow just beyond the cottage. She had found her road.

Staying low and creeping forward, Karen made her way to the back of the cottage. If she
were lucky, she may still find something in the house that had an address on it, then she would know exactly where she was and which way she needed to go. Using a large overgrown rose bush for cover, Karen pushed aside some of the ivy covering one of the cottage’s windows. It was dark inside, but she could just make out the thickly dust covered shapes of neatly positioned kitchen furniture. There didn’t seem to be any signs of the chaos or old bloodshed she would have expected to see if the owner had become one of the Dead within these walls, so Karen took this as a good sign. Pushing more of the heavy ivy aside, she soon found the warped and flaking back door. With a quick look back at the field behind her, Karen stepped back and gave the door a sharp kick. The old rotting wood of the door cracked and splintered, making a little more noise than she would have preferred, but with just one more well aimed kick, she had soon made a hole large enough for her to crawl through.

Standing up in the small kitchen, Karen wrinkled her nose and fought the urge to sneeze. The room carried the smell of something long dead. Not the rancid wet stench of one of the actual Dead, this was dryer and far less cloying. It didn’t take her long to find the source of the
smell, it was the desiccated remains of a tabby cat. The poor thing must have died many years ago, back when the Death-walker virus had first struck. Without its owner to come back to feed it, the poor beast had faded away to the dried husk she now found wedged against a door. Relieved she had been granted a brief respite from the Dead, Karen moved away from the cat’s body and began opening drawers looking for any letters or bills from which she could get the cottage’s address. Pulling open a drawer in a dresser, Karen was disheartened to find it full of clumps of shredded paper and old dried mouse droppings.

‘Not a mouser
, eh?’ she mumbled, giving the cat’s body a disapproving shake of her head.

It was when she turned her attention back to the dresser that she noticed a small pin board on the wall. On it, all of the various vouchers and cut out recipes had long since faded to illegible type in the sun
, but as she idly pushed some of them aside, she saw what she was looking for, a glossy postcard with its photo facing her.

‘Yes!’ she said to herself, pulling the drawing pin out of the postcard.

‘Gavin Wiseman,’ she read, tilting the card to catch the light, ‘Morningside cottage, 6 Saint Michael’s lane.’

Spreading the map out on the kitchen table, Karen looked at the names of the roads surrounding the four woodland areas marked on the map.

‘There you are,’ she mumbled, tapping a specific forested area that ran along Saint Michael’s lane, ‘now just have to get from here to Lanherne.’ 

Scouring the map again, she quickly found the village of St Mawgan and the nearby convent of Lanherne. After she had traced the route back to Morningside cottage, she guessed if she did a mix of jogging and brisk walking
, she could possibly be there in a little under an hour.

‘A lot can happen in an hour
,’ she said under her breath, as she folded up the map and pushed it inside her jacket.

Catching movement in the corner of her eye, Karen looked up at the cobweb strewn kitchen window. Outside, only five meters from the cottage, were three shambling figures.

‘Shit!’ she said, backing towards to door that led off the kitchen.

She needed to find another way out and fast. Already
, she could hear the hungry moans of the Dead outside as they began to converge on their prey, her. Pulling the kitchen door closed behind, Karen sprinted through the cottage to the front door, skidding to an abrupt halt in the front hallway.

‘Well, thank you
, Gavin Wiseman.’ She said, a smile spreading over her face as she looked at the dusty mountain bike propped against the hall wall.

The chain was a little rusty but at least it still moved when she turned the pedal arm and the back tyre could do with some air in it, but it was far more than she had ever hoped to find. Behind
her, she could tell the three animated cadavers had finally reached the back door, the sound of their hammering vibrating through the small cottage. Whether they would work out how she got in, she didn’t know and certainly wasn’t prepared to find out. So with a quick look through one of the small glass panels in the front door, Karen made sure the front of the house was free of danger. As with the back door, the front door was a little warped, but thankfully here, the porch hanging above the doorway had managed to keep out much of the bad weather and after three sharp tugs, the door opened inwards with a screech.