Last Days With the Dead (19 page)

‘Oh, it’s just some birds,’ Karen whispered, with a sigh of relief.

But Liz had lived the last eight years among the Dead and knew never to take anything on face value, and as the Dead man fell through the bushes onto the road, she was proven right. The Dead man slowly pushed himself up from the ground, crushing the joyous bluebells beneath his blackened and filth encrusted hands. Liz looked down at the Dead man who, like all of his decaying brothers across the planet, had pointlessly destroyed something beautiful, and she hated him for it. The Dead man took a shaky step toward Samson and turned his ruined face up to Liz. What was left of his face was a mass of maggot ridden grey flesh, and the rest of his emaciated body hadn’t fared much better either. With one of his eyes completely missing and the other nothing but a pus filled feast for the insect larvae, Liz was surprised the Dead man was able to see her at all.

‘God
,’ whispered Karen, covering her mouth with her sleeve, ‘how can you stand the smell?’

At the sound of her words, the Dead man cocked his head to one side as if trying to pin down the sound of life that had penetrated his rotting eardrums, reached out his arms
, and let forth a low dry moan.

‘You get used to it,’ Liz replied, swing
ing her blade in an arc that would connect with the Dead man’s skull, ‘eventually.’

Unfortunately, with his head tilted at such an angle
, her blade glanced off his right temple, removing what little flesh he had left on his cheek and sending a shower of maggots down his chest.

‘Damn,’ she said, re-adjusting her hold on the blade.

But the Dead man seemed to become unusually still, his outstretched arms slowly falling to his side, while his remaining eye began to drift, somehow forgetting its endless search for living flesh. Then, with the softest of moans, the last gasp of air escaped his withered lungs and he crumpled to the floor.

‘What happened?’ Karen asked looking down at the lifeless corpse of the man.

‘Don’t know,’ Liz replied, her brow creasing in concern.

‘You obviously did more damage than you thought,’ suggested Karen, ‘the thing was falling apart, surely it wouldn’t have taken much to put it down.’

‘Hmm… perhaps,’ replied Liz, flicking Samson’s reins again.

As Samson continued to carry Karen and Liz through the village, they could see various corpses dotted along the
roadside, evidence that Imran and the others had passed this way earlier.

‘Jesus! What happened here?’ said Liz, when they saw seven mutilated bodies hanging from the school railings and the single torn body of a woman lying on the ground.

‘Looks like someone outlived their usefulness.’ Karen replied solemnly, turning away from the gruesome scene. ‘Are they the Donaldson’s?’

‘Well, it’s hard to tell
, but I think so. Mary Donaldson and her daughter don’t seem to be among them though,’ Liz said, looking at each of the corpses in turn. ‘I guess whoever’s in charge has some use for them still.’

‘Probably for the breeding program,’ said Karen, ‘they’ve
proven they’re fertile and can carry a child full term. Captain Cardin will want them back at the base.’

‘And whose handy work was this?’ Liz asked, urging Samson away from the school and down a road she knew the cart would be taking.

‘Sergeant Eric Ridge, he’s the officer in command of the landing party,’ Karen replied, ‘they must have seriously put up a fight for the woman and her daughter to have pissed him off so much.’

‘They were an incestuous, nasty bunch of crazies
, but I don’t suppose they really deserved to be strung up for the Dead to feast on like that,’ said Liz. Niggling doubts began to creep into her mind about what they would do when they finally caught up with Mary and her daughter, one of them after all, had murdered Nadine.

So not to tire him
out, Liz let Samson alternate between a walk and a trot, and as he settled in to his rhythm, the two women travelled in silence, uninterrupted by the Dead for the next half an hour.

The day had developed into a cool spring morning. Devoid of the gloomy cloud cover they had been forced to endure of late, the bright sun rose above them in a clea
r blue sky. All about them, small lives went about their merry business, while along the roadside, hedgerow’s bloomed with new life, both plant and animal. The air itself was full of life. Iridescent insects, flitting from flower to flower, did their best to avoid the small birds swooping to collect a winged harvest for their own newly hatched young. While the tree canopies and overgrown gardens had become a concert hall of late starters calling for new mates. But all this life around her did little to instil Liz with any great sense of hope. Even if they did catch up with this Sergeant Ridge, how were they expected to attack what was presumably a well-armoured convoy and not only escape with Charlie, but also with all of their lives? And then there was the question of how they were to deal with Mary and her daughter. Was there a chance that they too were victims of Sergeant Ridge, only doing what they were told to keep their loved ones safe?  

‘Check the map for me
, will you,’ Liz said over her shoulder, putting aside the moral dilemmas concerning Mary and Lucy she knew she would have to face at some point, ‘I think it’s this turning up ahead.’

Reaching into the small drawstring pouch Liz had on her
back; Karen pulled out the small A to Z and opened it at the pages that already had their top corners turned down.

‘So we’re here,’ she said, reaching her arms further around so Liz could see the map, ‘and you say we need to get them before they get to this general area?’

‘Yes,’ Liz replied, taking the small book from Karen for a closer look, ‘and if we don’t find them by then, we’re in big trouble ourselves.’

‘Why?’ asked Karen, looking over Liz’s shoulder at the small map in her hands.

‘Because we’ll be there,’ Liz replied, pointing her finger to a certain point on the map.

‘Oh, Shit!’ was all Karen could say as she read the word ‘Hospital’ by Liz’s finger.

***

‘So we’re here,’ said Imran, pointing to the large map he had now folded so it just showed the area they were in, ‘on the outskirts of Bodmin town
, but what do you think this area is?’

Moving the map in Imran’s hand so a disk of light from one of the spy holes fell directly on the section he had asked about, Phil leant over to look at the grey shaded shape.

‘Looks like it may be some sort of out of town shopping complex or warehouses, I’m not sure,’ he finally said, ‘either way, this close to town, you can bet there’ll be a lot of the Dead still hanging about, and it’s just down the next turning.’

‘Great,’ mumbled Steve.

‘Right, now that we’re moving onto the larger roads, we’re more likely to come across old gridlocked traffic,’ said Patrick looking over his shoulder. ‘I don’t want us blindly going forwards to end up surrounded by the Dead and unable to turn round, that’s just suicide.’

‘Well
, I think it’s about time we gave Duncan’s basket a try,’ said Phil reaching for the battered oval shaped wicker laundry basket.

Only recently
, Duncan had been hit with the flash of inspiration to use a basket on the roof of the cart to hide someone from the hungry eyes of the Dead. As they only reacted if they heard or saw signs of the living, it seemed ideal that whenever someone opened the hatch in the cart’s roof, they could hide their head and shoulders from sight under the loosely woven wicker basket, the extra height enabling them to see further ahead of the cart undetected.

‘I’ll go,’ said Imran, taking the basket from Phil’s hands, ‘
no offense, but we’ll need a bigger basket for you.’

‘Did he just call me fat?’ asked Phil looking at Steve.

‘Phil, the muscles on your arms are almost as big as my thighs,’ Steve replied chuckling softly, ‘I don’t think anyone could call you fat.’

‘Ssshhh...’ Imran whispered, standing up with a foot on each of the benches that ran either side of the cart so he could open the hatch in the roof.

Instantly, silence blanketed the inside of the cart, as with a soft click, Imran pushed the hatch over to rest on the outside of the cart’s roof. Taking the wicker basket in both hands, he then pushed it up lengthways through the opening and then tipped it so it rested bottom up over the hatchway.

‘Here goes,’ he whispered, standing to his full height after he had secured t
he handles of the basket to some rings on the roof.

With his head and shoulders now standing proud
out of the hatchway, he should have been plainly visible to the Dead that he knew milled about further down the road, but thanks to Duncan’s idea, he was hidden from sight. They had already cut away some of the wicker in places, creating small holes through which Imran could now view the area around them undetected.

‘Hey, it seems to be working
,’ Imran whispered down to the other men, while he watched a Dead woman slowly pulling her withered carcass past Delilah and the cart, completely oblivious to Imran’s presence

‘O
kay, there’s plenty of room for us on this road for about fifty meters, but then there’s three wrecked cars and a van blocking the road,’ Imran whispered, ducking back down again. ‘There’s room for us to manoeuvre around it if we go onto the path for a bit, and then re-join the road another thirty metres or so further on, which should take us near the back of those warehouses or whatever they are.’

Patrick gave Imran a ‘thumbs up’ and with a flick of Delilah’s reins
, they were soon moving again, and it wasn’t long before they all felt the bump of the cart wheels as they rose up the curb and onto the path.

Looking through one of the spy holes as they made their way past the mangled pieces of metal, Steve noticed that a chain link fence r
unning parallel with the road was blocking off an area that may have once have been a car park. Whatever it had previously been, it backed onto a large industrial looking complex of warehouses. But it was what filled the car park that made Steve gasp. At some point early on when the Dead first replaced Man at the top of the food chain, the area must have been used as some sort of rescue point for the residents of Bodmin. It had failed horribly. There amid the abandoned rusting shells of family cars, vans, and small local buses, were the motionless figures of over four hundred of the Dead. Worst of all, were the corpses still locked within their cars, for theirs must have been a terrifying and tortured death. With the car park instantly becoming an unorganised mess of torn metal and collided vehicles when the terrified people had tried to flee, the very thing they had hoped would save them, had trapped many. Locked behind their doors, they must have slowly starved to death, while all about them, the hungry Dead fought to get to their flesh.

Tapping Phil on the shoulder, Steve indicated at the horrors that lingered merely a few metres away.

‘Christ!’ Phil whispered, looking back at Steve.

Returning to watch the horde
of the Dead as they passed, Phil and Steve became aware that a wave of movement was unexpectedly rippling through the decaying crowd. The Dead, altered by the presence of something alive, had suddenly roused themselves from their stupor. Starting in a far off corner of the car park, they quickly began their pitiful moaning. As each one of the Dead let forth its hungry call, it whipped its neighbour up into a similarly desperate frenzy. Steve could already see some of them reaching with their painfully slow movements for whatever had caught their attention, but, whatever it was, it was darting through them with some speed. Steve looked at Phil, an anxious look on his face. If the Dead surged in their direction, the chain link fence would stand little chance of holding back such a number of agitated hungry cadavers. Then as the ripple moved over to the corner furthest away from the cart, Steve saw a mangy looking tabby cat leap for the top of the fence. Willing the poor creature to make it over, Steve watched as the cat franticly kicked its back legs, desperate to find leverage on the chain link fence. But unfortunately, all of its effort was to be for nothing, as no sooner had it began its panic driven escape, than Dead hands had latched onto its small body. With an ear piercing howl, the cat tried to drop from the fence, hoping a different avenue of escape would prove more fruitful, but it was too late for the tabby, the Dead would never relinquish their prize. The unfortunate animal screeched one final time before the Dead began their brief but bloody feeding frenzy, and within seconds, it had been torn to pieces, its tasty morsels disappearing amid the crowd of decaying humanity.

Phil and Steve both pulled away from the spy holes and silently moved the covering disks back into place. They had seen enough
, and as they looked over at each other, they both knew it wouldn’t take much for them both to share the bloody fate of the poor moggy.

With a
bump, the cart went back down the curb and re-joined the road on the other side of the wreckage. It was then that they heard the scream, followed by two gunshots.

‘Uh oh!’ whispered Steve, while just beyond the safety of the cart, four hundred heads suddenly snapped to the right.

***

‘There they are!’ said Liz, seeing the back of the Lanherne cart disappear round a corner some hundred metres ahead of them.