Last Days With the Dead (30 page)

Wiping the putrid gore from his boot, Patrick looked quizzically back at the motionless corpse. It had happened so fast and with only the briefest snapshot of the Dead thing’s slackening face, Patrick knew he must have been mistaken, yet
, still the image niggled and unsettled him.

‘Everything
okay?’ asked Phil as Patrick climbed back into the cart.

‘Hmmm?’ asked Patrick, his thoughts still troubled by what he may have seen
. ‘Sorry, yeah, yeah, everything’s fine, let’s get going.’

‘Right-oh,’ Phil replied with a nod, taking up Delilah’s reins once again.

For twenty-five minutes, they travelled along the overgrown lane looking for the break that would hopefully take them to Eden. Thankfully, they didn’t come across any more of the Dead along the lane, in fact, the only other thing to cross their path was a healthy looking fox. For the length of a heartbeat, the sleek animal paused to watch them approach, mildly interested by the strange beasts that had wondered into its territory. Then after taking a sniff of their approaching scent, dismissed them and darted through the small break its daily run had created in the hedgerow.

‘We haven’t missed it, have we?’ asked Imran, moving forward to look over Phil’s shoulder
. ‘Surely we should have found the side track by now?’

‘Hmm
,’ grumbled Phil, his eyebrows creasing in concern, ‘perhaps these bloody hedgerows have closed the gap and we’ve already missed it?’

‘No, wait!’ Imran said, pointing to the left side of the lane some thirty metres along
. ‘Look, look there. Isn’t that a gate under all that ivy?’

Phil leant forward to get a better look and breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like they may have found their way through after all.    

After countless years exposed to the elements, the wooden gate was so rotten it almost crumbled under Steve’s touch when he tried to move it. In fact, had it not been for the years of ivy growth that, bit by bit, had developed a strangle hold on the wooden gate; Steve doubted there would still be any gate at all. So with only two hard kicks, the last remnants of the gate collapsed to the ground in a heap of damp wood fibre and tangled ivy. As the cart rolled through the gap in the towering hedgerows, they realised Phil had been right to describe this off shoot as little more than a track. Almost immediately, the relatively level surface of the lane was left behind them and the carts wheels began to crunch over the weed-choked gravel that someone had put down years before. Either side of them, the brambles and hawthorn bushes began to thin slightly, only to be replaced with light woodland. The trees here were perhaps twenty or thirty years old, and it was only when they took notice of the strangely even spacing between them that they realised this was in fact, man-made woodland.

‘It doesn’t look too deep,’ said Phil, guiding Delilah around a tall sapling that, like many other plants, had tried to take advantage of the break in the tree cover created by the gravel track
. ‘Whoever designed this Eden place must have landscaped this woodland to create a visual break between them and the fields behind.’

‘Visual break
,’ mocked Liz, shaking her head.

‘What?’ Phil said
, looking over his shoulder, ‘I can read you know. Nadine’s not the only one that likes to lose herself in a book.’

At the mention of Nadine’s name, the smile slowly fell from Liz’s face as image of her friend’s blood soaked body flashed before her eyes.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to...’ Phil began, realising what he had said as soon as the words left his lips.

‘No, no, it’s alright
,’ she interrupted, waving away his concern, ‘Nadine was our friend and a part of all our lives for so long. We can’t just ‘not’ mention her, like she didn’t exist, we owe her more than that. We should remember and talk about her; I think she’d like that.’

Phil gave Liz a sad smile and nodded.

It only took them a few minutes before they broke free of the tree line on the opposite side of the young woodland, and as they left behind the mottled shadows of the trees, they found themselves on a sun-bathed break some five metres wide. It was covered in light coloured gravel and ran off in both directions, following the two-metre high metal perimeter fence.

‘Erm
,’ said Phil, looking left and right at the gravel stretching off in both directions, ‘which way?’

‘Hang on,’ said Imran, reaching for a pair of battered binoculars hanging on a hook, ‘I’ll stand on the roof
, maybe I’ll see something.’

Within seconds, Imran had pulled himself up onto the cart’s roof and with the binoculars up to his
face; he followed the curve of the perimeter fence searching for a gate.

‘
Wow, they’re huge
,’ he said to himself when he caught sight of the first of the vast bio-domes that made up the Eden project.

Two huge adjoining domes, each having three or four smaller domes nestled at their base, dominated the landscape that had been given over to the Eden project
. The domes were made up of a hexagonal pattern of strengthened plastic cells surrounded by a steel framework, and as Imran took in the amazing vista, sunlight glinted and danced across their honeycomb like structure. Even from a distance, Imran could see the area was awash with flowering plants and lush greenery. Not just in the gardens surrounding the domes, tourist centres and picnic areas, but the very domes themselves had been claimed by the plants they intended to display. Both inside and out, creepers of all kinds had worked their way up along the steel structure. It created a living green lacework that reached up for at least ten metres from the bases of the two larger domes, and almost covered the framework of the smaller connecting domes entirely.   

‘Do you see anything?’ called Patrick from below him.

‘What? Sorry.’ he said, quickly refocusing on the job at hand.

‘Nothing to the left. The fence just runs all the way round unbroken
,’ he finally answered, turning to check the other way. ‘And on the right, we have, wait, yes, yes, it looks like there’s a gate about five hundred metres or so down from us. It’s next to some sort of small building, probably a supply shed or something.’

‘So, ‘right’ it is then,’ said Phil, flicking Delilah’s reins.

‘Did you see any of the Dead?’ Karen asked, as Imran closed the top hatch behind him and the cart started with a lurch.

‘Not that I noticed immediately
, but you can only see part of the complex from here,’ he replied, replacing the binoculars on their hook. ‘And anyway, outside of the domes and the visitor’s centre, Eden looks like it was designed to be a warren of pathways winding through various types of gardens. Of course, after all these years, those gardens have grown pretty wild.’

‘So, in other words, we don’t know
,’ said Steve, taking a brief swig from a water bottle. ‘Great!’

‘Well, it’s not as i
f we’ll be hanging around to pick up souvenirs from the gift shop, Steve,’ said Liz.

‘Really?
And I was hoping for an ‘I’ve been to Eden and all I got was this lousy T-shirt’ T-shirt,’ Steve jokingly replied.

‘Gift shops aside, we might have a problem,’ added Patrick, taking the water bottle Steve was passing him
. ‘If this place is the warren Imran says it is, unless a route to the exit is clearly marked, we’re going to have to find some sort of map to find our way out.’

‘Right, looks like somebod
y needs to get out with the bolt cutters,’ said Phil a few minutes later, as he pulled Delilah to a stop in front of the gate.

‘I’ll go,’ said
Patrick, pulling the large bolt cutters from a box under the bench, ‘Imran can you give me some cover, just in case.’

‘Sure,’ Imran replied, standing to open the roof hatch again.

‘Actually, now that we’ve stopped,’ began Liz, glancing down at her watch, ‘I think I’ll swop Samson and Delilah over. She could probably do with a rest by now.’

‘Good idea.’ said Patrick, opening one of the side hatches
. ‘We don’t want to tire the old girl out.’

So as Liz went to unhitch Delilah from the cart and replace her with Samson, Patrick went to work on the secured gate, both of them working with the secure knowledge that Imran had their backs covered.

‘Come on, you… fucker,’ growled Patrick, straining to bring the bolt cutter blades together.

Suddenly
, with a sharp ‘snap’, the blade edges connected, cutting through one of the links of the padlocked chain that had been wound securely through the steel gate. Holding onto the two ends so the padlock didn’t fall and alert something unseen waiting for him on the other side of the gate, Patrick began to pass the chain back and forth until, with the softest of ‘clinks’, it was finally free. Turning to see that Liz had already successfully swopped over the two horses, Patrick glanced up at Imran and nodded, ensuring he was ready for the gate to be opened. Imran returned the gesture and pulled the string of his bow taught, he was ready for anything should it be waiting for them on the other side of the steel gate. 

With an annoyingly loud screech, the years of rust on the hinges finally gave way
, and Patrick began to pull one side of the large metal gate open towards him. He had only pulled it halfway open when the base of it scraped along the gravel and became wedged on the uneven ground.

‘Shit
,’ he mumbled to himself, hoping the other side would open fully or they would have to get the spades out to level the ground themselves.

He was just stepping back to reach for the other side when an arrow unexpectedly shot silently through the air just in front of his face.

‘Jesus!’ he said, jumping back, startled by Imran’s arrow.

Snapping his head to the left, Patrick watched the body of a Dead man, just inside of the gate, falling to its knees with Imran’s arrow lodged deep in the side of its temple.

‘Must’ve been the sound of the gate opening that attracted it,’ called Imran, already reaching for another arrow from his quiver.

‘Thanks
,’ Patrick smiled, stepping closer to the badly decayed corpse that wore a filthy green T-shirt with ‘Eden Project’ printed across its front.

Placing his boot on the corpse’s head, Patrick bent down and with a tug, pulled free Imran’s arrow before returning to open the second gate. Thankfully, after only a little more screeching protest from the rusted hinges, the gate swung fully open and came to a stop next to
a small post set in the gravel surround.

‘Do you think you can
get through?’ asked Patrick, looking back and forth, trying to judge the width of the opening.

‘Phil says yes
, just about,’ Imran replied, ‘but can you guide us in so we don’t get the wheels wedged.’

‘O
kay.’ Patrick nodded, stepping backwards further through the gate.

With a brief look over his shoulder to make sure nothing rotting and hungry was about to pounce on him, Patrick began to wave the cart through the gate. Using Imran’s retrieved arrow as a pointer, he guided the cart as it slowly rolled through the gates.

‘Right, you’re clear.’ Patrick called to Phil, stepping backwards so Samson and the cart could make the turn on to the path.

Imran had been right. Next to the gate was indeed a small shed like building with grey slate roof tiles
, and a small leaded window. On its door, loose hanging metallic letters spelling out ‘aff only’, told him if he looked hard enough in the explosion of plant growth at the base of the door, he would surely find a missing S and T. It had obviously been used as some sort of supply shed for tools, and the tiny building, nestled tightly between a vast expanse of rhododendron bushes and the fence, had been spared much of the harsh effects of direct weather. All about the small building for as far as Patrick could see, plants were growing tall, wild, and unchecked. They spilled out over the weed chocked cobbled pathway and like a maze, enclosed the cart in walls of living greenery.

‘Think you were right, Imran,’ Patrick began, looking along the pathway, ‘this place really is a warren, we need to find some sort of ‘you are here map’ or we’ll…’

But his words were cut short as from the bushes behind him, another Dead member of the Eden staff threw itself at his back and bit down hard on his shoulder.

‘Fuck!’ shouted Patrick in
pain-fuelled panic, as he automatically flipped the emaciated corpse over his shoulder.

With a clatter of
rag-covered bones, the cadaver landed on the cobbles in front of him. Using the only weapon he had to hand, Patrick lunged forward and stabbed the creature through the eye with Imran’s arrow. With a squelch, the film covered eye popped, sending a rancid liquid over his hand, but Patrick was far from finished with the creature and drawing his hand back quickly, he stabbed again. This time the arrow tip momentarily met the resistance of bone, until with a crack, the arrow plunged deep into the rotting brain, forever stilling the Dead man.

‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ Patrick yelled, not knowing what a bite from the Dead could do to them now that they had effectively been cured of the Death-walker virus.