Last Days With the Dead (32 page)

‘Shit!’ he
spat, gently letting the pampas grass fall back into place as he backed away from the corner.

‘We’ll have to find another way,’ he whispered, pulling the folded map out from under his jacket, ‘there’s at least forty of those pus-bags on the road and even more further on. They’re just milling about now
, but if they catch a glimpse of us, the shit will really hit the fan.’

He let th
e meaning of his words hang, un-clarified, in the air. He didn’t need to explain, they all knew what he meant. Even if they dared to use their assault rifles, they would be overrun and slaughtered within minutes. As Sergeant Ridge frantically searched for another route, Grimes could be heard desperately trying to vomit without making any noise. He was failing.

‘Is he alright?’ Andrews murmured past Lucy to a worried looking Sinclair.

‘I’m fine,’ replied Grimes, answering for himself. Gulping down deep breaths, he wiped away the sheen of sweat from his face with his sleeve and continued, ‘It’s running when I’ve probably got borderline concussion that’s not too…’

‘Look, we wouldn’t be in this shit if wasn’t for you and the ginger gorilla here,’ spat Pelling, interrupting him and indicating toward Sinclair, ‘
so suck it up and stop your bitching!’

‘Fuck you!’ Sinclair mouthed, giving Pelling the finger.  

‘We need to use the gardens,’ Lucy finally whispered, reaching out to touch Andrews’ arm, ‘the Dead are less likely to be there, we can get past them by crossing through the gardens.’

As she drip fed them this nugget of survival information
, all eyes once again turned to the frail girl.

‘Makes sense, Sir.’ muttered Andrews, turning to catch Sergeant Ridge’s eye.

For a few seconds, the Sergeant weighed up Lucy’s suggestion. It galled him that this brat should have better tactical knowledge than himself, but he knew their options were severely limited. So after one final glance at the map, more to save face than actually to find an alternative route, because he already knew there wasn’t one, he nodded his agreement.

‘Mallon, Sinclair
, check out what’s on the other side of this wall,’ said Ridge, using his large hunting knife to point to the two soldiers.

Both men silently nodded their understanding and slowly began to inch their way over the low garden wall, each desperately hoping that the worst thing waiting for them on the other side was nothing more than a patch of stinging nettles.  After a few anxious
seconds, a hand appeared back through the cherry blossom, giving them the all clear sign.

‘Give me the baby and I’ll pass him to you,’ whispered Andrews, when it was Lucy’s turn to climb over the wall, ‘don’t worry, I won’t drop him
.’

Lucy looked from the child in her arms to the soldier crouched next to her. It troubled and confused her that this man was being friendly towards her. In her
head, he was her enemy. He may not have participated, but he was on the side that had beaten her family and left them for dead. Surely, therefore in some small part, he too was to blame for her mother’s body that now floated in the flooded carrier, a metal shard in her brain. Surely, he was to be punished along with the rest, wasn’t he?

‘Lucy?’ Andrews softly repeated, snapping the girl from her thoughts.

He had rested the shovel that was his weapon against the wall and was holding out his arms, hopeful to take the infant from her.

‘It’s alright,’ he nodded, ‘I’ll give him right back when you’re over the wall
, I promise.’

Lucy fought with something inside for a moment
, and then almost without warning, plonked the baby in the young soldier’s arms, pushed aside some blossom covered foliage, and clambered over the wall. Within a heartbeat, two small delicate hands parted the foliage again, revealing Lucy with a concerned look on her face.

‘Here you go,’ Andrews whispered, giving her a reassuring smile as he passed the baby back to Lucy, ‘told you I wouldn’t drop him.’

‘Thanks,’ she quickly muttered in reply, a look on her face as if the word had caused her pain.

Once everyone was over the low wall, the small group found themselves with a brief respite from the dangers of the road. Momentarily hidden from view by the surrounding overgrown bushes and trees, the soldiers looked up at the abandoned house searching for a way in.

‘Get it open, Mallon,’ said Ridge, nodding to the warped door with its peeling paint.

‘Wait!’ hissed Lucy, seeing Mallon was about to kick in the front door.

Surprised at the young girl’s intervention, Mallon looked quizzically back to his Sergeant as if to ask whose instructions he should be following.

‘Well?’ asked Ridge, impatiently tapping his leg with his hunting knife.

‘They’ll hear the noise,’ she whispered, walking over to look through one of the grime covered windows, ‘it doesn’t take much to get them interested.’

Shielding the reflected light with a cupped hand, Lucy peered into the gloomy front room of the house looking for signs that the Dead may be lurking inside. Satisfied they would be alone once they
entered; Lucy turned away from the window and began to look about the small front garden for something in particular.

‘Ah,’ she mumbled, finding an old planter full of rainwater, ‘this’ll do.’

Darting back to Andrews, Lucy quickly deposited the child back into his arms. Then getting down on her knees, she began to tear at the clumps of weeds and grasses that had taken root at the base of a flowering bush. Once a patch had been cleared, she tipped the water from the planter onto the mud and began to mix the two together to form a thick paste like slop.

‘What the fu
ck do you think you’re doing?’ Sneered Pelling, watching the girl.

‘I need some fabric or paper.’ Lucy whispered, ignoring Pelling altogether.

‘How big?’ Asked Grimes, fascinated by the girl’s curious activity.

‘About this big,’ she replied, holding her hands up.

‘Here,’ said Ridge, reluctantly ripping away part of the folded map he knew they wouldn’t need, ‘I hope this is going somewhere?’

Lucy gingerly took the paper from the Sergeant and then began to smother it in the muddy paste. Once it was completely covered, she scooped up another handful of the sloppy mud and carried them both to the window. Choosing one of the smaller panes, Lucy threw the handful of mud at the glass. With a soft splat, the mud stuck to the
windowpane and Lucy started carefully to cover it with the equally muddy paper.

‘Oh, clever
,’ mumbled Grimes, already guessing what she planned to do.

‘What?’ asked Sinclair, still none the wiser.

Lucy then smoothed out the paper stuck to the pane of glass and when she was at last satisfied, she bent down in search of the final item she needed to complete her task.

‘Here.’ said Grimes reaching down to pick up a small stone.

Taking the stone, Lucy chose a spot on the paper covered glass and gave it one sharp tap. With a barely audible cracking sound, the glass broke and Lucy began to peel away the paper slowly, taking with it much of the now shattered small windowpane. Slipping her hand delicately through the hole she had just made in the glass, Lucy slowly pulled the handle up from its ‘locked’ position. Then using just the tips of her fingers, she started to push against the inside of the window frame.

‘Come on.’ She muttered, as the stiff window frame refused to budge.

Grimes was about to offer to help her when the frame suddenly popped open. Without saying a word, Lucy quickly washed her hands in the last of the water from the planter and after drying them on her trousers, silently took the child back from Andrews.

‘Well done,’ he whispered to Lucy, as the soldiers began to climb through the now open window.

Just like at the farmhouse the previous day, the soldiers moved through the house in practiced formation, searching for any unwelcome hungry surprises on the way. Unlike their last search though, this time their assault weapons hung impotently on their backs, their use strictly prohibited. So with each of the soldiers tightly clutching their makeshift weapons, they cautiously made their way to the small kitchen at the back of the property and prayed no one else was home.

Apart from a few mice that scuttled off along the skirting boards when the soldiers came into the kitchen, they had found the house was mercifully empty.

‘Just one of them in the back garden, Sir,’ said Sinclair, pushing aside the slats of the blind over the sink, ‘God knows how it’s even still standing from the state of it.’

Sergeant Ridge stepped around the table covered in a thick layer of dust and mouse droppings, to look for himself. Sinclair had been
right; there standing in the tall grass under the bows of a large apple tree, was a severely emaciated corpse.

‘Right, let’s deal with ‘bones’ out there and get going
,’ said Ridge, his fingers slipping from the blind’s slats, ‘the longer we’re out here the less chance we have of getting through this without our balls ending up in some meat-bag’s stomach.’

Luckily, the back door opened with the simple turn of a key that someone had quite considerately left sitting in the lock
, and as Sergeant Ridge stepped out into the equally overgrown back garden, the cadaver under the tree became aware of his presence. With its movements verging on manic, the creature raised its arms and began to open and close its mouth rapidly, partly chewing away what little was left of the dried up flesh of its lips. Strangely though, it made no sound or tried to get closer to the living flesh it desperately desired, but simply stayed where it was. Confused, Ridged placed the holdall containing the Lanherne infant’s body on the ground, readjusted his grip on the large hunting knife, and stepped forward into the tall grass. It was only when he was a few paces away from the ravenous cadaver that he realised why. Wound tightly round the corpse’s neck and leading up to one of the sturdier branches above, was a rope. Whoever this sorry creature had once been, they had hung themselves. Whether they had been bitten or simply unable to cope with life in this world of the dead, Ridge would never know, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t really care either. Whoever this putrid mess had been in life, it didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was dealing with the bag of bones that slavered in front of him, so he could get out of this hellhole alive.

Without giving the cadaver a second thought, Ridge lunged forward. With one powerful slashing motion, his blade ripped through decaying skin, cartilage and bone, severing head from shoulders. For the briefest of
moment, the corpse hung as it had for countless months and then with the sound of the last remnant of skin tearing, the head and body parted company. Unlike those from Lanherne, who never left an animated head lying in the grass where an unsuspecting traveller could step on it, Ridge saw no reason to finish the job. He had made sure the creature was out of action and that was all that mattered. He certainly wouldn’t be coming this way again, so what did he care.

With the flick of his
gore-smeared blade, Ridge told the others to get going. He was just about to step over the low fence that separated one garden from the next when he remembered he forgotten to pick up the holdall.

‘Damn,’ he muttered to himself, jogging back to the kitchen door.

As he bent down to pick up the bag, he glanced over to the decapitated head sitting at the base of the apple tree. Something about what he saw niggled him, something was wrong, but what, he could not pin down. It was only when he was again astride the fence with one leg in each garden that it came to him. The eyes in the head that should have compulsively followed his movements hadn’t. They had been still. But Sergeant Ridge wasn’t to be given any time to process this realisation, for the next garden was providing its own problem to deal with.

‘Jesus,’ murmured Sinclair, watching the three corpses writhing against the darkly smeared glass.

Ridge looked at the three cadavers on the other side of the wide patio doors and briefly wondered if the female corpse was the mother to the two decaying children by her side, and just who had killed whom. Had the mother, as in life, brought her children into this world of death with pain, blood, and fearful screaming, or had the children in fact turned their own teeth upon their mother, desperate to reclaim the flesh from which they came. Even as he watched, the mother frantically tried to bite through the glass, unable to understand why she could go no further. While at her side, the two children frantically threw their decaying bodies again and again at the glass, turning their flesh to a mashed pulp.

‘We’d better go,’ said Lucy, tearing her eyes away from the two children not much younger th
an herself, ‘the sound might be carrying through to the front of the house.’

Sergeant Ridge nodded his agreement and continued wading his way through the
knee-high grass to the next fence, leaving behind them the pitiful family to be forever entombed within their once happy home.

‘Looks like someone tried to make a stand,’ whispered Sinclair to Grimes, nodding
to the barricaded ground floor windows and back door of the house they were now passing. ‘Wonder if they made it?’