Last Days With the Dead (40 page)

At the edge of the ascending
stairs, Liz and Imran nervously waited for Patrick and the others to catch up.

‘Move it!’ Liz screamed, seeing the Dead throng crashing toward them like a swarming mass of death.

With barely seconds to spare, Patrick, Karen, and Steve, charged past Liz just as the Dead spilled out onto the landing. Knowing it was pointless to engage the Dead when they were so vastly out-numbered; Liz and Imran swiftly followed the others, running up the staircase just a few paces behind. The thundering of their fleeing footsteps could barely be registered above the Dead’s deafening moaning, and as the stairway continued to rise, Liz and the others were forced to swiftly push aside more and more of wide leafed foliage, so they could pass. Suddenly, the map she had seen earlier flashed into her mind, distinct and complete in every detail.

‘No!’ she gasped, her steps almost faltering as she made a grab for Imran’s arm.

‘What is it?’ he asked, seeing the panic in her eyes.

‘We’re trapped!’ she whispered, looking back at the encroaching Dead so close behind them, ‘Imran, we’re trapped!’

Frantically, his eyes searched her face, unable to understand what she meant, then as the staircase abruptly broke free of the tree canopy, it became all too apparent. The stairs, that had once offered them a sliver of hope, led to nowhere but a tourist lookout point, an observation platform at the top of the dome some fifty metres above the ground.

‘Trapped…’ Liz whispered again, the fear twisting like a knife in her heart as she saw the others already desperately searching over the handrail for any way down.

‘Fuck! What do we do?’ Cried Andrews, darting wildly from one side of the ten-metre wide platform to the other, his panic causing his words to crack. ‘What the fuck do we do now!’

‘We fight!’ replied Phil, looking sternly from one face to the next
. ‘We fight our way back down past the bastards, it’s the only way.’

‘What
,’ said Andrews, backing as far away from the stairs as he could, ‘are you fucking mad! We’ll be torn to pieces before we even get back to the landing! Fuck, we’re screwed, we’re so fucking screwed!’

‘We don’t have much choice
,’ interrupted Patrick, ‘the branches this high up are too thin to take any of our weight, and unless you fancy a quick drop over the edge, it’s the only option we have.’

‘Right, we stay tight and we stay close,’ Phil began, ‘
we just need to keep them at bay, nothing else.’

Imran had subconsciously reached out and taken Liz’s hand tightly in his own. Just like the rest of the
group, they knew the likelihood of them surviving what was to come was slim. The only consolation the pair could take was that their daughter, Saleana, would be loved and well cared for back at Lanherne. Liz knew that Alice, without a doubt, would love Saleana as her own, but to think she would never see her own daughter again tore at Liz, ripping a hole of pain right down to the depths of her soul.

‘I won’t leave you,’ Imran whispered, squeezing her hand as the group began to gather in a tight circle, ‘I’ll never let you go
.’

‘I love you...’ she simply replied, taking his hand up to her lips.

‘Together then,’ Imran said softly, looking into Liz’s eyes.

‘Together,’ she echoed, choking back the tears that threatened to fall as she quickly stepped into his arms, feeling his heart beating against her chest just one last time.

‘They’re coming!’ screamed Karen, her eyes wide with fear.

Time had run out for them all, the Dead had reached the observation platform. Instantly, Liz let go of Imran’s hand, both so he could fire the few arrows he had left
, and to give her the freedom of movement she needed to wield her sword.

‘Here, take him!’ said Phil urgently, spinning Karen around to drop Charlie in her arms
. ‘Stay behind me for as long as you can, okay!’

Karen, her own neck already bloody from her earlier wound, clutched Charlie close to her chest and nodded. This is why she had come. This was why Matt had died. This child she now held in her arms, this stolen child so cruelly snatched from its loving mother, this was the child she would now die for.

‘Right, stick close! Steve, Andrews, time to make those bullets count!’ shouted Patrick over the alarmingly loud moaning, while the group began to edge forward to their probable deaths.

‘Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…’ Andrews repeated under his breath over and over again, as each step brought them closer to the Dead that even now
, were excitedly spilling out onto the platform.

When it came down to it, it was hard to tell whether it was the Dead man dressed in a gore encrusted suit  with half of his face missing
, or the woman with the chunk of flesh missing from her grey tinged neck that actually reached them first. Not that it mattered, as both were swiftly dispatched by one double swing of Phil’s hefty club. Their shattered and misshapen heads that had been almost torn from their shoulders by the force of the blow, hung momentarily to one side, before their cadaverous bodies slumped to the floor, where they were stepped over as the group finally met the bulk of the horde head on.

‘Get ready!’ Shouted Patrick, as the wave of the Dead finally slammed into them.

Instantly, they were engulfed by a sea of clawing hands and snapping jaws, but somehow the group managed to be keeping the throng at bay. Precious bullets tore through rotten mould covered faces, heavy clubs shattered skulls and blades slashed, dropping reaching limbs left and right.

‘We need to move forward!’ shouted Patrick, barely having time to think
, as yet another corpse slammed into him, it’s open mouth a putrid pit of compulsive desire.

‘Stay together!’ cried Phil, who was using the lifeless shell of a Dead woman as a shield against the manic swarm
. ‘Move as one! Don’t let them get between us!’

Behind
him, he could feel Karen’s body twisting and turning, mirroring his every movement so that she, and more importantly, the precious cargo in her arms were shielded by his bulk.

‘Karen, stay with me!’ he shouted over his shoulder, pulling his club from the crushed remains of a Dead woman’s head
. ‘Stay between me and Liz!’

He knew of all of them, Liz’s skill with her sword was Karen and Charlie’s best defence. Though just how long she could keep up her wild attack on the Dead
, was anyone’s guess, she would tire eventually, as would they all, and then it would really be over.

‘I’m out!’ cried Steve, the chamber of his rifle clicking empty
. ‘We need to get the fuck out of here!’

With limited options left open to him, Steve flipped his rifle over
, and ignoring the searing pain of his hands burning on the hot metal of the barrel, started to use its butt as a club. To each of them it seemed like they had been battling the Dead for an eternity, but in reality, it had barely been a few minutes, such was the all-consuming horror as they fought for their survival. They had barely moved a few metres towards the staircase, before they knew if they didn’t make ground soon, the pressure of the Dead on all sides would simply hold them in place. This spot, miles from home and so far from those they loved, this spot would be the place they finally met their ends.

Andrews fired twice more, reducing the faces of two Dead men to dark rotten pulp. But such was the press of the Dead behind them that the now lifeless corpses
, simply stayed upright, their withered bodies simply unable to fall to the ground. Andrews knew his ammo supply was running dangerously low, and when finally he too felt the click of an empty chamber, the dread that had settled in the pit of his stomach twisted and burned into a blaze of pure panic.

‘I’m out!’ he cried, trying to use the length of his rifle to shove the Dead back, ‘I’m fucking out of ammo! Fuck! We’ve got to get out of here! We’ve got to get the fuck out of here!’

In his panic, he committed the cardinal sin when battling against the Dead, he lost control. Blindly lashing out with the butt of his rifle, he did not see the Dead girl manically clawing her way through between the two lifeless corpses still held upright, that is, not until it was too late. With an almost excited demonic glee, her small hooked fingers latched onto his bicep, and using his own weight against him, used this handhold to pull her open jaws toward his arm. With a terrified cry, Andrews noticed the Dead girl, her mouth seconds away from clamping down, and tried desperately to shake her free. With his attention now solely on the jaws so close to ripping into the flesh of his arm, it didn’t take long for the other Dead to press their advantage. Before he knew what was happening, multiple decaying hands grabbed hold of him, and as one, they began to pull him towards them. Suddenly, a vision born of the darkest of nightmares darted its emaciated and maggot ridden head forward and clamped down on Andrews’ neck. For a split second, Andrews gasped, freezing on the spot, the realisation of what was happening turning his bowels to ice, and then as broken and putrid teeth began to bear down to puncture his skin, he began to scream.

‘Andrews!’ screamed Karen, as a spray of warm blood erupted from his neck to rain down on the grateful open mouths of the Dead.

With blood on their faces, the Dead around Andrews knew their time had come, and as the life pumped out of his convulsing body, they pounced. With the ferocity of a pack of starving hyenas, Dead hands and teeth tore into Andrews, ripping free chunks of flesh to fill their putrid stomachs.  

Liz’s sword slashed upwards through the chin of a Dead woman, her green flesh only barely hanging on to her bones, piercing her skull cavity from underneath and sending her to the oblivion she deserved. Pushing the woman’s corpse back into the crowd, she tried not to look to her left where Private Andrews was being quickly torn to pieces
, but continued to slash again and again at the Dead hands reaching for her. With every swipe of her blade, limbs would fall cold and lifeless to her feet, but even so, the gap between her and the Dead was getting smaller and smaller. She knew before very long, there wouldn’t even be enough space left to use her sword effectively, and like Imran, whose bow was useless in such close quarter attacks, she would have to resort to using just her hunting knife. Thinking of him, she itched to make sure he was okay, so after kicking out at a Dead man with a blackened gaping hole where his left eye and much of the flesh of his cheek should be, she risked the briefest of glances in his direction. Imran was just pulling his knife from the temple of a Dead man, and as the thick rancid fluid splashed over his hand, Liz’s heart seemed to stop in her chest. For there, reaching past the shoulders of the now truly dead man to meet Imran’s extended arm with her opening jaws, was an exceptionally tall Dead woman.

‘Imran!’ she cried, using the body of the man he had just dispatched for leverage to leap up to knock the Dead woman’s jaw aside.

As her fist connected with the jaw, the Dead woman’s head suddenly snapped to one side, but no real damage had been done, and although the Dead had begun to already paw at her back, Liz could not let Imran be harmed. So, with a scream of rage, she yanked the back of her jacket from the Dead hands behind her, and lunged again at the tall Dead woman who even now, was darting back to Imran. But the Dead woman suddenly faltered in her movements, the decaying muscles of her face becoming slack and nonresponsive, causing her jaw to fall lifelessly to one side. Then with a strange choking sound, her head unexpectedly flopped forward to momentarily rest on her chest, before her body dropped, lifelessly, to join the other corpses at Imran’s feet. Briefly, Liz’s eyes met Imran, his confusion mirroring her own.

A scream from Karen, shook
Liz from the moment, and spinning, she saw Karen holding Charlie with one arm, while she frantically stabbed alternately between the face of the Dead man in front of her, and one that had snaked its way through its fallen brethren to grab hold of her leg. Then, just like with the tall woman, the Dead man pulling his face eagerly forward to take a bite from Karen’s thigh, inexplicably stopped. One second, he was a living abomination, an unnatural plague on mankind, and the next, he was just as he should be, a corpse. Confused, Liz’s eyes darted out over the crowd, her gaze flitted from one decaying visage to the next. It was only when she knew what she was looking for that sure enough, she could see more and more of the Dead suddenly halting in their pursuit of the living, only to succumb to the true death that had eluded them for so long.

‘What the fuck’s happening?’ shouted Steve, pushing aside two Dead men whose unnatural life force had suddenly fled their decaying muscles.

‘They’re dying! They’re finally fucking dying!’ shouted Phil, pulling the end of his spiked club from the skull of a Dead woman, while next to her, one of her Dead brethren simply fell to the floor, lifeless.

‘Imran
,’ said Liz, her hand reaching for his arm as three, and then four more of the Dead  in front of them dropped, their bodies transformed from instruments of death, to little more than a collection of rotting flesh on sun bleached bones.            

Then, as if by some unseen chain reaction, another fell, then another
, and another, and soon more and more of the Dead were letting go of the unnatural life the man-made virus had forced upon them. Bit by bit, the volume of the moaning began to decrease, only to be replaced by the almost constant thump of body landing on body, as the Dead dropped lifelessly to the floor. With the Dead horde now thinning with each second that passed, the group simply had to clamber over the piles of bodies to dispatch the few that remained standing. Even these seemed to be slower and more laboured in their movements than usual, and some even gave themselves over to the darkness of death by the time Patrick, Phil, or Liz, finally managed to reach them. And as the last of the Dead on the platform fell to Liz’s sword, she looked over at Steve, who was standing at the top of the stairs.