Last Days With The Dead (Lanherne Chronicles Book 3)

by Stephen Charlick

  ‘I can’t get the one on top of him,’ Steve heard Imran say, as he rolled around on the ground battling for his life, ‘I might hit Steve too.’

  Then with an almighty roar, someone was thundering along the road towards him.

  ‘Get ready!’ shouted Phil.

  And with a yell, a spiked club was swinging with lightning speed down towards him.

  ‘Jesus!’ cried Steve, thrusting the dog’s head up to meet the fast approaching spikes.

  With a crack, three of the long spikes, ripped through the top of the dog’s skull, killing him instantly, and as one final spasm shot through the dog’s body, it collapsed.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck! Shitty Fuck!’ winced Steve, his fingers slipping on the dog’s thick saliva as he tried to pry open the dead beast’s mouth.

  ‘Here, let me do it,’ said Phil, squatting his large frame down to look at Steve’s arm, ‘take the weight of the club and I’ll open his jaws.’

  Breathing hard through his teeth, Steve nodded.

  ‘You know there are easier ways to get dirty,’ said Phil, finally snapping the dead dog’s jaw open and throwing the beast’s carcass to the side.

  ‘Ha, Fucking, Ha,’ mumbled Steve, cradling his bleeding arm against his chest.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you back in the cart and get that seen to,’ continued Phil, helping Steve to his feet, ‘we need to get those wounds cleaned up, and with what we’ve got to use, it’s going to hurt like a bitch.’

  ‘Great. Why am I not surprised?’ said Steve under his breath, walking to the cart where Liz was already standing, waiting for him with their small precious medical kit under one arm.

  ‘Do you want to try to take your jacket off or shall I just cut the sleeve?’ she asked, gently holding his arm.

  ‘I’d rather save it,’ he replied, already slipping his undamaged arm free from his jacket sleeve, ‘and anyway, having a clean bandage on show is going to be a bit of a give-away that I haven’t been living rough for the last eight months.’

  ‘If you could just…’ Steve continued, nodding to his damaged arm.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, gently taking the sleeve cuff in her fingers.

  Slowly stepping backwards, he pulled his bloody arm free from the jacket and winced.

  ‘Well, at least it’s only my left arm,’ he said, turning his blood covered forearm back and forth to see what damage had been done, ‘I can still shoot.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, Solider-man, it’s not that bad.’ Liz said, taking his hand to look at the deep bite. ‘You’re not bleeding enough for anything major to have been severed, so I’m going to wash the blood off with water and then I’m afraid I need to sterilise the wounds.’

  ‘And that’s going to hurt…’ said Steve, scrunching up is face.

  ‘Afraid so,’ Liz replied, unscrewing the cap from a large bottle of their twice boiled water.

  Slowly, she tipped the bottle, pouring half of the water over Steve’s arm. It was only when much of the surface blood had been washed away that they could really see what damage the Dog had actually done. As Liz had predicted, although the bite was deep, nothing serious had been torn, ensuring Steve’s arm would heal in time.

  ‘Hmm, these two are quite big,’ said Liz, softly touching the two deep cuts caused by the dog’s large canines. ‘If Avery were here, he could put some stiches in. We’ll just have to make do with Superglue.’

  Letting go of Steve’s arm, Liz then pulled a second smaller bottle from the medical kit. Opening it, the sharp burning smell of bleach was instantly recognisable.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do,’ Steve said, shaking his head.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Liz replied, tipping a quarter of the bleach into what was left of the water, re-screwing the cap and shaking the large bottle to mix them together, ‘I’m watering it down, see.’

  ‘Oh, well that makes me feel a lot better about having bleach poured over open wounds,’ said Steve sarcastically, while holding out his arm and pointedly looked the other way.

  After much swearing through gritted teeth, Steve’s wounds were finally clean enough for Liz to pat dry with a towel and apply a few dabs of the Superglue to close the larger cuts.

  ‘There, all done,’ she said, finally tying off the end of the tight bandage on Steve’s forearm.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Steve, moving his wrist in a circle and wincing slightly.

  While Liz had been fixing up Steve’s arm, Phil and Patrick had used the time to remove the wooden guard beam that blocked their access to the train line, and by the time it had been cut free, Liz and Steve were already clambering back up into the cart.

  ‘Right, let’s get going, shall we?’ said Phil, once again gathering up the reins in his hand.

  And so with a click of his tongue, they were back on the move again. Thanks to Steve clearing a pathway through the rubble and the removal of the guard beam, Delilah was able to get them onto the level crossing and along the train tracks almost immediately.

  ‘We’re coming, Charlie-boy,’ Phil muttered, his eyebrows creasing together in concern when he glanced down at his watch and noticed the morning was already slipping by them, ‘Uncle Phil’s coming for you.’

  Behind them, the third dog, lying hidden amid the brambles, slowly blinked as he watched the cart disappear from view. Sniffing the acrid smell of something chemical and manmade, stung the back of his nostrils, but despite this, he could easily detect the warm scent of the man’s blood in the air. It called to him, demanding he follow. Creeping forward from his hiding place, the dog stood and turned his head to catch the enticing scent of fresh blood drifting on the wind. Tilting his head back to the bushes, the dog gave a single sharp bark, before again turning to inhale the smell that made his mouth drip with thick saliva. The soft padding of many paws behind him, told him the pack was with him again. They had lost two of their number, but there were always more to take their place, the pack would survive. And so, leading the way, the dog ran across the open space and started along the wire fence, his eleven pack brothers and sisters close behind him. They would follow the blood scent to its source; today the pack would not be denied their flesh.

  ***

  Sitting alone in the dimly lit farmhouse kitchen, Andrews idly stabbed at the portion of rehydrated pasta that he was having for his breakfast. As if to torture himself, he suddenly remembered with mouth-watering detail, the amazing meals his mother used to make for him and his father. The roast dinners with plates piled high with crispy potatoes, golden Yorkshire puddings, and a richly thick dark gravy, her creamy fish pie topped with a fluffy cheesy mash and the seemingly endless supply of cakes thick with buttercream.

  ‘Christ,’ he mumbled, jabbing his army issue fork into the unappetising pasta swimming in what he assumed was meant to bear some semblance of a tomato sauce.

  At that precise moment, he was ashamed to admit it, but he wasn’t sure what he missed most, his mother or her food. Lost in thought as he contemplated his own selfishness, Andrews caught the fleeting shadow of some movement in the corner of his eye. Turning, he looked through the open kitchen door, to the hall beyond.

  ‘Is that you Grimes? Sinclair?’ he called, balancing the kitchen chair on its back legs so he could lean back and see further down the hall. ‘Hello? Mallon is that you?’

  When no-one answered, Andrews let the front legs of his chair fall back down the tile floor with a bang. Then with a screech of wood against tile, he pushed the chair back, and giving the half-finished pasta one last disapproving glance, left the kitchen. Walking into the dusty hallway, Andrews could hear the muffled sounds of the other soldiers outside, getting ready to leave. Stepping around the remains of some broken children’s toys scattered on the floor, he made a point of ignoring the dark smeared wallpaper that had so obviously been ruined by small bloody handprints.

  ‘Anyone in here?’ he asked, glancing into one of the shadowy ground floor rooms, only to see more upturned furniture and signs
of a family life torn apart by tragedy.

  As a reply, he heard the sound of heavy footsteps walking across the floor above him.

  ‘You fuckers!’ Sighed Andrews, realising that someone was probably rifling through Glass’ pockets, salvaging anything useful. ‘Can’t you just let him alone?’

  Walking to the base of the stairs, Andrews grumbled silently to himself, while his tongue fought to work loose a piece of the cardboard like pasta that was stuck in one of his fillings. He was already half way up the staircase, his boots banging loudly on each step, when the tell-tale creaking of someone moving about in the front bedroom stopped.

  ‘Come on, stop pissing about!’ Andrews called up the stairs, his foot hovering above the next step.

  Whoever was up there had clearly heard him approaching, and it was not as if there was anywhere else they could go, but still, no one answered him.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he snapped, stomping up the few remaining stairs, up onto the landing.

  Just as he had assumed, the door to the front bedroom was ajar. They had made sure the room, now a tomb for both Private Glass and the decimated family, had been shut up tight. But now, someone had entered and violated what little eternal peace Glass was afforded in this final resting place so far from his friends and home. Feeling the anger starting to rise within him, Andrews walked up to the door and was about to place his hand on the door handle when a new sound emerged from the room. He froze. This time the sound that came from the room was a rhythmic creaking, interspersed with a wet animalistic grunting. Andrews knew exactly what it sounded like, but to think anyone would choose to have sex in the room one of their colleagues had died in, was monstrous to contemplate.

  ‘What the fuck…’ he began throwing open the door, but any further words he had planned to say froze in his throat.

  With his eyes widening in terror and revulsion, Andrews struggled to take in what he was seeing. There, covered in blood and lying lifeless on the bed, like a broken doll tossed across the rotting corpses of the mother and daughter, was Pelling. She had been gutted and her wet bloody innards had been scattered about the room like so much forgotten and discarded laundry. But even more disturbing, was sight of the man hunched over her, the camouflage trousers hanging about his ankles giving him away as a soldier, rutting and writhing between her blood splattered spread legs.

  ‘W… What?’ Andrews managed to whisper, bile rising in his throat as the soldier grunted loudly while he continued to pound himself into Pelling’s ruined corpse.

  ‘What… What the fuck are you doing?’ he finally managed say loud enough to be heard over the man’s act of bloody necrophilia.

  With one last deep thrust, the soldier climaxed, his body shuddering as the pleasure overwhelmed him. Then, just when Andrews thought what he was witnessing couldn’t possibly get any worse, the solider reached down and grabbed a handful of something from within Pelling. With a forceful yank, he pulled a wet and fleshy mass from her body, and then, as if it held the most exquisite perfume, he caressed it with his face, rubbing the bloody wetness across his cheeks and lips. Then with almost a tenderness, the man kissed the lump of meat and sighed.

  ‘You’re fucking insane, Soldier!’ Andrews snapped through his gritted teeth, swiftly swinging his assault rifle from his back and into firing position.

  With a second sigh, this one born more of irritation rather than ecstasy, the man’s arm fell to his side, allowing the lump of flesh to fall with a thud to the floor.

  ‘You always were a kill joy, Andrews,’ replied the man in a familiar voice.

  ‘No… no… no…’ Andrews whispered, shaking his head in disbelief, as the man began to turn his head to look at him.

  ‘The bitch fucked me up,’ said Glass, grinning a blood covered smile, as a dribble of dark blood slowly ran down his nose from the hole in his forehead. ‘Seemed only fair to repay the favour.’

  Andrews shook his head in disbelief, he knew Glass was dead, this couldn’t be happening.

  ‘You can have a go if you like,’ said Glass, licking clotted blood from his fingers, before reaching down to pull up his trousers, ‘there’s enough for two, I don’t mind.’

  Andrews, frozen by the horror and impossibility of what he was seeing, was unable to move. His limbs simply refused to obey the commands he silently screamed at them from his mind, and even as Glass thrust his hand deep inside Pelling’s savaged corpse again and started to walk towards him, Andrews was still unable to move.

  ‘There’s enough for two.’ Glass repeated softly, his hand rising up to cup Andrews’ face.

  ‘No,’ said Andrews, the word barely a breath.

  ‘But she tastes so good,’ said Glass, his bloody fingers slowly slipping across Private Andrew’s cheek towards his mouth, ‘taste.’

  As the gore covered fingers slipped deep into his mouth, Andrews finally found his voice.

  ‘No!’ he screamed, sitting bolt upright in his seat of the carrier, his heart hammering in his chest.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Mallon. ‘You sacred the fucking crap out of me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Andrews, rubbing his face vigorously as if to erase the images his mind had conjured up, ‘bad dream.’

  ‘Keep it together, Soldier,’ snapped Sergeant Ridge, a mix of anger and mistrust on his face.

  ‘Sir,’ replied Andrews, anxious to keep under the Sergeant’s radar.

  Looking around the inside of the carrier, he saw the same sideways glances, barely hiding their apprehension, coming from Pelling, Mallon, and Dr Lambert. Living on the base where personnel, unable to cope with the stresses and mental fatigue of the Death-walker plague effectively ending the world as they knew it, had resorted to suicide, they knew a soldier on the edge was not only a danger to themselves, but could put them all in peril. It was only Mary Donaldson and her daughter who, somewhat uninterestedly, returned his gaze. They had lived with the horrors of the Dead for the last eight years; possibly, they saw these tortured images that visited them as they slept as just an inevitability. The human mind simply could not witness the terrors of this new world without some form of release, and they accepted that.

  After clearing a small number of the walking corpses that had collected at the farm gates, drawn from the surrounding fields by the sounds of life and the prospect of something bloody to feast upon, they had finally left the farmhouse for the ghosts of the family that once lived there, and their new unfortunate guest, Private Glass. The morning had passed quite uneventfully and with the spring sun warming up the windowless carrier, Andrews had been lulled into his uneasy sleep by its constant rocking. But with the last nightmare images of Glass thankfully fading, Private Andrews was most definitely awake now.

  He idly watched Dr Lambert meticulously checking and double-checking the data he was collecting from the poor sedated infant that they had stolen away from the convent. With almost an indifferent attitude to the child, the Doctor opened the side of the clear container, grabbed hold of one of his small arms, wiped it with an alcohol swab, and inserted a needle deep into the flesh. Just looking at the process, Andrews could tell the Doctor’s bedside manner left a lot to be desired. He clearly saw the infant not as the vulnerable child that he was, but simply as a thing. A thing that he needed to study, to understand, to unwrap the secrets he held within him, and as such, he was no more worthy of his concern or compassion than a culture of bacteria under a microscope lens. Even in his sedated state, the child whimpered slightly when Dr Lambert clicked into place, a small glass test tube to collect yet another blood sample for testing. The poor child’s arms were already dotted with the marks, testament to the previous samples already taken. As the distressed whine escaped the poor child’s lips, Andrews looked away. He was already filled with shame and remorse for what he had been part of, he didn’t need the wordless accusations of an infant to make him feel any worse. So, desperate to find something else to look at, Andrews gaze inadvertently fell on Lucy and her own child.

 
Holding her own baby so close to her chest, Lucy watched Dr Lambert with a strange look upon her withdrawn features. Doctor Lambert glanced down at his watch and recorded the time on a small label on the test tube of blood, pulled off his sterile rubber gloves, and closed the side of the clear carrier. Lucy slowly rose from her seat and stepped over to the box. Then, as if she was afraid to startle the child held within, she gently placed her hand on the flat glass.

  ‘Lucy,’ Her mother said coldly, ‘sit back down. That thing is no concern of yours.’

  Lucy silently looked back at her mother and then after giving the stolen child one final glance, returned to sit by her side. But as she turned, Andrews saw something in the young girl’s eyes, something that would not have been expected, considering the infant was only here due to her actions, it was something he could only describe as maternal concern.

  ***

  ‘How far do you think we’ve come?’ said Liz, looking up from the map and through one of the spy holes to the passing countryside outside, devoid of any discernible markers.

  ‘Ten to fifteen miles,’ replied Phil, glancing back, ‘something like that, it’s difficult to tell, but at least we’re making good time and covering a lot of ground as the crow flies.’

  They had been steadily travelling along the tracks for over four hours now, and beyond the wooden walls of their cart, the crisp spring morning had developed into a pleasantly warm afternoon. The going had been smooth and unusually unhampered by the presence of the Dead. In fact, they had only encountered two particularly sorry excuses on the tracks so far, and these had been found at the entrance to tunnels, crippled, and decayed beyond movement. Presumably, at some point, they had plummeted down onto the track from the bridges overhead and with nothing alive to draw them from their stupor, they had lain for years exposed to Nature’s elements. Of course, they still saw groups of the Dead wandering through the overgrown fields or along the road and lanes that ran parallel to the tracks, but with the high wire fence running either side of the tracks, the cart had effectively travelled in the safe manmade corridor and had passed them unnoticed.