Six Days With the Dead

by Stephen Charlick

  ‘Praise the Lord our God, he has spoken to this unworthy vessel and told me what lurks within that what cannot be seen. He has told me of the stain of Man upon this infant’s soul. Unworthy of the life our Lord had bestowed upon him, he shall be damned for all eternity, to exist yet not live, to feed but not nourish, to be consumed forever with a hunger that only the denied solace of God may quench.’

  Anne began to shake her head back and forth, she had a horrible idea where this was going and despite desperately not wanting to watch, she was unable to tear her eyes away. Terror had denied her the ability to turn her head away from what she knew was about to happen.

  ‘This child is Damned!’ Ruth said.

  Without a moments thought, Ruth dropped the baby to the hungry Dead children below her. The tiny body was pounced upon immediately and disappeared in a mass of reaching Dead arms. Thankfully, before it could let out a single strangled cry, the Dead children tore the poor infant to pieces and greedily began to stuff baby sized limbs and entrails into their mouths. Anne let out a scream born of pure terror and disbelief. She desperately tried to block out the nightmarish bestial sounds coming from the pit, as the Dead children fed on the body of Emma O’Brien’s baby. Within minutes, all that was left of the doomed infant was the small crochet blanket it had been wrapped in, which Ruth folded in her arms and tossed to Anne as she walked past her.

  ‘We will be back later for your judgement. I suggest you pray to God, begging for forgiveness of your sins,’ Ruth said, reaching for the torch on the wall.

  Crouching as far from the pit as she could, Anne pulled the small blanket to her chest and wept. She wept for Mrs O’Brien’s unnamed baby, whose life was taken before it had barely had a chance to begin. She wept for the children in the pit whose lives had been so pointlessly snatched away from them, and then as Ruth and her husband walked back through the tunnel to the lake, leaving her in total blackness, she wept for herself.

  ****

  After an hour on the road, Liz, Imran, Charlie and Alice had passed through the village of St Mawgan without encountering any of the Dead. They had bypassed their usual visit to Jackson, wanting to get far as they could without stopping. Knowing their route would mean they would be leaving charted territory within another few hours, they needed to make good time while they could. There would be enough troubles ahead of them to delay their journey, without adding another one needlessly.

  ‘There must be another way round it,’ Liz said, examining the map for the tenth time since they left Lanherne. ‘I know they think they have some sort of Divine protection but the Reverend doesn’t strike me the type to drive though a red zone if he didn’t have to.’

  When Lars had initially shown them the route they would need to take to reach the Carnglaze Caverns, much had been debated about the red-zone already marked on the map that they would need to travel through. The most direct route to the caverns would either take them along the A30 motorway or at least across it and they didn’t need the shaded red area on the map to tell them this area would be swamped by the Dead.

  ‘Well, we’ll be moving into unknown territory,’ Charlie said, guiding Delilah into a turning off the main road. ‘Had we known there was an outpost in this direction, we may have come this way more often. Let’s just hope the motorway is the only obstacle we’ve got to deal with. I don’t think we’ve got the time to waste, doubling back on ourselves, if we choose the wrong route.’

  Liz was sure there had to be a way to the caverns that skirted around the many blocked roads and hot spots. The Reverend and Ruth wouldn’t go to all the trouble of kidnapping children, for them only to not be able to get back to their home safely.

  ‘There had to be a way,’ she thought to herself, as she once again scrutinised the map, hoping the route would somehow magically jump from the page before her eyes, if only she looked at the map a certain way. It was then that an idea began to piece together in the back of her mind.

  ‘Charlie, if the Reverend and his wife took Alex, why wasn’t he with them when we ran into them?’ she asked, as she trying to pin the idea down.‘Surely that means they must have kidnapped him and taken him back to their home before setting out again on a new hunt for children?’

  ‘Well, yeah that makes sense. I don’t know how that helps us though?’ he replied, wondering where she was going with this.

  He just wanted to keep her thoughts grounded. It was far too easy to jump to conclusions when you were desperate and scared. Assuming an answer was the right one just because it was the only one you could come up with, could be dangerous and the way the world was now, could end up getting you killed.

  Liz knew there was something just dancing on the edges of her mind. Something that would become obvious the moment she managed to get a grip on it. She turned the map this way and that, looking for inspiration. She scanned the areas around the Penhaligan home and the seaside home of the O’Briens, hoping the solution would show itself. She traced the roads from both of the locations back to Carnglaze Caverns, both of which forced them along a long section of motorway that would be un-passable.

  ‘Come on, come on, come on,’ she said to herself, sure the answer was staring her right in the face. ‘Come on, they didn’t fly there, there must be a way.’

  The moment she said it, she could feel the idea becoming solid. Obviously the Reverend and his wife didn’t fly to the Penhaligan’s or the O’Brien’s but there’s nothing to say they had to get there by cart, or rather by road. Immediately Liz began pushing aside the spy hole covers to let in more light, so she could see more clearly.

  ‘What? What is it? have you thought of something?’ Alice said, moving aside so Liz could lie more of the map flat on the floor.

  Scanning the map through new eyes, Liz’s finger darted from location to location.

  ‘Got it!’ she said excitedly. ‘They used the train tracks. They didn’t go by road at all for some of their journey... Look!’

  Charlie stopped Delilah and turned round to watch Liz follow the routes the Reverend and Ruth could have taken.

  ‘See, the train line branches off here to go to Cawsands Bay and then back up here there’s a branch line that’s only a few miles from the Penhaligan home,’ Liz said, looking from one face to the next for confirmation that her idea was plausible. ‘And look, the train line runs parallel to the motor way for quite a long section before it crosses it by a tunnel or bridge at this point.’

  Charlie leaned forward, studying the map for himself.

  ‘Do you know, I think you may have something there,’ he said squeezing Liz’s shoulder, ‘and that would explain the crashed train we found. They wouldn’t want to run the risk of being run down by a train using the tracks, so they probably sabotaged a section, just in case. I wouldn’t put it past them.’

  ‘And if they left the tracks here,’ Liz continued, now knowing she was right and this was the only possible way the Reverend could have got around ‘they could get back onto the smaller, more passable roads for the rest of their journey home.’

  ‘Right, so we just have to find a section of the line where we can get onto the tracks and then follow them till we get over the motorway,’ Imran said, his smile beaming with pride at Liz’s brainwave.

  Taking the map from Liz, Charlie began to work out their route. He knew they may have to follow the line for a while until they found the section the Reverend had used to gain access, but at least now they had a feasible plan of action.

  It took them two hours before they found a road that ran along part of the train line. Unfortunately the high fence that ran along the track embankment prevented them from accessing the line, so Charlie decided to travel parallel to it, hoping to find a break or a level crossing where they could move onto the tracks.

  ‘There should be a crossing in the small village coming up,’ Imran said, looking up from the map. ‘Hopefully we can get onto the tracks there.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Charlie said, his concern written all o
ver his face, ‘we keep going much further in this direction and we’ll start running into a lot more of the Dead. The motorways turned into a blood bath pretty quickly back in the day and who knows how their number has increased since then.’

  When the Dead first came people fell into two groups. Either they fled the cities, desperate to escape the Dead coming through their front windows, or they found places of refuge within the city, thinking they could wait out the disaster by living off the scavenged food left in homes and shops. Sadly the choice was ultimately no choice at all and many of both sides were doomed to join the army of the Dead, hungry for flesh. Motorways became deadlocked with traffic, as people fled in any vehicle that could carry them. Inevitably some brought with them relatives and loved ones who had already been bitten. And when they turned in transit, the resulting carnage made the roads awash with spilt blood. Drivers would lose control of their cars, as their Dead relatives clambered over the front seats to attack their living flesh. As car smashed into car, the number of the dead increased at an unbelievable rate and soon whole stretches of motorway were nothing but fire and broken metal, littered with torn and broken bodies. Worst among it all were the Dead, as they moved with a savage hunger from wreck to wreck seeking the trapped to feast upon. Even those who were lucky enough to be miles behind the initial crashes could not escape this bloody carnage for long. With traffic bumper to bumper they were effectively trapped within their vehicles, unable to move their car even if they wanted to. So when the wave of the Dead descended upon them, they faced the terrible choice of joining the stampede of the living fleeing past their windows, or pray the Dead would not be able to break in to get them. Children, the weak and the elderly were crushed underfoot, as Man reverted to his most basic instinct to survive. When the wave reached them, the sheer numbers of the Dead overwhelmed those sat helpless in their cars. Smashing windows with shredded and broken limbs and being oblivious to any pain, the Dead soon began pulling the terrified living from their seats. As skin tore and the living fell to be ripped to pieces, the Dead added to their number ten-fold, until soon the only thing that remained moving on the motorways were the Dead.

  Those who stayed in the cities faired a little better and managed to hold out for a while but as food reserves became scarce over the next few months, they too were forced to flee only to be met by the Dead waiting for them on the roads. So Charlie knew that even though seven years had passed, the motorway would still have a high concentration of the Dead. Those from the original carnage would not be a problem in their decrepit and weathered state, but it was those who had unwillingly joined the Dead in the years since, that they would have to worry about. These would still be able to move and if they attacked in enough numbers, they could tear their way into the cart and that would be that.

  Pulling into the small village they were met with the usual scenes of destruction. The small stone cottages, once picturesque and maintained with care, were now just sad reminders of the tragedy that had befallen this rural community. Each home they passed inevitably had had its door broken down by the hungry Dead, intent on devouring the living inside. Where the doors had proven too sturdy, the Dead attackers had simple smashed their way through the windows. Even now Liz watched a pair of mouldy and faded print curtains, flutter back and forth through the shattered glass of a broken front window. As Delilah pulled the cart past another equally ruined home, Liz noticed some of the roof tiles had been broken through from inside, creating a hole in the roof. This in itself was hardly note worthy but it was the words those trapped inside had painted on the roof, that twisted her heart. Written in large spray painted letters on the tiles was the phrase ‘HELP! 3 KIDS ALIVE HERE!’ Liz doubted anyone had come to their rescue and nightmare scenes of the terrified children trapped in the attic waiting for help that never came, filled her mind. She wondered if they had been able to make a last ditch attempt to flee and hoped with all her heart that they had been as lucky as Anne and herself and made it out alive, but she doubted it.

  ‘The crossing should be the other side of the green and just around the corner,’ Imran said, peering through the front view slit, as they entered what would have been the main hub of the village.

  In this case the only thing that distinguished it from the other small groupings of homes was that here there had been a tiny multi-purpose shop, a small pub and a village green not much bigger than the size of tennis court. The Green, that would have been a carefully mowed and maintained patch of grass, perhaps with a floral centre piece was now overgrown with high grasses, brambles and a few tree saplings. Wooden benches positioned at intervals along its perimeter had all but been swallowed up by the encroaching plant growth spilling out onto the cracked road surface, while a riot of pale rose blossoms grew wild and unchecked at its heart. At some point, there had been a collision just outside the little shop. A rusted and burned out Land Rover lay on its side, the charred and bleached bones of the driver, long since picked clean by birds and insects, were scattered about the vehicles twisted frame. The car that had collided with the Land Rover, its make now unrecognisable had ended up nothing but a crumpled mass of burnt metal. After the initial impact, it had ricocheted off to smash into the brickwork, just shy of the shops plate glass window. But it was the resulting fuel tank explosion that had caused the most damage. The small shop and the neighbouring pub had been reduced to burnt-out shells, as the fire spread unchecked from building to building. Much of the pubs interior was now exposed to the sky, its consumed rafters and supports having long since given up their fight to keep the roof in place.

  ‘This turning here?’ Charlie asked, as he manoeuvred Delilah around the remnants of the roof fallen onto the road, making passage past a tight squeeze.

  ‘Yes,’ Imran replied, ‘we should be able to see it as soon as we turn.’

  As they finally made their way past the corner, the hope that they would be able to gain access to the rail line here, vanished. Imran had been correct in locating a section where there was a crossing, but what they saw before them seemingly ruled this one out for sure. There, blocking the road in front of the gate they would need to pass through, was a large abandoned truck. Unfortunately the vehicle had not come to a controlled stop and its trailer sat parked at an angle across the road. It was unusual to see one so large this far from the major roads and they were surprised it had managed to get this far along the small winding lanes.

  ‘Oh, for fucks sake!’ Liz said, looking at the huge vehicle that might as well have been a cruise liner, for all the chance they had of moving it. ‘How the hell did that manage to get here? And what a stupid place to leave it.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to look for another crossing,’ Alice said, taking the map from Imran, ‘there must be another one not too far away.’

  ‘Sod this! I’m just going to take a quick look before we write this one off’ Liz said, opening one of the side hatches and jumping down to the cracked road before the others could stop her.

  ‘Imran,’ Charlie said, knowing there was no point calling Liz to get back in, ‘Cover her.’

  Immediately, Imran flipped open the top hatch, his bow already armed with an arrow, as he watched Liz gingerly walk over to the lorry. With bits of the tarmac crunching under her feet, she slowly made her way to the lorry, her sword held low but ready. Liz briefly paused to listen for any of the tell-tale moaning of the Dead. If any were around and caught sight of her, they wouldn’t be able to help but let out a hungry moan, so the fact that all she could hear was the chorus of bird song was promising. Following the side of the lorry to the cab section wedged against a garden wall, it was clear they wouldn’t be getting onto the tracks that way. Liz looked up at the dark blood smeared windows of the cab and knew whoever had been driving had not left this world peacefully. Even as she stared up at a flaking handprint on the glass, she could see the pathetic Dead man inside begin to stir, the presence of her living flesh bringing life to his previously still form. He had become one of the Dea
d so long ago that Liz knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that he could break the glass to get to her, so she ignored him and doubled back to check out the rear end instead. Although there was a little room between the end of the trailer and the garden wall on this side, there was still no way near enough room for even Delilah to squeeze through, let alone the cart too. Cursing their bad luck, Liz was about to return to the cart when she notice that a little further down a section of the fence blocking their access to the track had been removed. Curious, she walked past the end of the trailer to take a look. When she got there, a smile slowly crept across her face as she realised what she was seeing. There, leading up to the gap in the fence, were the ruts in the mud caused by a cart’s wheels. Following them backwards, they led down the bank and into one of the back gardens. Taking care that she didn’t inadvertently step on anything Dead in the high grass, Liz tracked the carts route, through the overgrown garden and onto a small brick patio at the side of the house. As she crossed the patio she could see that two wooden garage doors blocked off the road from the back of the house. Crossing her fingers that there wouldn’t be a car the other side of the doors, she undid the simple latch and let the doors swing open.

  ‘Yes!’ she said to herself smiling, as the sight of the back of their cart came into view.

  Having not only found a way onto the tracks but also a sign that someone had quite recently come this way, the group had a new sense of hope that their hunch about the Reverend using the train lines to bypass red-zones, might just be correct.

  They made surprisingly good time travelling along the tracks and Charlie sat there grumbling away under his breath, kicking himself for not thinking of it sooner. It was ideal. The line afforded them uninterrupted travel and with the tracks going straight from A to B, they saved a lot of the time that they would usually spend on the winding country lanes. The only drawback that Charlie could see, was that if they didn’t want to risk damaging the wheels they would have to find another crossing where the tracks sank lower. Only there, would the cart’s wheels be able to roll back onto a normal road easily without a risky bump up and over.