Suddenly, she heard a branch snapping to her right, followed by a flurry of angry birdsong, calling an alarm. Looking along the small track, she saw the figure of a woman picking herself up from where she had fallen. Karen was about to call out to her when the woman righted herself and stepped into a pool of weak sunlight filtering down through the canopy. A large chunk of flesh was missing from the woman’s face, and even from a distance, Karen could see the yellowing bone of her exposed jaw. The woman was one of the Dead. Karen slowly moved her hand down to the gun she had placed by her leg when she had opened the map. Feeling a little better with the weight of the gun in her hand, Karen watched the Dead woman. The woman’s animated corpse seemed to be rocking back and forth on her heels, as if unsure which way she should continue. As quietly as she could, Karen pulled her knees up to her chest and pressed her back even tighter against the tree, praying the Dead woman would not turn in her direction. Further off in the forest, Karen heard the distant forlorn moaning of another of the Dead. Instantly, the Dead woman snapped her head in the direction of the deathly call and with lumbering steps, she plunged through the trees on the opposite side of the track, disappearing from sight.
Letting go of the breath she had been unaware of holding, Karen tried to calm her racing heart. She knew she needed to try to keep her head. If she panicked, she would make a mistake, and mistakes out here could likely end up with her being just like the poor creature that had shambled off through the trees. With a few more calming breaths, Karen returned her attention to the map. Each of the marked woodland areas appeared to be no wider than a mile across at their deepest part, and with each lined either with roads or fields, she knew if she followed the track she had found, she would eventually find her way free of the trees and could finally begin her journey to Lanherne in earnest. Going left or right was the only decision she needed to make now. Folding up the map and pushing herself up away from the base of the tree, she noticed a large iridescent stag beetle merrily tramping its way across the track, oblivious to her presence.
‘She went that way.’ She mumbled to the beetle, thumbing in the direction the Dead woman had gone.
Karen turned left and began a light jog along the track. With no obvious dangers ahead or behind her, she figured she might as well put as much distance between the crash site and herself as she could, while she could. The sooner she found a road, the better, and if any of the Dead did see her jogging past, she hoped she would be long gone before they had a chance to react. Now that she was moving with some speed, it only took another ten minutes before the trees began to thin, and when she finally broke free of the woodland, it was almost with a surprise. One moment the trees were her constant stoic sentinels, and the next she was stumbling through into a field of waist high spring flowers and grasses. Instantly, she ducked down into the grass to avoid being seen by anything with the taste of bloody flesh on its mind.
Crouching in the grass, Karen listened for any movement or deathly moaning that would indicate she had been seen. Thankfully, the only sounds that greeted her were those from a multitude of buzzing insects, the birds in the trees, and the faint distant barking of a dog. She hoped the dog wouldn’t prove to be another problem she would have to deal with. She had been told of groups of wild dogs reverting to an almost wolf like existence, hunting in packs to bring down and feast upon the living and Dead alike. Cautiously, Karen raised her head above the level of the grass. To her left and right were more fields, but ahead of her, was a small dilapidated cottage, partly hidden by a riot of ivy and wisteria. Knowing no one would build a cottage in the middle of a field, Karen was relieved to see a break in the meadow just beyond the cottage. She had found her road.
Staying low and creeping forward, Karen made her way to the back of the cottage. If she were lucky, she may still find something in the house that had an address on it, then she would know exactly where she was and which way she needed to go. Using a large overgrown rose bush for cover, Karen pushed aside some of the ivy covering one of the cottage’s windows. It was dark inside, but she could just make out the thickly dust covered shapes of neatly positioned kitchen furniture. There didn’t seem to be any signs of the chaos or old bloodshed she would have expected to see if the owner had become one of the Dead within these walls, so Karen took this as a good sign. Pushing more of the heavy ivy aside, she soon found the warped and flaking back door. With a quick look back at the field behind her, Karen stepped back and gave the door a sharp kick. The old rotting wood of the door cracked and splintered, making a little more noise than she would have preferred, but with just one more well aimed kick, she had soon made a hole large enough for her to crawl through.
Standing up in the small kitchen, Karen wrinkled her nose and fought the urge to sneeze. The room carried the smell of something long dead. Not the rancid wet stench of one of the actual Dead, this was dryer and far less cloying. It didn’t take her long to find the source of the smell, it was the desiccated remains of a tabby cat. The poor thing must have died many years ago, back when the Death-walker virus had first struck. Without its owner to come back to feed it, the poor beast had faded away to the dried husk she now found wedged against a door. Relieved she had been granted a brief respite from the Dead, Karen moved away from the cat’s body and began opening drawers looking for any letters or bills from which she could get the cottage’s address. Pulling open a drawer in a dresser, Karen was disheartened to find it full of clumps of shredded paper and old dried mouse droppings.
‘Not a mouser, eh?’ she mumbled, giving the cat’s body a disapproving shake of her head.
It was when she turned her attention back to the dresser that she noticed a small pin board on the wall. On it, all of the various vouchers and cut out recipes had long since faded to illegible type in the sun, but as she idly pushed some of them aside, she saw what she was looking for, a glossy postcard with its photo facing her.
‘Yes!’ she said to herself, pulling the drawing pin out of the postcard.
‘Gavin Wiseman,’ she read, tilting the card to catch the light, ‘Morningside cottage, 6 Saint Michael’s lane.’
Spreading the map out on the kitchen table, Karen looked at the names of the roads surrounding the four woodland areas marked on the map.
‘There you are,’ she mumbled, tapping a specific forested area that ran along Saint Michael’s lane, ‘now just have to get from here to Lanherne.’
Scouring the map again, she quickly found the village of St Mawgan and the nearby convent of Lanherne. After she had traced the route back to Morningside cottage, she guessed if she did a mix of jogging and brisk walking, she could possibly be there in a little under an hour.
‘A lot can happen in an hour,’ she said under her breath, as she folded up the map and pushed it inside her jacket.
Catching movement in the corner of her eye, Karen looked up at the cobweb strewn kitchen window. Outside, only five meters from the cottage, were three shambling figures.
‘Shit!’ she said, backing towards to door that led off the kitchen.
She needed to find another way out and fast. Already, she could hear the hungry moans of the Dead outside as they began to converge on their prey, her. Pulling the kitchen door closed behind, Karen sprinted through the cottage to the front door, skidding to an abrupt halt in the front hallway.
‘Well, thank you, Gavin Wiseman.’ She said, a smile spreading over her face as she looked at the dusty mountain bike propped against the hall wall.
The chain was a little rusty but at least it still moved when she turned the pedal arm and the back tyre could do with some air in it, but it was far more than she had ever hoped to find. Behind her, she could tell the three animated cadavers had finally reached the back door, the sound of their hammering vibrating through the small cottage. Whether they would work out how she got in, she didn’t know and certainly wasn’t prepared to find out. So with a quick look through one of the small glass panels in the front door, Karen made sure the front of the hou
se was free of danger. As with the back door, the front door was a little warped, but thankfully here, the porch hanging above the doorway had managed to keep out much of the bad weather and after three sharp tugs, the door opened inwards with a screech.
‘Time to go,’ she mumbled, hearing the sound of splintering wood coming from behind the closed kitchen door.
Running the bike along the heavily weeded garden path and out through a broken gate, Karen found herself at last on the lane. She was disappointed not only to find the road was in an even worse state than the garden path, but it was also dotted for the next thirty or so metres with at least a dozen of the Dead, a few of them already starting to turn in her direction.
‘Crap!’ she said, placing her feet on the mountain bike’s pedals.
For a second, she watched them slowly shambling along the lane, one by one, each becoming alerted to the presence of her living flesh. In her mind, she was already darting a path in and around the walking corpses, too fast for them to grab hold of her.
‘Oh well, here goes,’ she called out, pushing down hard on the pedal.
***
‘If you can’t shut that brat up, I’m going to have Dr Lambert sedate him,’ snapped Sergeant Ridge, glaring at Lucy Donaldson, as she struggled to keep her sick son comfortable.
At the mention of his name, Dr Lambert briefly looked up from the data he was studying on his small laptop.
‘The child has a viral infection, Ridge,’ said Dr Lambert disinterestedly, his attention already drifting back to spiralling data on his laptop, ‘the fever’s making him irritable, that’s all.’
Lucy pulled her son close to her chest and desperately tried to calm him down. As her hand moved in a circular motion across his tiny back, her eyes couldn’t help but drift to the motionless body of the infant she had helped kidnap from the convent. Seeing the poor child in the clear box with tubes and needles going into his small body filled her with shame.
Her mother had promised her everything would be alright. Follow the Sergeant’s plan and they would all be back on their island at Silver Lake Wood soon, she had told her. All they had to do was get the child and they would be allowed to go. But even Lucy could tell the Sergeant wasn’t a man that could be trusted. She had seen it in his eyes; his words had been empty promises from the very beginning. So it had been no surprise to her when they had arrived back at the school that Sergeant Ridge had changed his end of the bargain in their absence. She did not know what had happened to the rest of her family, but as she and her mother were bundled into the back of the large armoured vehicle, she knew she would never see her father, brother, uncles, cousin, or aunt again.
Ridge looked at the young girl fussing with the child in her arms. If it had been up to him, he would have left her and her mother with the rest of her worthless family, but orders were orders, they needed women back at the base for repopulation. Admittedly, the girl was a bit too young, but she would grow up and the child in her arms was proof enough that she was already fertile. The fact that she had a child at all, spoke volumes about the men he had left strung up outside the school. Men like that had no place in the new world they would have to build, once the Death-walker plague was finally eradicated.
Once again, Ridge could feel the refitted armoured troupe carrier they were travelling in slow down almost to a stop.
‘What now, Private Grimes?’ he said, pressing the com button his earpiece.
‘It’s the wrecked bus, Sir,’ replied the soldier’s voice in his earpiece, ‘there’s not much room to pass.’
‘Tutting’, Sergeant Ridge looked at his watch and then swivelling in his chair, he pressed the ‘on’ button on a small monitor built into the wall of the carrier. Instantly, a black and white image appeared showing the drivers view of the road ahead.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ Ridge mumbled to himself, watching as the driver slowly manoeuvred through the tight gap.
On the monitor, Sergeant Ridge saw that a half a dozen of the animated corpses had caught sight of the driver through the protective grill over the windscreen and were pointlessly launching an attack to get to the man’s flesh. Ridge smiled to himself as one by one they fell and were pulled under the heavy wheels of the carrier. Ahead, he could see the back of one of their remaining armoured Jackals.
It galled him that the late Staff Sergeant Blackmore’s ill-fated previous mission to the mainland had cost them so dearly. Not only in manpower, which was bad enough when he thought of their limited supply of skilled men and woman back on the base, but it was the loss of the weaponry and technical equipment that really riled him. The man had been an arrogant fool to think he could traipse about the countryside collecting survivors against their will, and not come across a group that wouldn’t find the means to fight back. With only their resourcefulness to fall back on, these people at the convent had lived for eight years among the walking corpses without proper weapons or training, and had not only survived, but thrived too. That Blackmore had thought it would be so easy simply to take what he wanted from those at Lanherne, had shown just how much he had been blinded by his own over confidence, but more importantly, how much he under estimated their spirit.
When Captain Cardin had informed him they would be using something a little more subtle to get the child back, Ridge had agreed wholeheartedly. The group of survivors at the convent had already proven they were a formidable adversary; the direct approach was definitely not what was called for here. Then, when Ridge had found the strange Donaldson family, it seemed he had found just what he was looking for. Not only did the Donaldson’s already have a grudge against those at the convent, which he could initially use to his advantage, but they also had among them an irresistible lure to get them inside the walls, a sick infant. It had been perfect and the plan had been executed without a hitch. Mary Donaldson and her daughter had played their roles perfectly, and as he glanced past the four other soldiers in the carrier to the silent woman glaring at him with hate burning in her eyes, he knew she was one to keep an eye on. She had already proven she had no qualms about killing to get what she wanted, so he knew given the chance, she would happily feed him to the corpses for going back on their deal.
‘Sir, we’ve got a situation,’ came Grime’s voice through his earpiece, breaking Ridge from his thoughts.
‘What now, Private?’ Ridge replied, checking the monitor again.
But Private Grimes had no need to reply, Ridge could clearly see what the problem was. Ahead of them, the smaller Jackal was completely blocked in by the infected. This normally wouldn’t have been a problem, but the sheer number of corpses surrounding the vehicle on the narrow road was making it impossible for them to move on. Even as Ridge formulated a plan, the Jackal became buried beneath a wave of the Dead. They clambered over the vehicle; desperate to get to the three men they could see just beyond their grasp, their hands pushing through even the smallest of breaks in the Jackal’s armour. Despite the Jackal having extra plates of metal welded to its frame, there were still necessary gaps to allow the top and rear mounted machine guns movement.
‘Word from the Jackal, Sir. They’re requesting assistance,’ continued Grimes, as the sound of small arms fire reached those in the carrier.
Ridge could see a few of the corpses being thrown back as the men inside the Jackal shot them, but for each corpse that fell, another clawed its way over its fallen brother to take its place.
‘Damn’ said Ridge under his breath.
He knew they should have taken a different route back to the pick-up point on the coast, but Cardin had insisted time was of the essence, and they were to retrace their own steps. What Cardin hadn’t taken into consideration, was that a vast number of the Dead would still be following this path from their previous passing, and now it looked as if Ridge and his men may pay the price for this oversight.
‘Right, Pelling, Glass, and Mallon, up top,’ said Ridge, looking from one soldier to the next, ‘clear those pus-bags off the Jackal, before th
ey find a way in, we haven’t got all day.’
‘Sir!’ the young woman and two men replied in unison, moving to the small ladder that led to a secured hatchway set in the armoured carrier’s roof.
‘And you, Private Anders,’ Ridge continued, pointing to the remaining soldier and gesturing to Mary Donaldson, ‘keep an eye on her.’
‘I want controlled fire bursts up there,’ Sergeant Ridge said, pressing the mic button on his earpiece, ‘head shots only people, mark your targets, we don’t want anyone in the Jackal hit by friendly fire.’
‘Roger that.’ Came the reply from each of the soldiers taking up their positions on the Carrier’s roof.
Moments later, the shooting began and as he watched on the monitor, Sergeant Ridge saw the mound of corpses that had been attacking the Jackal soon begin to thin out. One by one, they fell lifeless to the ground under a hail of well-aimed shots from the three soldiers above him.
‘You three, try to conserve your ammo,’ Ridge commanded, knowing their supply wasn’t so extensive that they could afford to wipe out all of the moving cadavers they came across. ‘Just clear enough to give the Jackal a chance to move forward. Hopefully, they can shake off the rest themselves and we’ll ride over whatever falls off.’
‘Yes, Sir,’ replied Private Mallon. ‘Sir, I can see there’s a break in the crowd a few metres ahead of the Jackal, once they get moving they should be able to get some speed up.’
‘Did you get that Private Grimes,’ asked Ridge, making sure the driver of the carrier was also listening in, ‘relay that to the Jackal. As soon as they can, they’re to make a break for it.’
‘Sir,’ replied Grimes.
‘And Grimes, how’s our own situation looking,’ Ridge continued, ‘is the shooting attracting many of these dead bastards?’
Lanherne Chronicles (Book 3): Last Days With The Dead Page 12
