Lanherne Chronicles (Book 3): Last Days With The Dead

by Stephen Charlick

  ‘Come on!’ she angrily shouted to the scarred and bloody Alsatian that, like her, had faltered at the unexpected sound of the shot. ‘Well, come on then!’

  For the first time, despite his menacing growls, Liz saw something akin to apprehension in the dog’s eyes, and knowing to push an advantage, no matter how slim when it presented itself, Liz quickly stepped forward and began waving her arms like a lunatic.

  ‘Fuck off!’ she shouted, making herself look as intimidating as she could, ‘Fuck off! Go on, Fuck off!’

  She could almost see the animal trying to judge whether there was enough of the pack left to take her down. Then suddenly, one second the Alsatian was growling its promise to attack, and the next it had turned tail and darted back toward the train line. For a split second, the remaining five smaller pack members seemed at a loss of what to do. With their alpha abandoning the hunt, they were left with no other choice but to follow suit, which is exactly what they did.

  Watching the last of the pack disappear back under the fence, Liz sat down in the long grass with a thump and waited for her fiercely beating heart to return to normal.

  ‘That was close,’ said Karen, jogging over to Liz, ‘is it always like this?’

  Liz looked up at Karen’s smiling face, pushed herself to her knees, and using her sword for leverage, stood up.

  ‘Thanks, oh, and this is nothing, believe me,’ Liz said, returning Karen’s smile as she walked over to one of the animals Imran had killed. ‘Just wait till we’re back at Lanherne, Duncan says the drains won’t hold up for much longer, now cesspits, they’re really terrifying.’

  Liz placed her foot on the dogs back and with a sharp tug, Imran’s arrow came free.

  ‘Hmmm, wonder if it’s too late to change my mind and go back to the base?’ Karen replied, walking over to the next dog with an arrow lodged deep in its neck and mirroring Liz’s actions.

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure your Captain Cardin would welcome you back with open arms,’ said Liz, chuckling as she retrieved Imran’s arrow from the final carcass. ‘I hear he’s very much the forgiving type.’

  ‘Yeah, cesspits or Cardin? Not much of a choice,’ said Karen, handing Liz Imran’s arrow, ‘whichever way you look at it, they’re both full of shit.’

  Liz groaned at Karen’s terrible joke.

  ‘Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be here for, well, for the rest of my life,’ Karen grinned, taking an exaggerated bow.

  ‘Come on,’ said Liz, smiling as she shook her head, ‘we’d better get back in the cart and on our way, the sound of your shot might’ve gotten us some unwanted attention.’

  Karen’s smile slowly drifted from her lips, realising that in saving Liz, she may have alerted the Dead to their presence.

  ‘Yeah, let’s go,’ said Karen softly, her eyes drawn to the shadowy hedgerows as they walked back to the cart.

  ***

  ‘Yes, Sir,’ said Private Sam Grimes, glancing down at the map in his lap while Sergeant Ridge relayed to him directions through his earpiece. ‘Understood, I’ll tell the Jackal to take the left turning across the bridge coming up and then the next right seven hundred metres along. Yes, Sir.’

  After forwarding the instructions to the driver in the Jackal, Grimes tapped his earpiece to disconnect the open channel.

  ‘Won’t be long now, Sinclair,’ sighed Grimes, re-folding up the map. ‘Carlyon bay is only a few miles the other side of the river, and then it’s home time.’

  ‘Great,’ sighed Sinclair, idly picking at the rubber trim on the window surround, ‘home sweet home.’

  ‘What’s up with you? I thought you’d want to get back?’ Grimes asked, surprised that Sinclair’s sunny disposition seemed to be suffering an unusual bout of cloud cover.

  ‘I’m going to miss the trees,’ the large man replied, sounding almost embarrassed by the admission, ‘and the space…’

  ‘But we’ve got trees on the island?’ said Grimes, silently nodding to the large pot hole in the road surface of the bridge that, like the Jackal had just done, Sinclair would need to steer the carrier around.

  ‘You can’t call those wind blasted twigs that manage to hang onto that shitty rock, trees!’ he retorted, slowly turning the large steering wheel. ‘And anyway…’

  ‘Jesus!’ shouted Sinclair, slamming on the brakes.

  ‘What? What is it?’ cried Grimes, panic instantly flooding adrenalin through his body.

  But Sinclair did not need to explain what had terrified him, there just a few metres beyond the carrier, the tail end of the Jackal was just disappearing from view. With a thunder of falling masonry, the Jackal plummeted from sight.

  ‘Christ!’ shouted Grimes. ‘Back us up! Back us up!’

  But it was too late, already the front of the carrier had started to dip forward as the bridge supports and road beneath them collapsed in a shower of rubble down to the river below.

  ‘No! No! No! No!’ Grimes repeated, leaning back with his hands pressed hard against the control panel.

  With nothing under the front two sets of wheels, the carrier tilted forward at an alarming angle. From behind them, Grimes heard the panicked yells of the other soldiers, while Sergeant Ridge shouted through his earpiece. Then, almost as if it was happening in slow motion, the carrier began to fall. Suddenly, the cliff side and river below it seemed to fill their whole field of vision, their world quickly becoming a mass of boulders and fast flowing water. With his mind seemingly working out of sync with the normal flow of time, Grimes took in a thousand and one details of the scene before him. The pattern of moss on a particular rock, a specific clump of tall grasses stretching out into the water, the rusted frame of a long abandoned bicycle, and then of course, there was the sight of the upturned Jackal, its wheels still impotently spinning just proud of the fast flowing water.

  ‘Shiiiitttt!’ screamed Sinclair, the normal flow of time finally catching up with them as they plunged along the cliff side to the frothing river below.

  Almost instantly, the swirling blackness of the river seemed to hit the windscreen, swallowing the cab in darkness, and as Grimes was thrown against the glass, the momentum of the falling carrier caused the rear of the vehicle to flip over and land with an almighty crash upside down, half-submerged in the water.

  ‘Christ!’ said Sinclair, twisting his body on the roof of the cab so he was upright again. ‘We’ve got to get out! Shit! We’ve got to get out, Grimes, Grimes?’

  When Grimes gave no reply, Sinclair reached out in the darkness until his hand fell on some part of the man’s still body. Tracing along the limb, Sinclair felt his way to Grimes’ torso and up to his neck. Working his fingers round to the back of his neck, Sinclair felt for the small pulse detector. Thankfully, his finger traced along the nub of the bolt that would shoot up into the brain if the person wearing it died, Grimes was still alive.

  ‘Come on, Brainbox,’ said Sinclair, gently slapping Grimes on the cheek as water began to fill the cab, ‘Come on, wake up.’

  Sinclair shifted position so he could pull Grimes closer to him, but this smallest re-distribution weight caused the unnerving sound of cracking glass suddenly to echo through the dark cab.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ whispered Sinclair, his free hand reaching out gingerly to move his fingers across the windscreen.

  Sure enough, he soon found the sharp fracture line in the glass, and as his fingers traced along the crack, he could feel the increasing pressure of the water on the other side pressing against it. It was going to give way at any second and Sinclair knew it. So, wrapping his fist tightly in the folds of Grimes’ jacket, Sinclair pulled the unconscious man close to his chest and turned his back to the window to act as a shield.

  ‘Hope you’re ready,’ said Sinclair to the still body cradled in his arms, ‘it’s time to get out of here.’

  Then with a sharp kick, his boot connected with the glass of the windscreen. For the length of a heartbeat, nothing happened, then in an explosion of water that
knocked the breath from his lungs, the glass shattered, flooding the cab instantly.

  In the carrier behind them, the cold water lapping against his face caused Sergeant Ridge’s eyes to flicker open slowly. For a dazed moment, he couldn’t understand what he was seeing, but as his eyes blinked away, water tinged with blood, he realised he was looking up at the tilted floor of the carrier. He was wedged against the wall that separated the cab from the main carrier, and anything that had not been secured to the floor was currently bobbing about in the shoulder high water.

  ‘Sergeant! Sergeant Ridge!’ said Andrews from the far end of the carrier, looking a little dazed as he pushed himself up along the side of a built in storage compartment. ‘Are you alright, Sir? What happened?’

  ‘Someone’s fucked up that’s what happened,’ replied Ridge, pushing a floating computer keyboard out of his way, ‘any casualties, Andrews?’

  Andrews looked over at Mallon, who was just grabbing hold of the base of a bolted down table to pull himself up out of the water. He seemed fine, wet, but fine. On the other side of the table support, a drenched Lucy held tightly to an equally wet looking baby. From the look on her face, Andrews thought she might be in shock.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Andrews said calmly, trying to get Lucy’s attention.

  It was only when he followed her glazed stare that he noticed the body of Mary Donaldson floating face down in the water. A pool of deep red was slowly spreading through the water around her, it was clear that she was dead. The pulse detector on the back of her neck had been activated. It had registered her death and just as it was designed to do; it had shot its safety bolt up into her brain, preventing her from coming back as one of the Death-walkers. Of all of them, Pelling seemed to have been the only one to have been spared a dunking, and she was frantically trying to open the upside-down door in the back of the vehicle.

  ‘Apart from Mrs Donaldson, we’re okay, Sir,’ Andrews finally said. ‘Sir, are you alright, your head’s bleeding.’

  ‘Yes, just a scratch, it’s nothing,’ replied Ridge, his fingers coming away from his scalp covered in blood. ‘Wait, where’s Lambert… and the kid from the convent?’

  Pushing himself away from the wall, Sergeant Ridge began to swim toward the section of the carrier standing proud of the waterline. He had barely made two strokes when his kicking legs brushed against something large and soft.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, kicking hard against the object.

  Suddenly, knocked free by the Sergeant’s movements, the body of Dr Lambert floated to the surface.

  ‘Oh, great!’ said Ridge, flipping Dr Lambert’s corpse over to determine what had killed him. ‘Broke his neck by the looks of it, so that just leaves the boy.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Mallon, nodding towards the body of Mary Donaldson.

  Sergeant Ridge roughly pushed aside Dr Lambert’s body and waded over to the woman’s floating corpse. With a grunt, he flipped over Mary’s body. With a splash, she was turned over onto her back, releasing the small blue tinged body of the infant.

  ‘Shit!’ snapped Ridge, grabbing hold of a tiny leg to pull the dead child to him. ‘What a fucking waste, well, I suppose we’d better take it back with us, he may still be off use back on the base. Andrews, Mallon, look for something to put it in. Pelling, how’s that door coming?’

  ‘Just…’ she replied, the door suddenly swinging part way open before hitting against some obstruction. ‘There, open, Sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Sergeant Ridge nodded.

  ‘It? He was someone’s child…’ said Andrews, his words barely a whisper.

  ‘Cut out that bleeding heart crap, Andrews,’ said Ridge, a look of disgust on his face. ‘We’ve got a mission to complete. What did you think would happen to it once we got it back to base?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Lucy softly, her tear filled eyes looking up at Andrews.

  Andrews looked over at the young girl who had spoken, her words suddenly hitting him like a brick.

  ‘Fuck!’ he said in astonishment. ‘She’s right, he’s dead, Sergeant.’

  ‘Did you just get a fucking bang on the head,’ Ridge replied, using the side of the carrier to pull himself to the non-flooded end of the vehicle, the baby’s body still held in one arm, ‘or do you like just stating the bloody obvious?’

  ‘No, Sir,’ replied Andrews, seeing that Sergeant Ridge hadn’t understood him, ‘the child’s dead, like really dead, and he didn’t have on a pulse detector. He died and, and he stayed dead.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Ridge replied, looking down at the child’s body as if it was suddenly something unexpected or alien.

  ‘Does that mean it’s over? All this fucking nightmare is finally over?’ asked Mallon, hopefully looking from the stunned Sergeant to Andrews.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Ridge, looking up from the dead child, ‘but it’s all the more reason we need to take his body back to base. Who knows, this child could be the answer to everything.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Pelling, tossing the Sergeant an empty holdall, seemingly disinterested in the miraculous turn of events.

  Catching the bag with his free fist, Ridge placed the infant boy’s body inside and zipped it closed.

  ‘Right,’ he began, slipping the holdall strap over one shoulder as he finally pulled himself free of the water, ‘this is top priority now, we got to get this child’s body back to base. Pelling, get outside and check for any of the walking corpses. Andrews, get together weapons and ammunition we can carry with us. We’re still a few miles from Carlyon bay and we’ve got to get there on foot without getting our arses eaten.’

  ‘Sir,’ replied Andrews, already jumping back down into the water to pry open a locker holding their ammo supply.

  ‘Mallon,’ Ridge continued, pulling himself to the doorway where Pelling was already scanning the area through her rifle sight, ‘get the girl and her baby up here, we need to get out of here, pronto.’

  ‘It’s clear,’ said Pelling, glancing back to Sergeant Ridge as he pulled himself free of the wrecked carrier, ‘for now at least.’

  ‘Well, at least that’s something,’ he replied, readjusting the straps of the holdall containing the infant’s body. ‘What about the Jackal or Grimes and Sinclair? Any survivors?’

  ‘There’s those two,’ she replied, nodding further along the river bank where Sinclair was just pulling the unconscious form of Grimes from the water, ‘but the Jackal’s gone, we must’ve flipped right over on top of them, no way they could’ve survived, Sir.’

  ‘Fuck!’ snapped Ridge, pushing past Pelling to stomp over to Sinclair.

  ‘What the fuck happened?’ he said reaching Sinclair as he rolled onto his back, panting from exhaustion.

  ‘It just disappeared,’ he replied, trying to catch his breath. ‘The whole bridge just went from under us, Sergeant. There was nothing we could do.’

  Sergeant Ridge looked down at the two drenched men, his rage desperate for a release. Whatever had happened, he held these two partly responsible.

  ‘You better fucking pray we get back to Carlyon bay in one piece, Soldier,’ he growled, ‘or I’ll feed you to these corpses myself, now get up!’

  ‘Sir,’ panted Sinclair, slowly pushing himself up from the mud and slippery rocks.

  ‘And if he doesn’t come round by the time we ready to go, we’re leaving him,’ sneered Ridge, tapping Grimes’ body with his boot.

  ‘Sir,’ repeated Sinclair, his brow creasing in worry as he looked down at Grimes.

  Back at the rear of the overturned carrier, Mallon was helping Lucy out onto the stony riverbank, while Andrews organised their limited weapons and ammo supply.

  ‘How’s it looking, Andrews?’ Ridge asked, looking down at the small amount of salvaged weaponry.

  ‘Not brilliant, Sir,’ he replied, clicking a full magazine into his assault rifle, ‘we’ve got three clips a piece, and a dozen grenades.’

  ‘Shit,’ grumbled Ridge, looking along the river where already he could
see one of the walking corpses slowly ambling towards them.

  ‘If you shoot them, more will come,’ whispered a traumatised looking Lucy.

  ‘What was that, Lucy?’ asked Andrews, reaching out to the young girl holding her baby. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You, you have to kill them with knives or clubs,’ she replied, her voice barely rising in volume as her eyes darted up along the riverbank, ‘if you use your guns, they’ll hear you and more will come.’

  Sergeant Ridge’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the fragile girl. It was clear she had spent most of her life among the animated cadavers; in fact, he wondered if she even remembered a time when the dead were motionless. Perhaps, just perhaps, she knew what she was talking about. For the time it took for the walking corpse on the riverbank to stumble on the uneven rocks and right itself, Ridge had made up his mind.

  ‘Right, I don’t want any weapons fire while we’re en route to Carlyon bay, unless you have no other option,’ he began, pulling a long and wickedly sharp looking hunting knife from a strapped sheath on his ankle. ‘Fixed bayonets, knives, and anything you can shatter a skull with only.’

  ‘What? Sir, we…’ said Pelling, her annoyance clearly evident in her voice.

  ‘You heard me, soldier!’ said Ridge, cutting off her complaint before it began. ‘Hand to hand combat only.’

  ‘We need to go,’ said Lucy, her eyes nervously moving from the approaching corpse and up to the cliff side, ‘the sound of the crash will draw them to us. We need to go now.’