‘Is he alright?’ Andrews murmured past Lucy to a worried looking Sinclair.
‘I’m fine,’ replied Grimes, answering for himself. Gulping down deep breaths, he wiped away the sheen of sweat from his face with his sleeve and continued, ‘It’s running when I’ve probably got borderline concussion that’s not too…’
‘Look, we wouldn’t be in this shit if wasn’t for you and the ginger gorilla here,’ spat Pelling, interrupting him and indicating toward Sinclair, ‘so suck it up and stop your bitching!’
‘Fuck you!’ Sinclair mouthed, giving Pelling the finger.
‘We need to use the gardens,’ Lucy finally whispered, reaching out to touch Andrews’ arm, ‘the Dead are less likely to be there, we can get past them by crossing through the gardens.’
As she drip fed them this nugget of survival information, all eyes once again turned to the frail girl.
‘Makes sense, Sir.’ muttered Andrews, turning to catch Sergeant Ridge’s eye.
For a few seconds, the Sergeant weighed up Lucy’s suggestion. It galled him that this brat should have better tactical knowledge than himself, but he knew their options were severely limited. So after one final glance at the map, more to save face than actually to find an alternative route, because he already knew there wasn’t one, he nodded his agreement.
‘Mallon, Sinclair, check out what’s on the other side of this wall,’ said Ridge, using his large hunting knife to point to the two soldiers.
Both men silently nodded their understanding and slowly began to inch their way over the low garden wall, each desperately hoping that the worst thing waiting for them on the other side was nothing more than a patch of stinging nettles. After a few anxious seconds, a hand appeared back through the cherry blossom, giving them the all clear sign.
‘Give me the baby and I’ll pass him to you,’ whispered Andrews, when it was Lucy’s turn to climb over the wall, ‘don’t worry, I won’t drop him.’
Lucy looked from the child in her arms to the soldier crouched next to her. It troubled and confused her that this man was being friendly towards her. In her head, he was her enemy. He may not have participated, but he was on the side that had beaten her family and left them for dead. Surely, therefore in some small part, he too was to blame for her mother’s body that now floated in the flooded carrier, a metal shard in her brain. Surely, he was to be punished along with the rest, wasn’t he?
‘Lucy?’ Andrews softly repeated, snapping the girl from her thoughts.
He had rested the shovel that was his weapon against the wall and was holding out his arms, hopeful to take the infant from her.
‘It’s alright,’ he nodded, ‘I’ll give him right back when you’re over the wall, I promise.’
Lucy fought with something inside for a moment, and then almost without warning, plonked the baby in the young soldier’s arms, pushed aside some blossom covered foliage, and clambered over the wall. Within a heartbeat, two small delicate hands parted the foliage again, revealing Lucy with a concerned look on her face.
‘Here you go,’ Andrews whispered, giving her a reassuring smile as he passed the baby back to Lucy, ‘told you I wouldn’t drop him.’
‘Thanks,’ she quickly muttered in reply, a look on her face as if the word had caused her pain.
Once everyone was over the low wall, the small group found themselves with a brief respite from the dangers of the road. Momentarily hidden from view by the surrounding overgrown bushes and trees, the soldiers looked up at the abandoned house searching for a way in.
‘Get it open, Mallon,’ said Ridge, nodding to the warped door with its peeling paint.
‘Wait!’ hissed Lucy, seeing Mallon was about to kick in the front door.
Surprised at the young girl’s intervention, Mallon looked quizzically back to his Sergeant as if to ask whose instructions he should be following.
‘Well?’ asked Ridge, impatiently tapping his leg with his hunting knife.
‘They’ll hear the noise,’ she whispered, walking over to look through one of the grime covered windows, ‘it doesn’t take much to get them interested.’
Shielding the reflected light with a cupped hand, Lucy peered into the gloomy front room of the house looking for signs that the Dead may be lurking inside. Satisfied they would be alone once they entered; Lucy turned away from the window and began to look about the small front garden for something in particular.
‘Ah,’ she mumbled, finding an old planter full of rainwater, ‘this’ll do.’
Darting back to Andrews, Lucy quickly deposited the child back into his arms. Then getting down on her knees, she began to tear at the clumps of weeds and grasses that had taken root at the base of a flowering bush. Once a patch had been cleared, she tipped the water from the planter onto the mud and began to mix the two together to form a thick paste like slop.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Sneered Pelling, watching the girl.
‘I need some fabric or paper.’ Lucy whispered, ignoring Pelling altogether.
‘How big?’ Asked Grimes, fascinated by the girl’s curious activity.
‘About this big,’ she replied, holding her hands up.
‘Here,’ said Ridge, reluctantly ripping away part of the folded map he knew they wouldn’t need, ‘I hope this is going somewhere?’
Lucy gingerly took the paper from the Sergeant and then began to smother it in the muddy paste. Once it was completely covered, she scooped up another handful of the sloppy mud and carried them both to the window. Choosing one of the smaller panes, Lucy threw the handful of mud at the glass. With a soft splat, the mud stuck to the windowpane and Lucy started carefully to cover it with the equally muddy paper.
‘Oh, clever,’ mumbled Grimes, already guessing what she planned to do.
‘What?’ asked Sinclair, still none the wiser.
Lucy then smoothed out the paper stuck to the pane of glass and when she was at last satisfied, she bent down in search of the final item she needed to complete her task.
‘Here.’ said Grimes reaching down to pick up a small stone.
Taking the stone, Lucy chose a spot on the paper covered glass and gave it one sharp tap. With a barely audible cracking sound, the glass broke and Lucy began to peel away the paper slowly, taking with it much of the now shattered small windowpane. Slipping her hand delicately through the hole she had just made in the glass, Lucy slowly pulled the handle up from its ‘locked’ position. Then using just the tips of her fingers, she started to push against the inside of the window frame.
‘Come on.’ She muttered, as the stiff window frame refused to budge.
Grimes was about to offer to help her when the frame suddenly popped open. Without saying a word, Lucy quickly washed her hands in the last of the water from the planter and after drying them on her trousers, silently took the child back from Andrews.
‘Well done,’ he whispered to Lucy, as the soldiers began to climb through the now open window.
Just like at the farmhouse the previous day, the soldiers moved through the house in practiced formation, searching for any unwelcome hungry surprises on the way. Unlike their last search though, this time their assault weapons hung impotently on their backs, their use strictly prohibited. So with each of the soldiers tightly clutching their makeshift weapons, they cautiously made their way to the small kitchen at the back of the property and prayed no one else was home.
Apart from a few mice that scuttled off along the skirting boards when the soldiers came into the kitchen, they had found the house was mercifully empty.
‘Just one of them in the back garden, Sir,’ said Sinclair, pushing aside the slats of the blind over the sink, ‘God knows how it’s even still standing from the state of it.’
Sergeant Ridge stepped around the table covered in a thick layer of dust and mouse droppings, to look for himself. Sinclair had been right; there standing in the tall grass under the bows of a large apple tree, was a severely emaciated corpse.
‘Right, let’s deal with ‘bones’ out there and get going,’ said Ridge, his fingers slipping from the blind’s slats, ‘the longer we’re out here the less chance we have of getting through this without our balls ending up in some meat-bag’s stomach.’
Luckily, the back door opened with the simple turn of a key that someone had quite considerately left sitting in the lock, and as Sergeant Ridge stepped out into the equally overgrown back garden, the cadaver under the tree became aware of his presence. With its movements verging on manic, the creature raised its arms and began to open and close its mouth rapidly, partly chewing away what little was left of the dried up flesh of its lips. Strangely though, it made no sound or tried to get closer to the living flesh it desperately desired, but simply stayed where it was. Confused, Ridged placed the holdall containing the Lanherne infant’s body on the ground, readjusted his grip on the large hunting knife, and stepped forward into the tall grass. It was only when he was a few paces away from the ravenous cadaver that he realised why. Wound tightly round the corpse’s neck and leading up to one of the sturdier branches above, was a rope. Whoever this sorry creature had once been, they had hung themselves. Whether they had been bitten or simply unable to cope with life in this world of the dead, Ridge would never know, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t really care either. Whoever this putrid mess had been in life, it didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was dealing with the bag of bones that slavered in front of him, so he could get out of this hellhole alive.
Without giving the cadaver a second thought, Ridge lunged forward. With one powerful slashing motion, his blade ripped through decaying skin, cartilage and bone, severing head from shoulders. For the briefest of moment, the corpse hung as it had for countless months and then with the sound of the last remnant of skin tearing, the head and body parted company. Unlike those from Lanherne, who never left an animated head lying in the grass where an unsuspecting traveller could step on it, Ridge saw no reason to finish the job. He had made sure the creature was out of action and that was all that mattered. He certainly wouldn’t be coming this way again, so what did he care.
With the flick of his gore-smeared blade, Ridge told the others to get going. He was just about to step over the low fence that separated one garden from the next when he remembered he forgotten to pick up the holdall.
‘Damn,’ he muttered to himself, jogging back to the kitchen door.
As he bent down to pick up the bag, he glanced over to the decapitated head sitting at the base of the apple tree. Something about what he saw niggled him, something was wrong, but what, he could not pin down. It was only when he was again astride the fence with one leg in each garden that it came to him. The eyes in the head that should have compulsively followed his movements hadn’t. They had been still. But Sergeant Ridge wasn’t to be given any time to process this realisation, for the next garden was providing its own problem to deal with.
‘Jesus,’ murmured Sinclair, watching the three corpses writhing against the darkly smeared glass.
Ridge looked at the three cadavers on the other side of the wide patio doors and briefly wondered if the female corpse was the mother to the two decaying children by her side, and just who had killed whom. Had the mother, as in life, brought her children into this world of death with pain, blood, and fearful screaming, or had the children in fact turned their own teeth upon their mother, desperate to reclaim the flesh from which they came. Even as he watched, the mother frantically tried to bite through the glass, unable to understand why she could go no further. While at her side, the two children frantically threw their decaying bodies again and again at the glass, turning their flesh to a mashed pulp.
‘We’d better go,’ said Lucy, tearing her eyes away from the two children not much younger than herself, ‘the sound might be carrying through to the front of the house.’
Sergeant Ridge nodded his agreement and continued wading his way through the knee-high grass to the next fence, leaving behind them the pitiful family to be forever entombed within their once happy home.
‘Looks like someone tried to make a stand,’ whispered Sinclair to Grimes, nodding to the barricaded ground floor windows and back door of the house they were now passing. ‘Wonder if they made it?’
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Grimes replied, gesturing up to one of the back bedroom windows where a man’s emaciated corpse was pawing pointless at the glass.
‘Pity,’ was all Sinclair could say, catching the hunger crazed glare of the cadaver.
Apart from one other animated corpse that Pelling eagerly consigned to its long overdue oblivion, the rest of the gardens they crossed had been thankfully empty, and they had soon made their way to the last in the row of houses.
‘Are going through this one, Sir?’ asked Mallon, looking up at the shattered windows and soot stained brickwork of the final house.
‘No,’ mumbled Ridge, double checking the map, ‘too risky that the corpses will see us and we need to turn at this corner anyway.’
The Sergeant then quietly walked over to the bushy plants that bordered the garden’s overgrown patch grass, slowly pushed aside the branches of a misshapen laurel tree, and paused.
‘Damn,’ he whispered under his breath, disappointingly finding a two-metre high wooden fence running the length of the garden.
For a few seconds, the Sergeant pondered how to deal with this new obstacle. Of course the flimsy barrier wouldn’t normally pose a problem, but with God knows how many of the corpses possibly milling on the other side, they could hardly just jump over. Sergeant Ridge glanced at Lucy, knowing that any moment, she was about to show him up again with another one of her little gems of practical knowledge. But this time he knew he already had the tools at his disposal to complete this task, and pulling a small black disk from one of his pockets, he turned to look at Lucy.
‘You’re not the only one with tricks up their sleeve,’ he whispered, smiling smugly as he pushed aside the top of the black disk to reveal a mirror beneath.
Lucy ignored the Sergeant and let her eyes wander along the top of the high fence, searching for something she knew they would need. When she finally found what she was looking for, she glanced back at the soldier to see what he would do next. Sergeant Ridge had pushed himself closer to the fence and was slowly raising the mirror, tilted at an angle. Turning left and then right, the Sergeant checked the other side of the fence for any of the hungry cadavers.
‘Right, it’s clear.’ He finally said, putting the mirror back in his pocket. ‘We need to go left from here and then right at the next crossing. There’s some sort of tour bus or coach on its side at the intersection and another behind it. They’re blocking the view from here, so we’ll just have to see how the land lies when we get there.’
‘Sir, how’s she going to get over the fence?’ asked Andrews, nodding towards Lucy with the baby in her arms.
‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll get through okay,’ she said softly, walking away from the group.
‘Lucy!’ Andrews hissed, giving Ridge a glance before jogging after the apparently escaping girl, ‘Lucy, wait!’
Lucy soon stopped at the spot she had chosen and turned to look at Andrews.
‘You need to look at the top of the fence.’ She muttered, once again giving him the baby to hold. ‘See, this panel has dropped out of line from the others. It’ll be loose and easier to pry away from the post.’
Lucy then ran her fingers down the post along the edge of the wooden panel. At one point, she stopped and began to work her fingers into the small gap she had found.
‘There’ll be less plants on the other side to block it,’ she whispered, glancing back at the fascinated soldier, ‘and as the bottom of the panel is probably higher than the road anyway, all it needs is one good shove to…Open!’ she finally said, as the fencing panel suddenly creaked opened onto the roadside of the fence.
Normally, she wouldn’t have been so bold, but with Sergeant Ridge already giving them th
e ‘all clear’, she knew nothing that wanted to rip her open and feast on her warm organs was waiting for her on the other side. So with just one further shove of the fence panel to make the gap wide enough, she slipped through. Looking back along the hedge, Lucy could see the other soldiers were already crouched down against the fence some ten metres away. No matter how much they were trying to hide it, she could tell from their expressions that they felt exposed and vulnerable standing out in the open like this, so close to the horde of the Dead they had just bypassed.
‘Ten metres can save your life,’ Lucy whispered to Andrews, as he pushed through the gap and handed her back the baby.
Immediately, Lucy wanted to kick herself for passing on another piece of survival knowledge. She had to keep on reminding herself that she didn’t want to like this young man, she didn’t want to be his friend, and she didn’t want him to be safe. But with each minute she spent with him, her resolve faltered and her need for revenge on them all waned.
‘Come on, Lucy,’ whispered Andrews, lightly touching her shoulder and breaking her from her thoughts, ‘the others are moving.’
Lucy looked over at the other soldiers and saw that they had already crossed to the other side of the road, and were crouched near the back of one of the crashed coaches. As she watched, the Sergeant slipped the holdall carrying the body of the small child off his shoulders and casually dropped it at his feet with a sickening thud. In that moment, the world seemed to fall away for Lucy. She could not hear Andrews next to her urging her to move. She was unaware of his worried and concerned expression, as he knelt before her trying to make her look at him, trying to reach her. In that moment, all Lucy could see was the holdall at Sergeant Ridge’s feet; the holdall that held a tiny body, pale and still. Suddenly, the ember of revenge that burned within her began to ignite, transforming in ever increasing waves into an uncontrollable firestorm. How dare he treat the baby with so little respect, dropping the bag to the floor as if it held nothing but rubbish. How dare he come to their home and tear her family apart. How dare he be one of the living when so many had been snatched into the gaping maw of death, bloody, and terrorised. She hated him, of that she knew in the very core of her being. She hated him and she could wait no longer for her pound of flesh. She would see him bleed for his sins.
Lanherne Chronicles (Book 3): Last Days With The Dead Page 25
