Last Days With the Dead (11 page)

‘I’ll do my best, Sis
,’ Matt replied, quickly flicking switches on the cockpit control panel to bring the chopper to life.

With a whine, the blades began to spin
slowly. Karen looked up at the blades above them spinning faster and faster with each turn.

‘Come on, come on
,’ she mumbled to herself, wishing them to go even faster so they could take off.

‘Shit
,’ said Matt, nodding across the airstrip at the figures running in their direction, ‘Company.’

‘Come on, Matt
, come on, Matt!’ Karen screamed, seeing the soldiers drawing their weapons.

‘I see them
,’ he replied, frantically looking down at the rotor speed dial.

Then with a lurch, Karen was jolted forwards as Matt pulled on the control stick
, allowing them to rise slightly in the air. Karen looked away from the soldiers who were beginning to take up defensive positions, and down to the choppers landing skids beneath her, now hovering half a meter off the ground. It was then that the first shot rang out.

‘Jesus
,’ Karen said, looking at the spider web of cracks in the cockpit glass near Matt’s head, ‘get us out of here!’

‘Pleasure
,’ was all Matt said to her, and then with a sudden falling feeling in her stomach, the chopper rose higher into the air.

More shots were
fired; most of them missing them entirely, but a few ricocheted dangerously off the choppers bodywork. With every high-pitched ‘ding’, Karen flinched, expecting their one chance of escape suddenly to become a plummeting fireball. But within mere seconds, Matt had taken them beyond the firing range of the men below, and as the island disappeared into the surrounding blackness behind them, Karen suddenly looked over at her brother and burst into tears of relief.

***

‘What the Fuck was that, man?’ said Leon, darting from his room, already a knife in each hand.

Up and down the corridor, doors were being flung open
, and from each room, the startled members of Lanherne were coming, ready to fight for their lives.

‘Jen! Nicky!’ Patrick called down the dark hallway
. ‘Gather up all the children and take them into our room.’

Jen, already with Danny in her arms, side stepped Steve who had the room next to hers
, and ran to the end of the corridor where Patrick and Helen’s room was. In the flickering light, from something burning outside, Patrick noticed Steve was holding a gun. As a rule, all of the Convent’s real weaponry was kept under lock and key in one of the storerooms. Admittedly, Steve always had a copy of the key hanging around his neck, but Patrick didn’t know how he felt about him permanently having a firearm within hand’s reach, especially with so many children wandering around. Putting the conversation he would need to have with Steve at the back of his mind for now, Patrick realised that at this precise moment, the fact Steve already had a gun on him may save them precious moments, and keep everyone alive.

‘Steve
,’ Patrick said, running towards him, ‘get outside and see if they need help, use the gun if you have to.’

Steve nodded and began to run to the stone staircase.

‘Leon, Imran, Phil,’ Steve called to the three men as he ran past them, his military training automatically kicking in, ‘with me!’

Without question, the three men followed. Phil, dressed only in his underwear, didn’t even wait to put on any clothes. With the length of pipe already in his hand, he had all he needed to deal with whatever they found outside. While Imran, who had automatically grabbed for his bow and full quiver the moment the explosion had woken him, was already sprinting down the corridor after Steve. Leon, with one of his arms already hooking through the sleeve of his vest of knives, quickly pulled something from the pocket of the jeans he had hastily slipped on.

‘Here,’ he said to Bryon, handing him a lighter, ‘get some of the lamps lit.’

It was a rare occurrence that they used any of the valuable oil lamps, they all knew that once the oil was used
, it would be unlikely they would be able to refill them again.

‘Will do,’ said Bryon, reaching for one of the oil lamps that hung unused on a hook.

Pulling off the glass cover, Bryon flicked the wheel on the disposable lighter. With a flash of sparks, the flame lit, and with his hand cupped to save it from any draught, Bryon tilted the lamp so the wick was in the flame. After a few sputtering attempts, the wick finally burst into life, filling one end of the corridor with welcoming light.

‘What do we...’ Bryon began, turning round
, but his words abruptly stopped as the light fell through the open door of Alice’s room.

‘Alice
,’ he cried, running to her door, ‘No!’

Instantly, Liz was pushing her way past people to get to the woman she loved as a sister.

‘What?’ she exclaimed, pausing in the doorway to see Bryon resting the lamp down beside the puddle of blood that surrounded Alice’s still body.

‘No!’ she screamed, throwing herself into the room.

‘Get Avery!’ she heard someone call from the doorway behind her, as she knelt in a pool of Alice’s warm blood.

‘I’ve got a pulse
,’ Bryon said with relief, looking up at Liz, her eyes wide with worry. ‘It’s weak but it’s there...’

Liz gripped Alice’s hand fiercely, wishing with all her heart
that she would open her eyes.

‘We need to stop the bleeding!’ said Bryon, looking about the room for something suitable.

‘Here,’ said Penny, stepping into the room to pick a clean folded towelling square off a pile by the door, ‘use this.’

Taking the square of fabric, Bryon folded up into a tight wad and after ripping aside Alice’s bloody T-shirt, pressed the wad firmly to the hole in her shoulder.

‘Where’s Avery!’ he shouted to the stunned faces of the people standing in the doorway. ‘We need Avery, now!’

‘J-man’s gone to get him,’ replied Patrick, his worried expression diminishing the effect of his calming tone, ‘he’ll be here any second.’

‘It’ll be alright, Alice,’ Liz whispered, kissing her friends bloody knuckles, ‘it’ll be alright.’

Behind
her, she heard Penny make a small gasp. Turning her head briefly away from Alice, Liz could see Penny standing over the cot that Charlie slept in.

‘He’s not here
,’ Penny said, turning back to look at her and then over to Patrick, ‘Charlie’s gone? They’ve taken him.’

***

Outside, Steve skidded to a halt, taking in the scene of burning debris and scattered rubble.

‘Forget that
,’ shouted Phil to Damien and Rich, who had come down from the walkway and were frantically trying to put out the fire that had already taken hold on the side of the pig sty, ‘we need to block that fucking hole!’

Even as he said the words, the shambling figure of a Dead woman pulled herself through the gap in the wall where the side gate used to be.

‘Got it!’ called Imran, dropping his quiver at his feet so he could take aim.

With a twang of his string, the arrow shot from his bow, landing just above the Dead woman’s right eye. For a second
, she rocked back and forth on her feet and then as her ruined brain finally released its hold on her decaying body, she collapsed to the ground.

Inside the
pigsty, the pigs could smell the smoke and were starting to panic. Rich, who had abandoned trying to douse the flames with buckets of water from the water barrel, pulled open the sty door, and let the pigs out. In a stampede of snouts and trotters, the five pigs and half a dozen piglets, darted out of the burning sty and began to dart around the courtyard’s patchwork of vegetable plots.

‘What do we do?’ called Rich, coughing as he inhaled some of
the thick black smoke. 

‘Imran, Leon! Get up on the walkway and make sure no more of those bastards get through
,’ Phil shouted, looking round for something they could use to block the breach.

‘I’ve got an idea!’ called Steve, running over to one of the carts
. ‘Help me push it nearer to the wall.’

As one, the men ran to the back of the boxed cart and began to push with all their might. Moving the cart the ten or so meters over to the breach
, would have taken seconds for any of the three horses at Lanherne, but for the four men, it seemed to take an age. The explosion surely must have roused all the Dead in the surrounding area, and with each turn of the cart’s large wheels, Steve expected them to be overrun. Only the reassuring whisper of arrows and knives flying through the air from the walkway above, calmed his concerns. He knew Imran and Leon would keep the Dead at bay, they had to, their lives depended on it.

‘What the fuck happened, anyway?’ grunted Phil, as the cart finally became level with the hole in the wall.

‘There was just this explosion out of the blue and then by the time we got here, all that was left to see were the tail lights of two  motor bikes as they sped away,’ replied Rich, wiping the sooty sweat from his forehead.

‘Hey, aren’t the Dead just going to be able to crawl under this?’ asked Damien, crouching down to look beneath the cart.

‘Now, we tip it over,’ Phil said, nodding to Steve to confirm that had been his plan, as he positioned his grip under the cart’s carriage, ‘the carts’ roof will block them out.’

Once each of the men had a firm grip in the bottom of the cart, they slowly began to lift one side off the ground.

‘Come on, you Bastard!’ Phil shouted, the blood pumping in his ears as he strained with the others to lift their side of the cart higher.

Suddenly
, Cam, Sarah, Duncan, and William, appeared next to him and seeing what needed to be done, each found a space to grab hold on the cart. Immediately, the cart lifted higher from the ground.

‘On the count of three, push
,’ said Phil, through gritted teeth.

‘One, two
… three!’

Amid the grunts of effort, the cart slowly rose higher and higher, until the perfect angle was finally reached and gravity began to work in their favour.

‘Get ready!’ grunted Phil. ‘Step back, it’s going to…’

Then, with a crash, the cart tipped onto its side, blocking the hole.

‘It’s not tight with the wall,’ said Cam, looking at the fist-sized gap between the cart’s roof and the wall, ‘but nothing can get through, we’re safe.’

‘Thank fuck!
Now we deal with the fires!’ directed Phil. ‘Everybody grab a bucket of water, Sarah, you try to catch the piglets and put them in the stable, they’re likely to get trampled on out here.’

‘On it
,’ she replied, darting after one of the small piglets as it ran by.

‘I’m going to give the Convent a once over,’ whispered Steve to Phil, as he retrieved the handgun he had stuck in the waistband of his jeans, ‘make sure there’s only us left in here.’

‘Good idea,’ nodded Phil, dipping his bucket into the water barrel, ‘be careful, Steve.’

Bucket by bucket
, the group darted back and forth to the water barrels positioned about the courtyard, until finally, with a spluttering fizz, the last smoky embers were extinguished.

‘Fuck!’ said Phil
, throwing his empty bucket away from him as he dropped to sit on the ground. ‘I’m getting too old for this malarkey.’

‘You look alright to me,’ said Sarah, dropping down next to him and patting him on his muscular thighs, ‘you’re in great shape for a man your age.’

‘Why, Sarah,’ Phil said comically, acting as if he only just realised he was sitting there in just his underwear, ‘you tart, flirting with me at a time like this…’

‘You should be so lucky,’ she laughed, poking him in the ribs, ‘and anyway
, you’re not the only one with a bit of eye candy to snuggle up to at night.’

‘And how’s it going with Cam?’ Phil said, pushing himself up from the ground with a grunt and dusting some dirt off his backside.

‘It’s…’ Sarah began to answer, a secret girlish smile creeping across her face.

‘Phil! You need to come,’ interrupted J-man running up to him, ‘Alice has been shot…’

‘Get Avery,’ said Phil, already sprinting for the Convent entrance.

‘Avery’s been hurt too
,’ J-man called after him, causing the man to skid to an abrupt halt.

‘Is
, he?’ said Phil, the colour draining from his face as terrible thoughts and images flashed into his mind.

‘God, No
,’ J-man quickly replied, seeing that Phil had feared the worst, ‘he had a pretty bad crack to the head, he was just coming round when I went to fetch him for Alice.’

Phil’s large body visible shook with relief and he rubbed his face vigorously with his hands trying to clear the horrific thoughts of losing Avery from his mind.

‘Pheww,’ said Phil finally, blowing away the last rush of adrenalin that still fizzed through his veins, ‘and Avery’s with Alice now?’

‘Yes,’ J-man replied, ‘but he’s still a bit shaky, so he’s getting Bryon to be his hands
.’