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Authors: Stephen Charlick

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Horror, #Fantasy

Last Days With the Dead (6 page)

BOOK: Last Days With the Dead
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‘Would we be able to use tractor tyres
,’ asked Imran. ‘There are so many farms round here, there’s bound to be a tractor or two in a barn somewhere.’

‘I think they might be too deep,’ Phil mused, scratching his beard with the back of his hand
. ‘Then there’s the problem of getting air into them. I’ll ask Duncan about it when we get back, he likes a challenge.’

For the next ten minutes, the three companions travelled in silence, each trying to come up with ways they could improve either the road surface or the cart. As she mulled various ideas over in her head, Liz looked up through the roof hatch to watch the overhanging branches of the trees slowly swaying in the soft breeze. The branches that only a few weeks before
, had been nothing but twisted bare wood had now broken out in a riot of small green leaves that danced merrily back and forth. Spring was at last with them and by some miracle; the survivors of Lanherne had made it through another cold winter.

As Samson pulled the cart up to the wide gate that stood at the bottom of the
tree-lined lane, he automatically came to a stop. For a long time, a large fallen tree had blocked the direct route to the village, but after many trips out with axes and saws, it had finally been cleared, giving them a good supply of firewood in the process. So here, Samson patiently stood, idly swishing his tail as he waited for instruction from Phil. With a slight pull on the reins and a click of his tongue, Phil urged Samson to turn right.

Liz pushed aside one of the many spy hole covers that dotted the walls, so she could watch the world go by. The cart had barely made the full turn from the lane and onto the road, when Phil pulled Samson to an abrupt stop.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Phil, leaning forwards to look at the road ahead through his front viewing slit, ‘already?’

‘What?’ asked Liz, already guessing what she would see as she repositioned herself so she could look over Phil’s shoulder.

Sure enough, Liz could see the sad group of shambling corpses that, in one form or another, were making their way along the road towards them. If they remained silent, the Dead would eventually shuffle right past them, unaware that only a few centimetres of wood separated them from the living flesh they craved. But it was an unspoken law of Lanherne, you never let the Dead pass, and you always ended their existence if you could. It wasn’t a case of simply giving the walking corpses the death they rightly deserved, but also with the Dead out numbering the living so vastly, you never let an opportunity pass to even up the odds a little. One less walking cadaver was one less walking cadaver someone would have to fear being bitten by.

There were six creatures of various sizes and states of decay dotted in the road ahead of them. The closest had once been a teenage girl, her once trendy clothes and up
to the minute trainers, were now nothing but tattered filthy rags encrusted with dried gore. Liz watched the wretched creature stumble slightly when her clearly broken leg that had a blackened shard of bone protruding through the mouldy skin, suddenly bent at an odd angle mid step.  How this girl had died, Liz had no idea. Perhaps she had fallen and lain helpless as she died from the infected wound. She would never know, but today this young girl would finally meet her maker.

‘I’m on it
,’ said Imran softly, about to push himself through the roof hatch and rain his arrows down on the approaching Dead.

‘No, I deal with these,’ Liz interrupted, already opening the side hatch next to her
. ‘I need the warm up.’

‘Liz!’ Imran snapped, reaching a fraction of a second too late to stop her.

The moment her boots crunched down onto the cracked tarmac, six sets of Dead eyes locked onto her with nothing but a desperate hunger burning in their gaze. Reaching up behind her, Liz’s fingers wrapped securely around the handle of her sword, and with the softest of ‘clicks’, the blade unlatched, allowing it to slip free of its sheath. With smooth, precise movements, Liz swept the blade in front of her, instantly feeling comfortable with the reassuring weight in her hand. With the barest of whispers, the blade sliced through the air as she flicked her wrist left and right, becoming nothing but a deadly extension of her arm, and once she was ready, Liz stepped purposefully forward to meet the girl.

With a
groan, the girl took another stumbling step forward, reaching a cracked and dirty hand imploringly toward Liz as she did so. Liz paused to watch the Dead girl for a second. It was if the girl’s corpse almost shook with excitement to be suddenly so near one of the living, but as her mouth began to snap open and closed in anticipation of ripping into Liz’s flesh, Liz knew the time to watch was over. With a twitch of her wrist, the blade arched through the air, removing one of the girl’s extended hands with a brittle snap. Before the removed appendage had hit the concrete, Liz was using the power of the swing to follow through. A split second later when the hand came to a rocking standstill on the road, the girl’s head tumbled to the ground to join it, closely followed by her now lifeless body. Stepping over the body, Liz switched the position of the blade in her hand and with a grunt, stabbed down its tip into the still moving face of the Dead girl. As her blade tore through the decaying flesh of the Dead girl’s face to pierce the barely covered bones of her skull, the creature was finally put to rest.

Without a second thought for the girl, Liz then moved onto the next walking corpse. This time it was a short man dressed in filthy mechanic
’s overalls. Most of the skin and much of the flesh had been ripped from his face at some point. What was left, had taken on a sickly shade of green and was threaded through by a spider web of dark veins. At the edges of the torn flesh, hanging limply from his pitted skull, Liz casually noticed that the larvae of some unknown insect was happily living their lives burrowing and feasting on the man. Again, the excitement on the cadaver’s features was palpable, as a dark coloured drool dripped from his ravaged lips. Taking a few steps towards him with her blade held high behind her, Liz waited for just the right moment to strike, and as the Dead man opened his mouth to let forth his pitiful moan, Liz saw her opportunity and lunged. With lightning speed, her blade fell, slicing cleanly through what little flesh and tendons were left on the man’s jaw, and following through to his vertebrae and spinal cord. With a sound almost like a cough, the Dead man stopped in his tracks. Then, slowly at first, and faster as its momentum increased, the top half of the man’s face slid from position, to fall with a splat on the road. In the seconds before the body fell, its twitching slug like tongue tried to probe the roof of a mouth that was no longer there, and subconsciously, Liz’s own tongue in her mouth mirrored the sickening movements. Glancing down at the top half of the Dead man’s face, Liz noticed his milky eyes still followed her every movement.

‘Nighty night
,’ she said, stamping down hard on the Dead man’s skull and sending a spray of decaying brain matter across the road as his skull shattered.

A few steps behind the now permanently lifeless
body were two more Dead men, eagerly shuffling their way towards her. As if in practiced unison, they lunged for her as one. The taller of the pair even managed to brush his Dead fingers along Liz’s shoulder, but her reflexes were too quick for him, and with a powerful flick of her wrist, she severed his arm at the elbow, while kicking out hard at his smaller companion. This gave her just the room she needed to quickly alter the position of the blade in her hand and thrust it upwards under his chin. With a ‘crack’, the tip of her sword slid through the Dead man’s decaying jaw and into the base of his skull. It only took a second for the tall Dead man’s remaining arm to fall uselessly to his side, and in that moment, Liz tugged free her sword from his jaw, allowing him to crumple to the road. Turning to now deal with the smaller Dead man, Liz noticed Imran had already taken care of him. There, protruding from a ruined eye socket was one of Imran’s arrows. Liz glanced back to the cart and sure enough, Imran was already letting a second arrow fly from his bow. Her eyes flicked back to the two remaining walking corpses in the road, and watched as almost instantly the head of a Dead woman dressed in nothing but rotting underwear, snapped violently backwards. As always, Imran’s aim was perfect and the arrow had landed deeply lodged in the Dead woman’s forehead.

With only one more of the Dead remaining on the road, Liz was determined to deal with this one herself. Turning to Imran, she held up her hand for him to hold his fire. Despite the annoyed look on his face, he did as she asked
, and lowered his bow. Liz, satisfied that it would be her blow that gave this abomination the peace it rightly deserved, walked slowly over to meet the Dead child hobbling towards her. The pathetic thing could only have been ten or eleven when it died, its life hardly begun before it was ended so violently. With its emaciated frame and patchy lank hair, Liz realised she was unable to tell whether it had been a boy or a girl. Whatever it had been, she knew it had been loved, and its loss mourned over. In honour of that love, she would end its suffering and end it quickly. She watched its jaws snapping hungrily at her, as it stumbled closer and with a quick prayer to a God she hope was listening, she stepped forward, swinging her blade over her head. As the blade connected with the top of the child’s skull, the papery skin and brittle bone tore. In its last moments of un-life, the child brought its tiny hands up to grasp the blade, now imbedded in its skull and then with a look of almost relief flashing over its decaying features, the child fell. Liz looked down at the small crumpled body lying at her feet and knew but for Charlie, she too may have met a similar fate.

With motherly tenderness, Liz bent
down, gathered the small child’s body in her arms, and carried it over to the side of the road. Once she had finally given the child its permanent place of rest, she stood and turned to see Imran standing by the cart watching her.

‘If it w
as Saleana, would you want someone to just toss her corpse aside like so much trash?’ she asked softly, as she walked past him, seeing the question in his eyes.

‘Liz…’ was all Imran could say, his eyes slowly drifting back to the small body now lying under a flowering blackberry bush.

Once Imran had retrieved his arrows and pulled the other five bodies over to the side of the road, he climbed back into the cart, closing the hatch behind him. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he watched Liz silently picking at the rim of one of the spy holes.

‘That will never happen to Saleana,’ Imran said, pulling Liz to him, ‘we know that no matter what happens, she’ll never come back as one of those things.’

‘I know,’ Liz replied softly, her fingers gripping tightly onto Imran’s jacket, ‘I love you.’

‘I know,
’ he answered, smiling as he gently kissed the top of her head.

‘If you two have finished,’ Phil interrupted with a smile, ‘I think we should get going to the village before all that’s left is a pile of smouldering ruins
.’

‘Well, you’re the one with the reins in your hand, big man
,’ Liz replied, nodding for him to go.

‘Right
,’ Phil mumbled, turning back to face the road ahead and giving the reins a flick, ‘come on boy.’

***

‘Can you see anything?’ asked Liz, looking up at Phil.

When they had arrived at the village of St Mawgan twenty minutes later, it
hadn’t taken them long to track down the source of the smoke they had seen from Lanherne. Whatever was on fire was burning from behind the high boarded up railings of the village school. At one time, it had been the home of Jackson and had ultimately become his tomb, when he finally decided to take his own life. During his stay there, he had meticulously gone from house to house removing doors, which he then used to bolt to the railings, allowing him to hide from the hungry eyes of the Dead. Even now, the wall of doors still prevented Liz, Imran, and Phil from seeing into the playground, which had been turned over to grow vegetables by Jackson. 

‘There’s not enough smoke for it to be the school on fire,’ replied Phil in a whisper, as he stood on tiptoe trying
to look out of an upstairs window of the building opposite the school. ‘My guess is that there’s a small fire somewhere on the old playground.’

‘But how did it get lit,’ Liz mulled, ‘as you said before
, it’s not been dry enough for it to light on its own and…’

‘Wait
,’ Phil interrupted, ‘I can see movement… it looks like a woman.’

‘Do you think she’s on her own?’ Liz asked, craning her neck to try to see for herself.

‘Only one way to tell,’ Phil replied, looking down at her. ‘Come on; let’s get back to the cart.’

They had left Imran, Samson
, and the cart hidden from view in a side street a hundred meters from the school. Luckily, they had found the village clear of the Dead when they arrived, whether it was down to the unknown arrivals, they could only guess. They had come across a small pile of battered corpses dumped by the side of the road just before they had entered the village proper, so they assumed so.

‘How are we going to play this?’ whispered Imran, looking from Phil to Liz
. ‘Whoever they are, they’re hardly just going to open the gates to people they don’t know, we certainly wouldn’t.’

‘I think I should do it,’ replied Liz
. ‘We know there’s at least one woman in there, perhaps she’ll be more inclined to open up if she hears another woman’s voice.’

BOOK: Last Days With the Dead
5.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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