Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead (2 page)

‘Carmella!’ Vincenzo whispered, gently shaking his pregnant wife awake. ‘Sveglia, il mio amore… I morti sono qui!’

Liz didn’t need to know what exactly Vincenzo was saying to understand the strangled cry of fear that escaped Carmella as she pushed herself from the bed cradling her large belly.

‘Vincenzo, take Anne! I can’t fight with her in my arms,’ said Liz, passing him her bundled up sister.

‘Lizzy!’ Anne whispered, her large blue eyes reflecting in the pale moonlight.

‘It’s alright, Anne… everything’s alright,’ Liz lied, kissing her sister’s forehead, ‘Vincenzo will keep you safe…’

‘What are we to do, Lizbetta?’ he replied, taking Anne. ‘The windows!’

Liz glanced at the tall windows with their iron railings and realised, that which had been perfect at keeping the Dead out, now trapped them within.

‘First, we wait for the others,’ she began, looking at Tom who nodded his agreement, ‘Charlie will…’

But her words died in her throat, as with a creak the door at the end of the ward began to be slowly pushed open. With a flick of her blade, silently indicating for Vincenzo to move Carmella and Anne behind her, Liz stepped forward. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tom, stepping quietly past Paul to stand by her side. As usual in each of his hands he held tightly the curved hand sickles that were his weapon of choice. Whatever was coming through the door they would meet it together. With another creak of the rusting hinge, a silhouetted figure stepped through the door. Instantly Liz recognised the outline of the spiked club it held and she released a breath that until that moment she hadn’t realised she was holding.

‘Phil!’ she whispered, lowering her blade. ‘Thank God…’

‘Sounds like it’s time to make a move again, Liz,’ he replied, his concerned face becoming clear as he stepped into a beam of moonlight.

‘You heard it too,’ she replied. ‘How long do you think we’ve got?’

‘Until we’re over run?... not long,’ said Phil stepping back to the door to look through the cracked small circular pane of glass. ‘David’s checking out the door at the end of the corridor. It’s the only thing standing between the main building and this wing. If the Dead have made it that far….’

‘We’ll be trapped…’ Liz completed in a whisper.

‘Yep,’ said Phil, glancing back past Liz to Vincenzo holding Anne in one arm while his other arm held his wife protectively close to him.

Suddenly there was a chorus of blood chilling screams coming from somewhere in the main building, swiftly followed by the bang of a door as it slammed against the wall and then the sound of multiple running footsteps approaching them. Phil looked from the circular window back to Liz. Even in the dim moonlight she could see Phil was torn between throwing open the door to help David and staying to protect them. But as the running footsteps came closer along the dark corridor, Phil abruptly stepped back, determined to use his body as a shield against whatever was about to burst through.

‘Get ready!’ he growled, only really talking to Liz and Tom.

‘Vincenzo,’ said Carmella, barely keeping the terror from her voice. 

Liz, standing with her feet apart and her sword held high behind her as Charlie had taught her, took one last slow deep breath and prepared herself to fight for the lives of those around her. She knew these newly turned Dead would be fast, their movements still as lithe and supple as when alive. It would be a few hours yet before the slowly decaying brain condemned the body to nothing more than a shambling shell. Not that these slower Dead would be any less a threat. On mass they could still break their way through barricaded doors and windows, their weight alone giving them the force their dead muscles couldn’t.

The running footsteps were moments away from the door now and as the first shadow fell against the small cracked window Liz glanced to Phil praying the first angry corpse through wasn’t David’s. When the door finally flew open with a bang it was Charlie running towards her. Even with only moonlight illuminating him, Liz instantly took in the dark blood splashed across this chest and face.

‘No,’ she choked, her sword dropping slightly as her heart broke at the thought of Charlie becoming one of the hungry cadavers he had fought so hard to protect Anne and herself from for the last five years.

Charlie had been a solider in Iraq and had been sent home after a road side bomb had detonated killing much of his platoon. He had often told Liz, that day he had been one of the lucky ones. Not only to have survived the explosion with only the loss of his left hand as a souvenir of his final tour but it had also put him on the path to meeting her and her sister. Charlie had had an ex-wife and daughter of his own once, but when the Dead came that life had been cruelly torn from him. When one of his army buddies had called him, telling him to ignore the reports that everything was under control and that the riots springing up throughout the globe were something more than simple unrest, he knew he had to get out of the city and quickly. Rushing like a mad man to fetch his daughter from her school, he had arrived just too late to save her. He had found classrooms empty and awash with spilt blood, every corner contaminated with ungodly carnage and as he fell to his knees amongst the congealing gore and torn flesh his world collapsed about him. His grief ripped his sanity from him, condemning him to an existence of meaningless survival. It wasn’t until a month later when, in one of the few remaining rescue centres, he had come across a terrified ten year old girl clutching her infant sister that he had finally found a reason to go on. Liz had looked up at him with her large brown eyes full of so much fear and loss that he knew he could not turn away from her need. Through these two girls he would make amends. Through them he would find a reason to live and a way to assuage his guilt.

‘Liz,’ Charlie suddenly said. ‘Thank God!’

With those three words, Liz knew her world was as it should be. Charlie was alive and somehow everything would be OK.

‘Fuck, Charlie!’ she said, lowering her blade. ‘The blood… I thought…’

‘What? Oh, it’s not mine,’ he simply replied, glancing behind him to make sure David and Tyrone had followed him into the ward.

‘They’re coming!’ shouted David, looking through the circular window at the silhouettes running along the corridor toward them.

‘Shit!’ said Phil, grabbing a length of pipe out of David’s hand to feed it through to door handles.

‘That won’t hold them for long,’ panted Tyrone, moving over to comfort his wide eyed brother. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Well, with the windows barred, we’d better pray we can keep them at bay for a few hours…’ replied Phil, already pulling over one of the beds to block the doorway.

‘David, how many were there?’ asked Charlie, flicking a chunk of flesh from the large hunting knife he always had strapped to the stump where his prosthetic hand used to be.

Before he could answer the first of the Dead threw themselves against the doors, slightly jarring them open.

‘Four or five…’ murmured David, desperate to tear his gaze from the bloody face that had suddenly appeared the other side of the cracked glass.

With a shudder, the rest of the Dead pack slammed against the door, forcing the gap between them just wide enough for broken and bloody fingers to be pushed through. With a yell, Phil stepped forward and kicked the doors together again, scattering severed fingers to the floor.

‘We need to barricade this while we think of what we’re going to do,’ he said, pushing his back hard against the doors.

Spurred into action, the others began to pull the meagre collection of battered and peeling bedside tables and chairs over to the rattling doors.

‘What happened to Cam and Michael?’ asked Liz, afraid of the answer she may be given, ‘Did they…?’

‘No, No… We got split up,’ replied Charlie, pulling a small metal cabinet over to Phil. ‘They said they’d try to get to the horses… let’s just hope we can join them.’

Without warning the sound of shattering glass stopped everyone in their tracks.

‘Gesu Cristo!’ cried Carmella, staring as the Dead fought to push their arms through the broken pane of glass, oblivious to the shards cutting deep into their Dead flesh.

‘Charlie, we… we need to get out of here!’ she continued, switching back to English. ‘There must be a way!’

With a wave of panic consuming her, Carmella pushed herself away from Vincenzo and ran to one of the tall barred windows.

‘There must be a way!’ she cried, frantically pulling against the bars, hoping to loosen them, ‘There must! I… I won’t let them have my baby!’

‘Carmella! Carmella!’ hushed Vincenzo, trying to pry her fingers from the bars while Anne sat mutely in his arms.

‘Now would be a good time for any ideas, Charlie…’ said Phil, jolting as the Dead repeatedly threw themselves against the doors at his back.

‘Erm…’ he began, realising their options were more than a little limited, ‘any chance we can crowbar the bars wide enough apart to get out?’

‘Doubt it,’ said Tom, leaning against a windowsill, ‘these were meant to keep the loonies in … they made them pretty secure.’

‘Shit!’ mumbled Charlie, dropping to sit down on Liz’s bed, his eyes scanning the shadows hoping something would come to him.

Watching as Charlie mentally came up with one plan only to discard it again, Liz tried to block out the almost growling cries of the Dead pounding against the door. She knew, like a dinner gong, their calls would only draw more of the Dead to them and soon the sheer number on the other side of the door would send the doors and their feebly erected barricade clattering into the ward. Thinking of what she would do when that eventually happened, Liz let her gaze wander past Charlie to the wall behind him. She had seen it countless times since arriving at the Institute but only now did the large patch of water damaged plaster really catch her attention. Following the stain up to the cracked ceiling above her bed, a hopeful plan dared to form. Desperately she tried to picture the hospital wing from the outside. She could clearly see the tall windows set in the peeling painted brickwork and on top, the moss covered grey slate tiling of the roof. Yes, the roof was pitched and not flat. They may just have a chance after all.

‘Help me!’ she suddenly cried, running over to push one of the larger tables to a certain point by her bed. ‘Charlie, the ceiling! Perhaps we can get through the ceiling!’

‘Christ, girl, you’re right,’ he replied, his head tilting up to look at the cracked ceiling above him.

‘Tyrone, your crowbar!’ shouted Tom, smoothly slipping his two scythes in their straps on his back.

‘Here!’ Tyrone replied, tossing the heavy metal bar.

Catching it, Tom leapt onto the table. Taking a moment to steady himself, he gently traced the crack with his fingers until he found what he thought would be a good spot.

‘Here goes nothing,’ he said glancing down at the hopeful faces looking up at him.

With a grunt, barely audible over the chilling moans of the Dead, Tom swung the crowbar upwards toward the crack. The water damaged plaster didn’t stand a chance against him and as the bar ripped through it a small section of the ceiling showered down upon him.

‘Well?’ asked Charlie, coughing as dust and chunks of plaster filled the air.

‘Hang on,’ Tom replied, using the hook end of the crow bar to pull down more of the plasterboard. ‘Err… Yep, I can see one of the joists. If it can hold my weight I think I can pull myself up.’

‘Here,’ said Tyrone, pulling a small plastic chair over and lifting it up onto the table, ‘it’ll be easier if you stand on this.’

‘We need to hurry this up, people!’ said Phil, jolting forward as more of the Dead threw themselves at the door that they somehow knew separated them from the flesh they desired.

Behind him, the wood around the broken window was beginning to splinter and crack as more and more of the Dead fought to reach through to them.

‘We don’t have much time!’ shouted David, running to help Phil hold back the cadaverous horde. ‘Hurry!’

Tom looked at the splintering doors and instantly knew that whether there was a way out through the roof or not, it was their only hope of escape.

‘Right,’ he said to himself, stepping up onto the chair.

With the extra height the chair gave him, he reached up through the hole and moved his fingers along the edge of the ceiling joist. Once he was satisfied he had a secure grip he pulled himself up into the darkness. Almost immediately the sound of the crowbar hamming against the thick slates echoed down to the trapped group.

‘Tyrone, you’re next… then Vincenzo,’ said Charlie, glancing nervously at Phil and David as they fought to keep the barricade in place.

‘But…’ began Tyrone, looking protectively at his younger brother.

‘You both need to be up there to help pull Carmella up… she won’t be able to do it on her own,’ Charlie interrupted.

‘Right,’ he replied, turning to Paul and quickly signing what he was doing.

Nervously chewing on his lip, Paul nodded his understanding. With a smile and a squeeze of his brother’s shoulder, Tyrone jumped up onto the table. Standing on the chair, Tyrone mirrored Tom’s actions and with a kick of his legs he pulled himself up into the loft space.