Six Days With the Dead (24 page)

‘
This doesn’t look good,’ Charlie whispered, ‘No sign of them, but from the fireplace they’ve obviously been here sometime in the last few hours.’

Stepping into the shadowy room, the only light source coming from the moonlight behind them and the very soft orange glow from the embers, they realised it would be near impossible to see any of the Dea
d coming for them in here. Picking up a piece of wood from beside the fire and tearing a strip off one of the faded curtains, Charlie made an impromptu torch. Blowing against the fading embers it took a while for the fabric to catch but eventually he soon had a blazing torch to light their way.

‘
Ready?’ he said, turning to Liz.

But Liz was looking down at the tiled flooring. Now that they had some light they could both clearly see that at the far end of the room by another doorway, the tiles were covered
in a spray of deep red blood. 

‘
Oh fuck!’ Charlie said.

Remembering the sight of poor Mrs Penhaligan lying face down in the garden with her head smashed in, Liz
’s heart sank to think of Emma O’Brien and her unborn baby meeting such a fate .

‘
Right, this place is probably a warren of small offices, not to mention the cells. I say we open that door, make some noise and wait for whoever that blood belonged to, to come to us,’ Charlie suggested.

Nodding, Liz went over to the door, trying to step round the pool
of blood. Placing her hand on a blood covered door handle, she gave it a push. The door swung open with a creek, showing a dark corridor lined with boxes and shelves stacked with supplies. Wiping the foreign blood from her palm onto he trouser leg, Liz looked at Charlie.

‘
Hello, Hello, anyone home? Get your live flesh here!’ she shouted down the corridor.

Then straining her hearing, she listened
for any sound coming from within the police station. She tried again, but it was soon clear the place was as dead as the person whose blood she was standing in.

‘
Nothing,’ she said to Charlie, ‘I can’t hear a thing.’

Suddenly there was a frantic crunching of the gravel jus
t outside. Spinning with an ice pick ready in his hand, Charlie was relieved to find that it was just Imran running towards them.

‘
There’s someone walking down on the beach,’ Imran said, with a flick of his head.

Following Imran back outside, Charlie
and Liz walked surrounded by the pool of yellow light of their torch. So as not to ruin his night vision, Charlie handed Liz the torch and walked over to Imran. After briefly closing his eyes to readjust them to the limited light supply, he looked to the beach below them. Sure enough, a figure was walking along the surf line, its back to police station on the peninsula.

‘
Right, let’s get down there and see what’s what,’ Charlie said, ‘Imran, you stay here with Delilah, Liz with me.’

Breaking into a jog before the word
s had left his mouth, Charlie was off. Liz thrust the torch to Imran and with a wink she too disappeared into the darkness. Pausing briefly at the end of the gravelled side road, Charlie turned to Liz who had been a few paces behind.

‘
There’s a pathway leading down to the beach over there,’ he said, pointing to a break in the fence running along the cliff side of the road.

As they reached the top of the path, Charlie held up his hand for her to stop. They listened intently for any danger
, before they began their descent, hearing only the distant break of the surf below, they carried on. Walking along a cliff path in the dark, with high grass on one side, and a drop on the other was not Liz’s idea of fun. Every few paces, she would turn around, checking the darkness behind them for an unseen attack. But no attack came and soon the small path of trampled down grass turned sandy as they reached the top of the beach. Looking up the way they had come, Liz could still make out Imran standing by the cart, the torch waving in his hand. As they stepped off the last part of the path, the sand gave way to the shingle that covered many of the beaches in this area.

‘
Well there’s no sneaking up on them, not with these pebbles,’ Charlie said, as they began crunching their way across the beach to the distant figure still walking in the surf.

The figure stopped and peered out to the ocean, its shoulders slumped as waves lapped at its ankles. They could now see from the silhouette that it was a man. The scene before them could so easily have been just someone out for a
stroll with something serious to think out. But the blood at the Police station told a different story. When they were twenty metres away, the crunching of the shingle underfoot alerted the man to their presence. With a stiff automatic movement, the man turned to face them.

‘
Mr O’Brien, is that you? Where’s Emma, Daniel?’ Liz said, holding her sword low so as not to appear a threat.

If he was in shock there was no telling what he may do. Then the figure took a step towards them, and then another. Then wit
h a sound that was part roar and part moan, he burst into a sprint directly for them. Luckily, the shifting shingle beneath his feet slowed him down slightly.

‘
We’ve got a Runner!’ Charlie shouted to Liz, recognising the call immediately.

The man, who the
y assumed was probably Daniel O’Brien, had died during the last three or four hours. His brain was still able to assert relatively smooth control over his limbs but there was no doubt he was as Dead as the shambling cadavers they had met earlier that day. In that split second Liz noticed his blood covered hands clenching and unclenching, desperate to get hold of either of them. In that one movement she could see his desperation to rip into their flesh and feast upon their living bodies. Placing her feet in an optimum battle stance, Liz readied herself, her blade held high behind her. The Dead Mr O’Brien was now only a few metres away, his moan developing a growling undertone as he chewed frantically at his own lips.

‘
Oh shit!’ Charlie said to himself, as they could now see how Mr O’Brien had died.

Like James Penhaligan his throat had been cut, or at least it had been attempted. This time the cut had not gone deep enough, or perhaps Mr O
’Brien had tried to fight them off during the attack. Either way, instead of the single slice under the chin, this cut had slipped down to the shoulder on one side, missing the major arteries. Whoever had killed him, finally had to resort to plunging a knife deep into his chest to finish him off. The Dead man’s milky eyes focusing on Charlie seemed to glow in the pale moonlight. With an extra burst of speed, Daniel O’Brien lunged at Charlie with murderous intent. After his time in the army, and years of fighting the Dead, this frenzied attack was clumsy at best. With a quick sidestep, Charlie was swinging his ice pick towards the back of the Dead man’s skull. With a dull ‘thud’ the tip of the pick broke through Mr O’Brien’s cranium and tore into the brain. With the unnatural life now gone from this moving sack of flesh and bones, Daniel O’Brien slumped to his knees and fell to his side, forever to lie among the other flotsam and jetsam along the high tideline.

‘
Shit,’ Charlie said, as he wiped clean the tip of the ice pick, ‘We’ve got to get back to the Convent as soon as possible, we’ve been dealing with this bullshit long enough.’

‘
But what about Emma?’ Liz asked, as they started to climb back up the cliff path. ‘We can’t just abandon her and her baby.’

Shaking his head, Charlie sighed
.

‘
Sorry Liz, but I’ve got a sneaky feeling that they’ll both turn up Dead somewhere round here.’

Liz went quiet
, as she thought of poor Emma forever to carry inside her, her unborn Dead infant.

‘
We should at least try to find her.’

‘
Well, it’s too dangerous to search the village tonight. We’ll bed down at the Police station and take a look at first light,’ Charlie said ‘but we’re not hanging around for too long, we’ve got to take care of our own first. I want to be back at Lanherne before tomorrow evening. Agreed?’

‘
Agreed.’ Liz replied.

This whole trip seemed to have led from one horror to the next and Charlie was right
, they could not allow this to visit those they cared for at Lanherne.

‘
Well?’ Imran asked, when they had returned to the Police station. 

‘
It was Mr O’Brien. They got him.’ Liz replied.

Standing in the pool of warm yellow torch light
, Liz just wanted to step into his comforting arms and forget the sights, even for just a few minutes. But she knew they needed to secure Delilah for the night and then move into the O’Brien’s home to sleep.

‘
Fuck!’ Imran replied. ‘So what now?’

‘
Bed down here, a quick look for Emma at dawn, then we get our arses back to the Convent and pray everything’s alright there’ Charlie said, as he unhitched Delilah and began to lead her to the back of the station, where a fenced off area would keep her safe.

‘
Come on…,’ Imran said to Liz, pulling some blankets out of the cart ‘we might as well get inside.

Walking into the station, Liz and Imran looked about the blood splattered room, the fl
ickering torch light adding to the uneasy atmosphere.

‘
Well, we’re not sleeping in here,’ Imran said, ‘let’s find a room with a little less carnage in it.’

Nodding her agreement, Liz took the torch from Imra
n and headed to the other door. Walking down the small corridor, she soon found a suitable room to sleep in. At one time it had been an office of some kind, but since Emma and Daniel had taken up residence, it was now a bedroom. In one corner sat a small crib. It would never hold the smiling happy baby it was intended for and was now nothing more than a reminder that just when you thought life couldn’t get any worse, some bastards could come along and add a whole new level of shit to deal with. Liz placed the torch in the small fire place, the kindling quickly catching alight, filling the room with a flickering, comforting light. Moving over to sit on the bed, Liz picked up something folded by the pillows.

‘
Christ, IH many more are going to die, before they’re stopped?’

‘
I don’t know what to say, Liz,’ Imran replied, wrapping his arms around her ‘but all those who have been attacked have been in small groups and there’s a lot of us at the Convent. We’ll be ok, don’t worry.’

‘
I suppose so, but that’s not really the point.’ Liz replied, turning round in Imran’s embrace.

‘
Delilah’s sorted out back, all watered and fed,’ Charlie said, as he joined them in the bedroom. ‘Emma and Daniel have a good flock of chickens out there. I think we’ll take what we can, no point letting them starve and it’ll be good to cross breed them with ours too.’

Looking about the small room, he chose a sturdy looking wooden chair and jammed it under the door handle, just in case.

‘Right, you two have the bed and I’ll sort myself out on the floor.’ 

Grabbing two seat pads from a dilapidated looking sofa, Charlie made a make shift bed on the floor. Taking one of the pillows from the bed and a blanket from Imran, Charlie tried to get as comfortable as he could.

‘Night,’ he said, as he turned on his side.

Soon Liz could hear his breathing take on a slow steady rhythm, as he drifted off to sleep. Liz and Imran lay down on the bed, spooning
their bodies against each other.

‘
I love you,’ Imran whispered in her ear, kissing the back of her neck.

‘
I love you too,’ she answered.

Feeling Imran
’s heart beating through her back she could tell, like Charlie he was soon asleep. For a while she watched the orange flames dancing in the fire grate, as the tragic and terrifying events of the day replayed themselves in her mind. Pulling Imran arms tighter about her she prayed tomorrow would be a better day. She prayed tomorrow they would find Emma alive and most importantly, she prayed these crazy raiders would not find their way to the convent.

DAY 4

‘Push, Emma. Push,’ Liz screamed to the woman lying in front of her giving birth.

Emma, her hair plastered to her face with sweat, panted through the pain as another contraction racked through her body. As the pain reached a crescendo she screamed
and grabbed for Liz’s hand. Liz winced at the fierce grip Emma had on her and not for the first time wished someone else was here to help. Where was everybody else, she thought to herself looking around the small bedroom? Emma screamed again, the contractions coming again to tear through her. Liz wetted a cloth with her free hand and wiped Emma’s brow, trying to cool her. Then suddenly Emma’s breath caught in her throat, her eyes bulging horrifically, she looked at Liz, her panic clear to see. Emma opened her mouth to speak but before a sound could pass Emma’s lips an explosion of blood shot from between her legs soaking the bed. Emma bucked her body wildly, blood flecking on her lips as her hysterical screams tore something in her throat.