Six Days With the Dead (34 page)

‘
Whatever you say, Reverend,’ Charlie replied, annoyed that his gesture of friendship had been thrown back in his face.

Liz and Charlie watched
Ruth and her husband enter to convent, before going to their own cart to make their own checks.

‘
God or no God, that bloke’s an arsehole,’ Charlie said to Liz, as he ran his hand over Samson’s flanks. ‘Pity that child will grow up with him for a father.’

‘
Well not everyone can have a dad as cool as you, you know,’ Liz replied, pinching his cheek playfully. ‘Come on Pops, let’s get this show on the road.’

Eating his late breakfast, Mohammed sat alone at one of the Refectory tables that faced the tall windows looking out over the gardens below. He could see Alice doing her patrol of the walkway. Every few meters or so, she would stop to make sure none o
f the Dead were pawing at the base of the wall. Thinking about Alice, he felt it was just his bad luck she had recently paired up with Charlie. He had been playing it cool with her but it was now obvious he had waited too long to show his hand. As far as his interest in Alice was concerned, that ship had now sailed. On the walkway he could also see his brother turning the gears that slowly opened the gate to allow Samson and the cart through. When they got back in a couple of hours, he would talk to Charlie about taking Duncan to Cawsands Bay sometime. If the residence had fled on mass, like he said, they may have left behind some parts Duncan could use to make a working CB radio. If anyone would have had the right parts, the fishermen would.  Not that there was any guarantee anyone was left out there with a CB to answer but it was worth a try. The trip would also give them a chance to check on the Reverend and his wife. Charlie had given him directions on how to get there, suggesting his family use it as a refuge.

As Mohammed thoughts drifted, thinking about the outside world they could possibly contact with a radio, he did not hear the bare feet softly padding across the floor behind him. He did not see the old fashioned razor shaking slightly, as it was gr
ipped fiercely by an approaching hand. He did not realise an arm was being drawn back, readying itself to strike. When he finally heard a sharp intake of breath behind him, it was too late. With a flash of reflecting light, the blade fell, drawing swiftly across his exposed throat. In that split second everything stopped for Mohammed. Surprised there was no pain, Mohammed slowly brought his hand up to his throat. In his shocked state, his mind was not able to process the information his body was giving him. He wasn’t aware of the spray of blood shooting from his severed neck through his fingers, across the table and splashing over the window pane. He looked down at his fingers, his arms now drenched with his own blood and wondered why they were wet. His dying body did not understand why it couldn’t catch its breath or why the edges of  its vision had begun to darken, tunnelling slowly as the world faded away. There was something he should do, Mohammed was sure of it, but the thoughts in his head seemed to be jumbled and melting away like snow. Like the snow, his hands and feet must surely be in, they were so cold they tingled.

‘
Why was he standing in snow?’ He thought to himself.

‘
Why couldn’t they be warm like the fingers now resting on his head, tightly gripping his hair?’ He wondered.

The fingers began to pull his head back. The fingers became a hand and then an arm until Mohammed, his vision nearly totally gone
, was looking into the set of pale blue eyes behind him. With a tug, the hand pulled Mohammed’s head back sharply, the force ripping the wound across his throat wider. Satisfied her job was done, Ruth carefully closed the razor, placed it in her pocket and walked out of the Refectory. As she closed the door behind her she smiled, thinking of the surprise someone would shortly find inside.

Slipping back into her shoes, Ruth looked up at her husband with the baby sleeping in his arms.

‘The Heathen is no more. The Lord has passed his judgement upon him. One by one, each shall be judged by God’s hand and they will fall before Him, unworthy and tainted by the age of Man,’ Ruth said, calmly as she reached up to stroke her husband’s cheek. ‘Now, take the infant to the cart while I get the girl.’      

Function by function Mohammed
’s brain began to shut down. As his blood seeped across the table in front of him, it dripped steadily to form a puddle on the floor. Within one minute, the real Mohammed was no longer sitting in the Refectory. What had made Mohammed was now gone for ever. His memories and personality were now nothing more than fading electrical impulses in a brain, no longer capable of working. Within the shell that had housed Mohammed for nineteen years, something else was taking over, something alien to Nature’s normal plan. For three minutes the body of Mohammed lay as it should, still and motionless but then like a slap in Nature’s face, one of the fingers twitched. The movement was so slight, if someone hadn’t been looking directly at the finger they would have missed it. But then with a spasm the whole hand moved and violently his right leg kicked out against a table leg. A low gurgle began deep inside the corpse’s chest and behind its Dead eyelids, milky eyes moved rapidly back and forth in a hellish parody of sleep. The body that had been Mohammed moved its neck, causing its head to loll forward, hiding the deep gash across its throat. The gurgle that had started within its chest began to force its way up the creature’s throat and as cold lips parted, a low chilling moan echoed around the Refectory. The thing that was no longer Mohammed, slowly opened its eyes and began looking around the room for something it needed, something it needed with such desperation that the need burned at the very centre of its being.

Up on the walkway, Imran watched as
the Reverend walked out of the convent holding his baby in his arms. Looking behind him all the time, the Reverend Moore went to the back of his cart, opened the hatch and rather indelicately dumped the baby inside. Lars had already hitched up the poor beast that would have to pull the Reverend and his family to Cawsands Bay. Despite a good feed and a night’s rest, the horse still looked to Imram, to be on its last legs and he wondered if they would make it at all. Charlie and Liz had already gone to the village, so Lars had moved the Reverend’s horse and cart, positioned in front of the gate, ready for their departure.

Ruth walked briskly down the dim corridors to the room she knew held the child they would take with them
. The child that was the one beacon of purity within these cursed walls. She had hoped the small boy could also have been saved but he was tainted like the rest of them, the stain of Man on his soul. She could feel the cold metal of the razor knocking against her leg with each step she took and although it was an instrument of God’s will, she hoped she would not have to use it again today. As she turned a corner, she almost bumped into one of the Sisters. She did not know her name and didn’t care. This woman was as damned as the thing she had left in a pool of its own blood.

‘
Oh, Sister I am sorry, there’s so little light in here,’ Ruth said, her hand hovering in her pocket, ready to grab the razor.

‘
That’s perfectly alright Ruth, I should’ve been looking where I was going,’ the sister said, smiling kindly.

‘
Well, we’re about to leave and my husband will be waiting for me in the courtyard. May God go with you, Sister,’ Ruth said.

Knowing she didn
’t have much time, Ruth moved aside so she could walk around the Sister. She had walked a few steps when she stopped, turned back to the woman walking away from her and called, ‘Oh, Sister! I forgot someone was looking for you in the Refectory.’

‘
Thank you, Ruth,’ the woman said, with a little wave.

‘
See, I didn’t need to know her name,’ Ruth thought to herself, as Sister Margaret walked unknowingly to her death.

Ruth stood silently outside Anne
’s door, waiting for her call to action. As if on cue, a woman’s terrified scream echoed through the corridors. She heard movement from inside the room, as a little hand secured the bolt across the door.

‘
Her sister has taught her well,’ Ruth mused, as she waited a few minutes to add to the authenticity.

When she thought she had waited long enough after the scream, she began to pant, sob and pound on the door, as if she had just run to that point in the corridor.

‘Please Anne! Please it’s me, Ruth the Reverend’s wife. Please let me in, the Damned are inside the Convent! Please, for my baby, Anne, don’t let them kill me baby. Please!’ The last word caught in her throat, as she was wracked with a panicked sob.

Inside her room, Anne listened to the Reverend
’s wife pleading to come in. Liz had told her if the Dead ever got into the convent she should never open her door to anyone, no matter who it was. The Reverend’s wife sounded terrified, why didn’t she go to one of the other rooms? Didn’t she know the noise she was making would attract the Dead if they heard it? This woman was stupid but she didn’t deserve to die and neither did the baby. Hoping she was doing the right thing, Anne reached up and drew the bolt back across. Slowly the door swung inward, revealing the Reverends wife, standing with tears running down her face. As the small woman turned to look at Anne, her face seemed to change before Anne’s eyes. The tears stopped immediately and a cold hardness appeared in her pale blue eyes.

‘
You’re coming with me, the Lord had commanded it,’ she said coldly, lunging for the small girl standing in the doorway.

Five minutes earlier Sister Margaret was walking along the corridor to the Refectory, mentally ticking items off a list of thi
ngs she needed to do that day. As she reached the door she noticed a strange smell in the air which she was unable to place. Like an itch in the back of her mind, the smell triggered a basic warning, but a warning of what, she could not pin down. Her hand hovered momentarily over the door handle, some primal instinct whispering an alarm to stop. On some deep subconscious level she knew she should not open the door but Sister Margaret was not a woman who gave into such things. After she briefly scolded herself for being so silly, she turned the handle and opened the door. As the door swung inward, the sight she beheld froze her to the very core. Immediately she realised the smell was the coppery tang of blood in the air. Her wide shocked eyes somehow took in every detail of the room in an instant. The wide spray of blood across the wooden table top, the pattern of droplets running down the glass on the window and of course the man sat slumped in the chair, droplets of blood dripping from his long fingers adding to the large pool of blood. A deathly silence filled the room, broken only by the rhythmic dripping of blood hitting the floor. Sister Margaret’s world suddenly shrank down to the path of a single droplet of blood slowly running down the corpse’s index finger. She could not move her eyes from the scarlet fluid running along the finger nail groove, to pool at the tip of the finger. The droplet expanded until it could hold no more liquid and then suddenly fell to the puddle below. She so desperately wanted to scream but the only thing to escape her throat were sharp panicky breaths. She willed her legs to move, she needed to get away from the carnage in the room but her body refused to do as commanded. When a tiny whine finally managed to pass her lips, the corpse sitting at the table sprang violently to life.  A face turned sharply in her direction, a face spattered with blood and with teeth bared. It was a face she recognised. Looking into Mohammed’s Dead eyes she knew she was what the Dead man wanted most in the world. Fighting against the primal fear that had taken control of her body, Sister Margaret managed to move one of her feet to take a step back. Before her shoe had left the stone floor, the Dead Mohammed sprang from his chair, knocking it backwards to the floor. With a massive flood of adrenalin now pumping through her body, Sister Margaret managed to fight off the paralysis that had taken control of her muscles, to turn her body away from the fast approaching blood covered corpse. Before Sister Margaret was more than two steps into the hallway, the Dead thing lunged and landed heavily on her back. As they both fell to the floor, Mohammed’s blood covered hands were already ripping away at her veil, desperate to get to her flesh beneath. Finally Sister Margaret’s vocal cords let forth the horrified scream that had been building inside her. But for Sister Margaret, the scream had come too late. She had run out of time and as the echo of her cries died in the dim corridor, she knew no one would come in time to rescue her. With her veil now completely torn from her head and her wimple ripped at one shoulder, Mohammed threw himself down onto her exposed flesh. Sister Margaret screamed wildly and carried on screaming, while his teeth bit violently into her cheek. Such power was behind the bite that his teeth reached almost to the bone and as Mohammed pulled his head back he tore away a large chunk of her face. Sitting astride the struggling woman, the creature that had once been Mohammed chewed upon the stolen flesh hungrily, barely swallowing the mouthful before returning to tear another strip of flesh from the woman’s face beneath him. By the time the Dead Mohammed had stripped the flesh from one side of Sister Margaret’s face and neck, the woman’s body had ceased in its struggle to survive, and as the body went into a cardiac arrest brought on by the shock and pain, Sister Margaret thankfully died.

While the last sparks of life fled Sister Margaret
’s body, the animated shell that had been Mohammed, jammed his fingers deep into her right eye socked and ripped out the eye, together with most of the optic nerve. Just as he was about to devour Sister Margaret’s eye, a brief spasm rippled through the body beneath him. Looking down at the corpse, the Dead Mohammed did not understand what was happening. His Dead brain could not comprehend that Sister Margaret was about to join him in the ranks of the Dead, as all of a sudden the warm thing that had captivated him to the point of frenzy and had promised to satisfy the hunger that burned within him, was suddenly of no interest at all. Stuffing the eyeball in his mouth, Mohammed’s animated corpse pushed itself off Sister Margaret and stumbling slightly, began to walk down the corridor in search of other warm things to bite into.