Six Days With the Dead (39 page)

‘
No, Imran it’s me, I’m OK,’ she said, seeing the bleeding woman in his arms.

Barely breaking his stride, Imran carried on running, thankfully now with Alice guarding his back. Coming up to the Cha
pel doors, Alice rushed ahead to open them and quickly checked none of the Dead were inside waiting for them. Imran followed swiftly behind. With each step, he could see Sister Catherine spasm with pain.

‘
I’m sorry, Sister,’ he said as the Sister cried out while he propped her up against the communion rail as gently as he could, ‘You’re here now.’

The nun was pale, too pale for Imran
’s liking, it didn’t look like she would last long enough to turn just from the bite. If he had to guess he’d say she would die from shock and blood loss. Thankfully, Alice had one of the Convents guns, so at least Sister Catherine would pass on knowing she would not be coming back to feast on her friends. Not that that was much consolation for the woman, Imran was sure.

‘
Sister Josephine!’ Imran called up to the balcony room. ‘I need you to come down, it’s Sister Catherine, she’s…’  Imran paused searching for the right word. He was sure Sister Catherine knew what the situation was but even so, he didn’t want to upset her further, ‘…hurt.’

Almost immediately, Imran could hear the blockade in front of the small door being moved aside. When the Mother Superior threw open the door and darted to the weeping figure of Sister Catherine sitting on the floor, Imran could see the wor
ry and fear in the old woman’s eyes. Nadine hovered quietly by the doorway, not wanting to intrude on the last personal moments the nuns would share.

‘
Oh my child…’ Sister Josephine said, taking the dying Nun’s hand gently in her own. Sister Josephine looked forlornly at Catherine’s torn and bloody back and knew there was no hope. With tears in her eyes, she looked up at Imran.

‘
Thank you for bringing her here,’ she said. ‘I know you took a risk, you didn’t have to.’

Imran could only nod a reply, nothing h
e could say would make this situation better for any of them. As blood began to pool around her, Sister Catherine slowly moved so she could face the crucifix on the Altar. The unbelievable pain made her cry out, but she was determined to face her Lord when she passed from this world. Sister Josephine removed her rosary beads and wound them loosely about Sister Catherine’s hands, first lifting the small silver crucifix to the dying nun’s lips for her to kiss. As the two nuns began to pray together, Imran and Alice looked at each other, knowing one of them would have to shoot Sister Catherine before she returned as one of the Dead. After a few minutes, Sister Catherine’s breathing had taken on a slow wheezing quality and when a prayer suddenly died on her lips, Imran thought her time had come, but with a sharp and obviously painful intake of breath she carried on again. Sister Josephine sat on her knees beside her friend as the life drained out of her and she prayed for the strength to do what she must. As Sister Catherine began to slump forward, Sister Josephine held out her hand behind her. It wasn’t until Alice walked up to her and placed the gun in her hand, did Imran realise that Sister Josephine would do the deed herself.

‘
Catherine, my child…. Look upon our Lord,’ Sister Josephine said in a soft motherly voice.

Using the last of her strength, Sister Catherine tilted her head up to the large wooden crucifix adorning the Altar. With large, tear filled eyes, she glanced briefly back at her Mother Superior an
d, with a small nod, she turned back to look at her saviour.

‘
Go with God, my child,’ Sister Josephine whispered as she kissed the nun’s forehead before softly placing the gun barrel against the back of her skull ‘Forgive me, Lord.’

With t
he sound of the shot echoing through the Chapel, Sister Josephine tore off her own veil to cover the damage the bullet had done to Sister Catherine’s face and holding the still form of her friend in her arms, she wept. 

By the time Sister Josephine could
shed no more tears for Catherine, they had been joined by Sister Claire and those who had been out in the fields. As those capable of fighting made a search of the convent for more of the Dead or survivors, Sally and Nadine took the two nuns back up to the small balcony room to wait for news. When they had first arrived, Alice had had the sad task of taking Richard and Nicky to one side to tell them how Barry had sacrificed himself to save Justin. Nicky had held Richard as he mourned for the loss of his brother, but Alice could tell she was desperate to go to Justin. When the group had left the Chapel to make their search, Richard had insisted on going with them despite the obvious pain he was in.

‘
I can cry all I want later,’ he told Alice, his voice breaking a little on the last word. ‘We’ve got to make sure we’re safe first, Barry would want us all to be safe.’

To maximize their search, only one person went back on watch duty. It was the Dead inside they needed to worry about now, not the sad creatures dr
awn to the convent walls by the living inside. Not surprisingly, Damian volunteered to watch the wall, while the others systematically made their way room by room through the convent. They found Sister Margaret’s remains outside the gun room, a bullet through her half eaten face. Adrian’s body lay in one of the ground floor hallways with many of his internal organs missing, again a bullet had ended his unnatural existence. When they came across Michael’s body in the kitchen with Imran’s knife rammed deep into his skull, they also found Sister Rebecca and William hiding in one of the store rooms. They had locked themselves in only moments before Sister Catherine had darted into the kitchen and mistakenly chosen her own hiding place. They had wept silently as they listened to her agonising screams as Michael’s cadaver attacked her, ripping the flesh from her body. Knowing they could do nothing but wait it out and that no matter what they did, Sister Catherine was as good as dead the moment Michael found her.

‘
Imran,’ Phil said, when he stepped up to the open doorway that had once been Michael’s bedroom.

The room was a mess, blood seemed to cover most of the bed and floor and as they had already found the bloodbath in the Refectory it was assumed the blood here
had been Michael’s. Mohammed’s decapitated body lay lifeless on the floor, his neck a mess of torn and broken skin and viscera. As Imran slowly made his way to the door, even though he knew in his heart what to expect, he had not prepared himself for the carnage that had been committed upon his brother’s body. Michael, in what could only be thought of as an act of strange mercy, had somehow ripped his brother’s head from its body to prevent him killing anyone else. Even now, a head that had once been his loving brother, looked up at him with hunger in its roaming Dead eyes. Imran knew given the chance, this abomination would still bite into him with a savage hunger, even though it had no body to feed. Kneeling down in front of the head, Imran gently leant forward and kissed his brother’s blood splattered forehead. Through his tears, he then turned the head to face away from him as he withdrew his hunting knife from the sheath on his hip. With the knife held in his shaking hands, Imran placed the tip of the blade at the top of Mohammed’s skull.

‘
To Allah we all belong and to him we will return,’ Imran said quietly, his tears falling freely. ‘Goodbye, my brother.’

Tightening his grip, he took a breath to steady himself and plunged downwards, forcing the blade t
hrough his brother’s skull and into the brain.

‘
Come away now Imran,’ Alice said, placing a hand on his shoulder, ‘the others will take care of Mohammed.’

Imran rose slowly to his feet and followed Alice from the room. Outside Phil stood solemnly with Cam,
the old sheets Sister Rebecca had given them to use for shrouds, folded in their arms. It had been decided that they would not just dump the bodies of those they loved in the pit with the other Dead but bury them instead. So, as Phil and Cam opened a sheet on the blood covered floor, Imran said one last goodbye to his brother and left them to their task.

****

‘Come on, come on, come on,’ Liz said, impatiently as Damien worked the winch to open Lanherne’s internal gate to let them in. Not waiting for it to open fully, Liz jumped from the cart and ran through into the courtyard as soon as it was open wide enough for her to squeeze through. The sight that greeted her, stopped her in her tracks. There, wrapped in blood covered sheets were five bodies of various sizes laying in a row.

‘
No…’ she whispered, shocked they had lost so many of their number.

As she stood there, trying to think what horrors must have occurred here while they were away, Alice came running up to her, almost on the point of crying.

‘Oh Liz, we can’t find her, we can’t find her,’ Alice said, her misplaced guilt tipping her towards hysteria. ‘It’s Anne, we’ve looked everywhere and we can’t find her.’

‘
The Reverend and his wife took her,’ Liz said blankly, forcing herself to pull her eyes away from the shroud wrapped bodies, ‘Who did we lose?’

‘
What? What do you mean the Reverend took her?’ Alice said, not understanding what Liz was talking about, ‘Why would on earth would they take Anne?’

‘
Look, we’ll explain it all later. Who did we lose?’ Liz asked, as Samson pulled Charlie and the cart through the gate.

‘
Barry, Michael, Adrian, Sister Catherine, Sister Margaret and…’ Alice paused, knowing Liz thought of Mohammed as a brother ‘... I’m sorry Liz, we lost Mohammed too’

‘
Where’s Imran?’ Liz said, pushing aside the grief that threatened to overwhelm her. Imran needed her now, she had to be strong for him. ‘I must go to Imran.’

‘
He’s in the kitchen with Sister Rebecca,’ Alice replied, and instantly Liz ran into the convent, desperate to be with Imran.

As she ran through the dim corridors, she passed various people with mops and buckets of hot water, silently washing away the evidence of the carnage that had occurred. Rea
ching the kitchen door, she saw Sister Rebecca on her hands and knees weeping as she scrubbed at the stone floor. Someone had died here, someone they cared about but Liz could not think about that. There, standing by the kitchen window was Imran. Turning his tear streaked face towards her as she entered, her heart almost broke to see him in so much pain. Throwing herself into his open arms, Liz could hold back her tears no longer.

‘
Oh, Imran. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ she said, as she wept into his chest.

‘
I’m going to kill them, Lizzy,’ Imran replied, an alien harshness hardening his voice, ‘I’m going to find the bastards that did this and kill them so slowly, they’ll beg for death.’

Liz knew it was the anger and the grief talking but even so, she could see
in his eyes that at that moment he meant it and it scared her a little. She wondered if she would feel the same if the Reverend had killed Anne instead of just kidnapping her, and realised she probably would. She too would hunt down the man who had done this terrible thing and make him pay.

‘
You may get your chance,’ Liz said, looking up into his sad, angry eyes. ‘Nathan and Ruth, they did this as a cover so they could take Anne.’

‘
If we have to search our whole lives, we’ll get her back Liz… and then those fuckers will pay,’ Imran replied.

Sister Rebecca had removed as much of Sister Catherine
’s blood from the stone floor as she could. Standing up she looked down at the stains that had worked their way into the stone slabs, a permanent reminder of Sister Catherine’s last bloody moments. Slowly she lifted the bucket and poured the red tinged water down the sink. Tearfully, Sister Rebecca watched the water spin down the plug hole and as the last of it disappeared with a low gurgle, she covered her face with her hands and wept some more. Imran silently pulled the Sister into the embrace he and Liz were sharing and together the three of them stood holding each other as they mourned for those they had lost.

***

‘So the Reverend and his wife did all this so they could kidnap Anne?’ Nadine asked, astounded that the supposedly religious couple treated life with such little regard.

Charlie had gathered everyone in the Refectory later that afternoon to tell th
em why their friends had died. All signs of Mohammed’s murder had been carefully washed away but Imran could still see the pool of his brother blood seeping across the floor each time he closed his eyes. Sister Rebecca and Sister Claire had made everyone something to eat but no one apart from the newly acquired golden retriever seemed to be hungry. Charlie had given the dog to Justin to look after for the moment and it had proved a good idea. While Justin was washing and cutting out the many matted sections of the poor beast’s fur that refused to comb through, his mind was taken off the loss of his uncle and the horrors that they had all endured at Lanherne that day. Justin had wanted to call the dog Barry, despite Nicky pointing out that the dog was in fact a girl. Justin didn’t care, as far as he was concerned she would always be called Barry, even if everyone else called her something else.

‘
Yes,’ Charlie replied, ‘and it’s my guess they were the ones who killed William’s brother to get to his nephew, the Penhaligan family for little Alex and then James O’Brien for Emma, or rather her baby. They obviously kept Emma alive hoping she would give birth naturally but we came upon them on the road, they had to cut the baby out of her before they arrived at Lanherne, so their story would add up.’