Six Days With the Dead (49 page)

‘
Come on Anne, we need to go. We have to go,’ she whispered, ‘Please Anne…’

But Anne held on, refusing to let go of the only man who had been her father. Eventually Imran had to help Liz pull Anne
’s small kicking and crying body away from Charlie.

‘
Daddy!’ she cried, reaching for Charlie, overwhelmed with the grief.

And as Liz and Imran pulled
a distraught Anne back to the boat through the dark tunnel, they heard Charlie’s words call after them.

‘
I love you!’ and then the sound of a single gunshot stopped them in their tracks.

Holding each other in the dark tunnel, Liz, Anne and Imran wept for the man who had forged a safe life for s
o many. They wept for a father taken from them so unjustly and for a man who was truly a hero. They wept for all that could have been and for what now would never be. They wept for their Charlie. They wept for themselves.

EPILOGUE : 6 MONTHS LATER

‘
Are you sure you’re ok, do you need anything?’ Imran asked Liz, giving her large distended belly an affectionate rub.

‘
Yes, I’m fine. Honestly you’d think I was the first woman to get pregnant,’ she replied, looking down at Imran’s smiling face.

When she first told him they were going to have a baby, he had gone very quiet
and she feared he was unhappy about the impending addition. As it turned out he had been just a little stunned by the news and once he had calmed himself down, he hadn’t stopped smiling since.

‘
From the size of you, it looks like it’ll be twins,’ Alice said from the seat next to her.

‘
Well, let’s make a pact, if you have a boy and I have a girl we’ll pair them up,’ Liz said, smiling at her equally pregnant friend.

‘
Oh, it’ll be a boy’ Alice replied, absentmindedly rubbing her own stomach.

She had already decided to call the child Charlie, no matter which sex it was. It was her gift to the memory of a great man. When Liz and Imran had returned from the Chamber with a hysterical Anne but no Charlie, she knew the worst had happened. She had b
roken down and although she and Charlie had only gotten together recently, she had loved him completely in that short time and would never forget him.

‘
Imran, what are you still doing here?’ Sister Rebecca asked, as she walked into the Refectory. ‘You’re meant to be doing a fighting class with the Justin and Anne before it gets too dark outside?’

‘
Oh crap, so I am,’ he replied and with a quick kiss on Liz’s belly and then her mouth, he ran from the room.

The rescued children had fitted in very well to life
at the Convent and despite what they had gone through, Liz thought they were surprisingly happy.

‘
Children often bounce back given the chance and a loving environment,’ Sister Josephine had told a few weeks after they had returned.

A loving environment wa
s certainly what they were given here at Lanherne. Everyone had welcomed the new arrivals with open arms, especially Sally who had surprised everyone and not only taken them under her wing but blossomed from it. Nadine and Lars had even started up a school at Lanherne, much to the vocal disappointment of Justin, although Liz thought he secretly enjoyed it and it was more about being the oldest boy and having a reputation to keep up among the other children.

‘
Ouch,’ Alice said, as her baby gave her a kick from inside.

‘
Sign of a healthy baby,’ Sister Rebecca said, smiling at the two pregnant women. ‘What you need to do is loo….’

Liz and Alice looked at Sister Rebecca her mout
h open, frozen mid word. Following her gaze they saw what had shocked her into silence. There on the wall, a simple thing from a time gone by, a thing that they had walked past countless times without giving it a second glance. This thing that they never thought would work again, had been transformed into an unbelievable object of hope.

‘
Oh my God!’ Alice said, looking back at Liz. ‘What does it mean?’

‘
I don’t know,’ Liz said quietly, as she stared at the glowing light bulb on the wall ‘but I think things are going to change.’

***

I hope you enjoyed
‘Six days with the Dead’. If you did, perhaps you’ll follow the characters of the Lanherne Chronicles in their fight to survive in the world of the Dead in the sequel:
‘Five more days with the Dead’

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to date with future releases in the series on www.facebook/sixdayswiththedead