Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead by Stephen Charlick Read Free Book Online

approach, ‘and whoever drove her out here has obviously had the same idea as us to wait out the storm…’
    ‘Yes, but just who will we be waiting out the storm with?’ mumbled Charlie, reaching for the bolt of the nearest side hatch.
    With all the Dead still concentrated nearer the burning Institute, Charlie knew now was the best time to check out who was in the other cart. To leave it any longer simply ran the risk of running into them as they began to disperse in search for more of the living.
    ‘Be right back,’ he whispered, slowly opening the hatch, jumping down and closing it behind him.
    Walking to the front of the cart, Charlie gave Snow a reassuring pat as he passed her.
    ‘Good girl,’ he mumbled, his hand running along her thick neck.
    Glancing back at the institute, before the high wall cut it off from his line of sight, Charlie cursed their bad luck. He had hoped it would simply be a case of clearing the Dead to reclaim the building and then they could carry on as before but seeing how much of the building was ablaze he knew that was no longer to be an option. Even the trees closest to the building had caught alight; the older among them already sending their rotten branches crashing to the ground in a shower of flaming sparks.
    Charlie had just reach the rear of the second cart when he heard the tell-tale scraping of painfully slow footsteps approaching from somewhere to his right. Behind him Snow gave a brief snort of displeasure as the stench of rotting flesh reached her and when the smell hit him also, Charlie knew, with relief, that whatever was coming had been dead a long time. Turning so his back was to the cart, he waited for this new guest to arrive. If he was quiet the creature may just pass him entirely, unaware of his presence, but that was not the way Charlie did things. In his mind any of the Dead left to wander was just one more set of teeth that one day may be tearing into your flesh or that of someone you loved, so as a rule he dispatched these walking cadavers whenever the opportunity presented itself. The amount of corpses he consigned to their denied oblivion was but a infinitesimally small drop in the ocean compared to the countless hordes of the Dead that roamed the planet, but in some way the fact that he did his small part made it just that bit easier to sleep at night.
    The sound of loose gravel skittering close by told him whatever was dragging itself by was almost upon him. Sure enough, with the pale moonlight filtering through the light cloud cover above him and the soft orange glow from the burning Institute, Charlie saw the walking corpse suddenly appear from the shadows. The Dead man looked as though he may have been a workman of some sort at one time. His florescent jerkin, now dull and covered with ancient gore, hung loose about his withered frame. His naked torso beneath, once presumably covered in muscle built up from a hard day’s labour, was now sunken and emaciated. Blooming from the right side of his chest, up along his skeletal neck and across his gaunt face, a spider web of dark mould had taken root to extract the last remnants of nutrition from his decaying skin and muscle. Charlie couldn’t initially tell what had killed the Dead man but as the cadaver forced his legs to take another excruciating step forward it became all too apparent. There, between his jerkin and the loosely hanging trousers perched precariously on angular hip bones, was the ragged gaping hole where his kidneys had once been. Whether it had been the blood loss and trauma that had killed him or he had fallen victim to the unknown activator that the Dead held within their bite which pulled the living to their death beds only to force them to rise again as one of the Dead themselves, it didn’t matter. The man was gone, whatever had made up his personality, hopes and dreams had been stripped from him the moment he had fallen to their unnatural hunger.
    Stepping silently behind the cadaver,