Read Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead for Free Online Page A

flicking Snow’s reins.
    For the next few minutes the group travelled in silence. Only the creaking of the cart’s wheels, the crunch of gravel under hoof and the distant screams of those unfortunate souls still trapped among the Dead filling their thoughts as Michael guided Snow along the long path to the gate.
    ‘Can’t see a fucking thing,’ he grumbled, leaning forward to peer through the thin channel cut into the wooden wall in front of him.
    Craning his head round to look over Michael’s shoulder at what he could see through the viewing slit, Phil tapped the man and pointed to the left.
    ‘That’s the edge of the wooded area,’ he whispered, indicating a slightly darker patch of blackness, ‘If you keep that on our left side and the sound of gravel under the wheels we should be…’
    His words were abruptly cut short by the sight of a naked young woman running across their path sprinting towards to woods as if her life depended on it. Directly behind her, almost within arm’s reach, was a second woman clothed in a gore splattered oversized T-shirt. Startlingly similar in appearance, the two had to be related in some way but at the moment there was a world of difference between the two, the second woman was Dead.
    ‘Charlie,’ said Phil, already reaching for the handle of one of the side hatches, ‘she needs our help… I’m going out.’
    ‘What?... Phil!’ Charlie managed to say before soft moonlight flooded the cart’s interior.
    ‘Damn!’ he continued, catching a glimpse of Phil’s back as he ran to the woman’s aid, a heavy length of pipe in his hand.
    As it happened, the young woman wasn’t quite as helpless as she first appeared and dropping suddenly to her knees, she allowed the Dead woman to plough directly into her crouched form, sending her flying. Before the Dead woman had even landed on the gravel, the young woman was up on her feet and surprisingly charging towards, rather than away from, the moving corpse. When she reached her, the Dead woman was just pushing herself up with arms but with more power than her lithe body suggested, the young woman leapt into the air, her right leg extended and landed hard on the back of the Dead woman’s neck. With a sickening crack the woman’s neck broke and at last her Dead limbs were still.
    As if all the wind had suddenly been taken from her sails, the young woman slumped to ground, her hands in her lap as she forlornly watched the impotently snapping jaws of the Dead woman still trying to reach her.
    ‘Would you like me to finish her?’ asked Phil, coming to a halt just behind the young woman.
    ‘What? Oh… No, no I’ll do it,’ she managed to say, tilting her head up to Phil. ‘We… we promised each other… if… if one of us ever…’
    ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Phil interrupted, crouching down beside her as he pulled his hunting knife free of the sheath on his calf. ‘You shouldn’t have to do this…’
    ‘No… I promised,’ she replied, her tone telling him anything else was not an option.
    With a nod of understanding, Phil flipped the knife in his hand and handed it to her, handle first. For a moment the woman looked at the comically large knife in her small hand, a flash of silver momentarily illuminating her face as the blade reflected the moon above her. With her fingers shaking slightly, the young woman pushed aside the Dead woman’s blood-matted hair and choked back the deep sob that threatened to overwhelm her.
    ‘Debs,’ she said, ignoring the visage of the snarling corpse with the snapping jaws that even now looked at her with such wild desperation and need.
    For she could not see the monster the woman in front of her had become, she could only see her sister. The sister that had held her as hell vomited forth its plague on humanity condemning them to an all too short life of fear and pain, the sister who had fought by her side to keep the Dead at bay for the last five years and the sister who had