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

ultimately sacrificed herself so that she could live. But they had made a promise to each other, a vow that neither of them could break and even as the tears fell freely from the young woman’s eyes she took the knife and placed it above the growling cadaver’s ear.
    ‘I love you, Debs,’ she said, the tip of the knife spearing through the ear canal. ‘I kept my promise…’
    With a sharp downward thrust and a stomach turning ‘crack’, the knife broke through the skull to destroy the brain within. Instantly the Dead woman became still, whatever unnatural tie her body had with the living now severed.
    ‘I’m sorry… Erm…’ Phil whispered, pausing for the woman to fill in her name.
    ‘Frances… Fran, they call me Fran,’ she whispered back, her lips barely moving as she gently stroked her sister’s face.
    ‘Right… Fran, we need to get out of here,’ he replied, gently lifting her to her feet.
    After a few shaky steps Fran released herself from Phil’s helpful support.
    ‘Here,’ he continued, quickly pulling his long sleeved T-shirt over his head as they briskly walked back to the cart, ‘you might want to put this on.’
    ‘Thanks,’ she replied, slipping on the oversized garment just as they got to the cart.
    ‘It’s a bit cramped but it’ll only be for a few hours until the Dead have slowed down and then we can go back in and clear the Institute,’ whispered Phil, helping Fran up through the open hatch.
    Pulling the hatch closed after him, even in the darkness Phil could feel Charlie’s angry gaze upon him.
    ‘I couldn’t just sit here,’ he defensively said to the darkness.
    ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ Charlie growled.
    Phil knew Charlie’s anger was justified, he had endangered them all by leaving the cart the way he had. If any of the Dead had seen him and Fran returning they would have attacked them all, their moaning alerting more and more of Dead that the living were inside and as sturdy as the cart walls were, they could only withstand so much abuse if the Dead attacked on mass.
    With a click of Michael’s tongue Snow began to move again, pulling the heavy cart behind her.
    ‘Can anyone else smell smoke?’ asked David, in a hushed voice to no one in particular.
    With the sound of sniffing, Liz adjusted Anne on her lap as best she could and pushed aside the cover of one of the spy holes in the back wall of the cart.
    ‘Oh, shit!’ she said, looking back the way they had come. ‘It’s the institute… the main building, it’s on fire.’
    Behind them, golden flames flickered at many of the barred upper floor windows, illuminating the tragic figures of the Dead as they hunted the few living souls still trapped inside the building. In one of the vegetable gardens below, Liz watched as the silhouetted figures of two Dead men took down a man as he bolted through the main doors hopeful to escape the inferno. Even from a distance, she could see he held in his arms a terrified child. They didn’t stand a chance and although he fought gallantly to protect the child, Liz knew the result was inevitable.
    ‘We’d better come up with a new plan,’ she softly said, closing the cover back over the spy hole. ‘I doubt there’ll be much to salvage by morning.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Charlie began, his voice an urgent whisper. ‘We stick to the plan…. Wait it out on the other side of the wall until morning and if all that’s left is a burnt out shell, then so be it… We’ll survive.’
    ‘I agree,’ said Tom, ‘there’s nothing in there that won’t keep till dawn and certainly nothing worth dying for.’
    A few minutes later the gentle rocking of the cart came to an abrupt halt as Michael pulled Snow to a stop.
    ‘Well… would you look at that!’ he said, under his breath.
    ‘Looks like we’ve found Star and our missing cart,’ he continued, smiling to himself as the dark mottled mare just beyond the gate seemed to shake her head in recognition at Snow’s