Free Lanherne Chronicles (Prequel): To Escape the Dead by Stephen Charlick Page A

replied, slipping one of the corpse’s arms from something that looked like a cross between a bullet proof vest and a utility jerkin. ‘Lucky we’re the same size…’
    Slipping the vest over his head, Charlie began to do up the side-straps. It was only when it was on that Liz truly understood why Charlie had ‘robbed’ the body of Daniels of his clothes. Secured in channels across the chest and back were three wickedly sharp looking ice picks.
    ‘Damn, there’s one missing,’ said Charlie disappointedly noticing the empty channel on his chest.
    ‘Here it is,’ said Tom, coughing while he yanked the missing pick from the ruined skull of an un-noticed body half hidden by a scorched table.
    ‘Thanks,’ Charlie replied, taking the missing pick from Tom to test the reassuring weight of it in his hand, ‘Yep, this’ll work for me…’
    ‘No more of the Dead seem to be coming…,’ said Liz, puzzled why more hadn’t answered their call.
    ‘Perhaps the doors at the other end are locked?’ suggested Michael, darting back into the kitchen only to return moments later with a grubby looking tea-towel. ‘I’ll check…’
    Tying the towel over his mouth and nose to block out the worst of the smoke, Michael manoeuvred around the three fallen bodies and using one of the long tables to guide him, made his way through the smoke filled room to the door he knew lay at the far end of the dining hall. At any moment he expected to feel Dead hands upon him, grasping compulsively for his flesh as they appeared from the swirling smoke around him.
    ‘What do you see?’ called Tom from behind him.
    ‘Fuck all,’ Michael mumbled to himself, blinking away the stinging smoke from his eyes.
    ‘I’m almost at the door!’ He continued, calling back as the hand keeping contact with the long table told him he had reached its end.
    Leaving the security of the table behind him, Michael stepped forward making the four strides that would take him to the double doors. Sure enough, by the second step, the smoke parted revealing the doors ahead of him. Slowly he reached out, his fingers gingerly wrapping about one of the handles. Pausing, he could’ve sworn he heard a scratching sound but as more smouldering embers popped and crackled to his right he wrote it off to some unseen debris settling to the floor. 
    ‘I’m at the door…’ he called back to the others, steeling himself to pull open the door.
    He was about to open it when the scratching sound reached him again, unnerving him. This was no debris, of that he was certain this time.
    ‘I think… I think there’s something on the other side,’ he said, his voice barely reaching the others.
    ‘Michael, be careful,’ called Liz from behind him.
    ‘Hmmm,’ he mumbled in return, his fist tightening about the crowbar in his hand.
    Taking a deep breath through the stale smelling tea-towel to steady himself, Michael pulled open the door.
    ‘Fuck!’ he yelled as a blackened hand fell through the open door and latched onto his ankle.
    Instantly, as the adrenalin coursed through him, his gaze followed the blistered hand up along a chard sleeve to the severely burnt face of a woman looking up at him, her mouth slowly opening. Instinctively he drew back his arm to smash the skull of the woman looking up at him. It was then that she spoke.
    ‘K…K… Kill m... me,’ she panted. ‘P… Please k... kill me…’
    ***
    ‘Vincenzo!’ whispered Carmella, her fingers nervously tightening about her husband’s wrist.
    ‘Non preoccuparti, Carmella. Tutti saranno ben,’ he whispered back, trying to calm his wife’s justified fears while the sound of Dead hands banging against the walls increased.
    ‘Cam, we must do something… it is not safe,’ he continued, switching back to English.
    The Dead had seemingly appeared out of the blue shortly after Charlie and the others had disappeared beyond the walls of the Institute. What had started with one set of Dead hands clawing