Read Online Five More Days With The Dead (Lanherne Chronicles Book 2) by Stephen Charlick - Free Book Online

the creature in his sights. With the slightest intake of breath, Imran steadied himself and then exhaled slowly as he let the bowstring slip from his fingers. As always, his arrow flew with precision, burying deeply in the creatures forehead. With the softest of sighs, one last fetid breath escaped its torn lips before the creature fell to floor.
    ‘I can’t see any more of the Dead from here ,’ Imran said, climbing back into the cart.
    ‘Right, we’ll have to go in. Duncan, you stay in the cart and keep watch. Imran, I’ll be on point . Your bow’s not too hot in tight corridors, so we’ll rely on this,’ Phil said, lifting a length of metal tubing with long twisted nails hammered through one end,
    ‘ And this,’ he continued, strapping an object onto his wrist that looked like a glove with two long metal spikes bolted to a plate covering the back of the hand. 
    He had got the idea from Charlie. Charlie had lost a hand during one of the desert wars long before the Dead came and realising he would need as much weaponry as he could carry, he had modified his artificial limb to hold a large hunting knife.
    ‘One of yours?’ Imran said to Duncan, nodding at the spiked glove.
    ‘I aim to please,’ Duncan said, bobbing his head.
    ‘Right, come on, ladies. Let’s get to business,’ said Phil, kicking open the side hatch.
    By the time Imran had followed him out of the cart, Phil had already taken position by the gate. With his bow in his hand and a full quiver of arrows on his back, Imran gave Phil the nod and they began walking into the playground slowly. Phil glanced briefly down at the Dead thing Imran had dispatched. Even now, the maggots carried on their harvest of the Dead flesh, their lives oblivious to the change in state of their host. Putting his booted foot on the creature’s head, Phil yanked Imran’s arrow free and silently passed it back to him. Walking down the small path Jackson had made between the rows of vegetable beds towards to school entrance, they could still hear Toby’s frantic barking coming from within the building. When he first took over the school, Jackson had sensibly boarded up the lower two thirds of the large classroom windows, just in case the Dead should ever breach his perimeter. What had been a positive for Jackson was now a hindrance for Phil and Imran because they had no idea what they could be walking into. What they could see through the top third of the glass didn’t bode well though. A multitude of well-fed flies made tapping noises as they continually ricocheted off the smeared glass. In Phil’s experience where you found flies this fat, you could bet your arse there were rotting corpses too.  Pausing as they got to the door, Phil motioned to Imran he would open it on the count of three. Counting down on his fingers, one by one, Phil took a breath and slowly pushed the door inward with his foot. Instantly, the smell hit them. This was not the dry almost sickly sweet smell of old death but the rotting stench of death in its first bouts of decay. Phil hacked phlegm into his mouth and spat, desperate to clear his mouth. Even after just a few breaths, the foul odour almost felt like a coating on his tongue, because it was so strong.
    Walk ing down the dimly lit corridor, which would have once teamed with the carefree jostling and laughter of young children, they knew they would only find death and the Dead awaiting them here. Checking each small classroom as they passed it, the detritus of Jackson’s life littered every available space, Phil and Imran could see Jackson had lived a life of lonely sad regret. Whether a regret that his wife had died or that he had survived, they could only guess, but the words scribbled over walls and blackboards showed Jackson’s unstable mind could not forgive himself for this imagined slight. The words ‘sorry’ and ‘forgive me’ were scrawled in shaky handwriting over many of the available surfaces, which clearly showed a man