Read Online Six Days With the Dead by Stephen Charlick - Free Book Online Page A

Paris, Milan, all the major capitals of Europe. Riots, that seemed to be made up of dead people. Standing up slowly Nicky grabbed Rich. Leaving the luggage behind and running for their car, they both had one word screaming in their minds ‘Sam’. Nicky had left their nine year old son with Barry, her brother-in-law. She trusted Barry completely. He was a policeman and Sam loved spending time with his uncle. As the car joined the motorway her mobile rang, it was Barry. Just seeing the number on the screen her stomach dropped.  Answering the call, Barry told her that Sam had been attacked by a crazy girl in the street. It wasn’t too bad though as she had only bitten his hand, which Barry had carefully disinfected. Barry had locked all the doors and windows and was now watching Transformers with Sam in the living room. Of course at that time, they didn’t know what was to come an hour or so later. By the time Nicky and Rich were only half an hour away from home the news on the radio had gone from horrific, to the stuff of nightmares. But it was when they mentioned the bites that Nicky realised her baby would die. She frantically dialled Barry’s phone number again and again, desperate to get through but only getting the service unavailable message. As their car pulled up to Barry’s house, she was out of the car and running to the front door before the car had even stopped. Opening the door Richard and Nicky ran through the house, calling his name over and over, desperate to find their son. Upstairs in the back bedroom they found Barry, tears running down his face as he held the limp body of Sam in his arms. A bloody towel lay over Sam’s head. Reaching to remove it, Barry caught her hand, stopping her. She did not need to see what was beneath to know her baby was gone.  She did not remember much of the next few weeks. Running and hiding, sometimes fighting, it didn’t matter anymore to her.  Weeks, turned in to months and Rich and Barry stayed with her, keeping her safe, keeping her alive. She carried with her a painful all-consuming guilt. Guilt for not being there to protect Sam and guilt for hating Barry, though rationally she knew he had had no choice in what he had done. Over the next few years they had travelled the south coast, avoiding the towns, moving from one settlement to the next. It didn’t matter to her. Faces, names, places, all were meaningless now. They had joined a small caravan of wagons and then one day Rich had brought to her the frail weeping Justin. It was if she had been given a chance to make amends. They had sat in the wagon holding each other weeping. Her own baby was gone and this child’s mother was also gone. They needed each other and she would build for them both a new life on that need.
    ‘ So don’t say anything in front of Anne, please. I don’t want her to worry while I’m away’ Liz asked Nicky.
    Liz knew she could rely on Alice to look after Anne while she was gone. If the worst happened and Liz never came back, they had discussed what would happen. Alice had agreed to take care of Anne perman ently. In a world where people could be there one day and not the next, things like this often came up if someone you loved was dependent on you. Liz looked over at Alice who was sitting between Charlie and Duncan. She knew if the worst ever happened, Anne would be safe in their care.
    Duncan had been a G od send to the members of the Convent community. He had designed and made the pump to draw water from the stream. He had built the mill, so they could now have bread, of a sort, and he had worked out the pullies on the gate system to keep them all safe. When the Dead had swept across the globe, Duncan had been an engineer on an oil drilling platform in the North Sea. Sat in the television room with the other riggers, he had watched the world fall apart, one horrific report at a time. Then, when the satellites stopped transmitting they could only assume the mainland was now lost to