Amidst the falling dust (The Green and Pleasant Land) by Oliver Kennedy Page A

We are all staring in dismay at our carriage and the billowing cloud of smoke which wafts up from it into the sky. The car is a shell, our belongings are less than that.
    At that moment a cadaver comes stumbling from the trees behind us, it has seen the smoke and smelt the burning. It has sensed life and has moved to extinguish it. The manner in which Patricia pulls out her hunting knife and rams it through the fiends head is almost casual. Off in the trees we hear more noise, the sound of multiple things stumbling towards the roaring fire.
    “Run” says the lieutenant. We obey.

Chapter 8, The Disfigured Dream

    Just when you think things can't get any worse, any more strange and cruel, they inevitably do. The past twenty-four hours have been bizarre and uncomfortable. We avoided the cadavers. Trowler made up a makeshift stretcher, which nice guy Dan Sutton offered to help carry.
    The strangers condition did not change, his every breath was a struggle, he would occasionally open his eyes, though after my first encounter I avoided going anywhere near him. The dream which had seemed so real had been reduced by my feeble mortal mind. Now just scraps and shreds remained, torn pieces of metaphysical cloth which I could not weave into anything coherent.
    We spent an uncomfortable night in the undergrowth. I did not have the heart to ask where we were going, I don't think anyone knew. Everyone seemed to be undergoing some sort of psychological adjustment. The robust and unwavering Tasker was becoming withdrawn, as if even he was beginning to sag under the weight of our predicament.
    We walked all through the next day down the valleys of the Lake District. I would say we were lost but it is difficult to be so when you don't seem to have any true destination in mind. Morale is gone, burned up with the car and all our kit. Boiled bark and muddy water do little for the appetite.
    Darkness has fallen again and we have found a cave, nestled in some trees at the bottom of a large stony hill. My mind brings forth an echo of the past, it tells me that perhaps we are near Scafell, but such memories are unreliable and of little use in the here and now.
    Patricia looks like she is asleep, or pretending to be so. So does Mark, I envy them. Tasker is apparently on guard though to be truthful I cannot see him and he might have just run off into the darkness hours ago for all I know.
    Trowler and Sutton. They are very much awake. They are starting to disturb me. They are knelt over the green eyed man, they have been for hours. Their heads are bowed and their hands rest upon the dirt. They say nothing out loud but I am sure as can be that I can hear muttering and murmuring coming from the triad. Some conversation to which even the shadows would have to lean in if they wished to be privy to it. Against Taskers insistence a small fire lingers there at the entrance to the cave, another sign of his eroding authority.
    My eyes begin to droop. My head dips every now and then and I can feel the blessed burden of sleep about to take me away for a time. But just as I am about to succumb I look up one last time. I start to shake and sweat. My heart flutters, my blood pounds. Sitting on a rock only a few feet from me, there is a cadaver.
    It is a brutal looking beast. Though I am surprised by the neatness of its attire and its apparent lack of a desire to immediately start eating me. A grey shirt and trousers it wears. As I look on I start to notice other anomalies that do not fit with the profile of the living dead. Bandaged stumps protrude from the end of its shirt sleeves. And though its face is a lipless wreck that has had the humanity carved from it with a blade the eyes are pure and clear, and they stare steadily at me with the contemplative look of one who lives.
    “Who are you?” I whisper.
    “A man once, like you Patrick, now, a ghost perhaps, a ghost of the flesh”, its voice is halting, the sounds warped. The inside of his mouth reveals a torn