The bells of Skegston End only ever sang for Sunday mass, weddings and funerals. Hearing them cry out on a Tuesday was as sure a sign as any that something had gone very wrong and the Vicar had been the first to spot it.
Most folk's immediate reaction was to flee to the neighbouring town of Lunhamthrop and seek shelter in their city-sized network of underground bunkers. They were the next to meet the danger that the church bells had been trying to warn them about.
The few who remained headed churchways to help the Vicar, after all a village without a Vicar just isn't proper. They arrived just in time to hear the bells peal for the last time as he was cast out of the bell tower to meet his beloved maker with a sickeningly wet crunch as his head met with the cold, uncaring stone steps.
After the initial shock had worn off, they ran to check on him in the slight hope that he might be even the littlest bit alive while a yellow-tinged fluid mingled with his gushing blood. They mourned for him too soon, forgetting that he'd been trying to warn them of an approaching danger.
A polite, yet muffled, cough came from behind them and they turned to meet all that the Vicar had been trying to keep them from. Every one of them recognised the names they saw before them, the stones they spent days and weeks agonising over.
They did not recognise the weed-smothered corpses that shuffled about beneath the stones, dirt dripping with every rattled inhale and every forced exhale.
Their confusion didn't last for long as terror overtook them at the sight of the graveyard marching.
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