In Java I would load the images raw into a bytearray, attaching each bitmap after each other.
Then read them out and recreate them when needed.
(a custom Run-Lenght-Encoding could help compressing it if the bitmaps are relatively plain)
You could do the same in Lite-C:
look into the following points
#1 way to load data into an bytearray
#2 recreating a usable bitmap from an bytearray
#3 a sufficiently fast way to access the bitmaps (offsettable)