We spread out and stood a few feet from the wooden frame of the gallows when we reached the grisly scene. I counted six corpses hanging from the thick wooden cross piece between the two tall poles. The dead had been strung up high, their feet dangled at least a couple of feet above our heads and they swayed gently in the breeze. The ropes creaked against the dry, wooden frame as the bodies drifted around in slow circles.
I studied the corpses for a moment. They were a combination of three males and three females, distinguishable by their body shape, clothing and hairstyles, although their ages seemed to vary. Some were older and some younger. The desert air and arid conditions had mummified their facial features, although the skin was crinkled, yellowed and parched. The jaws hung open as though in a final, agonized, screaming grimace and the hands were bound with rope behind their backs. Their eyes had decomposed and only dark, empty sockets remained. The bodies were still fully clothed in ragged but modern garments and their dry, sun bleached and sand covered hair blew around in the breeze. The stench of the dead was evident even though we stood a few feet from the gallows.
“How long have they been up there?” Dovey asked.
“Difficult to say,” Wingate answered. “In these conditions, it’ll take a body longer to decompose than in a damper climate. They are strung up fairly high so the wild animals around here can’t even get to them.” She glanced around the landscape. “It simply could be a mass suicide event. We’ve seen these kinds of things before.”
“I don’t buy that,” Smith growled, shaking his head. “This frame has been purposely put together as a set of hanging gallows.”
“So what?” Wingate snapped, screwing up her face.
“If you’re going to hang yourself, why go to the extent of knocking up this big assed wooden frame? These poles must weigh a god damn ton. Why not just shoot yourself in the head or hang yourself from your roof beam?” Smith carried on. “How the heck did they tie up their hands and the biggest question of all is how the hell did they get up there in the first place? There are no ladders or scaffolding for them to climb up.”
Wingate scowled and huffed. At least she was conversing with Smith, even if it wasn’t in a particularly friendly way.
Smith scuffed at the dusty ground with his foot. “Wide tire tracks in the dirt right here. They’re slightly faded but it looks like tracks from a big old truck. It’d have to be a big assed beast to get up here in the first place. My guess is these poor bastards were loaded onto the back of a flat bed truck, like you’d use to transport livestock, strung up on the gallows then the truck pulls away and…” he clenched his fist at the side of his head, bent his neck to the left and poked out his tongue in an expression like he was being hanged.
“Maybe they were infected,” McElroy said.
Smith shook his head. “Not possible, Mac. We all know they’d still be gurgling and moaning up there if they were members of the undead. I don’t have to tell you that the only way to kill the infected for good is to destroy the brain. These guys were hung and killed when they were living, breathing human beings. And completely uninfected.”
I thought for a moment. “Could it be possible they’d been bitten and not yet turned?” I asked. “That way they could still be eliminated before they became undead.”
Smith glanced over the hanging corpses. “It’s possible, I suppose but the bodies haven’t got any signs of bites or blood stains or bandages on them. We all know what a fucking mess occurs when one of the living gets bit. These guys don’t show any signs of that happening.”
“So what are you thinking, Smudger?” McElroy asked. “Just a random act of murder here?”
Smith shook his head again. “This was planned. Look where we are. In a god damn graveyard. So called hallowed ground. Whoever constructed these gallows took their time, probably with these poor, dead bastards watching them do it. To my mind, this was a fully functional and deliberate execution…and intended to be a warning of some kind.”
Smith’s gruesome conclusion sent another shiver down my spine.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A small flock of birds fluttered overhead as they flew across the cemetery. I glanced skyward, watching the birds scatter in two’s and three’s. They seemed as though something had startled them. I followed their aerial path then glanced back to the position they’d come from, down the slope towards the newer buildings at the roadside. A slight dust cloud hung in the air at the rear of the saloon and I thought I saw movement amongst the floating, swirling haze.
“What the hell is going on down there?” I shouted, pointing down the hillside.
The rest of the crew turned and looked to where I was indicating.
“I don’t know,” McElroy said. “But I don’t like it.”
“Me either,” Smith rumbled.
“Come on, fellers, let’s get out of here,” McElroy barked, waving us away from the gallows.
“Are we going to just leave these bodies here, strung up like that?” Anderson whined. “We should at least bury them in some sort of graves.”
“Maybe later,” McElroy muttered. “Right now, we need to find out what the hell is going on down there.”
We hustled back through the cemetery at a brisk pace. One of the crew tripped over the outer edge of a felled tombstone and went sprawling head first into the dusty surface. I sensed a slight air of panic had set in amongst us.
“Catch yerself on, man,” McElroy roared at the fallen guy. “Stay on yer damn feet, will you.”
We met up with the other guys who had stayed beside the ruined buildings in the Ghost Town. McElroy very briefly explained to them what we’d seen on the far side of the graveyard and what we’d seen down the hillside. He received glum expressions from the other guys but he didn’t dwell on their confusion.
Moving together in a huddle, we trudged back along the narrow trail and started to scale down the hillside.
“Go easy, boys,” McElroy instructed. “We don’t know what’s down there.”
Smith and I followed McElroy down the sloping ground. Dovey and Anderson led the charge, as usual and a few more of the crew trailed behind us. We’d caused quite a dust cloud of our own with all the bodies rushing down the slope and visibility decreased to only a few feet in each direction.
I saw flashes of movement amongst the dusty haze when I reached the bottom of the hillside. Smith was still alongside me and we stood still, glancing around and trying to get our bearings. People shouted incoherently from somewhere in the distance and then a shrill, terrified scream caused Smith and I to move a little closer to each other and rip our handguns from their holsters. A loud, guttural engine roared from within the dust cloud but sounded like it was moving away from us.
“What the fuck is going on, Smith?” I bellowed.
“Stay close and stay calm,” Smith instructed. “Don’t start shooting unless we have to. Just wait for a moment.”
I did as Smith said. We stood side by side in silence. The engine had receded to a distant whine but people still shouted and screamed somewhere around us.
The breeze began to blow the dust cloud into the ether and the air started to clear. People coughed and wheezed, wailed and groaned in the near vicinity. It sounded like a few people were in pain and I hoped nobody was seriously hurt. Wingate would have to patch up the wounded but how the hell had they managed to injure themselves to warrant medical attention?
I spat out a mouthful of grit as the dust cloud finally settled and faded away. Our crew were scattered all over the near ground. Some lay in the dust and some chased around, glancing in each direction with confused expressions on their faces. It was a scene of utter chaos.
The big, wooden back doors of the saloon stood open. The beige colored patio slabs at the rear of the building were coated with pools of blood. A bunch of the undead swarmed around the bodies of some of our crew lying on the patio, chewing, gnawing and gorging on their bleeding bodies. More ghouls emerged from the saloon interior, where they’
d obviously been locked inside. I recognized the corpse of Maloney lying on his back on the slabs. His eyes were open and his face was deathly white but he was definitely dead, with blood flooding from a huge slice wound across his throat. I knew the fatal injury hadn’t been caused by the undead. Something else was going on here.
“Fuck’s sake, will you just fuck off, yer eejit!”
I turned to my right to the sound of the voice and saw McElroy grappling with a heavy set, male member of the undead. The ghoul growled and the creature’s long, dark hair flailed around its head as it tried to bite McElroy. The big Irishman held the zombie’s throat as he repelled the repeated attacks.
Smith took a side step to his right, leveled his handgun at McElroy’s assailant and fired one round. The big zombie’s head rocked to the side amid a shower of blood and brains that spattered across the sand. The body dropped to the ground, sending up a spray of dust around us.
McElroy gasped for air and stared at us with an expression of total confusion. We didn’t have a clue what was happening or why it was happening around us either. I simply shook my head and shrugged. The situation had turned into a complete fucking nightmare.
Smith jolted into action. He moved forward to the patio area behind the saloon and began dispatching the undead with well aimed, single shots from his handgun, the gunfire echoing across the hillside behind us.
Other members of the crew seemed to recover from the initial shock of the onslaught and began firing wildly at the attacking ghouls, possibly being up close and personal with the undead for the first time. A stray round zipped by McElroy, close to his right shoulder.
“Keep your shots aimed at the bastard’s heads and watch your angles, you bunch of crazy fuckwits,” McElroy roared. “Don’t waste the god damn ammo.”
One of McElroy’s guys yelled in excruciating pain after a wildly aimed round ripped through his left kneecap. The guy fell to the ground and was immediately pounced on by two ragged undead who bit and chewed and gorged on the blood spurting from the guy’s wrecked knee.
It was turning into a free for all. The crew seemed to be panicking and making a hash of eradicating the undead around us. We were all going to end up dead if this fiasco carried on the way it was.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A skinny, male ghoul with fresh blood smeared over its bony, parched face came at me, moaning and screeching as it approached. A daubing of blood also coated the left side of the zombie’s wispy gray hair and the milky white eyes seemed sunken back a long way into the sockets, almost as though they’d been pressed into the skull.
I took a measured and careful backward step away from the creature as I raised my right hand, gripping the butt of the Russian handgun. The thin zombie lurched forward, reaching out at me with clawing, gnarled fingers. I checked there were none of the crew directly behind my attacker, aimed the barrel of the gun at the creature’s forehead and squeezed the trigger.
The firearm made a cracking noise and jolted in my hand. The expended round successfully hit the intended target. The zombie’s head rocked backwards as its whole face caved in and the top of the head erupted into a mass of brown liquid and chunks of skull fragments. The body flopped to the ground in front of me. I stepped over the still corpse and tried to carefully aim at more of the ghouls hustling through the saloon’s back doors. I fired two shots and two zombies dropped to the patio.
I tried re-aiming but it was virtually impossible to gain any clean shots without a member of the crew bobbing into my line of fire. We needed to form some kind of plan. We were amongst unorganized chaos. I glanced to my left and saw Smith wading through the undead with his handgun blatting away, sweat and blood splashed across his face. I looked right and saw McElroy grimacing and yelling obscenities I didn’t even understand. Gunshots, screams and groans seemed to be encapsulating me from all around. I took a few more steps back away from the mayhem and felt the hillside resist the movement against the heels of my boots.
This scenario was totally unexpected and completely out of the blue. We’d let our guard down and had been hoodwinked, either by an unpredicted situation or by an unforeseen hand. It was probably a combination of both. The guy in the buggy had bothered me and I was sure he wasn’t just a lone wolf.
The air seemed to develop a fuzzy haziness. Time appeared to slow down, almost to a slow motion affect, like on an old TV video player. I sucked in oxygen but it burned in my lungs like acrid smoke. I thought I was going to collapse any second. I felt as though I was enduring a heart attack or some kind of seizure. I didn’t want to go out like this. I’d rather be shot or fall off the side of a cliff face or any damn thing like that. Not piss my pants and die of heart failure in the face of the undead. Not after all I’d gone through over the past few years.
I caught sight of my alternative self across the opposite side of the melee. He stood on the patio staring directly at me. He was dressed in a pair of dark shades, a black cowboy hat, a black suede jacket with tassels on the sleeves and across the chest, black denims and a pair of black leather cowboy boots. I had to admit, he looked like a fucking rock star. He tapped the bottom of his shades with his right index finger, pushing them a little further up his nose, then pointed at me with both hands in a two cocked finger salute, as though he was firing loaded weapons at me.
“Go at ‘em motherfucker,” he whooped, whirling his hand in the air.
I stared at him, feeling dumbfounded. “What the hell are you doing?” I jabbered.
“Looking out for you, you dumb fuck. It’s what I always do.”
I shook my head. “Not always.” I realized this wasn’t the time or place for disagreements. “So, what do I do?”
“Take control, dude,” he yelled, leaning forward as he spoke. “Be a leader for once in your miserable existence.”
I gritted my teeth and nodded. The scene shimmered back to real time. Bullets flew through the air, screams, shrieks, moans and sounds of pandemonium surrounded me. I knew what I had to do.
I turned to McElroy. “We need to pull back and regroup, Mac,” I yelled.
McElroy glared at me with an angry expression. I noticed a sudden look of realization dawn on his face.
“We need to back up onto the hillside, Mac,” I shouted. “We’ll have to do the best we can for the wounded and try and drag them up there with us. That way we can pick off the undead as they try to follow us.” My final few words were lost in the noise and confusion but McElroy seemed to get the gist of my plan.
“Listen up, everybody,” he roared. His voice was full of anguish and authority and a damn sight louder than I could ever muster. “Get back up the hillside, everybody. Stop fighting the undead and get the wounded to safety.”
I glanced around. Where the hell had Smith got to? I spotted a blood spattered, teeth clenching big guy with wild, wide eyes who looked like a crazy psychopath. The guy held something that looked like the wooden leg of a table and was battering a couple of undead around their heads with the implement. I knew it was Smith and I knew he wasn’t going to stop fighting until the enemy was totally wiped out.
A few of the crew followed McElroy’s instructions and began retreating towards the hillside. Some dragged a few blood soaked bodies through the dust with them.
“Christ!” I grunted, as I backed up. We’d probably lost half our number in dead and wounded and we were still pulling back.
McElroy fired a couple of shots at a few undead coming too close up and personal towards our retreating group. Another guy went down under a knot of attacking zombies and screamed as their teeth tugged and ripped at the flesh on the back of his neck.
I winced at the grisly scene and briefly wondered how many damn undead had been locked up in that fucking saloon. They had to number close to one hundred. The place had been a ticking time bomb waiting to go boom and we’d fallen for the sucker punch. So much for a nice drink in the sunshine.
“Smith…come on, Smith,” I yelled, waving him towards us as we backed up the h
illside.
Only for a fraction of a second did Smith take his eyes from his attackers and glance in my direction. Then he simply turned his attention back to the undead massing in front of him. He continued to batter them with the table leg but he was continuously being driven backwards away from the hillside and further away from us.
The undead lurched up the hillside as we climbed higher. We gained a little ground but the wounded slowed our progress. I moved slowly, trudging backward and watching helplessly as Smith was beaten back in the opposite direction. He was still fighting but now moving backwards along the pathway running adjacent to the saloon and leading back out to the roadway.
Shit! Smith was too far away. He was cut off with no chance of joining our retreat.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I aimed and fired one shot from my handgun at a ghoul who staggered up the hillside, lurching in my direction. The creature jolted and toppled over backwards then slid on its back down the incline, through the dust and clumps of weeds.
Smith was moving further away down the pathway at the side of the saloon building, staggering backwards but still continuing to lunge at the undead crowd in front of him, attacking the ghouls with the wooden table leg. I hadn’t a clue what his plans were but sincerely hoped the crazy bastard would escape unscathed from this latest fiasco.
I shielded my eyes from the bright sun as I watched Smith move further back down the pathway and finally disappear from sight around the front of the saloon. He’d have to go it alone and was certainly capable of doing just that. I couldn’t help him this time.
Left in the Cold (The Left Series) Page 7