Left in the Cold (The Left Series)

by Christian Fletcher

“Hey, Wilde Man,” McElroy boomed behind me.

  I turned my head and glanced further up the hillside. McElroy stood at the summit waving me upward.

  “Are you going to stand there all day admiring the fucking view or are you going to give us a wee hand up here, feller?”

  “Uh…yeah, sure,” I muttered.

  I didn’t like leaving Smith and felt a little guilty about the situation but I had no choice. I glanced around at the foot of the hillside. The undead made slow but steady progress up the slope. The remainder of the crew had managed to drag the wounded far enough up the hillside to be temporarily out of harm’s way. I spun around and plodded up the incline after them.

  Breathing heavily from the exertion, I joined McElroy at the brow of the hillside and stood beside him, facing down the slope and watching the undead advance. I took a brief glance behind us and saw one guy on the ground with blood all over his face and the skin of his right cheek ripped open. If it was a bite from the undead, the poor bastard was dead already. The guy wailed relentlessly and Anderson tried to tend to his horrific wounds by attempting to apply a compression bandage.

  Brooksey helped another guy sitting in the dust with his hand clamped over a gunshot wound that had nicked his shoulder. At least this guy hadn’t been bitten so far as I could see. Two more of McElroy’s crew tried to revive another guy who lay on his back and looked as though he was unconscious and probably on the verge of death. The injured guy was pale and blood pooled beneath him from several injuries around his torso. One more guy stood to the right of the party, aiming his handgun down the slope and an expression of abject terror on his face.

  It suddenly dawned on me that Wingate wasn’t tending to the wounded and dying. I glanced around. She wasn’t even on the fucking hilltop.

  “Where’s Wingate?” I gasped. “She’s not here. Where is she, Mac?”

  McElroy spun around and counted up our numbers in a muttered tone. He looked directly at me.

  “I don’t know, Wilde Man,” he groaned. “She was out there when we reached the saloon. She was right behind Dovey.”

  I looked around the crew again, just to make sure. “Dovey isn’t here either,” I said. “I saw Smith. He was backing up along the path beside the saloon.”

  McElroy nodded. “I know. I saw. What the fuck is going on here, Wilde Man?”

  I’d never heard McElroy sound so confused. We turned back to scour the patio area at back of the saloon for anybody stranded amongst the undead crowd. I felt anxious and exasperated.

  “I don’t know,” I croaked.

  “We got fucking jumped,” a voice yelled from behind us.

  McElroy and I spun around to see who had spoken. Brooksey knelt by the guy with the gunshot wound and a neatly tied compression bandage around his shoulder. Brooksey stared at us with wide eyes and a grimace across his face.

  “Go on, Brooksey,” McElroy barked. “Tell all, man but do it quickly.” He took a brief glance over his shoulder at the advancing undead.

  “Maloney and I heard noises coming from the inside of the saloon when we were standing outside the back doors,” Brooksey explained. “We thought it sounded like zombies inside there so we decided to wait until you guys got back before we tried to open up the doors. Then we heard an engine noise like a truck or something from around the front. Maloney went to take a look and next thing I know he comes stumbling around the back with his throat slit.” Brooksey swallowed hard before he continued. “Then the back doors just flew open and the dead heads all came running out. I did my best to fight them off before you guys showed up right in the nick of time.”

  McElroy took a few seconds to process the new information, nodding his head gently with a sour expression on his face. We didn’t have long before we had to make a move, one way or another.

  I took a quick peek back down the hill. The undead scrambled up the slope and were getting closer. Some of the ghouls lost their footing and slid back down but the majority of the undead pack made steady progress.

  “We can’t stay here, Mac,” I said. “We have to try and get back to the RV somehow. There must be another trail or something down from the hilltop on the other side of the Ghost Town.”

  McElroy flashed me a condescending glare. I was sure he was about to dish out some abuse in my direction but he thought better of it given the dire situation and kept quiet. He turned back to Brooksey.

  “Did you see Wingate or Dovey down there?”

  Brooksey shook his head. “I couldn’t see shit with all that dust flying around, Mac. All I was trying to do was not get bit amongst all that crap going on down there.”

  I gazed down the hillside at the patio area behind the saloon. Bunches of blood soaked undead knelt and clustered around the mutilated bodies of some of the guys in our crew who had fallen. The ghouls tore, ripped, chewed and devoured the corpses that were little more than butchered pieces of meat. I knew it sounded callous but I didn’t much care if Dovey was one of the victims but I sincerely hoped and prayed that Wingate wasn’t one of those who’d been ripped to pieces down there. Maybe she’d got away in the dust cloud and was holed up someplace. I couldn’t totally figure out what had happened to her and I wished she was with us up on the hilltop.

  McElroy looked down the brow of the slope. The undead crawled on their hands and knees but still managed to gain ground up the hill. He glanced over at the other guys tending to the other two wounded men.

  “Can those fellers be moved at all?” he asked.

  Anderson shook his head. “It’s no good, Mac. He’s gone.”

  I sighed, knowing the guy with the chewed face was dead but he was going to turn into an animated corpse

  The two guys trying to revive the other victim stood either side of the prone body. “Him too,” one of them said, with a grim expression on his face. The other guy crossed himself and muttered some religious speak I didn’t fully understand.

  The guy standing on his own at the edge of the hilltop began firing wildly down the slope. A few bodies rolled down through the dust but more ghouls climbed closer to our position. The guy wailed and his handgun clicked without firing. His magazine was empty.

  “Time to make a move, boys,” McElroy said. He looked at the guy with the injured shoulder. “Can you walk, McGuiness?”

  “Aye, don’t fret yourself, Mac,” the guy I now knew was called McGuiness said, in a broad Northern Irish accent. “I can run all day if you want me to, so I can. I got no choice if I don’t want to be zombie food.”

  Anderson yanked McGuiness to his feet. McGuiness grimaced in pain, his blue eyes narrowing and his short, sandy colored hair ruffling in the breeze. He staggered a little but stood unaided. McElroy, me and the other guy with the empty handgun stepped back away from the edge of the hillside. The undead kept crawling up and were only a few feet from the summit.

  I gazed around at our ragtag crew. Shit! There had been around fifteen or sixteen people in our party to start with since we’d split at the motel and now we numbered only eight. Smith was still out there, hopefully alive somewhere, Wingate and Dovey were unaccounted for and the rest of the crew were dead. Whole clusters of undead were after us and we were stuck on a hillside next to a ghost town in the middle of a desert.

  I wiped sweat from my forehead as I backed up from the slope. I glanced back at the ruined Ghost Town and wondered if I’d soon be joining the spirits roaming the buildings in the dead of night.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “What are we going to do with Ray and Dizzy?” Brooksey asked, pointing at the two members of our crew who were now corpses.

  McElroy sighed and shook his head. “We don’t have the time to bury them now, Brooksey. I’m sorry but we’re going to have to leave them.”

  “You know what’ll happen to them, Mac?” the guy with the empty gun yelled.

  McElroy nodded and drew his handgun from his holster. The Armalite rifle was still wrapped around his shoulder. He cocked the handgun, turned and aimed at the fall
en guy with the ripped open face. McElroy fired the weapon once. The guy’s head jolted and a spray of blood erupted from a huge hole in his head. McElroy swiveled, aimed at the next dead guy in our crew and repeated the process. The other guys stood back a few paces with ashen faces.

  Not a nice thing to have to do to people you’ve known for a long time but I respected McElroy for carrying out the grisly task. Those guys were only going to reanimate and come after us. It was two less enemies to face and I hoped somebody would do the same to me if I were in that unfortunate situation.

  White faced, McElroy slipped his handgun back into the holster. “Come on, boys, let’s get fucking going.”

  I nodded and gulped down a lump of vomit that threatened to rise from my throat. We had to move off the hillside and find another way down. McElroy turned back towards the Ghost Town and the rest of us left alive followed him. The undead reached the hillside summit in ragged formation, crawling up the rocky terrain. They were slow moving but we couldn’t afford to dawdle. We had to get down the rise and get out of the Ghost Town.

  McElroy led the way, threading a pathway through the ruined buildings while the rest of us plodded along behind him. McGuiness was struggling to move freely but didn’t allow his gunshot wound to slow us down.

  “We’ll try and find a trail from the south side of the town,” McElroy said, pointing the way. “That route overlooks the roadway below us so hopefully, they’ll be some kind of way down.”

  A few of us murmured in agreement. Any escape route out of the place sounded a good plan. I glanced to our right and saw the swinging, executed figures moving in the breeze. The silent, hanging corpses caused a chill to run down my spine. What the hell had we stumbled across?

  The wrecked buildings allowed some cover across the hilltop from the gathering undead on the summit. We made progress with the sun blasting down on our backs as we moved across the uneven landscape.

  McElroy stopped at the edge of the vertical slope and stared down. The rest of the crew joined him at the rim of the downward gradient. The ground sloped away at a steep angle and I saw the dusty roadside we’d traveled on earlier below us at a vertical distance of around fifty feet.

  McElroy glanced at each of the crew in turn. “We’re going to have to get down there, boys. Just take it slow and steady,” he said. “Once we get onto the roadway, we can double back to the RV.”

  McElroy led the trek down the hillside, cautiously stepping down onto a carpet of small pieces of rock and gravel. The other crew members tentatively followed McElroy, moving unsteadily down the slope. I tried to gulp away the dryness in my throat. The last time I’d attempted to negotiate a rocky gradient, I ended up going ass over tit with my fall broken by the sea at the bottom. That situation had been on St. Miep Island when guys were shooting at us. This scenario was a little different but just as difficult to accomplish. One loss of balance could result in an awkward and painful fall all the way down the slope.

  Brooksey lost his footing around half way down. His feet slid on the gravel but he managed not to topple forward. Instead, he landed heavily on his back and slid through the sand and rock chipping the rest of the way down the hill.

  “Way to go, Brooksey,” McElroy said, from a few feet above the roadside.

  Brooksey stood and dusted himself off, complaining about grazing his back and arms.

  Anderson reached the roadway next and was quickly followed by McElroy and two of the other guys. McGuiness seemed to be having trouble gaining his balance and his progress was painfully slow. I joined the other crew members on the roadway and turned to glance back up at the hillside. Only McGuiness and one of the other guys were yet to join us at the foot of the incline.

  “Come on, fellers,” McElroy called out. “Not far to go now, boys.”

  McGuiness looked worried and I guessed the pain from the accidental gunshot wound was causing him all kinds of bother. The other guy on the hillside stayed close to McGuiness but he wouldn’t be able to stop the injured man if he fell. McGuiness could walk, he’d have to simply try and fight through the pain barrier. He’d vastly slow us down if we had to carry him. I gritted my teeth and willed him to make it down the hillside in one piece.

  Movement above us attracted my attention. I glanced up the slope and saw several figures shuffling closer to the edge of the hillside. We’d taken too long to reach the roadside and now the undead were in plain sight.

  “They’re getting closer,” I yelled, pointing up the rise.

  McElroy looked to where I was indicating. “Shit!” he huffed. “Come on, boys, you need to pick up the pace a little.” He waved McGuiness and the other guy forward.

  The undead possessed no thought process for their immediate safety. They’d keep coming after us, using the shortest route possible. A reanimated female, clad in the torn and dirty remains of a white uniform of some description, toppled down the hill’s summit and rolled down the slope, sending up a shower of dust and loose stones. The female zombie turned over and over in a knot of flapping arms and legs. She tumbled down the hill in a vertical line slightly to the right of McGuiness and the other crew member alongside him.

  McElroy, Anderson, Brooksey and I drew our firearms, waiting for the female ghoul to reach the bottom of the slope.

  “Easy, boys,” McElroy warned. “Think about conserving the ammo.”

  I held back, aiming my handgun at the sprawling figure as it rolled onto the roadside and tried to stand on unsteady legs. McElroy moved forward to within six feet of the ghoul, aiming his handgun at the creature’s head. The undead woman hissed at him, revealing broken and rotting teeth. McElroy fired once and the woman jerked backwards, landing heavily on her back amongst the dust covering the roadside. Crimson liquid oozed in a pool beneath her.

  More zombies tumbled over the edge of the hillside, rolling through the sand towards us. McGuiness and the other guy still had a few feet to negotiate before they reached the roadway. I felt my stomach tighten. They needed to get a move on or we’d be swamped by undead raining down on us from the hilltop.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  McGuiness and the other crew member were around twenty feet from the foot of the hillside when a rolling body that resembled a bundle of blue rags, crashed into the backs of their legs. Both McGuiness and the other guy fell face first into the dust. The three of them tumbled down the remainder of the slope and I heard McGuiness cry out in pain as the impact jolted his injured shoulder.

  I took a quick glance up the hill and saw more undead bodies rolling our way. Anderson fired at one ghoul that attempted to crawl along the roadside towards him. Brooksey shot another male zombie rising to its feet on the partially covered blacktop.

  McElroy turned his head towards the other two crew members whose names I didn’t know. They seemed to be backing off a little with expressions of absolute terror on their faces. The two guys had their handguns drawn but waved them around in all directions as though they might fire off a whole bunch of stray and misaimed rounds at any second. We didn’t need any more friendly-fire casualties.

  McElroy was obviously also aware of the pending danger they posed.

  “Fellers, don’t fire,” he roared. “See if you get along the road and back to the RV. Get it running and wait for us. Got it?”

  The two guys gazed at McElroy and relief washed over their faces. They nodded and hot footed it behind us along the roadway back towards the vehicle. I wasn’t sorry to see them go if I was honest and wouldn’t have been surprised if it was one of those two guys who’d accidently shot McGuiness.

  McElroy and I moved closer to McGuiness and the other guy as they rolled across the road, almost tangled together with the ghoul who had bowled them over. They came to a standstill a few feet in front of us and it didn’t look good for our fellow crew members. McGuiness clutched his injured shoulder but managed to kick out at his attacker and somehow shuffle his way across the sand covered road on his back.

  Neither McElroy nor I could manage
to aim and get a clean shot at the ragged zombie. The creature grappled with our remaining crew member who lay on his side on the ground. I saw a curly mop of black, greasy hair above the snarling ghoul’s face. A ripped blue uniform partially covered the zombie’s skinny body and I briefly wondered if he’d been a cop in his former life. Our guy tried to stand but the zombie grabbed his arm and pulled him back down.

  I attempted to flank the battling pair so I could fire off a shot from an angle but stumbled over McGuiness who was trying to stand up. McElroy fired once but only managed to skim the zombie’s right ear.

  Our crew member howled in pain when the undead guy bit into the side of his neck and tore away a chunk of flesh. Blood spurted from the wound and spattered onto the roadway. The zombie snaffled at the gaping hole in the guy’s neck, lapping up the blood and wrapping bony hands around our crew member’s head. The guy was dead already and by the abject horror in his eyes, he knew it too. I couldn’t help staring into the guy’s eyes for a few seconds, watching in horror as his life ebbed away.

  Two consecutive gunshots rocked me from my partial, frozen up state. The crew member and the undead guy’s heads both rocked backwards and they lay still. Our former colleague lay on top of the ghoul who’d infected him.

  I turned my head and saw McElroy still aiming his handgun at the two bodies. That was the third member of his crew he’d had to kill today. I just hoped the mental strain of carrying out such an act wasn’t going to return and haunt him later.

  McGuiness stood to the left of McElroy and slightly behind him. He gripped his injured shoulder but had managed to draw his firearm with his other hand. McGuiness breathed heavily, with his mouth hanging wide open and stood hunched forward, slightly doubled up. Sweat rolled from his pale face and he looked totally beat. We had to get this guy out of danger or he’d be an unnecessary burden if he went into shock.

  I glanced over at McElroy, who was staring back up the hillside. More zombies tumbled down the slope and a whole crowd of undead massed across the rise above us. The sun cast bizarre, squirming shadows on the roadside around us.