The others all agreed. I didn’t see what else we could do. We were back to living each day as it came, fighting the elements, fighting the undead, fighting to survive in an unknown environment.
Chapter Seven
We trudged through the snow in relative silence for what seemed like hours. The deep snow, hilly terrain and heavy backpacks were strength sapping and I badly needed to rest. We walked by clusters of tall trees laden with snow on their branches, across white covered barren fields and over dilapidated wire fences. The Glenross Hotel was well and truly out in the Scottish wilderness.
We came across an isolated barn and stopped to rest out of the wind for a few minutes. The barn roof was half collapsed under the weight of the snow and Smith wouldn’t stay inside when he saw a rat scurrying around the decaying stack of hay bales. Smith hated rats and was more terrified of the furry rodents than he was of walking flesh eaters.
The first zombie I’d seen for a while, staggered out of a wooded area shortly after we left the barn. The creature lumbered towards us and fell over a few times in the snow. It was wrapped in nothing more than brown colored rags and wailed and moaned as it tried to stand. Gera took aim with his M-16 and dispatched the ghoul with one single shot to the head. The gunshot echoed around the sparse landscape and I hoped no more undead would be attracted to the sound.
Cordoba slid waist deep into a snowdrift on the opposite side of a wooden fence. Gera and I grabbed her arms and pulled her out.
“I think we’re standing on what’s left of a road,” Smith said. “That dip in the ground Cordoba fell down was probably a roadside ditch. Let me take a look at that map, Wilde Man.”
I pulled out the map from my parker pocket and we huddled around in a circle. Smith studied the map intently. He pointed to a few block shaped objects along a line that I guessed was a road.
“If we follow this road west, we should come to this small village, right here. Maybe we can take a break and rest up for a while in one of the houses.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “I’m done.”
I was glad when the others agreed and we followed the snow covered roadway at a slow pace. The white covered rooftops of the houses honed into view after around a mile further down the road. The buildings were all constructed of chunky stone and only one storey high, spread around at odd angles to the road. I rubbed the snow off of the village signpost and was pleased to see the place was delightfully named ‘Killnockie.’ I tried to pronounce the name quietly in a Scottish accent, but the noise sounded like I was trying to clear my throat.
“Are you okay, Brett?” Cordoba asked. “I heard you coughing.”
“Yeah, I’m good,” I muttered. “Just trying to speak Scottish.”
“I’m sure they don’t sound like that, Brett,” Batfish chuckled. “Which house do you think we should try, guys?”
“Man, these places look old,” Gera mused, staring at the buildings.
“They were standing long before we were born and they’ll probably still be standing a long time after we’re gone,” Smith said, rather morbidly. “Let’s try this place, right here.”
He led the way through a small front garden that contained a few mounded dome shapes, which were impossible to recognize under the thick snow.
Smith banged a gloved fist on the front door. “We don’t want to go inside if we’re not welcome.”
Gera wiped away a layer of snow from one of the front windows and it fell from the pane in a thick slab. He peered through the glass but shook his head.
“I can’t see shit inside that room,” he sighed. “The windows are covered in condensation on the inside.”
“You’d think these remote places would have been safe from the disease,” Wingate said. “The people could have hidden away and cut themselves off from the rest of society.”
“Maybe they have,” I said. “Scotland seems pretty deserted from what I’ve seen of it. In fact, I can’t remember seeing a living person since we’ve been here.”
“Well, it don’t seem like there’s anybody home,” Smith said, banging on the door a second time. “Let’s see if we can find an easier way in through the back.”
We followed Smith around the side of the stone house, through the garden and around the rear of the building. The back of the house looked out onto miles of open countryside, blanketed beneath thick layers of snow. Smith brushed the ice off the rear door handle and tried turning it. He butted his shoulder against the door but it remained firmly in place.
“Looks like we’ll have to break a window,” he muttered.
“Won’t that let the cold inside?” Wingate whined. “We have to warm up or we’ll be in danger of catching hypothermia. We’ve got little in the way of medical supplies and we all need to get out of the cold for a while.”
“Yes, Doc,” Smith groaned at being scolded. He turned back to the door and gave the wooden panel by the lock a series of hefty kicks. The layer of snow on the door frame spattered outwards under the heavy impact of Smith’s boot and showered us as we huddled at the back entrance. The wood next to the jamb splintered and gave way. The door opened slightly but was warped into the frame and scuffed across the interior stone slab floor.
“We’re in,” Smith muttered.
“I’ll enter first,” Gera volunteered. “We got to check the coast is clear before we can relax.”
Nobody argued with Gera and he hunched over his M-16, leading the way through the doorway. We followed him inside the house in a vertical line, with me being the last to enter behind Batfish. The interior was dark and dank with a stench of mold wafting through the place. The layers of snow covering the window panes blocked out the natural daylight. I turned and pushed the door closed behind me, leaving us in near darkness but at least we were out of the freezing wind. The house was eerily silent and I felt uneasiness rise within me. Entering an unknown property, not knowing the layout of the place or what lay beyond the room’s confines always filled me with dread.
Wingate fished around her parker pockets and pulled out a flashlight. She clicked the switch and the LED bulb blinked into life, illuminating the room. We stood in a small kitchen with a gray flag stone floor, brown wooden paneled walls and a spindly rectangular table, surrounded by four stools in the center of the room. A row of glass fronted cabinets hung from the wall next to the back door. A brown countertop ran in an ‘L’ shape beneath the cabinets and along the adjoining wall to our right. An old fashioned, white fronted refrigerator stood in a recess in the wall to our left. Smith moved towards the refrigerator and opened the door. I immediately caught a whiff that smelled like long since spoiled milk.
“Jesus, something smells a little ripe in there,” Smith snorted, covering his face and closing the refrigerator door.
Wingate searched through the closets but mice had shredded whatever was left of packets of dry food on the shelves. She removed a couple of tins with almost disintegrated labels.
“I think these contain soup,” she said, shining the flashlight over the tins.
“We’ve got all the tins we need,” Smith sighed. He unclipped his webbing and slid the pack off his back. “I need to put this damn thing down for a while.”
We all followed suit, removing our heavy backpacks and dumping them in a pile next to the back door. I rolled my shoulders, relieved at the load taken off my body.
“We better check the place out,” Gera said, gripping his M-16 rifle and edging towards the closed door in front of us that led to the rest of the house.
“I’ll come with you,” Cordoba said. “It’ll be quicker and easier if the two of us check out the other rooms. You guys stay here and we’ll give you a call when we’ve cleared the place.”
We nodded in turn and Cordoba removed her own flashlight from her parker pocket. Gera snapped the kitchen door open and Cordoba shone her flashlight into the darkness beyond. A musty, stale stench wafted through the air, out of the blackness. The smell reminded me of a crypt, of long dead people.
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Chapter Eight
Gera and Cordoba moved slowly through the kitchen doorway into the dark, wooden paneled hallway. Two rooms with closed doors sat on each side and the front door stood directly in front of us. I didn’t like the feeling I was enduring in the pit of my stomach. Maybe it was just because we hadn’t been inside a new place in a while but my intuition, or whatever it was, rarely proved me wrong. My gut instincts had helped keep me alive all through the apocalypse and now the gauge was pulsing in the red.
Cordoba placed her gloved hand on the handle of the first door to the left and nodded to Gera. He returned the nod and she flung open the door. Gera moved into the room beyond and Cordoba followed, out of our line of sight.
“I don’t like this,” I muttered. “Something doesn’t feel right.” I felt shaky and my guts turned over.
“Since when did anything feel right,” Smith huffed, oblivious to my dubious reservations.
He took out his pack of smokes and lit one up before offering the pack around. I shook my head but Batfish took a cigarette. Wingate tutted scornfully.
“I thought we talked about your smoking,” she hissed. “You agreed to cut down.”
Smith was about to protest when Gera called to us from the next room.
“Hey, guys. I think you should come in here and see this.”
Smith and I exchanged concerned glances and moved quickly out of the kitchen. He slipped his rifle off his shoulder and I drew my Beretta handgun. We moved through the doorway and joined Gera and Cordoba, who stood side by side, staring down to the left.
The new room was some sort of study with dusty old leather bound books loaded onto the surrounding shelves along the walls. A globe of the world sat in a big wooden frame next to the window to the left, between a chunky desk and a row of four thick framed chairs.
Smith and I entered the study while Batfish and Wingate hung back in the doorway. The stench of decay from the room was overpowering. I held my free hand over my nose and mouth and looked at the row of chairs that Gera and Cordoba were studying with such intensity.
Four bodies, of varying heights and sizes were tied one to each chair, facing into the room. Their arms were secured around their backs and thick rope bound around their waists shackled the bodies to the backs of the chairs. Each body had a hood or pillow case pulled over their heads and old, crusty blood from inflicted wounds stained the fabric of the veils.
“What in the name of holy fuck went on here?” Smith whispered.
I studied each body in turn, from left to right along the row. The first was a large male, wearing the remains of a police uniform; the second was a young girl, still wearing a blue and gray school uniform. The third body was a woman, in a white, blood stained jumper and denim pants and the fourth was a skinny male, still clad in a tatty green suit and brown shoes. All the corpse’s legs and feet were splayed at odd angles as though they were kicking out in their last few seconds.
Smith dropped his cigarette and stomped it out. He slung his rifle over his shoulder then moved forward and picked at the pillow case covering the skinny guy’s head with his thumb and forefinger. He slowly slipped off the head cover, which resisted, bonded to the man’s head with congealed blood. Smith removed the pillow case and dropped it to the ground.
The corpse was that of an old guy with wispy gray hair in a horse shoe shape around a bald pate. The top of the old man’s skull was cracked open with several indents from heavy blows from a blunt instrument. The horrific head wounds revealed shards of skull bone and a splattering of congealed, brown brain matter over the scalp. The guy’s jaw hung open and the skin looked tight and stretched across his bony facial features, which gave the impression he was almost mummified. The image was truly horrific and I imagined his mouth remained wide open during his last living moments, one final scream of pain and terror as he was bludgeoned to death.
“Don’t pull the hoods off the rest of those bodies, Smith,” Batfish croaked. “I don’t want to see the others.”
Spot poked his head from beneath the blanket inside the harness around Batfish’s waist and sniffed the air disapprovingly.
“Were they zombies or were they killed while they were still living people?” Cordoba whispered.
“Maybe they were all members of the same family,” I said. “Remember that Post Office we found in New Orleans?”
Smith glanced at me and nodded. “How could I forget? Those bodies were from suicide though. This guy was killed deliberately by somebody else.”
Wingate moved into the room, leaned over the corpse and took a look at the old guy’s head wounds.
“Well, it’s obvious he’s been dead for a while.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Smith huffed.
She reproachfully glanced back at him for a second then returned to study the cadaver.
“It’s almost impossible to tell if he was infected. There’s no obvious bite marks but that doesn’t mean to say all these bodies weren’t contaminated somehow. As we have all seen, the reanimated dead have a milky film over their eyes but this guy is partially decayed so it’s not easy to draw any positive conclusions.”
“Okay, Quincy, enough already,” Smith sighed. “Let’s just let the dead lie, or in this case sit. There’s nothing we can do for them now.” He spun the world globe and the sphere rumbled inside the frame.
“I don’t think I can relax in this house with those bodies in here,” Batfish said. “Can we move onto another place?”
I was about to agree when I heard a knocking sound from one of the rooms on the other side of the hallway. The noise made me freeze on the spot. The others heard it too. We drew our respective weapons and held them at the ready. Batfish looked back over her shoulder with an anxious expression on her face. She reluctantly stepped inside the study and huddled close to the rest of us. We all glanced at each other and Gera nodded to Cordoba. The two of them quietly crept to the study doorway.
Cordoba flicked on her flashlight and shone the beam across the two closed doors on the opposite side of the corridor. She and Gera moved slowly out of the study towards the door to the right. The rest of us huddled in the study doorway, with Smith and I at the front, while Batfish and Wingate crowded behind us. Cordoba and Gera used the same entry method as before. Cordoba flung open the door while Gera covered the entry point with his M-16.
The creature that emerged from the room beyond, into Cordoba’s flashlight beam looked only barely human.
Chapter Nine
Gera took a backward step with his finger poised on the trigger of his rifle. I knew he was caught in two minds whether to fire at the bedraggled figure in the doorway or not. The man’s eyes were wide with shock and his mouth draped open in utter surprise. Long, brown matted hair hung around his head and a thick bushy beard surrounded his chin. Only a couple of black rotting teeth were visible inside his open mouth and he was wrapped in several stained blankets.
“Don’t take a step closer,” Gera warned forcefully. “I will be forced to shoot if you approach any further.”
I noticed the emaciated figure in the doorway held a claw hammer in his right hand at his side. This guy looked nuts and dangerous all at the same time.
“What do you want?” the guy croaked. His accent was decidedly Scottish and came out more of a rasp.
“What?” It was obvious Gera hadn’t understood a word the guy said.
“I think I’m the only one left in Killnockie,” he mumbled. “Have you come to rescue me?”
Gera briefly glanced back at me. “What’s he saying, Wilde? Can you understand him?”
“He thinks we’re the rescue party,” I sighed. The poor guy was probably thinking we were going to whisk him away to someplace safe.
“No, we’re no liberators, friend,” Gera barked. “Now, put down the tool and we’ll talk.”
The hammer clattered to the floor as the guy released it from his grasp. He looked utterly shell-shocked as though we were aliens from another planet.
“Back up into the room and keep your distance,” Gera ordered.
The guy’s facial expression quickly turned from shock to fright as he complied with Gera’s commands. He took a few backward paces into the room and Gera followed him at a safe distance. Cordoba picked up the hammer as she entered the room after Gera. The four of us in the doorway bustled through the hallway into the room opposite.
The guy had obviously been living in the one room since he was isolated after the undead outbreak. The place was a complete mess with empty food tins and packages, dirty discarded items of clothing and bedding strewn all over the stone floor and draped across furniture. The room stunk of stale excrement and rotten food. A makeshift bed that was nothing more than a stained mattress lay in the corner of the room alongside an overflowing bucket of bodily waste.
“Oh my god, I think I’m going to hurl,” Batfish wailed.
“What in the name of…?” Smith’s words trailed off as he gagged and turned back through the door.
“I think it’s best if we move into another room,” Wingate suggested, obviously trying to be diplomatic.
“Good idea,” I muttered, holding down the rising stomach bile.
Gera guided the strange guy at rifle point through the hallway and stood behind him while he opened the door adjacent to the putrid room.
“They’ll see us if we go in here,” he protested. “They’ll know we’re in here. They’ll come for us, I’m telling you.”
Gera flashed us an incredulous glance before he followed the guy into the next room.
“Totally nuts,” Gera muttered, shaking his head as he moved through the doorway.
We followed them inside and I was pleasantly surprised to find the room contained no dead bodies or putrid trash or reeking buckets of shit. It was quite depressing how far into the depths of despair and depravity a human being could plummet.
The room obviously used to be the guy’s living area with two leather bound chairs and a matching three seat settee pushed against the wall to our right. The furniture faced a TV set on a stand in front of the bay window. A few family photographs hung from the walls, snapshots taken in happier times. A middle aged, brown haired man and a blonde woman huddled behind a fresh faced young girl, probably their daughter, in the pictures. All three smiled into the camera, looking as though they couldn’t be more contented with life. Another photo was of the same family, standing in a line in a well tended garden with a friendly looking Dalmatian dog sitting obediently at their feet. I wondered what horrors had befallen that nice looking family unit.
The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold Page 4