I felt a gust of icy cold air blow into my face and sensed we were approaching an entrance to the outside world. Smith and I turned a right angled corner in the corridor and stood in front of an open door. The freezing cold air took my breath away and flakes of snow and ice blustered inside the interior.
“What the hell…?” I stammered.
Smith ducked his head through the exterior door and glanced around the snow laded ground outside. I wrapped my arms around my torso and moved closer behind him to take a look outside. The doorway led to a small patio area surrounded by a snow covered, waist high hedge. We could see the outer wall beyond the hedge but no movement of any person, alive or dead.
“What the heck is this door doing left open?” I whispered.
Smith moved back inside and slammed the door shut. “Beats me,” he mumbled.
Something moved across the corridor, several yards beyond our position. I saw the figure dash crossways, from left to right in my peripheral vision.
“Who’s there?” I called.
“Who’s where?” Smith quizzed, with an incredulous expression on his face.
“I just saw somebody run across the corridor up ahead,” I explained, pointing in the spooky figure’s direction.
Smith turned to look where I pointed and then back at me. “Are you sure you’re not seeing things, kid?”
“No, I definitely saw some fucker running across that passageway,” I insisted.
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t get a real good look at them. Like I said, they moved real quick.”
“Male or female?”
I tried to replay the scene in my mind but the vision was sketchy at best. “No idea, they were wearing white, I think.”
“All right,” Smith sighed. “Let’s see if we can catch up with them.”
We turned and Smith strolled through the corridor, holding the golf club at the ready. I drew my handgun once again, holding the weapon at my side. I didn’t know what we were up against and felt more than a little anxious. I half expected some ghastly creature to leap out at us at any moment. The atmosphere in the castle had changed from warm and friendly to hostile and foreboding, in the space of a few hours.
Chapter Twenty-Six
We reached the end of the corridor and the floor space fanned out into some kind of museum type area. Complete suits of medieval armor stood either side of the entrance, as though they were on guard. Waxwork dummies, dressed in various time period costumes stood on plinths in a semi circle around the perimeter of the room. Some platforms contained several waxwork figures, depicting battle scenarios or scenes of torture. Old medieval weapons, such as broadswords and maces hung from the stone walls between the assorted wax statues. The whole museum area was dimly lit by small rectangular shaped windows, situated high up in the wall opposite the entranceway.
“This place looks interesting,” Smith muttered, as we moved closer to some of the exhibits.
I studied a waxwork guy, sporting a bushy, orange beard and long, plaited hair with a snarling, crazy expression of aggression on his face as he attacked some unseen victim with a huge sword, raised above his head. He was dressed in a tartan kilt and a baggy white shirt and stood on his plinth amongst a bed of synthetic, purple heather. A hand painted sign at the sword wielding waxwork’s feet read ‘Scottish Highland Warrior.’
“I wouldn’t like to tangle with this guy on a dark night,” I muttered, replacing my M-9 in the holster.
“Ah, this is all a show for the tourists, kid,” Smith sighed, waving his golf club around the museum. “The stereotypical red haired Scotsman, wearing a kilt, drinking whisky and playing the bagpipes. It’s all part of the deception.”
“It’s only a dummy, Smith,” I sighed. “Nothing to get worked up about.”
“That’s the thing,” Smith continued. “All through our past lives, we were fed a continuous overflow of bullshit. What teachers taught us at school, the books we read, the news on TV, the speeches politicians gave were all a crock of horseshit. They told us what they wanted us to believe. They told us who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. We were told what to think was right and what was wrong. We were manipulated and lied to all our lives and the whole time the world was heading for a meltdown that none of your so called, clever assholes saw coming.”
“You’re beginning to sound bitter in your old age,” I teased.
“Just an observation, kid,” Smith sniffed and turned away to look at more of the stereotypical Scottish exhibits.
I moved along from the rugged Scottish warrior and stood in front of a chain mail-clad waxwork of the historical figure of Robert the Bruce. The reproduction of the medieval Scottish king stood with his foot raised on a polystyrene rock, gazing wistfully over shores of a hand painted backdrop of a loch. I thought about what Smith had just said, mulling his words over in my mind.
“Do you think they could have stopped this epidemic if they’d known it was coming?”
“They?” Smith laughed. “The mysterious ‘they’ probably didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late.” He prodded a waxwork figure of King Charles I with the tip of his golf club. “Remember that hospital we went to when we first met? The sick pit in your shitty hometown, when I was looking for that asshole pal of yours that owed my old boss, Larry a ton of money.”
“He was called Pete Cousins and he was a good guy, despite what you think,” I snapped. “And yes, I do remember that hospital. It was the place we met Rosenberg.”
“Ah, yeah, I’d forgotten about him,” Smith sniggered. “He was that goofy junior doctor guy who got himself killed in Manhattan.”
I huffed, finding Smith’s recollections of people I’d liked distasteful at times.
“Anyhow, that place was just one small example of how quick the damn infection spread. They were probably all sitting around some office discussing what to do about the epidemic and by the time they’d formed some kind of plan, every major city in the world had been overrun with undead corpses. They probably didn’t even believe the virus was real until they had some zombie munching on their ass.”
“That life of normality seems a long time ago now,” I sighed. “It seems as though I was a different person back then.”
“We’ve all changed since those days, kiddo,” Smith mused. “I used to get paid to kill people.” He lined up the golf club head with a candle on a low standing table, then swung enthusiastically. The club shattered the candle into smithereens, sending chips of wax raining across the museum. I winced in pain as a chunk of wax hit me in the face, below my left eye.
“Christ, what are you doing, Smith?” I yelped, rubbing the sore patch on my face.
Smith belly laughed. “Ah, quit whining, will you? It’s only a piece of candle.”
“I think it was the bit with the wick in it because it damn well hurt,” I protested.
I glanced at Smith to fix him with a hard stare but he was looking beyond my shoulder, all mirth from my misfortune had evaporated from his face. I spun around to see what he was looking at and saw a live stereotypical Scotsman approaching us at a rapid pace. He was stocky and had long red hair, thinning on top and a patchy ginger beard. The guy was dressed in period costume, in a black tunic and a green and blue tartan kilt.
The crazy man roared hoarsely and took a flying leap at me. His arms wrapped around me and the force of his airborne lurch caused me to stumble backward, colliding with the Robert the Bruce waxwork. We scrabbled around on the plinth for a couple of seconds in a tangle of real and synthetic arms and legs. The guy had knocked the wind out of me and I struggled to try and speak before he clubbed me with a looping right hand punch. The blow caught me in exactly the same spot as where the wax chunk had struck. My head spun and my senses were momentarily scrambled.
I heard Smith bellow a warning to the crazy guy and was vaguely aware of him pushing down on me to get to his feet. I shook my head to try and clear my mind and rolled sideways into Robert the Bruce’s fe
et, broken from the rest of the figure at the ankles but still remaining firmly affixed to the plinth.
My senses returned to somewhat normal but I couldn’t work out what the hell was going on. Who the hell was this crazy ginger haired guy and why was he attacking us?
Smith prodded the guy in his shoulder with the head of the golf club, dishing out a warning for him to back off. The ginger guy muttered obscenities and threats of his own, in a deep guttural tone before swatting the golf club away with a meaty fist. Ginger then charged at Smith, leading with his left shoulder. The action must have caught Smith unaware and the two of them crashed into King Charles I, sending the waxwork figure hurtling into the back wall in several broken pieces. The ginger guy landed on top of Smith as the pair of them fell on top of the plinth where the mannequin monarch had previously stood.
Ginger rained punches down at Smith, who did his best to block the blows with his arms. The golf club had tumbled from Smith’s grasp and lay amongst the shattered pieces of King Charles I.
I thrashed around amongst the broken limbs of Robert the Bruce, trying to haul myself to my feet. This crazy ginger guy was going to kill us both if we didn’t stop him. I pushed down on something hard and spherical to regain my balance. I looked down as I stood up and saw I had hold of Robert the Bruce’s decapitated head, still wrapped inside the chain-mail hood.
I wasn’t much of a football player at Brynston High School and I was certainly no quarterback but I was a fair baseball pitcher. Adopting the stance, I hurled Robert the Bruce’s head at the ginger haired assailant, continuing to wildly throw punches on top of Smith.
The waxwork head struck the ginger guy on the side of his face and the force knocked him sideways off of Smith. Ginger grunted in pain and rolled off the plinth, landing heavily on the floor. Smith didn’t need any time to compose himself. He sprung off the plinth and scooped up the golf club from the ground.
I had to give Ginger some credit; he was a tough son of a bitch. He saw Smith approach him wielding the golf club and rolled across the floor through the debris. The waxwork head had caused a large swelling and a purple bruise on the side of Ginger’s face. Smith’s nose and lips were smeared with blood from Ginger’s flurry of punches.
Ginger grabbed hold of King Charles’ detached arm and leapt to his feet to meet Smith head on. Smith took a couple of steps backward as Ginger swung the waxwork arm at his head. The synthetic fingers swished through thin air as Smith rocked back on his heels, dodging the swipe.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I reached for my handgun but did I shoot this bastard? Firing a loaded weapon at a zombie was one thing but a living human being was a different matter.
“Put down the dummy’s arm, you ginger fucker,” I yelled, pointing the M-9 at Ginger.
He briefly glanced in my direction with a confused expression on his face. Smith took the advantage. He swung the golf club like a baseball hitter and caught Ginger behind his left ear with the bulbous head. Ginger groaned and stumbled to his right but still kept hold of King Charles’ arm as he fell.
Smith moved toward Ginger, raising the golf club for another swing. I expected Ginger to stay where he was but he continued to roll across the floor towards me.
“Stay right where you are,” I bellowed.
Ginger ignored my demands again and he swiftly sprung to his feet a few inches in front of me, as though the blow from the golf club was ineffectual. I adjusted my aim but Ginger delivered a swift head butt onto the bridge of my nose. The blow rendered me senseless and the handgun spun from my grip. I fell backwards onto the plinth, blinking uncontrollably with my nose feeling as though it had exploded.
Not content with shattering my nose, Ginger wielded the wax arm above his head and was about to bring it down in a vicious blow to my head. Smith swung the golf club behind Ginger and hit him across his back. The blow made a satisfying ‘whap’ sound and Ginger collapsed head first onto the plinth beside me. Wrongly, I thought that was the conclusion of the battle of the waxwork museum.
I held a hand up to my nose and winced at the pain the touch of my fingers caused. Blood coated my hand as I dabbed my damaged snout.
“You okay, kid?” Smith asked.
I nodded and grunted a reply, pushing myself up off the plinth.
“Who the fuck is this crazy bastard?” Smith muttered, prodding Ginger’s back with the tip of the golf club.
“I have no idea,” I mumbled, the words distorted due to my damaged nose. I looked amongst the debris on the floor for my handgun but failed to spot it. I wiped the blood away from my chin and around my mouth with my hand but it still gushed from my nostrils.
Smith and I were under the false impression that the guy was spark out unconscious. But we were wrong. Ginger rapidly spun around brandishing a mace, which must have fallen from its wall fixing during the melee with Robert the Bruce. The weapon had a spiky metal ball attached to the end of the long handled shaft and looked a deadly killing device. The people of medieval times weren’t unimaginative when it came to manufacturing weapons to maximize brutal injuries.
Ginger took a wild swing at me and I stumbled backwards, away from the lethal spikes on the head of the mace. The medieval weapon cut through the air, less than six inches from my face. Smith took a step forward, swinging the golf club at Ginger’s head as he moved. The flat side of the club’s head smashed against the crazy guy’s mouth. I heard a sickening crack as Ginger’s teeth shattered in his jaw. His head rocked back and he fell into a suit of armor, sending the metal body plating clanging and crashing to the floor.
Smith took another downward swing but Ginger blocked the blow by holding the mace horizontally above his head. He grabbed the end of Smith’s golf club with his free hand and hauled himself to his feet. He roared in defiance at Smith, spitting out a combination of blood and broken teeth as he pushed forward.
Smith tugged back on the golf club, trying to release Ginger’s grip. The two of them grappled with the weapons and lurched across the museum floor, with Smith heading in a backward direction. I frantically searched the ground for my M-9. This situation had gone on long enough. I was going to have to shoot this crazy feller to stop him.
Ginger gave one almighty shove and both he and Smith crashed into a glass covered wooden display cabinet. The closet was no match for two hefty men and quit its normal pose immediately. Shards of glass, lengths of wood and fake stone relics scattered across the floor with Smith and Ginger wrestling and rolling around amongst the wreckage.
Smith released his right hand from the golf club shaft and delivered a hefty punch to Ginger’s jaw. The blow produced a dull thud and Ginger sprawled to his right, skidding through chips of glass. Smith hauled himself to his feet and proceeded to kick Ginger in his guts three times.
Ginger grunted in result of Smith’s hefty kicks but he still gripped the mace tightly in his hands. I lifted the remaining body parts of Robert the Bruce and spotted my M-9 handgun beside a chain-mail clad leg. Smith swung the club down at Ginger but he rolled out of the way from the blow.
“Cocksucker,” Smith spat, as the club head bashed into the wooden floorboards.
Ginger staggered to his feet, spouting some unintelligible garble through his swollen lips and smashed mouth. He raised the mace above his head and charged at Smith once again. This time, Smith was better prepared and dodged out of the way of the onrushing crazy guy. Ginger didn’t stop and ran headfirst into another waxwork figure of a kneeling monk, about to be beheaded by the looming mannequin of an axe wielding Viking warrior. Both the monk and the Viking yielded and broke into several pieces under the weight of Ginger.
I scooped up my handgun and moved a few paces closer to Ginger, aiming the M-9 at his head as he scrabbled around between the broken wax limbs.
“Stop!” I bellowed. “Stop it right now or I swear I’ll shoot you in the fucking face, you crazy son of a bitch.”
Ginger glared at me but seemed a little more compliant than previously. He dropped the mace
to the floor and spat out a mouthful of blood.
“Let’s finish his sorry ginger ass right here, right now,” Smith growled, tossing away the golf club and drawing his own handgun. He shuffled beside me, aiming his M-9 at Ginger’s battered head.
“Put those guns down, now,” a female voice shrieked from the doorway.
Smith and I swung our heads around and saw Mrs Sally McMahon, the amiable chef and castle housekeeper, who had now seemed to have transformed into a shotgun wielding mobster. Both barrels of the hunting shotgun she held were aimed directly at Smith and I.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We had no choice but to drop our handguns to the floor.
“What the bloody hell is going on here?” Mrs McMahon demanded. She turned her glare to the crazy ginger guy. “Look at the state of you, Rory and look at the mess in this place. It will take me hours to clean all this up.”
“You know this guy?” Smith asked, pointing at Ginger. “He just came in here and attacked us.” Smith pointed to himself. “I never even saw him before.”
Mrs McMahon ignored Smith’s rant. “Rory, you know you’re not supposed to be out of your room. Now, get back upstairs at once.”
Ginger or Rory, as we now knew was his name, hauled himself up off the deck with a sheepish expression on his bloodied face. He glared menacingly at Smith and I as he trudged by, heading towards the doorway. Mrs McMahon glanced distastefully at him as he brushed by but she still kept the shotgun trained on us.
“What the hell is going on here, ma’am?” Smith quizzed. “Why are you still pointing that damn gun at us, Mrs McMahon?”
She fixed us with her steely glare then spoke in a clear, brusque tone. “Rory has had some mental problems and is usually confined to his room in the south tower. He didn’t know who you were and probably thought you were hostile. That’s why he attacked you.”
“He would have killed us if he could,” I shrieked. “Look what he did to my nose.” I pointed at my face to emphasize my point.
The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold Page 13