“He used to be the curator of this museum before the trouble started,” Mrs McMahon explained in a slightly more civil manner. “He might have thought you intended to steal or deface the artifacts kept in here.”
“It’s a bunch of stupid dummies,” Smith sighed incredulously. “Why the hell would we want to steal anything in here?”
“I’m just guessing what was going through his mind,” Mrs McMahon snapped. “We do our best to supervise him but we can’t be with him twenty-four hours a day.”
“Where is everybody?” I asked. “We haven’t seen anybody this morning and one of our party has gone missing. He was the other guy with us last night, have you seen him?”
“I’m not responsible for the whereabouts of others or what they do with their time,” Mrs McMahon replied curtly. “Now, I have much to do so I’ll be on my way.”
She at last, lowered the shotgun, turned and went to leave through the doorway.
“What was all that last night?” Smith called after her. “Telling us there were zombies in the perimeter then locking us outside in the cold. What was that about, Mrs McMahon?”
She spun on her heels to face us with a furious expression on her face.
“I didn’t want those unholy things getting into this castle,” she rasped, barely containing her temper. “If you think you are more important than the rest of us still alive inside these walls, then you can think again, mister. We endured a terrible time clearing the castle so it was safe for us to live without fear. I lost my husband in the process. Those creatures are still out there trying to get in to tear us to pieces and by God, I won’t stand by and just let them waltz on in here.”
“Well, who opened the outdoor gate last night?” Smith asked. “It didn’t just damn well open itself. Somebody unlocked it and either went through the gate or left it open for those zombies to come through.”
Mrs McMahon’s face twitched. I didn’t know if her blinking eye and trembling top lip on the right side of her face was due to enraged anger or a submission of guilt. The woman was impossible to read.
“As I said, I am not responsible for the actions of others,” she said in a low voice. “Now, I have work to do.” She spun around again and marched through the museum doorway.
Smith flashed me a concerned glance before he bent down and retrieved both our handguns. I noticed his left eye was swelling and turning a dark shade of purple. I dabbed my nose and dreaded my next view of myself in a mirror. Smith handed me my M-9 and I shoved the weapon back in its holster. My face felt numb but a searing pain throbbed through my temples. Smith bent over and tore away a strip of the waxwork monk’s brown smock. He ripped the strip in half and handed me a piece.
“For the blood,” he said.
We cleaned ourselves up as best we could with the torn rags before heading out of the wrecked museum.
“Where are we headed this time?” I asked, still dabbing my nose with the strip of material.
Smith’s lips seemed to have stopped bleeding but his eye lid was swollen almost shut. He glanced at me with his good eye as we continued down the passageway.
“As far away from that crazy ginger bastard as possible,” he grunted.
“Rory, the whack job,” I added.
Smith sniggered. “I really thought that crazy son of a bitch was going to kill us in there.”
“Man, he was so strong,” I groaned. “He kept getting up even after you hit him with that golf club and kicked him in his guts. He was like Michael fucking Myers from those Halloween movies, or something.”
Smith belly laughed then immediately grimaced. “Don’t make me laugh, kid. It makes my face hurt. Let’s go find a drink someplace.”
We wandered through another series of wooden wall paneled passageways and Smith stopped when we drew level with a door marked ‘Office’ with an embossed white sign.
“I doubt Gera will be in there,” I said.
“Screw Gera for a second,” Smith sniffed, pushing the door open. “I’m looking for something a little medicinal.”
I followed Smith into the office and saw a big mahogany desk, surrounded by wine colored, leather armchairs in the center of the floor space. Rows of books and folders were stacked neatly on shelves running the whole length of the wall to our left. A big, square window looked out onto the snow covered castle grounds. I tried to weigh up whereabouts we were in relation to the building and decided we must be at the rear end of the castle.
“Aha,” Smith chimed, removing a green bottle from a wooden wall closet to our right. He picked up a pair of crystal glasses between his fingers and set them down on top of the desk. The whisky bottle was around three quarters full and Smith studied the label with his open eye then poured a generous measure in each glass.
Smith handed me a glass and we both took a long sip of whisky. I figured the alcohol might dull the pain in my head.
Smith winced and held his fingers to his battered lips. “Fuck, that stings,” he hissed, then drained the glass in one swift gulp.
I sipped my whisky more serenely and watched Smith refill his glass.
“Shouldn’t we be looking for Gera, right now?”
“In a second, kid,” Smith mumbled.
He was clearly bored with the search for our companion and wanted some downtime. He went to top up my glass but I shook my head. I wasn’t sure if the Scotch was going to cure my pain or make it a damn sight worse.
Smith drained half his glass then began rifling through the buff colored files on the shelves.
“What are you doing, Smith?”
He ignored me and removed one of the cardboard files from the horizontal stack. I saw the file had Sally McMahon scrawled in black marker across the cover.
“These must be the employee files of the people who worked here when the castle was operational,” Smith said. “I noticed them when we came in here.”
He placed the file on top of the desk and opened the cover. “Let’s see what they had to say about our gracious, Mrs McMahon.”
I turned back to the shelf and flicked through the files until I came across the one I was looking for. I removed the cardboard folder with ‘Rory Anderson’ written across it.
“This must be the crazy guy’s file,” I said. “Let’s see if there’s anything interesting in here.”
I put the folder on the desk, standing on the opposite side to Smith and opened the file. The folder contained reams of printed and hand written paperwork, such as various training records and quarterly appraisals. Nothing really grabbed my attention until I came across the guy’s resume and some copies of medical records. I speed read through Rory’s resume and studied a particular section with intent.
“Looks like our crazy Rory used to be some sort of cage fighter in his younger days,” I said. “He had to quit due to a bad knee injury.”
Smith glanced up from his reading material and took a sip of his whisky. “That explains why the guy was so strong.”
I scanned the copied medical reports and whistled through my teeth. “After he finished cage fighting he went through a few problems. Arrested for aggravated assault a couple of times and was even institutionalized for a period. How the hell did he get hired by this place, working with paying guests?”
Smith shook his head. “I guess he was lucky to be given another chance. No employer would touch me when I came out of the slammer.”
Smith had told me in the past, he’d served time in jail but I’d never pressed him too much on the subject. He was an ex-cop so I guessed his jail time had been a very unpleasant experience.
“Ah, it seems our Mrs McMahon is not so sweet and innocent after all,” he said. “She spent time in a women’s jail for fraud and theft eight years ago. She was caught red handed stealing blank checks and fraudulently cashing them from her former employer, who owned a country manor in the Highlands someplace.”
“How come these records go into such detail?” I asked, flicking through the remainder of Rory’s file.
“You have to admit a conviction to your employer, if you want to keep your job,” Smith explained. “You might as well tell them because it don’t take much to find these things out. I guess the guys at the castle decided to keep these records. Whether that’s legal or not, I don’t know.”
I closed Rory’s folder and shoved it back on the shelf then flicked through the remainder of the employment files.
“Let’s see who else we can dig up some dirt on,” I muttered, thinking about the rest of the people we’d sat around the dinner table with the previous night. My money was on Joan being some type of whack job but I wasn’t sure she’d even worked at the castle when the outbreak started.
Surprisingly, I found a folder with ‘Alex McNeil’ scrawled on the front. “I didn’t know Alex had worked here,” I said.
Smith glanced up. “I don’t know who is who in this damn place. Motherfuckers seem to be popping up all over the place. I didn’t know that damn Rory guy even existed until we ran into him in that crappy museum.”
I thought for a second. “Didn’t Alex say there were eleven people living in the castle?”
Smith looked blank. “I can’t remember. I don’t think I heard him say anything like that.”
“There were seven of them at the dinner table and we’ve met crazy Rory. That leaves another three people we haven’t met yet,” I said.
“I don’t think I want to meet them, if they’re anything like that stupid, ginger jerk weed,” Smith huffed. “We’d never get out of here alive.”
“Well, think about it, they could be anybody and they might have taken Gera.”
Smith looked up from the file with a pained expression. “Gera’s a big, tough guy. I’m sure he can handle himself.”
“What if he ran into crazy Rory in the middle of the night?”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up okay,” Smith sighed and carried on reading through Sally McMahon’s file.
I started on Alex’s folder, skipping through the training records. “Alex used to be one of the maintenance guys here,” I read aloud. I flicked to the back of the file and found more copies of printed criminal background checks. I read through the report with astonishment. “Shit, Alex served some serious time for assault, malicious wounding and grievous bodily harm, according to this report,” I said. “The guy was in and out of various institutions when he was younger.”
Smith looked up again and frowned. He downed the remainder of his whisky and reached for the bottle, refreshing his glass. I didn’t resist when he added another splash into my glass. I was more interested in who the hell we had gotten ourselves involved with.
Smith closed his file on Mrs McMahon and slid it to one side of the desk. I stuffed the paperwork back into Alex’s folder and turned back to the shelves, desperate to find out more about these people. I flicked through the rest of the files on the shelf, trying to recall the names of the people we’d met in the castle. I found one labeled ‘Maurice McQueen,’ another file for ‘Davie Cooper’ and one marked ‘Trevor Bateman.’ All three names on the folders probably were the same guys in the castle.
I quickly flicked through the paperwork while Smith sipped his Scotch and stared out of the window. Maurice or Mo, the bespectacled, moaning thin guy had a conviction for animal cruelty, Davie had a long rap sheet for violent crimes and most alarmingly, Trevor had served prison time for downloading indecent images of children. I felt sick to my stomach.
“Fuck, Smith,” I spat. “You may want to read these reports to see who we’re dealing with here.”
Smith turned from the window and studied the files. I gauged his expression as he read through the reports. His eyebrows rose as he scanned the pages and he exhaled loudly in surprise.
My stomach churned over as I thought of Cordoba, Batfish and Wingate wandering around the castle without knowing those guys’ violent and criminal backgrounds.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Smith closed the files and looked up at me. “Just because they committed crimes in the past doesn’t make them bad people now,” he said.
“Would you trust them?” I argued.
“You trust me, don’t you? I’m an ex-con.”
“Yeah, but that’s different. I’ve known you a while.”
“Just because they’ve committed some crimes doesn’t make them psychos,” Smith pointed out. “This place probably had a deal with the cops or the courts or whoever to employ ex-felons. They do it all the time nowadays, or did do. It’s called helping people back into the community or some such bullshit.”
“I hope you’re right,” I hissed, picking up my drink. “Because we’ve left the girls roaming around in here on their own.”
Smith pulled a pained face. “They’re capable of looking out for themselves. Those three are tougher than most guys. And besides, they’re all armed. You worry too much, kid.”
I drained my glass, already feeling the effects of the alcohol. “I think we should go find the girls and check they’re okay.”
“All right, if it’ll stop you whining” Smith agreed and necked back the remainder of his Scotch while I stuffed the files back on the shelf.
A small bathroom was located next to the office and Smith and I washed the congealed blood off our faces after relieving ourselves in the facilities.
We carried on along the corridor, looking for a staircase to take us up the floor levels. I wondered where Mrs McMahon had scurried off to and realized she’d headed in the opposite direction to where we were going. The air in the passageway felt colder and the rooms either side of us looked as though they hadn’t been bothered with for some time. Layers of dust sat on the shelves and surfaces inside the areas we walked by.
“It doesn’t look like anybody has been around these parts of the castle in a while,” I said. “Maybe we should turn back and head the way we came.”
“That’s what they’ll expect us to do,” Smith said. “If those guys are up to any bad shit, they’ll anticipate us following the routes we know. We’ll keep heading in this direction until we come to a staircase or another exit.”
I didn’t know if Smith was right or not. Maybe I was being a little paranoid but nearly everybody we’d run into since the zombie apocalypse hadn’t exactly been friendly. Alex and his gang had seemed okay but maybe they did have ulterior motives for welcoming us into the castle with open arms. Mrs McMahon had showed us another side to her character by pointing a loaded shotgun at us and that fucker Rory certainly wasn’t pleased to see us. It was nice to sleep in a warm bed for the night and have a roof over our heads but what was it going to cost us? I was beginning to regret splitting up to search for Gera. We should have stuck together.
Smith and I plodded along the dim passageway, side by side. I couldn’t help worrying about Gera and the girls. The thought which gave me some relief was that Maddie and the young girl, Chloe were both outsiders and hadn’t been harmed, as far as I knew. I also wanted to find out who the remaining three mystery faces were inside the castle.
“There you go,” Smith muttered, as he pointed to a crisscrossing staircase situated in a recess to our right.
The staircase balustrades were carved in dark brown wood and the light blue carpet runner flowing down the center of the steps was heavily stained with what looked like blood. I gazed down at the stains as we approached and rubbed my foot over the reddish brown blemishes.
“These look like old stains,” I said. “Maybe it was from when they were clearing the place of zombies.”
“Never mind shit stains on the carpet, kid,” Smith whispered. “Look up there.” He pointed up the staircase.
I followed his gaze and saw a white faced, long haired female hanging by the neck, suspended from a rope tied to the top banister.
“Jesus,” I blurted. “Who the fuck is that?”
“It’s nobody we’ve seen and it looks like she’s been here a while,” Smith said, moving slowly up the staircase.
I followed his ascent but couldn’t keep my eyes o
ff the dead girl dangling between the two sets of banisters where the staircase crossed over. She wore a white dress with a light green cardigan over her torso and I’d have guessed she wasn’t much over twenty years of age, although it was difficult to tell as her skin had begun to discolor. Her eyes remained half open and her head was slightly bent forward, causing her long dark hair to drape in front of her shoulders.
We brushed by the dangling corpse and I was glad I couldn’t smell the musty stench of death through my shattered nose. I noticed Smith held his hand over his nose and mouth as we moved by.
“Do you think she was bit?” I asked.
“She don’t look bit,” Smith replied. “I don’t see no blood on her.”
“You think we should, like maybe cut her down?”
“Maybe later, kid,” Smith sighed. “We got to find the others first.”
We continued cautiously up the staircase. I didn’t know what or who was going to pop out at us next. The stairway leveled off to a wooden boarded landing that looped around the back of the staircase and led to several more dark, dreary rooms. I ducked my head inside a few of the open doorways and saw stacks of discarded mattresses in one room and a pile of broken bed frames in another. The gloomy walkway continued through the castle interior, heading further into the main building itself.
“This is leading us nowhere, Smith,” I protested. “We should have gone back the other way.”
Smith stopped moving and placed his hand across my chest to halt me in my tracks.
“Did you see that?” he whispered.
“What?”
“Up ahead. That figure you were talking about before. They just ran across the corridor in front of us.”
“I didn’t see nothing,” I sighed. “But I think whoever it is, is following us.”
“How can they be following us if they’re always ahead of us?”
“Well, you know what I mean. I don’t like this; it’s beginning to shit me up.” A cold shiver ran through me.
“Hey, you,” Smith yelled, staring directly ahead down the passageway.
The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold Page 14