The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold

by Christian Fletcher

  Cordoba led the way up the steps, treading cautiously towards a flaking white painted door at the top of the staircase. I figured we had only a few seconds before the throng of zombies reached the back wall of the store behind us.

  “Hurry it up,” I hissed to Cordoba, at the top of the steps.

  “Take it easy,” she admonished. “We don’t know what the hell is waiting up here.”

  I felt a slight annoyance. “Well, we certainly know what the hell is following us. I’m the one at the back here.”

  “Will you keep your voice down,” Batfish hissed at me.

  Smith and Wingate also flashed me an angry glance. Jimmy looked extremely worried as he tightly gripped his shotgun.

  Cordoba pushed open the door at the top of the staircase at the same time a furious banging noise erupted against the thin wall paneling behind me. I heard undead hands rip and tear at the plywood paneling. It wouldn’t take them long before they discovered the doorway and wrenched it open.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  I felt like shoving the rest of the party further up the steps and hurriedly bundling them through the doorway. Batfish was directly in front of me and I kept glancing behind me to check the door in the wooden panel wall hadn’t been breached.

  Cordoba finally stepped through the doorway with the others following her. I moved up the staircase, waiting for the door to burst open to my rear at any second. I shut the door behind me and saw it had a silver locking latch by the jamb. I quickly engaged the lock and looked through the vertical strip of safety glass above the door handle. The broken chairs I’d placed beside the door below us whizzed across the floor and the flimsy door flew inward. A swarm of rotten hands and faces tumbled through the doorway into the corridor.

  “They’re right behind us,” I said, turning around to face the room we now were gathered in.

  The room was some kind of rest room for the store staff. It was dimly lit by a window to the left and a small skylight in the ceiling above us. White countertops and matching closets ran around the perimeter of the walls and a kettle still sat by the stainless steel sink near the window. A few blocks of chairs faced each other, either side of a low standing coffee table, positioned on the right side of the room. The whole area stank of damp and rotting carpets.

  Another three doors positioned in an alcove stood directly in front of me. The two on either side of the center door were marked as ladies and gentlemen’s restroom while the one in the middle had a sign at the top marked ‘office.’

  There didn’t seem to be any back door and no obvious exit.

  “Okay, how do we get out?” I whispered.

  “Let’s have a quick scout around,” Smith muttered. “How secure is that door behind you, Wilde?”

  I turned and glanced through the safety glass panel and saw a sea of gnarled faces stumbling up the steps. I rocked the door in its frame to test for sturdiness.

  “It’ll keep them out for a while but it won’t last forever,” I said. “Besides, we can’t stay up here for the rest of time.”

  “I know that,” Smith spat, studying the skylight. “We won’t fit through that window.”

  Wingate rushed for the ‘Ladies’ room while Cordoba and Batfish checked out the office. Jimmy opened the door to the men’s bathroom.

  I moved to the window by the sink and glanced around the frame at the opening mechanism. I clicked open the handle and pushed the pane. The damn thing opened horizontally and only a few inches. A blast of cold air gusted into the room.

  “We could always shoot out or smash the glass,” I suggested.

  “What’s below us out there?” Smith asked, hugging himself. He was obviously still feeling a little sick and feverish.

  I peered through the small gap, glancing downwards. A red brick wall surrounding a small parking lot was directly below the window, a drop of around twenty feet. Not an impossible distance to negotiate but a tricky maneuver to carry out with no guarantee of coming through it unscathed. A sprained or broken ankle would only hinder our escape and subsequent trek across the countryside.

  “It’s a possible escape route,” I said, closing the window. “But it’s a fairly long drop out there.”

  Smith approached and took a look himself. “Hmm,” he muttered, almost certainly considering the implications of jumping from the window.

  The door to the corridor rattled in its frame and hands and gray faces pressed against the strip of safety glass as the zombies pushed en masse up the short staircase. The snarls, shrieks and yells reverberated around the corridor and throughout the restroom.

  “We can’t go back that way, for sure,” I said, pointing at the safety glass window. I wasn’t even sure how long that strip panel was going to stay in place.

  Batfish poked her head through the office door back into the restroom.

  “This way, guys,” she instructed. “There’s a fire escape route through the office.”

  Smith and I glanced at each other and moved towards the office door. Jimmy and Wingate came out of their respective bathrooms.

  “What’s going on?” Jimmy asked.

  “Way out, allegedly,” Smith said, pointing towards the office.

  We moved through the doorway into the office. It was a small, cramped room with a single chair either side of a typical, bland work desk, standing to the right of the floor space, in front of rows of files on shelves fixed to the wall behind.

  Cordoba stood by an open fire exit door to the left and at the rear office wall. She held her rifle, pointing down the spiraling metal staircase outside the fire door.

  “It looks all clear down there,” she said.

  “Well, let’s go then,” I sighed. I didn’t want to get caught up and have to stay holed up inside the dingy building any longer than we had to. I wafted with my arms in the direction of the fire door, trying to herd everybody towards the exit route.

  Cordoba led the way, clanking carefully down the metal stairs. “Watch these steps,” she warned. “They’re slippery with ice.”

  The fire escape led down to a small courtyard with a high red brick wall, squaring the perimeter. No outer door led the way through the wall into the back street or whatever lay beyond the rear of the store. I glanced back up the staircase and saw Jimmy close the fire door. Now we were trapped inside the small courtyard.

  “Where do we go now?” I whined, scanning the wall for another route.

  “There has to be a way out of here if that was the fire escape,” Smith muttered. “They couldn’t just muster their staff out here if the building was on fire.”

  Cordoba stepped further through the courtyard, following the man building’s perimeter wall. I saw her turn right, disappearing around the corner through a walkway unnoticeable if you didn’t know it was there. She leaned her head back around to face us.

  “This way, come on,” she hissed.

  We followed Cordoba around the corner of the building and through a small walkway. A high wooden gate stood in front of us at the end of the footpath. I couldn’t think where it led in relation to our position and wondered if it was a route back into the main street or around the rear of the building someplace. The gate was locked by two heavy barrel bolts at the top and bottom.

  Cordoba stopped when she reached the gate and glanced back at the rest of us. “Where do you guys think this route leads?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Smith said, glancing around the walkway. “But there’s no other ways out of here so we’re going to have to bite the bullet here.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  The gate could have led us straight into the path of another mass of zombies. I held my breath as Cordoba carefully and quietly slid back the bolts. She opened the gate a crack and peeked out. We waited behind her with bated breath.

  “Well…what’s out there?” I impatiently hissed.

  Cordoba glanced back at me. “It leads to a side road off the main street. There are a few zombies out there but nothing we can’t handle. T
ry not to make too much sound, though.”

  “All right, let’s just get out there, shall we?” I mumbled.

  Cordoba slipped through the gateway followed by Jimmy, Smith and Wingate. Batfish and I crept out through the entranceway at the rear of the party. The back street was narrow, in the immediate shadows of a red brick warehouse opposite and the wall running around the back of the store. Cordoba clubbed the closest zombie, who was a young teenage girl in her past life, with the butt of her rifle. Another two ghouls shambled around the side street. One was a frail old man and the other was a middle aged woman. Jimmy took them both out with the hard, wooden butt of his shotgun.

  The route to the right led back to the main street. A stream of zombies shuffled by, looking like they were heading to the junk store we’d come through. The undead tended to follow each other without reason. Perhaps they were driven to follow each other in herds like animals. None of the zombies going by on the town’s main drag noticed us amongst the side street shadows. We regrouped together in a bunch, beside the warehouse’s brick wall.

  I glanced to my left, studying the left side of the side street. Larger brick buildings and more warehouses stretched as far back either side of the road, as far as I could see.

  “Let’s stay away from the main street,” Cordoba said. “We’ll head this way.”

  The only problem we had was the route led us further into the town’s industrial area, which was no doubt surrounded by heavily populated residential areas, where large numbers of undead would be roaming around. We didn’t have much choice, though. The main street was definitely off limits.

  We moved cautiously along the side street, scanning the areas up ahead. The thoroughfare was flanked by high brick walls on each side and we could easily become trapped if large numbers of undead approached from both ends of the street.

  “I don’t like this,” I hissed. “We’re too exposed out here.”

  I was starting to think that coming through the town wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe we should have bypassed the damn place. For a small town, there seemed to be one hell of a lot of zombies milling around. We hadn’t seen one survivor yet and it made me wonder how many small towns’ populations throughout the world had been totally wiped out.

  The side street dog legged and Cordoba moved quickly to peer around the corner of the brick wall. She turned back with a worried expression on her face.

  “More zombies up ahead,” she whispered.

  “How many?” Smith asked.

  She shook her head. “Too many to get through. They’re blocking the width of the street.”

  “Shit,” I groaned, glancing around our surroundings. I noticed a barred metal gate situated into the brick wall on the opposite side of the street. Next to the gate, a pair of wooden double doors were closed together, looking like the entrance or exit into some sort of industrial factory. The metal gate was secured by a chunky chain and a heavy padlock but the wooden barn style doors didn’t look incredibly sturdy.

  “Let’s try through there,” I suggested, pointing to the doorway.

  Smith moved to the wooden double doors and tried to wrench them open without success. He studied the barred gate and lifted the big chain.

  “No go,” he said. “The double doors are locked from the inside and that gate is heavily secured. We’ll need an industrial grinder to cut through that chain.”

  “I reckon I could climb that gate and get in through the gap at the top,” Jimmy said, pointing to the narrow space between the top of the bars and the brick wall.

  “Yeah, even if you can, that’s not going to help us, Jimmy,” Smith groaned.

  “Aye, but I could see if I can open those doors next to the gate,” he said.

  Smith glanced at me.

  “It’s worth a try,” I said. “We’re rapidly running out of options, here.”

  “Go for it, Jimmy,” Batfish said.

  Cordoba stayed at the corner, keeping an eye on the cluster of zombies further down the street. “They’re heading this way, guys,” she hissed. “We’ll have to either go back the way we came or find another route.”

  Jimmy took off his backpack and handed it to me, along with the shotgun. He scrambled up the gate with incredible ease and slipped through the small gap at the top. Hanging onto the top bars, he flipped his body around and dropped to the ground on the other side of the gate.

  “Very impressive,” Smith muttered, nodding in appreciation.

  Jimmy hurriedly moved to the back of the big wooden doors and we heard him grunting with exertion.

  “What’s up?” Smith asked.

  “Theses bloody bolts are really stiff,” Jimmy groaned. “I don’t reckon these doors have been opened for the best part of a year. The bolts are all rusted up.”

  I glanced anxiously at Smith and he flashed me an exasperated look. We both didn’t want to hassle Jimmy but he needed to hurry. If he couldn’t open the doors in time, we’d have to abandon the idea and we were standing motionless with a large number of zombies approaching.

  “Could one of us go over the gate and give him a hand?” Batfish asked.

  “Not being rude,” I said. “But I don’t think any of us would fit through that small gap. I’m afraid he’s on his own in there.”

  “Ease them bolts out, Jimmy,” Smith encouraged.

  Wingate rushed across the street to where Cordoba crouched at the corner. She took a look around the side of the building and hurried back to the double doors.

  “We have to do something, quick,” she gasped. “There’s a shitload of those things on the way.”

  “Okay,” Smith said. “Leave the bolts, Jimmy we haven’t got time. We need to be out of here in about thirty seconds. You better get back over on this side of the wall.”

  “They’re coming,” Jimmy grunted. “They’re nearly there now.”

  We heard a metallic clang sound and the doors jolted slightly. Jimmy pushed open the left door to the factory entrance, with a big smirk on his face.

  “Okay, let’s get inside before they see us,” Smith said. He waved at Cordoba across the street for her to join us.

  She took one last glance around the corner before she hurried to the entranceway.

  “They must be heading to the main street or something,” Cordoba whispered. They’re all heading in this direction.”

  Smith and Jimmy ensured the wooden doors were bolted shut again once everybody was through the entrance. We stood in a cobbled square covered by a sheet metal roof, behind the big, red brick building in front of us. The factory looked old and the large windows were dark beyond the glass panes.

  “Let’s get inside, out of the way,” Smith said. “They’ll do their best to tear those wooden doors down if they hear us in here.”

  “We need to find a way in,” I said. “The place looks pretty much locked up.”

  “That’s good, in a way,” Smith muttered. “At least there might not be zombies inside.”

  “We hope,” I reminded him.

  I handed Jimmy back his shotgun and backpack and we followed Cordoba on the path at the rear of the factory building. Usually, whenever I’d visited these kinds of industrial buildings in the past, they hummed and droned with fans and other working machinery but this place remained deathly silent.

  Trying to keep silent while treading through the snow was proving impossible, so we took a right turn beneath a covered walkway, in a long recess in the building’s structure. Debris littered the outside of the factory, mainly from broken roof tiles that had come loose and slid down to the ground. The walkway led to a set of double doors, constructed of glass panes at the top half and wooden slats at the bottom. I tried the doors but they were locked.

  “Do we really want to go inside here?” Batfish asked. “We could just wait until that bunch of zombies has gone by.”

  “We’d probably benefit if we rested up awhile,” Wingate said. “We should all eat something and take some water.”

  “We can have anothe
r look at the map and try and work out where the hell we’re going,” Smith suggested. “At the moment, we’re aimlessly wandering around. We won’t last long if we carry on like this.”

  “Okay, so how are we going to get inside?” I asked. “I guess we could shoot out all the windows but we need to do it quietly. Last thing we want is for the whole town of zombies to hear us trying to break inside here.”

  “A place this old? It’s got to be pretty easy to get in,” Smith said. He glanced around and opened a grit bin, used to cover the pathways with snow dissolving gravel when the factory was operational. “A-ha,” he said, lifting a metal shovel from the bin.

  “What the hell, Smith?” I groaned. “Are you going to try and dig your way inside this place?”

  “Watch and learn, kid,” he said.

  I didn’t have a clue what Smith was going to do. He stabbed the blade of the shovel between the wooden slats in the bottom of the door in front of us. Then he used the shovel like a lever to prize out one of the pieces of old lumber. The door cracked and splintered and the paneled square of wood popped outwards and fell onto the path.

  “There you go,” Smith said, with a hint of self satisfaction. “Are you impressed, Wilde Man?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen somebody wreck a door with a shovel.”

  Smith, shrugged. “There you go.”

  Cordoba took of her backpack, handed her rifle to Wingate and crawled through the hole in the door first. “All clear,” she called back through the gap.

  We passed all the gear and rifles through to her and scrabbled through the hole, one by one. The factory interior was steeped in shadows and smelled of old oil and stale water. The floor was covered in patchy brown linoleum and a wide staircase, leading to the higher levels stood to our left. An old, time keeping ticket punching machine was fixed to the wall beside the door.