“It’s the only way I can see us getting out of here, unless we go back through the factory and run around in the dark, trying to find a way out,” Cordoba interrupted. “I’ll go back in there with you, Brett.”
“Hold on,” I said. “I’ve only seen a welding mask, as Smith rightly said, I don’t know where the equipment is.” I’d suddenly been nominated to go back into the factory and didn’t much like the idea.
“Well, you could show me where the guy in the mask was,” Cordoba said. “We’ll have a quick look around for the gear and have to re-evaluate if we can’t find it.”
Smith sighed. “It’s okay. I’ll go back in there with Mr Big Ideas, here.” He nodded at me. “It would be better if you stayed out here with the others, Cordoba.”
“Are you saying I can’t handle it back in there, Smith?”
“No, I’m not saying that.” Smith held up his hands in a surrendering motion. “I’m just saying lifting that damn oxyacetylene tank onto the conveyer belt isn’t going to be easy and your man, here has a dicky shoulder, so he won’t be much use hauling the gear.”
“Just let them go,” Batfish sighed. “We’re wasting more time, the more we stand here bickering.”
Cordoba huffed disapprovingly. “All right but you better be quick. We don’t want to be moving through that factory at nightfall, if you can’t find the welding gear.”
Smith and I took off our backpacks and stored them in the back of the nearest truck. He handed his M-16 rifle to Wingate, checked his handgun and picked up the shovel.
“We move quickly and quietly,” Smith instructed. “Only use the firearms as a last resort. Got your piece of pipe?”
I picked up the metal tube and nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”
I studied the sky and guessed it was around mid afternoon. We probably had around a couple of hour’s daylight left in the day. Not that I planned spending the remaining few hours of sunlight stuck inside that damn factory.
Chapter Sixty-One
Climbing back up the steeply sloping conveyer belt proved a difficult maneuver. Our feet kept sliding down the vinyl surface and we couldn’t get any sort of grip. Smith finally nailed it when he grabbed hold of the sides of the vinyl belt and slowly hauled himself up the slope. I passed him up the shovel and the metal pipe when he was crouching inside the open gap, between the levels. He held onto the wall with one hand and waved me forward.
I followed his lead, climbing the belt in the same manner but struggling against the pain in my shoulder. I reached out with my right hand and Smith grabbed hold, pulling me up to his position. We both collapsed back through the opening. Luckily, the stack of cardboard boxes heaped in front of the belt absorbed our fall.
Smith stood up on the belt, picked up our weapons and handed me the pipe. “Come on, let’s get this shit over and done with,” he muttered.
He pulled me to my feet and we trotted along the conveyer belt surface. We slowed our pace when we neared the edge of the box stack. Smith peered around the corner of the boxes and we both gasped when a gnarled hand groped around the cardboard surfaces. He side stepped the hand and moved slowly around the box stack. I saw him swing the shovel in a forward motion, as though he was digging a load of air. I heard a cracking sound and saw blood spray onto the conveyer belt surface.
Smith withdrew the shovel and the silver colored blade was coated in grimy, brown blood. He signaled with a flick of his head for me to join him. I shuffled along the belt and saw one of the zombies in the blue coveralls lying on the floor on his back, beside the box stack. A pool of brown gunk surrounded the mashed head. Smith had obviously shoveled the zombie’s face, the blade splitting the top of his skull from the rest of his head.
“Nice kill,” I muttered.
“Where was this guy in the welding mask?” Smith asked, as he hopped down off the conveyer belt.
“Right over there.” I pointed to the spot beyond the box stacks. “He was hanging out with this dude you just shoveled in the head.”
We heard a growling noise and glanced to our right. One of the zombies from the workshop was still trying to get through the opening but couldn’t manage the maneuver.
“He’s not going anyplace in a hurry,” Smith muttered. “We’ll leave that bastard right where he is.”
“There was another guy in blue coveralls like this dead one,” I explained.
“Let’s take a scout around but I don’t want to spend much time in here,” Smith said.
I clambered down off the belt and we slowly walked around the box stacks. A pathway through the cardboard packages led to a row of long metal racks, stretching into the darkness in the distance.
“There’s nothing here,” Smith groaned. “Let’s try the next aisle.”
I peered through the rack to our left and couldn’t see any welding gear. We walked around the solid metal structures and stared down the aisle.
“We’ll never see the welding gear way back there in the dark,” Smith sighed. “I’m not searching all the way down every one of these damn aisles. There must be about a hundred of them. This storeroom stretches back for like a mile.”
Smith was exaggerating as usual. The storeroom was large but not quite as big as he made out.
“In an ideal world, we’d find a doorway leading to the outside of the building,” I said.
“In an ideal world, we wouldn’t be in this shitty mess, period,” Smith groaned. “Damn it, we should have gone to Mexico.” He kicked out in frustration at a small piece of metal, which scuttled across the floor making a tinkling sound.
A deep groaning echoed through the storeroom, once the piece of metal had ceased its short journey over the concrete.
“Shit,” I whispered. “Did you hear that?”
“U-huh,” Smith rumbled.
We stood still, scanning the area for any sign of sudden movement. Two zombies in blue coveralls lurched from behind the rack, a few yards in front of us. Neither wore a welding mask.
“There are only a couple of them. We can take care of them, easy,” Smith muttered and took a step forward.
I saw more flashes of dark blue emerging from the shadows between the racks around us. “No, Smith,” I barked.
Surprisingly, he took notice of me and stopped in his tracks. He’d noticed more coverall clad zombies looming from the blackness and steadily approaching us.
“Christ, there’s a shit load of these clowns in here,” Smith hissed.
It dawned on me, we wouldn’t make it through the factory if we couldn’t manage to open the outer gates. There were too many zombies locked inside this damn place. Going back to the loading bay empty handed wasn’t an option. We edged backwards away from the gathering horde.
“We’ve still got to find that welding gear, Smith,” I whispered.
“I know that but that’s not the biggest issue at the moment,” he growled, wielding the shovel in anticipation of attack.
The gang of undead hissed and moaned at us, stretching out their arms ready to tear us to shreds. I glanced behind us and saw more zombies shuffling between the racks to our rear.
“Ah, fuck, Smith,” I howled. “They’re coming out of the damn woodwork. There’s a whole bunch of them behind us now, as well.”
We were trapped in the storeroom and there was still no sign of the welding gear we desperately needed.
Chapter Sixty-Two
The coverall wearing zombies closed in on us from all directions, snarling and groaning in anticipation of fresh meat. My metal pipe and Smith’s shovel seemed wholly inadequate weapons against such a large number of predators. We needed a few grenades and a belt-fed machine gun to eliminate our troubles.
“If you have any smart-ass ideas right now, Wilde Man, I’m all ears,” Smith croaked, shuffling around in a small circle.
I glanced around for some inspiration. One of the skylights was above us, casting dim sunlight down onto us, like a stage spotlight. The window was too damn high for us to reach but we co
uld maybe get to it if we climbed the shelving racks.
“Up there,” I spluttered. “Let’s get up onto the racks.”
“Good call,” Smith mumbled.
We turned and rushed to the nearest shelf, knocking pieces of labeled machinery and small cardboard boxes onto the floor as we attempted to haul ourselves up. The zombies closed in and were only a few feet from our position. We couldn’t hang on to our weapons and climb so we tossed the shovel and the piece of pipe at the enclosing horde. Smith clambered up the shelves like an ape scales the bars at the zoo. I struggled to keep up with him. My shoulder stung as though I’d been knifed all over again and my left arm felt incredibly weak.
“Hurry it up, Wilde,” Smith screamed at me.
A hand below me grappled with the toe of my boot and I kicked out, catching the tall zombie fully in the face. Smith was already crouching on the top shelf of the rack, emptying the contents of the boxes down onto the undead crowd. Millions of ball-bearings of varying sizes spilled from the boxes, raining down on the zombies below. Some trod on the rolling metal spheres and lost their footing, bumping into others and tumbling to the ground in swathes, like a domino effect.
“Woo-hoo!” Smith crowed, on top of the shelves. “That looks fucking great from up here.”
“Quit kissing your own ass and give me a hand up there, will you?” I croaked, reaching up with my right hand.
Smith tossed another box full of ball-bearings down below then reached and grabbed my outstretched hand. I hauled myself further up and relaxed slightly when I knew I was definitely out of reach of the zombie’s clutches. I grunted with exertion as I joined Smith on the top shelf and looked down to the ground below. Heights weren’t my thing and glancing down made me feel a little woozy. I estimated we were around fifteen feet from the floor and approximately six feet from the rack next to us.
Smith laughed as he watched another bunch of zombies go down, toppling over into each other as the ball-bearings rolled beneath their feet.
“People would pay good money to watch this shit,” he said.
I hunkered down for a few moments, gathering my breath and regaining my strength while watching the amusing show below us.
“It’s all very entertaining, Smith but we still need to get out of here and we still need that welder,” I pointed out.
“Good point,” he muttered and the mirth dropped from his face immediately. “Let’s go.”
I wondered what the next installment of our improvised and fairly fucked up plan was going to be. Throwing custard pies at the zombies or squirting them with water from a fake flower, perhaps?
Smith turned and suddenly leapt from the shelf we stood on to the rack opposite. Shit, I realized we’d have to jump across the racks to make it back to our exit point. I didn’t know if my shoulder would hold up but there were no other choices.
Smith beckoned me forward. “Come on, Wilde. We don’t have time to fuck around here.”
I glanced nervously behind me. The zombies continued to thrash around below, most of them scrabbled around on the ground.
“Don’t worry, I’ll catch you, come on,” Smith hissed. “Those ball-bearings won’t keep them occupied for long, we need to hurry.”
I swallowed hard, staring Smith in the eyes and jumped towards him. As usual, Julia’s face flashed through my mind. That terrified look on her face, when she knew she wasn’t going to make the jump forever haunted me.
Smith grabbed onto the back of my jacket as I gripped the side of the top shelf on the next rack. He hauled me up beside him and we crouched side by side. Smith looked into my face and he could see I was terrified.
“We’ve got a couple more jumps to make and then we’re next to the conveyer belt,” he muttered.
“Yeah, but even if we get back out into the loading bay, we’re still trapped inside the compound,” I groaned. “Those fucking zombies will follow us down the slope eventually and they’ll still be no way out of there.”
Smith shrugged. “What else are we going to do? Stay right up here forever?”
We both successfully made the next jump. The zombies were losing their coordination and had lost sight of us. Smith was about to make the next jump across the racks when he stopped. He reached down onto the shelf below us and picked up a pair of black welding goggles.
“It’s a start,” he whispered, showing me the goggles. He wrapped the elastic head strap around his shoulder so they wouldn’t hinder his movements.
I looked around the shelves to see if they held anything else that might be of use. Nothing sprung out at me, unless I’d been a qualified engineer and known what most of the stuff on the shelves was.
Smith made the jump to the final rack before we could climb down. The zombies were far enough away from us not to cause a problem reaching the box stack in front of the conveyer belt. I steeled myself for the last jump when I noticed something below me, to my left in the aisle. It hadn’t been visible when we first walked through the storeroom at ground level.
The zombie wearing the welding mask trudged slowly around a small trolley, with two gas bottles loaded onto it.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Smith waved me forward but I pointed down below us to the partially shadowed figure by the gas bottles. At first, Smith didn’t see what I was alluding to and flashed me a stern glare. I gritted my teeth and pointed downward again, badly trying to imitate somebody using a welder.
Eventually, Smith saw what I was pointing to. He nodded and I recognized a hint of a grin on his face. We didn’t want to make any unnecessary noise in case the welder zombie heard us. His excited groaning would no doubt give away our position.
Smith mimed us both moving along the top shelves we were positioned on, further down the aisle and leaping down on top of our prey. He took a wrench from the shelf below him and mimicked bashing an invisible victim over the head. We simultaneously nodded. Plan hatched.
We quietly crawled along our respective shelves into the dark shadows, away from the skylights. When we were positioned directly above the mask wearing ghoul, I realized it wasn’t as simple as to just leap down on top of him from fifteen feet above. Smith readied himself on the opposite rack. He was rocking backward and forward on his haunches, psyching himself up to swoop down on his victim. I held up my hand in a stop motion. The last thing we needed was to break a leg or sprain an ankle.
I pointed to myself and mouthed – “I’ll go down first so he turns my way.”
“What?” Smith hissed in a tone which was too loud. He obviously couldn’t see my word mouthing in the shadows.
I furiously flapped my hand for Smith to be silent and felt my heart jolt as the zombie grunted below us. He turned his head and briefly gazed at the shelves at eye level around him. Luckily, the welding mask he still wore was obscuring his vision.
I pointed to myself again and held up a single finger. This time Smith nodded and I began my descent down the high shelving unit. I took my time, allowing for the pain to slide away throughout my injured shoulder. I glanced around and saw Smith climbing down in unison with me. He obviously hadn’t understood what I’d meant. Ah, hell, I was just going to climb down and see what happened.
I reached the ground and turned to face the mask wearing zombie face on. He seemed to be tugging at the pipes connected to the gas cylinders and still hadn’t noticed me. Maybe some small part of his brain remembered what he used to do and the task he’d been carrying out before initial death.
Smith jumped down with all the grace of a flying rhinoceros and the noise of his landing caused the ghoul to glance upward from his gas tanks. In a sudden movement that took less than a second, Smith tore off the zombie’s welding mask and smashed the wrench across the top of his skull. The ghoul remained silent, tottered for a second until Smith brought down the weapon again. The second blow felled the hefty framed zombie and he lay motionless on the deck. Smith placed the bloodied tool and the welding mask onto the shelf next to him. He shrugged.
“Simple,” he murmured. Then he dragged the dead ghoul to the side of the aisle so we could fit the cart by the body.
“Do we need both these gas bottles?” I whispered.
Smith nodded. “One is for oxygen and one is for the acetylene. Mix them together and you got your oxyacetylene,” he explained. “You can’t have one without the other.”
“Shit, this is going to be awkward and heavy,” I sighed.
“I’m not one for saying I told you so,” Smith said. “But I told you so.”
“Ah, crap,” I spat. “We better get going.”
“I’ll just check the bottles over to see if they’ve got any gas in them and all the equipment we need is still here,” Smith said.
He bent down into the shadows and studied the gear.
“Hurry it up, Smith,” I hissed.
He stood back up. “It seems to all be here. There’s a welding torch attached and the gas regulators are still in place. There’s not much left in the bottles but it will be enough for what we need. I just hope the damn thing is still in working order.”
“Can we just go, Smith,” I hissed, between clenched teeth. I was worried we were spending too much time down the dark aisle and the zombies would soon gain their feet and come looking for us.
“All right,” he sighed, seeming a little offended.
He grabbed hold of the cart handles and began wheeling it through the aisle towards the box stack. I winced and baulked when the cart’s turning wheels generated a loud, high pitched squeaking noise.
Chapter Sixty-Four
“Why the hell is that damn cart making that racket?” I hissed.
Smith shrugged. “I don’t know. The wheels are probably seized up or something.”
“Ah, shit, every zombie this side of Glasgow can hear that noise,” I seethed. “We better hurry it up or we’re in deep shit.”
The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold Page 30