“It’s called a funnel,” Smith corrected her. “I don’t know for sure but I think these carburetors are fucked. Too much shitty diesel pumping through them. We’ll have to stop someplace for me to take a look at them.”
Smith last gave the boat an overhaul when we stopped in the Florida Keys, which had to be at least 500 miles behind us. We’d had to use some old diesel on occasions, that was probably well past its sell by date. I unfolded the map and searched the area for a place to hole up.
“There’s a marina in a small place called Venice, just up ahead and to the left…or to port,” I said, trying to sound like I was familiar with nautical terms.
“Okay, we’ll head there,” Smith agreed, glancing at where I pointed on the map. “I just hope there’s not a shit load of fucking zombies standing on the jetty, ready to chew our asses off.”
I nodded and lay the map on the console next to the wheel so Smith could see where he was heading. I walked across the upper deck and went down into the cabin below, our cramped, wooden paneled home for the best part of six months. How the hell had we carried on in these basic living conditions? Two sets of two narrow bunks stood on each side of the cabin. Smith slept on the port side top bunk and mine was beneath his. Batfish slept on the bottom bunk starboard side and used the top bed to stash her ever increasing bags of items we’d hauled from other vessels and our shore side raids. The lockers positioned against the walls in front of the bunks were crammed with tins of food and bottles of water. Our special booze supply was kept in the locker under the deck, below the wooden table in the center of the cabin. The galley consisted of a miniscule oven beneath an equally small hob to the right of the table, behind our bunks. A small shower cubicle and toilet was positioned at the bow end, forward of the bunks.
We kept the rest of the equipment like flares, oars, ropes and Smith’s fishing gear inside the lockers on the upper deck. A vast stash of dollar bills, weapons and ammunition were stored in the control cabin where Smith steered the boat.
I took a tin of dog food from the locker and the bent fork we’d reserved for feeding the hounds. If we were going shore side, I wanted to get the dogs fed before we reached the harbor and the remains of civilization. Even the scent of dog food would attract zombies from a distance. They may have been long dead but their sense of smell still remained and even heightened in their reanimated state. The dogs would gobble up their food before we landed in the harbor.
I clambered up the wooden ladder and picked up the dog’s dishes from the upper deck. The dogs wagged their tails and sniffed the air between us, knowing it was feeding time. I dished out the sloppy meat substance, obviously serving more to the bigger dog, Sherman. Smith always gave them equal shares when he fed them, which resulted in Spot, the Jack Russell having the shits for a couple of days.
The dogs lapped up their food and I watched them eat. I wondered what the hell they made of all this. They didn’t seem to mind too much as long as they were with us and fed regularly. Sometimes we’d let them paddle in the sea to give them a bit of exercise.
Smith turned the boat left, or to port to use my nautical terminology, around a tree lined headland and through a wide gap in the river. The spur off the main river narrowed as we approached what used to be the small town of Venice. Some empty industrial basins lay on the opposite river bank. Unkempt grass and reeds sprouted around the derelict buildings and tall, rusting silos stood behind the basins.
We looked around the basins for any disused boats or anything that resembled a workshop amongst the dilapidated buildings. The building roofs were sagged and bowed and crumbled away in places leaving gaping holes revealing the inner timbers. The place looked like it hadn’t been inhabited for quite some time.
Smith slowed the boat engine so we slowed to a crawl but still continued traveling south and east along the narrower part of the river. He craned his neck, glancing into each basin as we passed by. I joined him inside the control cabin and gazed down at the map on the desk by the wheel.
The river spur split into two and Smith studied the map then steered the boat to the route to our right.
“The marina should be just up ahead on the starboard side,” he said. “I hope there are some parts we can use, otherwise we’re going to be royally fucked. This engine won’t keep going much longer.”
For some reason, I thought about Scotty from the old 1960’s ‘Star Trek’ TV series. I couldn’t help but giggle to myself.
Smith gave me an inquisitive look. “What?”
“The engines cannae’ take it, captain.” I tried to impersonate Scotty in a terrible Scottish accent.
Smith shook his head. “You need to lay off that fucking weed, kid.”
We sailed by some former sight-seeing barges, bobbing around the bank to our left and partially covered by overhanging trees. Their overhead canopies were ripped and shredded by the overhanging branches and the once sparkling, white paint work was now algae green.
Smith turned to starboard into the semi circular shaped marina, where around a dozen discarded boats were still tethered to the jetty, bobbing slightly on the water.
“Let’s see what we got,” Smith said.
He steered the boat slowly around the marina looking for any boats that were similar to ours.
“Nothing remotely compatible,” he grunted. “These are all high powered fishing boats, built for speed and day trips. The engines won’t be the same as our old chug boat.”
I nodded like I knew what he was talking about. I wouldn’t know one boat engine from another.
“We’ll moor up on the jetty and take a look around,” Smith said, steering to the wooden landing stage in the center of the marina. “There must be some workshops around here someplace.”
Smith guided the boat towards the jetty and I went to the bow or the sharp end as I often referred to it, and prepared to loop the head rope around the shore side cleat. I explained the plan of action to Batfish, who still sat on her chair on the upper deck.
A crescendo of chirping from birds and buzzing of crickets from the overgrown trees and grass greeted us as we slowed against the jetty. I hopped onto the wooden planks, looped the rope around the cleat and secured it between the steel bollards. Smith cut the engine and tossed me the stern rope, which I secured in a similar fashion.
“We’ll make a seafarer out of you yet, Wilde Man,” Smith said, grinning.
He put on his Blues style shades, checked his Desert Eagle hand gun was loaded and collected a few extra magazines.
“You got your piece on you?” Smith called to me.
I nodded and patted my shoulder holster containing my Glock-22 that I’d recovered from an abandoned Police launch off the Maryland coast.
Batfish said she didn’t want to join us poking around in some gloomy boat sheds and would stay onboard with the dogs. Smith racked an Ithaca pump action shotgun and handed it to her.
“Fire it a couple of times if you get into any trouble,” he said. “We won’t be going far.”
Smith joined me on the jetty and we set off in the direction of the surrounding buildings. Clusters of buzzing insects and chirping crickets presented an eerie back drop of sound as we trudged through the overgrown grass.
For some reason, I sensed danger. My developed senses of threat were in the red zone on my inner zombie radar pulsing inside my head.
Chapter Three
A greenish and gray colored snake slithered through the grass a few inches in front of me. I leapt back a couple of feet, whimpering like a soppy child. Smith looked at the snake and chuckled.
“It’s only a little grass snake, Wilde. What the fuck?”
“I don’t like snakes,” I spluttered, screwing up my face in disgust.
Smith watched the reptile slither away through the grass and beckoned me forward.
“That damn snake is probably wondering who the hell that big jerk is, jumping about like a five-year old girl.”
“I’ve never liked snakes they just give me
the shits, they always have. Even when I see them on the movies I get…”
Smith stopped me babbling by raising his hand, his palm flat in my direction. We stopped walking and stood motionless. He watched the narrow gap between two of the rundown, cream stucco clad buildings. A dark shadow covered the space and the sunlight glinted above the crumbling roof tops.
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. A bird gargled in a high pitch tone somewhere behind us but my senses picked up on another noise. The sound of grass rustling came from the gap between the buildings, and then I heard a low moan.
Smith drew his Desert Eagle and I followed suit and pulled my Glock from the holster. Smith took a slow, tentative step forward and slightly to the left. My guess was he was trying to eliminate the bright sunlight shining directly in our eyes.
One lone figure stumbled around the corner of the structure to our left and into the shadow between the buildings in front of us. I shielded my eyes from the sun’s rays with my left hand and steadied my hand gun with my right onto the target. The figure emitted a throaty howl and lurched between the two buildings towards us. The zombie used to be a male in its former life and had been dead for some considerable time, judging by his decomposed state. It lifted an emaciated arm and quickened the staggering pace slightly.
I clicked off the Glock safety catch but Smith motioned at me to hold my fire. Another two shambling figures followed the lead zombie around the corner of the building and honed into view in the shadows.
“Shit! Three of them,” I hissed. Fuck only knew how many more were approaching.
“Keep steady and wait until they’re out of the shadow,” Smith whispered. “Don’t fire blind into the shade. Wait till we get a clear shot.”
The lead zombie stumbled out of the shadow, roughly fifteen feet in front of us. I could now clearly make out the rotten facial features. The eyeballs were gone and so was most of the skin and flesh around the face. A thick mop of gingery hair remained on top of the head along with the remnants of a wispy beard sprouting from the chin. The figure was clad in a torn, checkered work shirt and ragged denims.
Smith was the best shot I’d ever seen and his weapon handling and survival skills were second to none. The one problem with a Desert Eagle hand gun is it sounds like a fucking cannon when a shot is fired. Smith did fire one shot and the lead zombie’s head evaporated into a soup of brown brain matter and pieces of skull. The body flopped backwards into the long grass. The wretched creature’s existence finally terminated.
I was worried the gun shot might alert more of the undead to our position.
The two following ghouls both emitted low drones simultaneously, as if they were outraged by Smith’s brutal dispatch of their comrade. They moved from the shadow and into the daylight. Both were male and one was thickly set in denim dungarees, still wearing a fisherman’s cap on his head. The other was tall and skinny with his ears and nose missing, the old injuries surrounded by encrusted, brown blood.
“You take the guy in the cap and I’ll take the skinny bastard,” Smith hissed.
“Okay,” I muttered and took aim with my Glock. The center of Fishing Cap Guy’s forehead was aligned with my gun sight.
Smith’s Desert Eagle boomed and my Glock cracked. Skinny Bastard and Fishing Cap Guy both went down within a second of each other. Two shots, two kills - job done.
“Okay, let’s try and find a workshop,” Smith grunted.
We trudged through the long grass between the buildings, stepping over the three prone corpses lying on the ground. Smith peered around the corners of the two buildings and waved me forward. A rotting wooden, sliding door was positioned in the center of the building to our left. Smith pulled at the door and it squeaked open on rusting metal runners. The building interior was gloomy and a musty stench wafted from the doorway.
“Did you bring a flashlight?”
I shook my head.
Smith mumbled something I didn’t catch, removed his shades and stepped through the doorway. I followed him inside the crumbling building. We stood by the door with our hand guns at the ready, waiting for our sight to adjust to the murkiness. The sun cast some light into the interior and I heard something rustling around on the ground to my right. I twisted and pointed my Glock in the direction of the noise. A huge rat squeaked in surprise at our intrusion and quickly scuttled away into a dark recess towards the far wall.
“I fucking hate rats,” Smith hissed.
I remembered his tirade over my phobia of snakes and thought about returning some of his jibes but realized it wasn’t the right time.
The wooden boarded ceiling hung low overhead and a solitary light bulb dangled between the drapes of spider webs. Several cluttered old workbenches stood in a neat row in the center of the room. Chunky, rusting vices sat on opposite sides of each bench, the cylindrical, twisting handles stood up like lone fingers flicking us the bird.
“Anything of use in here?” I asked.
Smith gazed over the workbenches. “I can’t say. It’s so damn dark in here.”
We stepped slowly into the room, moving around and covering each dark corner with sweeping arcs with our hand guns. Piles of packing crates and cardboard boxes stuffed full of engine parts and boat accessories lined the wall at the opposite side of the building. Smith moved towards the stacks and started to rummage through one of the open crates.
“It’s like looking for a needle in a fucking junk stack,” he growled.
“Shouldn’t that be a haystack?” I corrected. Smith was always jumbling his sayings.
“Whatever,” he rumbled. “We’ll never find what we’re looking for in here.”
I didn’t even know what we were looking for in the first place, so I could’ve been locked in this room for a million years and still drawn a blank.
“Come on, kiddo. Let’s go back to the jetty and have a scout around the rest of the marina.” Smith moved back towards the open door.
I turned to follow and my elbow caught some old piece of engine machinery on one of the workbenches. The metallic engine piece clanged into what seemed like a thousand other objects sending them all crashing to the cobble stone floor in a crescendo of noise.
“Wilde Man!” Smith hissed. “What did you do?”
I stood wincing for a second until the clanking noises ceased. A metallic pipe rolled backward and forwards on the uneven floor. I stopped the pipe rolling with the underside of my boot and we stood listening for any approaching noise.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Smith rumbled.
We moved towards the open door and stopped a few feet from the entrance. A huge, man mountain of a guy with a completely bald head, appeared in the doorway, blocking the sunlight. His flapping denim work shirt was ripped open to his navel, exposing a huge, hairy belly that was peppered with old bite marks. He opened his grimy, blood coated mouth and emitted a low growl.
“Shit,” I spat and took aim with my Glock.
Man Mountain wasn’t alone. At least a dozen more undead figures crowded the doorway behind the big guy.
“Ah Christ!” Smith sighed. “You’ve brought the whole fucking village of dead bastards down on us, Wilde.”
My guess was this bunch of zombies was already on their way over to us when we’d dispatched their three comrades outside the building. The undead gang was probably attracted by the gun fire. Admittedly, my clumsiness hadn’t helped our predicament and given our position away but they couldn’t possibly have found us so quickly because I’d knocked over a bunch of stuff. My argument with Smith would have to wait. Right now, we needed to get the hell out of the building.
The Man Mountain plodded through the doorway and was followed by the rest of his undead crew, all jostling and bumping each other for pole position to get at us. Smith fired two shots and two zombies went down. The boom of his Desert Eagle reverberated around the room. I fired off one shot and hit Man Mountain through his left eye socket. He crumpled from the knees and fell face first onto the
cobbles.
The undead mob moaned with increasing volume and surged forward towards us. I moved closer to Smith as I didn’t want them to isolate us. Smith fired another round and a female zombie’s head exploded into a dark mist. We shuffled backwards deeper into the gloomy workshop, which didn’t help our escape plan. I quickly glanced around the interior, desperately searching for an alternative exit route. No windows or exit doors were visible from the inside. More zombies piled through the main sliding doorway onto the work shed cobbles. We were faced with around thirty flesh hungry ghouls.
“There’s too many of them,” I bleated. “They’re going to overrun us.”
Smith fired again and backed up.
Individually, zombies could be easily dealt with if you had a reliable hand gun. Even bunches of twos and threes weren’t a problem, but a swarming, snarling mob was a whole different ball game. They kept coming at you in a relentless, growling tide.
“Keep moving back,” Smith yelled above the growing stream of moans.
The zombies knew they had their prey cornered and it would soon be feeding time.
I followed Smith as we shuffled backwards with our guns still trained on the enclosing horde. We moved towards a dark corner on the opposite side to where the doorway was situated. Where the hell was Smith leading us? If we backed into a corner we’d never get out of the building.
Chapter Four
“We’re getting trapped,” I screamed.
Smith gripped my shoulder with his free hand. “Stairway-on our six.”
I took a brief glance over my shoulder and saw a metallic, spiral stairway leading to an upper level directly behind us. We nudged our way between some musty brown sacks and Smith backed onto the first step.
“We better get upstairs, fast,” he said.
The gaggle of undead fanned out as more of them bundled through the doorway into the gloomy interior. They lowed and hollered in what seemed like an excited state. Some of their number looked fairly freshly animated, while others were pretty much rotten and almost skeletal.
The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone Page 2