The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone

by Christian Fletcher

  I fired at the nearest walking corpse, an old guy who looked like he was in his last throes of life before he was infected. The Glock’s .40 round hit the ghoul in the center of his face, dropping him to the ground.

  “Save the ammo,” Smith bellowed. He turned and rushed up the stairway. “Come on.”

  I clanked onto the first stair and edged my way backwards up the steps. The staircase was an old, wrought iron French colonial style structure, with leafy patterns embedded in the frame. The stairs were steep and spaced widely apart. I climbed three or four and then turned and bolted towards the opening to the upper level.

  The zombies followed but had difficulty navigating the first couple of steps. A few of them fell over each other as they tried to maneuver up the stairway.

  The upper level was lighter than the ground floor, the sun’s rays shining through the partially collapsed roof.

  Smith holstered his Desert Eagle and picked up a brown sack that looked like a sandbag.

  “Help me with this,” he grunted, struggling with the heavy sack.

  I holstered my weapon and grabbed the opposite end of the sack. The rough material felt slightly damp and stunk of mold. We dragged the sack to the top of the stairway and rolled it down the steps. The heavy sandbag upended the first zombie climbing the steps and the creature fell backwards into his following, undead comrades.

  “That won’t hold them but it will give us a bit of time,” Smith said.

  “We need a way out,” I whined, stating the fucking obvious.

  Smith pointed to the hole in the low hanging roof. “We have to go up to get down.”

  I gazed up and didn’t like the look of the wrecked timbers that once was the spine of the building. Displaced, orange clay roof tiles hung at odd angles around the hole, like they were gripping to what remained of the roof in a final, desperate effort to fulfill their purpose. Some of the tiles lay broken on the floor beneath the hole in an ungainly pile.

  We didn’t have much choice. It was either through the hole in the roof or through the gang of zombies. Either exit strategy carried a hell of a risk. I hoped that shitty old roof wouldn’t cave in the moment we stepped onto it.

  Smith slid an old packing crate across the floor and positioned it underneath the hole.

  “Keep that stairway covered,” he barked.

  I drew my Glock and pointed it at the top of the staircase. Smith hopped up onto the packing crate and reached up to the busted wooden beams. The packing crate was obviously old and rotten and crumpled under Smith’s weight. He went over sideways and crashed in an awkward heap onto the wooden floor.

  “Shit!” Smith yelled and rolled onto his back.

  The scene would have been comical if the situation hadn’t been so serious.

  I frantically glanced around the attic for something we could use as a step-up to the roof while Smith stumbled to his feet looking totally pissed off. An old, rusting kids push bike leaned against the wall in the far corner. I holstered my hand gun and quickly moved towards the bike, then wheeled it back towards the hole. The brakes were partially jammed on and the corroded wheels squeaked as I rolled the bicycle forward.

  “What are you going to do?” Smith sighed. “Fly that fucking thing out of here like E.T.?”

  “Stand on the seat and handle bars while I hold it steady,” I hissed.

  “How are you going to get up there, Einstein?”

  “We could stand here arguing all day but we having a pressing engagement with something called, trying to live,” I rasped.

  Smith shook his head and clambered up onto the bike. I tried to hold it steady under his weight. The bike rocked around slightly and I heard the stream of undead bundling up the stairs. They must have overcome the obstacle in the shape of the sandbag on the steps.

  “Keep it still,” Smith hissed.

  He reached up to the wooden roof beam and hauled himself up onto the sagging tiles. The whole roof groaned under his weight and I thought for one moment the entire fucking lot was going to come down on top of our heads.

  Smith slowly crawled out of the hole into the daylight. I heard a high pitched moan and turned back to the stairway. A female ghoul with a shock of frizzy, ginger hair crawled up the top step on all fours. She shrieked and bared her teeth when her milky white eyes fixed on me.

  I glanced back up to the hole in the roof and Smith lay prone on the tiles trying to spread his weight evenly. A few of the loose tiles crashed down onto the floor near my feet. Smith reached down with his arm.

  “Grab my hand, Wilde Man,” he yelled.

  I reached up and slipped my hand into his. The Ginger zombie crawled across the floor towards me. More of the undead staggered into view up the stairs behind her. Smith hauled me skywards and several more loose tiles crashed to the ground. I dangled in mid air for a few seconds, not knowing if Smith was going to haul me up out of the hole. A steady stream of the undead jostled and bumped their way up the stairway into the attic space.

  I gripped the top edge of the broken timber with my free hand to give myself some sort of purchase to pull my body weight upwards. Ginger clambered to her feet and swatted the air below me. Her nails raked against the soles of my hiking boots.

  Smith grabbed the back of my shirt with his other hand and hauled me through the hole so my torso was onto the sagging roof. I kicked my legs in the air trying to force myself all the way out onto the tiles. The roof timbers creaked under the combined weight of Smith and I. Smith dragged me further out of the hole and I swung my left leg out onto the tiles. I clambered the last few inches and lay prone on top of the tiles breathing in a good lungful of sweet, fresh air.

  “You okay?” Smith asked, gathering his breath.

  I nodded. “We better get off this roof quickly, Smith. I don’t think it’s going to hold out much longer,” I panted.

  Smith patted his shirt pocket then the sides of his pants. “Shit, I left my smokes on the boat. Have you got any on you?”

  I slowly rolled onto my back and felt in my side pocket. I didn’t feel a rectangular shaped box. “I did have a pack on me but I must have dropped them climbing onto this roof.”

  I glanced back down into the hole and saw Ginger intently studying my pack of Marlboro reds. I pointed down into the attic room.

  “I’m not going back down there to get them.”

  Smith leaned over and gazed down at Ginger. He removed one of the loose tiles and hurled it through the hole. The tile smashed into Ginger’s chin and the top of her chest and then broke into several pieces. Ginger dropped the cigarette pack and collapsed backwards into the gathering undead crowd.

  “Take some of that, you ugly fuck!”

  Smith was always pissed off when we ran out of smokes. The zombies inside the attic space below responded by reaching upward and moaning together in a chorus.

  “Let’s get gone,” Smith grunted.

  We crawled on our hands and knees across the roof towards the building adjacent to the workshop. I looked down at the ground below the two buildings and saw the prone bodies of the three zombies we’d dispatched earlier. The distance between the two buildings was roughly ten feet wide.

  “Think you can jump that, Wilde Man?”

  Thoughts of Julia plummeting to her death the last time I jumped between buildings on a Manhattan rooftop surfaced in my mind. I remembered the look of abject terror in her eyes when she knew she wasn’t going to make the jump. I knew that brief second would haunt my thoughts as long as I lived.

  “No problem,” I muttered.

  Chapter Five

  I backed up a few paces then sprinted forward. I leapt the gap with ease and landed on top of the adjacent building. I crouched down on top of the ridge tiles on the spine of the roof. The image of Julia’s last frantic milliseconds of life flooded my mind and I felt a sorrowful lump rise in my throat.

  Smith clanked onto the tiles behind me. The moaning sounds from the undead subsided slightly as we disappeared from their view.
r />   “We’ll have to try and give the boat an overhaul somewhere further up the river,” Smith muttered. “This place is pissing me off.”

  The breeze blew in my face and I glanced up and looked out over the marina. I saw our boat still secured to the jetty, roughly one hundred yards in the distance and below us. Batfish stood on the deck with the shot gun in her hands. The two dogs stood each side of her. They were all facing out towards the river. I followed their gaze to the right and saw a small, gray boat approaching the jetty, its bows cutting through the water.

  “There’s another boat,” I said, pointing out to the river.

  I looked back at Smith, who stood astride the ridge tiles already surveying the incoming boat.

  “Looks like a small, U.S. Navy Patrol Boat,” he muttered.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, kid, there ‘aint no Navy no more. There ‘aint no nothing no more.”

  “Who do think it is, then?” I asked.

  “I think that’s a shit load of trouble,” Smith growled.

  I heard the faint sound of Sherman barking at the incoming boat. He leapt backwards and forwards and Batfish put her hand on his head to try and calm him. A scruffy guy, dressed in combat gear manned a heavy machine gun on the Navy boat’s bow. He trained the weapon on Batfish, adjusting his aim as the boat drew closer. Batfish lifted the shot gun to her shoulder but kept the muzzle pointed at the deck to show she was armed but not posing a threat.

  The crowd of zombies in the adjacent building must have heard the boat’s engines and cranked up their noise with more lowing and moaning.

  Two more guys appeared on the Navy boat deck. One pointed an assault rifle at Batfish, while the other held a hand gun aimed at Sherman. Both guys were similarly dressed to the dude behind the heavy machine gun. One had long, straggly hair and the other wore a floppy, jungle fatigue hat. They talked to Batfish but we couldn’t make out what they were saying due to the noise of the zombies next door.

  The guy in the hat slung his assault rifle over his shoulder and tossed a grappling hook onto the deck of our boat. He hauled in the rope and drew the Navy boat alongside ours. Sherman was going berserk, bounding forward and then back, his head jolting up and down as he barked. Spot was also snapping his jaws, his hackles raised.

  The guy with the long hair was motioning to Batfish to put down the shot gun. He stepped onto the deck of our boat and Sherman bounded forward as if to attack him. We heard a crack above the noise of the moaning zombies and Sherman collapsed on his side, a circular pool of blood flooded from a gunshot wound around his ribs. Batfish yelled and pointed the shot gun at Long Hair.

  “No, no, no,” I screamed. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “We’re being fucked over,” Smith growled.

  The guy in the floppy jungle hat leapt onboard our boat and twisted the muzzle of the shot gun up into the air. Spot lurched forward and took hold of the guy’s ankle between his teeth, shaking wildly at the leg of his combat fatigues. Batfish and the guy wrestled with the shot gun. They both fell over with the guy on top of Batfish. Long Hair moved forward and held his hand gun to Batfish’s head.

  “We need to get down there, Smith,” I screeched.

  Smith didn’t move. He stood still watching the proceedings with an expression of revulsion on his face.

  Batfish seemed to stop struggling and Long Hair took the shot gun. Floppy Hat regained his feet and then gave Spot an almighty kick that sent the dog spiraling over the side of the boat into the water.

  “Fucking bastards!” I spat.

  “Come on,” Smith rasped. “But we have to stay out of sight. My main worry is that prick on that heavy machine gun.”

  We moved along the roof to the far end of the building, hoping the guys on the boat wouldn’t see us amongst all the commotion.

  A willow tree draped in moss stood a few feet from the far edge of the building. Below us was the grassy bank where I’d earlier witnessed the snake. Smith shot me a glance then leaped from the building into the willow tree. I followed him and hit the soft foliage before feeling the more sturdy branches rip at my skin. I plummeted downward, my fall slightly broken by smaller, flexible branches.

  Smith was already crouching on his haunches with his Desert Eagle drawn and at the ready when I hit the ground. The landing took the wind out of me and I felt stings of pain in my arms and back where the branches had torn at me.

  I rolled up onto my knees and pulled out my Glock from the holster, no time for pain.

  “You move to the boat from the right and I’ll go left,” Smith hissed. “Use whatever you can as cover and keep your eyes on that fucking machine gun.”

  Smith scurried forward through the grass to the left. I kept low and moved to the right, darting between old gasoline barrels and upturned rowing boats as cover.

  I dived behind a low boat trailer, roughly twenty yards from the jetty and peeked over the top. Long Hair and Floppy Hat searched our boat and were busy loading our stash of food and weapons onto their own vessel. They were grinning to each other and muttering congratulatory remarks. Another guy appeared from below the Navy boat deck and joined them on our vessel. He was tall with a shaved head and also dressed in combat fatigues. I glanced left to the machine gun but the guy was still behind the mounting so I assumed Shaved Head was the driver of their boat. Four guys in all. I was sure Smith was doing the same calculations. The machine gun swept the shore in continuous arcs, covering the guys from any kind of attacks from the living or dead.

  Batfish was nowhere in sight so Shaved Head must have taken her below deck and locked her inside the Navy craft.

  Long Hair came out of our control room with a huge grin on his face clutching Smith’s holdall containing bundles of dollar bills. He muttered something to the others and moved towards the Navy vessel.

  I knew that would be the last straw for Smith and waited about three seconds before I heard the boom of his Desert Eagle. Long Hair’s knee exploded and he went down on the deck of our boat. The holdall spun from his grasp and landed on the deck of the Navy vessel.

  Long Hair screamed in agony clutching his shattered leg. Floppy Hat turned in shock, unslung his assault rifle and opened up with a blind burst of fire across the shore above our heads.

  Shaved Head screamed something unintelligible and bounded back onto the Navy vessel. He moved behind the wheel and fired up the boat’s engine. Floppy Hat backed onto the boat, firing intermittently as he moved. He removed the grappling hook from the side of our boat then grabbed Long Hair by the arm and tried to drag him onto the Navy vessel.

  Smith’s Desert Eagle bullets smashed into the Navy boat’s structure and around the machine gun mounting. He obviously couldn’t get another clear shot on Long Hair and Floppy Hat or the driver. The guy opened up with the heavy machine gun, its rapid fire rasped through the long grass and the bullets destroyed anything in their path. Pieces from fiber glass boats and sparks from the oil drums dispersed into the air like confetti as the rounds showered the shoreline.

  I aimed my Glock at Floppy Hat and fired off a couple of rounds. Floppy Hat screamed and clutched at his shoulder. He let go of Long Hair’s arm and tumbled backwards onto the Navy boat’s deck.

  I worried that Smith was hit but then heard a couple of his rounds blast at the Navy boat in retaliation to the machine gun burst. We were no match for their fire power and had limited ammunition. I hadn’t even bought a spare clip ashore with me. The Glock-22 magazine held fifteen rounds and I’d already fired around five or six shots.

  Shaved Head steered the Navy vessel away from our boat and circled around the marina at high speed. The machine gunner let rip with another burst of fire. This time he aimed below the water line at the hull of our boat. I heard the rounds thud into our boat’s side before the Navy vessel sped out of the marina back onto the river.

  I crouched behind the trailer for a few seconds, trying to process what had just happened in the last few
minutes.

  “Wilde, are you okay?” I heard Smith’s voice from somewhere in the long grass.

  I gave myself a quick once over.

  “Yeah, I’m not hit,” I sighed.

  I saw Smith striding towards the jetty. My legs felt shaky as I stood and followed Smith towards the wreck of our boat.

  Smith put on his shades and made straight for Long Hair, who lay on the deck on his back, gasping and whimpering in pain. I crouched beside Sherman. He was still breathing, albeit in wheezing rasps. I looked at the wound in his side and saw blood pooling from an ugly hole behind his left front leg. His side rose and fell with his rapid breathing and he looked at me with sad, brown eyes as if asking me why this had happened. Tears welled in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry, boy,” I sniffed.

  All he was trying to do was protect us. I’d met Sherman in Manhattan and we’d both escaped with our lives when the odds were highly stacked against us. Now, poor Sherman was dying on the deck, needlessly caused by the action of some greedy asshole. I gently stroked the center of his head with my fingers. He huffed and his tongue lolled from his mouth.

  I looked over at Smith. He was standing over Long Hair, pointing the Desert Eagle at his head. Smith bent down and picked up Long Hair’s hand gun. He examined the piece, turning it over in his hand.

  “Springfield XD, used to be military issue,” he mumbled.

  “Come on, man, you got to help me with my fucking leg,” Long Hair whined in a southern accent.

  “Does it hurt bad?”

  Long Hair nodded. His right leg was burst open at the knee joint and shards of wrecked, white bone and bloody tissue were visible inside the open wound. Flaps of loose, bloodstained skin surrounded the horrific injury and blood pooled on the deck underneath his leg. I didn’t share one jot of sympathy for the prick and neither did Smith.

  “But does it hurt real bad?”

  “Yeah, it hurts so fucking bad, man,” Long Hair screeched. He rolled around the deck in agony as he spoke. “You got to help me.”