“It’s nothing personal,” I said. “We have to rescue someone who’s been abducted. Smith doesn’t want anybody else tagging along in case they get hurt.”
Bathgate nodded and disappeared through the door into the darkness outside. I closed the door and shunted a heavy wooden table in front it. I was satisfied the table blocked the door from opening inwards.
I thought about what Bathgate had said. Maybe we were better off going our separate ways. Smith and I couldn’t afford to drag our heels; we were already a long way behind the boat men.
Smith sat at one of the tables in the downstairs bar, nursing a glass of his expensive rum with the barrel lamp at his feet. Spot lay stretched out on the ground next to his stool. The lamp light illuminated Smith’s face with an eerie, orange glow and made him look twenty years older, highlighting the lines on his forehead and around his eyes. The ageing process was another factor against us. What would happen when we were too old and weak to defend ourselves? That scenario was, of course, if we lived to old age.
Smith lit a cigarette and exhaled smoke across the lamp light beam.
“Did you think I was a bit harsh on that guy?” he sighed.
“Maybe, but I see your point.” I moved to the bar counter and took down a glass from the shelf.
“We can’t afford passengers on this trip, kid.”
I nodded and walked back to Smith’s table and poured myself a generous measure of rum. I ruffled Spot’s head and sat on the stool next to Smith.
“We can’t risk slowing up and Billy Bathtub, or whatever his name is will be a burden we don’t need.”
I sniggered and sipped the rum. It tasted smooth until the after burn hit my chest.
“It’s got some kick, huh?”
I nodded and thought about the living humans we’d met since our first meeting in my pal, Pete’s trashed apartment.
“I wonder how many normal, uninfected people are left in the world, right now,” I mused.
Smith turned his head and gave me his frightening stare.
“You can’t think like that,” he growled. “You can’t think too much about the past or too far into the future. Just do the shit that needs to be done at the time.”
I nodded and took a smoke from the pack.
“We’ve done well to survive this long, kid.”
We drunk our rum and Smith poured us a refill. I went back upstairs to the store and took some beach blankets and cushions we could use to sleep on. I lay a blanket on the floor for Spot to sleep on and made up my makeshift bed next to him. Smith piled his blankets and cushions next to his stool and turned off the lamp.
We talked in the darkness; Smith kept refilling his glass and seemed to be in a reflective mood.
“So, what’s the plan for tomorrow?” I sighed, my eyelids heavy with fatigue.
“We’ll sneak out of here at first light and find a decent boat,” Smith croaked. He sounded as tired as I felt.
Spot already snored in the midst of sleep on top of his blanket. I listened to Smith’s voice ramble on, although I couldn’t make out all the words. He slurred his speech the more rum he consumed and talked about things in his former life.
Sleep wrapped its gentle hand around me and I drifted to a place where no zombies and bad things existed. I didn’t know how long I was out for but sprang immediately awake when I heard a sound. I had evolved some kind of inner danger alarm, which was booming at full volume inside my head.
Chapter Twenty
I flicked off the blanket and sat up, listening for sounds in the darkness. Moonlight shone through the windows and I saw Spot still curled up sleeping. He was normally alert but I guessed fatigue dulls the senses of even the most vigilant creature.
The little dog lifted his head off the blanket when I stood. He must have sensed the movement, even though I was silent. Smith snored with a blanket half draped over him, lying on the floor under the table.
I touched Spot’s head and hoped he’d stay calm. I didn’t want him barking and giving away our position. We weren’t sure how zombie’s senses worked and if they could see in the dark or operated by smell alone. I crouched low and moved to the corridor. My first thought was the table barrier hadn’t held the outside door. The corridor was too dark to see down and I didn’t dare go through there with no light and no weapon.
Spot trotted behind me and sniffed the air. He didn’t seem agitated or threatened and I wondered if the danger was just my subconscious imagination. We were sleeping in a strange place and had a worse day than normal. Maybe it was stress, maybe it was shock.
I listened in silence. I heard nothing, but my senses still said something wasn’t right. Spot cocked his leg and pissed over the bottom step of the stairway.
Something banged on the outside of the wooden door through the corridor. Spot stood rigid. I listened. It was only a faint, half hearted noise but sounded like knuckles or finger nails scraping the outside of the wood.
I picked up Spot and held his jaws closed together. Dogs were great at raising the alarm but not so good at being secretive. I hoped that door would hold for the rest of the night and crept back to our blankets. I lay back down but didn’t close my eyes. The noise ceased but I remained vigilant, not daring to doze off again.
Around an hour later, the birds chirped outside in the surrounding trees and the light increased to gray early dawn. I waited until the shadows receded across the floor and flicked the blanket off.
“Smith!” I hissed. “Smith, come on, wake up. Let’s go.”
Smith mumbled and opened his eyes. He looked around our surroundings in confusion for a few seconds until his conscious memory returned.
“What time is it?”
“Day time, almost,” I whispered. “Something was banging on the door last night. It spooked me right out.”
“Probably one of those fucking rats again,” Smith croaked, rubbing the side of his neck.
We’d lived a kind of normal existence on the boat with hot showers and coffee in the morning. Now, we didn’t even have any water to clean our teeth.
I shuffled to the bar and took two bottles of juice from the non-working chiller cabinet. Smith hauled himself up from the floor as I handed him a bottle of juice. He swigged the fruit drink and winced, rolling his shoulder.
“I’m getting too old to sleep on hard floors, kid,” he sighed.
“Does it hurt where you got shot?”
“It hurts everywhere.”
Smith had taken a few bullets in his time and the long term effects were obviously taking their toll. He stretched his back and rolled his shoulders, grimacing as a series of audible, bodily clicks sounded.
“We best get going,” he mumbled.
Smith watched me pull the day sack over my shoulders.
“Do me a favor, kid?”
“Sure.”
“Run back up to that store and get me one of those carriers.”
I nodded and quickly climbed the staircase and moved towards the store. I glanced out of the bay windows across the marina. The boats still bobbed around the jetty and the sky was gray and overcast. I noticed a guy shuffling around in small circles by a red and white colored yacht, around fifty yards away. I recognized the blue coveralls. I recognized the guy’s features when he turned in his little loop to face the building. He was Simon Bathgate, who we’d met the previous night. Only his lower face was covered in dried blood and loose skin flapped from his bottom lip and neck. His eyes gazed aimlessly, covered with a milky white layer, like cataracts and his glasses were gone.
“Oh, shit!” I spat and raced to the store.
I grabbed a green colored day sack from the shelf, briefly resisting the temptation to pick a girl’s style bag for Smith. He’d only make me swap it for mine.
I ran back down the staircase holding Smith’s day sack. He stood at the bottom of the steps, holding Spot on the leash with the plastic carrier bag full of food cans and bottles of booze perched on the table.
“You ready
? What’s up?”
I pointed in the direction of the jetty. “Billy Bathtub is a zombie!” I hissed.
“Hey kid, I know the guy is a moron but he’s not quite that bad.”
“No, he really is a zombie,” I sighed. “I just saw him through the window, shuffling around by his boat.”
“Oh, Christ, is he on his own?”
“I think so.”
“What about his wife, any sign of her?”
I shook my head. “No sign of her out there.”
“Let’s get going. One dead guy seems to attract a whole bunch of other dead guys, like flies around cow shit. We don’t want to get stuck inside here.” Smith dumped the plastic bag into the day sack and zipped it up as he talked. He grabbed the hatchet from the table and handed me Spot’s leash.
I couldn’t take the barrel lamp as it was too bulky and awkward to carry. We moved quickly through the bar and slowed when we reached the narrow corridor. Smith slowly led the way forward and stopped by the outside door. The heavy table was still in place holding the door closed.
I shunted the table away from the door and winced when the wooden legs grated across the floor tiles. Smith stood opposite the door with the hatchet raised above his head. He nodded at me to open the door. I grabbed the handle and tried to stifle my nervous, heavy breathing. Worst case scenario was a whole bunch of undead were lined up in the doorway waiting to pounce on us.
I pulled open the door and breathed a sigh of relief. No zombies waited for us outside the marina building. Bloody hand prints stained the outside of the white, wooden frame and slats.
“I knew I heard something out here last night,” I whispered.
“It must have been Billy Bathtub trying to get inside after he turned,” Smith mused. “Come on, let’s move.”
I slipped through the doorway first, holding Spot on a short leash. Smith followed and we crept around the building perimeter, keeping low in a semi crouching position but moving as quickly as possible.
“I wonder if Billy Bathtub still has that revolver on him,” Smith muttered as we rounded the corner to face the jetty.
We crouched at the edge of the building, peeking around the corner.
“You’re not thinking of rifling through his pockets?” I hissed, with a hint of scorn.
“We have no bullet driven weapons, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Can’t we just creep away quietly for once?” I pleaded.
“Billy Bathtub won’t be much beef to take out, if he’s on his own.”
“Yeah, ‘if’ being the key word,” I spat.
“Okay, you and Spot hang back here, if you want. I’ll go and take care of Bathtub.”
I didn’t doubt Smith could handle a lone zombie with an axe but worried that several more of Bathtub’s new found species might be lurking close by and be attracted by the commotion.
“Okay, but don’t take too long,” I sighed.
Smith shrugged off his day sack, gave me a smirk and headed off to meet Bathtub head on. I watched as Smith kept in a crouching position, moving quickly, covering the ground between him and Bathtub. Smith drew the hatchet from his belt around ten yards in front of the zombie. Bathtub turned and opened his mouth as if too make a sound. His eyes widened as the hatchet blade swung forward and down. The sharp edge smashed into his skull between his eyes, creating a bloody, vertical groove running from the top of his forehead to the bridge of his nose.
Bathtub went down on his back from the velocity of the blow. He lay on the wooden boards, his left foot twitching slightly but his worldly existence terminated.
“He must be one of the shortest lived zombies in history,” I whispered to Spot.
Smith bent over the corpse and rifled through his blood stained coveralls. He retrieved a black, metallic object and held it up for me to see, like the revolver was some kind of trophy won in battle.
My gaze sharply turned left to the red and white yacht when I heard a shrill screech emitting from onboard the deck.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Simon, Simon! Oh my God, what have you done to him?” The woman’s voice screeched with a southern American accent.
I guessed the voice belonged to Bathtub’s wife, watching from somewhere onboard the vessel.
Smith swiveled on his heels to face the yacht. He kept low, holding the revolver and the hatchet at the ready. I picked up his day sack and trotted towards the jetty. Smith edged slowly closer to the yacht.
The woman’s voice continued screeching in wailing sobs and obscenities.
“Ma’am, come out onto the deck but you have to keep your voice down,” Smith commanded.
I took a quick glance at Bathtub’s prone corpse. A permanent expression of shock was etched onto his face. His skull was split like a coconut, blood and brain matter the color of porridge, oozed from the wound and dripped into the canal between the wooden jetty slats.
“Please, ma’am, keep your voice down,” Smith repeated in a harsher tone.
I saw movement through the porthole in the control room cabin on the upper deck. A blubbery, blonde woman, wearing a red strapped top and light blue pants opened the cabin door and stepped onto the deck. She held a handkerchief to her nose and tears streamed down her cheeks.
“You bastards killed my Simey,” she wailed.
“Ma’am, I’ll fucking kill you as well if you don’t shut the fuck up,” Smith growled.
I glanced around the jetty. The woman’s wailing boomed around the canal and across the water like a siren. No walking corpses were in sight yet but surely would home in on the screeching soon.
“He was turned, ma’am,” I said in a hushed tone, trying my best to sound sympathetic. “He would have bitten you.”
“He got bit after he came to see you last night,” the woman wailed. “All we wanted was some company so we could get the hell out of here.”
Smith flashed me a grimace that told me he was full of abhorrence. I knew he was going to shoot this woman if she carried on.
“Ma’am, you’re going to attract the infected if you continue making this noise,” I said softly, trying to reason with the new widow. “You need to calm down.”
The woman blew her nose in a loud trump and dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief.
“I knew something was wrong last night.” She spoke in sobs between breaths. “He stood on the deck and wouldn’t come inside. He said he loved me and you weren’t interested in helping us get away.”
“My heart bleeds purple colored piss,” Smith snarled.
I ushered him to keep quiet. Smith once told me that sympathy lay somewhere between ‘shit and syphilis’ in his book.
“This situation is exactly why I didn’t want them tagging along,” Smith muttered to me.
I sighed in exasperation. “Come on, Smith. Let’s just find a boat and get out of this place.”
“It may be a little too late for that, kid,” Smith muttered, turning his head towards the canal waters.
I followed his gaze and saw many dome like shapes breaking the surface all around the jetty. The shapes continued to rise and I instantly knew what they were. Heads. A shit load of zombie heads belonging to bodies surfacing from the canal and heading our way.
“Oh, shit,” I hissed.
Spot whined and growled and strained on his leash, either in excitement or confusion.
I heard a low moan behind me and spun around on my heels. Four zombies made their way across the jetty towards us. They were all dry and must have been lurking around somewhere among the other boats. Maybe these ghouls were the ones who attacked Bathtub.
“Does this fucking crate have a working engine as well as sails?” Smith barked at the woman.
“Of course,” she snapped. “Simon was always tinkering with things down in the engine room or whatever you call it.”
Smith glanced at me. “Time to go.”
We both knew the quick reaction – let’s get the fuck out of Dodge – drill. Smith untied the head rope and
I released the stern rope. We clambered onboard the yacht and removed the small gangway to the jetty. The yacht drifted a few yards away from the wooden pontoon and the bows bumped over a zombie’s head bobbing on the surface.
Smith breezed by the woman, ignoring her protests as he raced into the control cabin.
“We’re leaving, you got your wish,” I muttered to the woman, as I followed Smith to the control cabin in case he needed my help.
Bathtub’s wife was actually quiet for once. She stood on the deck with a shocked expression on her face, holding her hands to her face.
The control cabin was spaciously larger than the ex-Coastguard boat we’d previously used. The whole vessel was longer and wider and my worry was the yacht was going to prove cumbersome and slow to maneuver. The cabin walls and ceiling, or bulkhead and deck head to use nautical terms, were painted white and the floor consisted of varnished wooden lumber.
Smith looked lost in concentration as he studied the control panel. He turned the small wheel left and right. I looked through the front windshield (I didn’t know the nautical term) and saw we were drifting towards the opposite pontoon, not out towards the canal expanse. At least a dozen zombies surfaced and trudged ashore. A few more crossed the jetty and approached the pontoon we drifted towards, as if they were waiting like an unwanted welcoming party. I tied Spot’s leash around a sturdy spherical, white pipe running the height of the cabin.
“Go and get that silly bitch in here, Wilde Man,” Smith barked. “There must be a starter key or something here.”
I ducked my head out the cabin door and gave a short, sharp whistle. The woman turned her head with a look of shock and confusion etched on her face.
“In here a minute, Mrs. Bathtub,” I said and nodded towards the control cabin.
She staggered forward on unsteady legs. The shock of events in the last few minutes was obviously taking its toll on her. She followed me inside and Smith looked up from the control panel.
“How the fuck do you start this piece of crap?”
“With the starter key, of course,” the woman snorted.
“Where is it?” Smith yelled.
The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone Page 10