The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone

by Christian Fletcher

  “Do you think, even in his zombie-like state, he was searching for something?”

  “I don’t know,” I barked. “Some zombies do seem to remember odd things from their past lives.”

  “There you go,” my other self said.

  “Don’t play fucking games,” I snapped, frantically rifling through Simey’s pockets for a third time.

  “No, there you go.”

  I looked up and my additional self nodded to a spot on the jetty a few feet away. Something metallic glistened in the sun between the wooden slats. I rolled away from Simey’s body and crawled towards the metallic object. A chunky, chrome key fob with a ‘Manchester United’ soccer club crest emblazoned on it was jammed between the slats. I grabbed the fob and pulled it from the wooden boards. A bunch of keys jangled at the other end of the fob.

  I saw scuffed shoes and torn denims approaching in my peripheral vision. The two zombies were nearly on top of me. I rolled back towards Simey’s body to give myself a couple of seconds to get to my feet. I clutched the keys and hauled myself up. The two male zombies scowled and hissed. One had short, matted hair with bulging eyes and crusted blood around his gaping mouth and chin. His thumb and forefinger were missing on his right hand with only bloody stumps remaining. His accomplice was an older ghoul, with no hair on the top of his head but long and straggly around the back and sides of his head. He had a long beard with pieces of rotting flesh stuck between the curling, bushy hairs.

  Around a dozen zombies followed behind the two leaders, roughly twenty yards further down the jetty. I thought about using the revolver but decided to try and conserve the ammo. The guy with the bulging eyes plodded forward towards me, raising his arms as though he was going to hug me.

  I stood side-on to the guy and waited a beat until he got close enough, then delivered a right forearm smash to his chin. The chain mail and the velocity of the blow proved enough to send the zombie tumbling from the jetty into the canal water. He splashed into the surface and disappeared from view.

  “Hey, way to go, Brett,” my other self cheered behind me. “I didn’t know you’d taken up WWE.”

  I ignored my other self’s jibes as I still had one zombie in close proximity to deal with. The second guy’s gait was slightly different than the first ghoul I’d already dispatched. He kind of staggered from side to side like one of those robots from 1950’s B-movies, which made using the same form of attack a little more tricky. I thought about trying a Bruce Lee style Kung-Fu kick into the zombie’s guts but I would probably end up on my ass with the undead guy on top of me. I couldn’t afford to lose my balance and fall into the zombie infested water.

  Beardy came forward to try and grab me, his loose, green shirt flapped in the breeze. I stepped back over Simey’s prone body, attempting to put a little distance between us, although I couldn’t allow myself to be cut off from the dinghy. Whatever I was going to do, I had to do it quickly.

  I held the bunch of keys tightly in my hand and remembered something I’d seen in a movie a few years ago. What the hell, I’d try it. I placed a key between each of my fingers on my right hand so the jagged edges poked outwards.

  Beardy stumbled over Simey’s body and nearly went over the edge of the jetty but managed to keep his feet. I gripped the key fob tightly and balled my hand into a fist around the protruding keys. He came towards me, hissing like a wild animal. I firmly planted my left foot forward and swung my right hand like a baseball pitcher, aiming at the top of Beardy’s bald head.

  My punch landed in the middle of Beardy’s forehead. The key’s serrated edges pierced rotten flesh and then bone, driving the metal points into his brain. I withdrew my hand and saw three, neatly spaced holes in Beardy’s skull. He tottered on unsteady legs, groaned and fell sideways into the canal.

  “You’re a mean motherfucker,” my other self crowed behind me.

  I turned and snorted disapprovingly at my alternative self, then moved quickly towards the dinghy. I stopped briefly while stepping over Simey’s body to wipe blood from my hand and the keys on his coveralls.

  The canal waters still churned around the dinghy, with undead hands and heads bobbing and breaking the surface. I looked down at the raft, tilting in all directions and knew I was going to have to land bang in the middle. The zombies on the jetty lumbered closer. I took a deep breath and jumped, aiming myself at the center of the dinghy.

  The dinghy lurched to one side while I was in mid-air. I yelled in frustration and briefly glimpsed gnashing teeth in the water below me. Somehow, I landed on the inflated side, the firm rubber knocking the wind out of me for a second. I concentrated on keeping a tight hold on the bunch of keys.

  A hand grabbed my left ankle and tried to pull me into the water. The zombie’s head erupted from the surface and jaws clamped onto my calf. Luckily, the chain mail did its job and the female zombie didn’t pierce my flesh. Her wet, dark hair stuck to the sides and front of her head, slightly covering a greenish, white face.

  I instinctively kicked out and caught the woman in the throat with the bottom of my foot. I heard a cracking noise, like a tree branch breaking in the wind as her head snapped backwards. The woman tried to maintain her hold on my ankle but the blow caused her to plummet into the depths of the canal.

  I shuffled to my right and rolled onto my back inside the dinghy. The sides rocked back and forth and I gripped the sides, trying to haul myself into a sitting position. A muddy, wet hand grabbed my forearm and squeezed at the chain mail. I grabbed the oar and prized the fingers off my arm with the paddle end. The fingers slid across the wet rubber side and back into the water. I pulled the rubber seal open on the left wrist of the wetsuit and pushed the keys up the sleeve. At least I couldn’t drop them if they were inside the wetsuit.

  I leaned forward and untied the rope holding the dinghy to the jetty. My arms felt like lead from the exertion of rowing and fighting for my life. More hands reached out of the water, trying to grab me as I untied the knot, leaning slightly out of the dinghy. I flicked the rope back into the center of the raft and shuffled backward so I was on my haunches. The dinghy lilted from side to side as I grabbed the oar and hurriedly swung around in the water.

  I began paddling furiously on alternate sides of the raft. The thrashing of zombie hands in the water receded slightly but my problem was the yacht was drifting further away from me.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  My rowing slowed as weariness prevented my arms from working properly. I puffed and panted and sweat poured down my face. My body was so hot as the rubber wetsuit didn’t let my skin cool down.

  The yacht seemed to be drifting away from me faster than I could row. Smith stood on the deck waving me forward and shouting encouragement. I stopped paddling to take a breather. I felt like I couldn’t go on any more.

  “Maybe I should just shoot myself in the head,” I muttered to myself, patting the revolver strapped to my thigh.

  “Maybe you should.” My other self had appeared again, sitting facing me in the dinghy.

  “Not you again,” I sighed.

  “Hey, I found the keys for you, didn’t I?”

  I shrugged. The yacht drifted towards the center of the canal, even further from me.

  “Come on, Brett. What are you? Some kind of pussy?” Smith yelled from the deck.

  My other self giggled hysterically.

  “What are you laughing at?” I growled.

  “You are a pussy.”

  “Fuck you. In that case, you’re a pussy too because you’re me.”

  “I’m not as easily offended as you. I forgot how touchy-feely you are.” My other self pulled a weird face and wriggled his fingers in front of my face.

  I let my chin drop on my chest as I breathed hard. My arms felt as though they had turned to stone. I couldn’t even lift the oar.

  “Those zombies around the jetty will soon be swimming or floating out towards you,” my other self said, in an unusually quiet voice.

  “I know,” I
whispered.

  “So what are you going to do, Brett? Just float around this crappy canal until some fucking ghoul pops your little boat?”

  “It’s a dinghy not a boat,” I snapped in irritation.

  “What about those poor bastards in the yacht? Smith and that Trippy woman. Are you just going to let them drift around until they’re overrun?”

  “It’s Tippy. Why do you always try to deliberately rile me?”

  “Only asking a simple question, my friend,” my other self said and lit another cigarette.

  “Well don’t. Just quit talking to me.”

  “You may about to get lucky.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I snapped.

  I looked up but my other self had vanished again. I also noticed the yacht had snagged on the floating dock in the center of the canal. The yacht was around sixty feet in length and was wedged on the floating dock on its port side.

  I knew I had to reach the vessel before it became dislodged again in the breeze or any zombies crawled onto the floating dock. I picked up the oar and paddled slowly to my destination.

  Luckily, no more zombies tried to throw me out of the dinghy as I slowly rowed to the yacht. Smith lowered a rope to the waterline and I tied it to one of the dinghy handles. I stood up in the center of the raft and tossed the oar up to him, then reached up with both hands. Smith leaned out and clasped my sweaty palms in firefighter style. I had a horrible thought that the weight of the wetsuit, chainmail and the heaviness of my spent body might cause us both to topple into the water. But Smith was as strong as a gorilla and had no trouble hauling me up onto the deck.

  I collapsed onto the deck, sweating and gasping for breath.

  “Can you get me out of this damn wetsuit?” I rasped.

  Smith pulled up the rope and slung the dinghy onto the deck next to me.

  “You took your time, Wilde,” he teased. “Did you get those keys?”

  I nodded. “Inside the suit.”

  Smith and Tippy unstrapped the chainmail from my arms and legs, unzipped the black rubber wetsuit and peeled it off my body. I’d changed into a pair of Simey’s old short pants and one of his old T’s before I dressed in the wetsuit. The garments were drenched in my own sweat. The fresh air instantly cooled my body, which was a welcome relief. I felt like I was going to boil in that God damn suit.

  The keys jangled out of the sleeve onto the deck. Smith picked them up and moved quickly to the control cabin.

  “You better show me where to put the keys, Tippy,” he called from the doorway.

  Tippy shuffled after him with her hands raised by her sides and her considerable backside quivering from side to side.

  “Thanks guys,” I sighed. “Yes, I’m good. Don’t worry about me.”

  I lay on the deck on my back staring into the clear, blue sky, watching the occasional gull swoop overhead for a few seconds before I heard the engines whine into life and the motor chug from the stern. The yacht lurched forward and creaked against the floating dock as we pulled forward.

  I closed my eyes and tried to forget about my dry, parched throat for a minute. We were back on track but had taken a fuck of a long time doing it. Batfish could be miles away by now, or worse…she could be dead.

  Sitting forward, I tried to shake that last thought from my mind. I stood up and joined Tippy and Smith in the control room. They both stared out of the windshield, Tippy pointing the route we needed to follow to get out of the canal and back onto the Mississippi river. I grabbed a bottle of water from the countertop and glugged the whole contents.

  “You got a shower onboard, Tippy?” I bleated, looking like a drowned rat.

  Tippy nodded and led me to the washroom below deck. I thanked her and took a long shower, enjoying the refreshing sensation of clean, warm water on my skin and the cleansing scent of the shower gel.

  I dressed back into my camp sailor’s outfit and bundled Simey’s sweaty clothes into a ball. I tossed the sweat soiled shorts and T-shirt over the side when I crossed the deck to the control room.

  “You’re looking a bit more chipper,” Smith said, as I entered the cabin.

  “I feel a lot better now,” I sighed. “At least I can feel my arms again. How far are we from the river?” I picked up another bottle of water and took a few sips.

  “We’ve got to take a few more bends then we should be back on the old Miss P herself.” Smith nodded towards the windshield.

  “Where’s Tippy?”

  “She went to fix us something to eat.”

  I stood next to Smith and recounted the exploits of my dinghy expedition, omitting the parts about the conversations I had with my other self. He nodded and grinned throughout my slightly exaggerated tale.

  “I know,” he said. “I was watching you the whole time.”

  Tippy came into the cabin carrying a big plate piled high with different varieties of sandwiches. Her eyes were red and puffy and it was obvious she had been crying over the death of her beloved Simey, once again.

  The situation would take her some time to get used to. I knew that overwhelming feeling of despair and inner loneliness. At least I still had Spot and Smith for company, even though we’d had our ups and downs.

  We thanked her and tucked into the sandwiches. Most of the fillings had come from the inside of a can. No more fresh produce in this new day and age.

  “I make my own bread,” she sniffed. “Hope you like it.”

  I nodded and mumbled a little too enthusiastically to be credible. I was trying to cheer her up a bit and take her mind off the loss of her husband for a while. She wasn’t as emotionally numb as we were. Not yet anyway. Smith had probably always felt that way but it had taken me some time to acclimatize.

  “Did you ever happen to come across a small, Navy boat when you were moored up in the marina, Tippy?” Smith asked.

  Tippy munched on a tuna sandwich and thought for a second. “Oh, yes,” she said, after swallowing her mouthful. “We saw them a couple of weeks ago, up river somewhere. They were unloading some cargo onto a jetty by the old slaughterhouse. Rough looking guys, gave us the evils when we went by. I didn’t like the look of them and Simey told me to hide below deck until we were out of sight.”

  Smith flashed me a quick glance and I noticed his eyes turn into a steely glare.

  “Can you remember where you saw the boat?”

  “Ah, yeah, it’s only a few miles up river near the town where we used to get our supplies. Why? Are they friends of yours?”

  I laughed, Smith nodded and audibly ground his teeth. I knew the rage was filling within him like red water. No guesses for where we were headed next. I didn’t like the mention of a slaughterhouse. The word conjured images of carnage, slayings, massacres and butchery in my mind.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tippy asked us several questions as the yacht motored towards the river. Who were we? Who were the men on the Navy boat? Where we’d come from and was the rest of the world in as bad state? I answered her queries and asked a few of my own, trying to keep the conversation flowing. I told Tippy the guys on the Navy boat hadn’t paid us for some supplies and didn’t know whether she believed me or not by her bemused expression. Smith remained silent throughout our Q and A session. He gripped the wheel and stared out the windshield with a look of grim determination on his face.

  The yacht cut through the waterway beneath a viaduct, where the road had come to a dead end while we were riding the scooter. The canal lock gates stood a few hundred yards further to the east. Thankfully, the gates were open allowing us access onto the river.

  Smith steered to port, heading north once we were through the lock gates and back onto the river expanse. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad to leave the marina behind us.

  We munched on the sandwiches while the yacht chugged up river. We drifted by the north side of the town on the bank to our left. The town was small but the sparse streets were cluttered with old, abandoned cars and gangs of zombies lurching
around the roads and front gardens of the small houses.

  “Looks rough out there,” I murmured. “Have you seen anymore non infected people other than those guys in the Navy boat?”

  “A few,” Tippy answered. “Not so many lately but in the early days, people would come and go. They stopped by the marina when there wasn’t so many of those horrible things hanging around the canal.”

  Tippy began rattling off all the names of people her and Simey had met at the marina. She went into detail about where they were from and where they were headed. ‘I’ll bet most of the poor bastards are dead or walking corpses by now,’ I heard the cynical part of me say inside my head.

  She talked constantly for around twenty minutes, hardly pausing for breath. I didn’t know if it was nervous tension, her way of grieving or Tippy always suffered from verbal diarrhea.

  Smith remained silent throughout Tippy’s in depth characterizing and tales of where she and Simey spent their vacations. I grinned inanely and nodded between the rare interludes during her one way conversation.

  Tippy and I suddenly staggered to our left as Smith turned the yacht hard to starboard. Tippy grabbed my arm to stop her from falling over. Her considerable weight caused me to stumble back into the cabin wall.

  “What’s going on?” I called to Smith. “Why are we turning around?”

  “Just copped that fucking Navy boat, moored up around a half mile up river,” he growled, spinning the wheel.

  “Which side?” I asked, craning my neck around and looking out the back window.

  “Left side as you go up river.”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “You weren’t looking.”

  “Yeah, I think it was around here we saw them last time,” Tippy said, gazing out the side window.

  “Is that big, ugly metal shack up on the bank the slaughterhouse?” Smith asked Tippy.

  “I think that’s what Simey told me,” she bleated.

  We followed a slight bend and Smith swung the yacht around in a sweeping arc so we were heading up river once again.