The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone

by Christian Fletcher

  “Can you help us?” I asked.

  “There are still a few of us left alive on the base. We live like sewer rats scuttling from one building to another over the rooftops. I can take you to see some of the people who run what’s left of the logistics department. They can get you to the fuel dump.”

  “Will they sort us out a vehicle?”

  The Chaplain finished his whiskey and smiled weakly. “They are still military men at heart. I hope they help you and as followers of God, I hope they do. But I’m afraid I can’t speak for them. They also have endured terrible hardships and the loss of family and comrades.”

  “So, you’re saying they might have a bit of a bad attitude towards us?” Smith sighed, stubbing out his cigarette.

  Brady shrugged. “As I say, I hope not.”

  Smith downed his whiskey and stood up. “Come on then, Father. Show us the way.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chaplain Brady led us from his small office, along the narrow corridor to another flight of stairs that led to the building’s flat roof. I was glad to inhale fresh air and be out of the damp, musty building but I was nervous of rooftops since Manhattan, where I led a few of my companions into a dead end death trap.

  The adjacent buildings were crudely interconnected with lengths of lumber acting as a bridge between the black asphalt coated rooftops. Brady was surprisingly sprite for an older guy and didn’t seem to hesitate while walking on the narrow timbers. I shuddered when I looked down at the ground below when crossing between the first and second building. The fall would have been around fifty feet. Probably not high enough to cause death but certainly a sprained ankle or broken leg that would ultimately cause me to be left as an immobile, sitting duck for the hungry zombie hordes.

  I looked back at the doorway we’d bundled through on the ground floor when I’d reached the relative safety of the second building. The majority of the undead crowd still banged and clawed at the door but some had drifted away, seemingly bored with the fruitless task.

  Smith and I followed Brady across the timber bridges until we came to the last building on the street. He crossed the rooftop to the far edge of the building and stood holding the hand rails of the descending fire escape ladder.

  “We’ll have to be quick across the open ground,” Brady said in a whisper.

  The fire escape ladder agonizingly creaked and groaned as Brady depressed the metal guard rails. I thought every zombie south of New Orleans would hear the screeching mechanism, which was badly in need of some oil or some kind of lubrication. The pit of my stomach lurched upward in a gush of fear and I tasted the whiskey in my mouth once again.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” I hissed.

  Brady and Smith ignored my plea and carried on down the ladder to the ground below. I gulped down the rising bile and followed them down the metal steps. No zombies were in the immediate vicinity, a small bonus but the undead army still congregated at the front of the first building and could have swarmed at us within a few seconds.

  Brady lifted the escape ladder and let it tilt back to head height once we were all on the ground.

  “Hurry, this way.”

  We followed the Chaplain across an inclined grassy bank to a small parking lot at the rear of the building. He hurriedly rifled through his pants pocket and took out a set of car keys then stopped by a small, blue Hyundai. A couple of undead stragglers milled around the far end of the parking lot and began to stumble in our direction. Their ghastly moans seemed to float across the empty space between us and I wondered how long it would be before more of their cohorts were alerted to our whereabouts. The Chaplain fumbled with the key fob before unlocking the car.

  “Get in, quickly,” Brady ordered.

  Smith dived into the passenger seat next to Brady and I bundled across the narrow, back seats. The Chaplain hurriedly started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, avoiding the approaching zombies by swerving the vehicle in a kind of slalom.

  “There are two kinds of people left on God’s Earth,” Brady sighed. “The quick and the dead.”

  “Amen to that,” Smith agreed.

  Brady drove with increasing speed and could certainly handle his small car. He spun around a looping bend that took us onto a different street. Rotting, green faces flashed by my side window, their teeth gnashing only a few feet from my face. Blackened, gnarled finger nails scraped across the window glass and the vehicle bodywork.

  “We have to make sure the majority of the crowd doesn’t follow us,” Brady said, glancing in his rear view mirror. “The military guys can pick off a few stragglers but a whole bunch of them will cause a problem.”

  Brady drove us through a labyrinth of small side streets of what I guessed was the main administrative quarter and hub of the military base. The undead plodded after the vehicle but their masses soon thinned in number as we sped around the streets. Brady headed deeper into the base for a mile or so and I could see the airfield and runway behind more buildings directly in front of us. I wondered how far military bases spread into the back and beyond.

  “Some of the guys hang around in their squadron buildings,” Brady explained. “They’re fully armed and the buildings are pretty much impenetrable from the outside. They also have a clear view of the base from the front and the airfield at the rear, which gives them a good line of sight of any incoming masses of the dead.”

  He slowed the Hyundai as we approached the tall, square shaped squadron building. The ground floor windows were covered with the same metal sheeting we had seen earlier when we first met Brady. The Chaplain stopped the car outside the enforced steel front door and glanced around the vicinity before hopping out of the vehicle.

  “I’d better make sure they’re willing to let us in, wait here a second,” he said to Smith, before closing the car door.

  Brady walked to the front door, studying the dark windows on the upper floor.

  I leaned forward towards Smith. “Do you think this guy is on the level?” I whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we’ve come across some weird people in strange situations since all this started. Who’s to say this isn’t going to end badly again?”

  Smith shrugged. “Sometimes we’ve just got to roll with it. There’s no other way we can get enough diesel down to that river without this guy’s help. Anyhow, he’s a man of God. They’re not supposed to do bad things to people.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I sighed and sat back in my seat.

  One of the windows on the upper floor slid open and a beefy black guy, wearing a blue baseball cap and holding an M-16 assault rifle, stuck his head outside. He had a sour look on his face as he glared down at the Chaplain.

  “What do you want, Brady?” he snapped in a deep, gruff voice.

  “I found two survivors. They need help. Their boat is stranded without fuel back at the river. I was hoping we could help them.”

  “You brought people up here? Are you crazy or something?” The black guy’s tone was hostile and I didn’t think we’d get much joy from the situation.

  “They need some diesel and a vehicle, that’s all.”

  The black guy shook his head and disappeared back inside. The Chaplain turned to us and gave a small shrug. Less than a minute later, the front door opened and the black guy stood on the threshold pointing his M-16 in all directions.

  “Okay, come inside. You sure none of you are bit?”

  “I’m sure. None of us are infected,” Brady said, then beckoned us from the vehicle.

  Smith and I exited the Hyundai and moved to the front door. The black guy scowled at both of us as we entered the building. He shut the door and slammed the heavy bolts into place.

  “This is Chief Cole,” Brady said, gesturing to our host. He introduced us but Cole only gave a grunt of acknowledgement.

  “Thanks for letting us inside,” I stammered. Cole was quite an intimidating guy. He was dressed in khaki, military combats, stood at wel
l over six feet and was built like a hay barn.

  “It’s dangerous letting people inside the buildings,” he barked at Brady. “Remember what happened last time?”

  Brady looked slightly sheepish and swept his thin hair off his forehead, then turned to Smith and I. “We had a bit of an unfortunate incident here a few months ago. I took in a young couple, barely in their twenties, with a small child. Turned out the kid was infected and changed during the first night. The child turned on us and unfortunately, the young couple were both bitten. We had no choice but to terminate the whole family. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

  “That’s why the do-good Chaplain stays over on the far side of the base,” Cole spat. “We can’t trust him up here. Now, I hope you don’t mind but I got to see for myself that none of you have any infected bites or scratches on you.”

  “Okay,” Smith sighed and took off his jacket and shirt.

  Cole gave him a once over and asked about his bullet wound scars. Smith explained his shooting incident and how he was an ex-marine. Cole’s mood seemed to change a little for the better when he knew he was dealing with another member of the armed forces. I was examined next and Cole gave the Chaplain a brief search before he led us through the reception room of the squadron building. We followed him through a dim, off white colored corridor, up a dingy flight of stairs and through a door marked ‘Crew Room’ on a sign alongside a squadron logo. The room was whitewashed around the walls and ceiling with a brown tiled floor. A stench of stale beer, fried food and cigarette smoke wafted from the quarters. Around a dozen military guys and three tough looking girls, dressed in field combat fatigues milled around the room, playing pool or cleaning small arms weapons. The hubbub of military jargon fuelled banter and pool balls clacking together ceased when we walked into the room. They all stopped what they were doing and stared at us as we entered.

  “It’s okay, guys, they’re not infected and they’re definitely not staying,” Cole clarified. “These two need some diesel and a ride back to the river bank, that’s all. Then they’re gone.”

  The military guys muttered, sighed and groaned and returned to what they were doing.

  “I don’t think we’re flavor of the month,” I whispered to Smith.

  “They’re just trying to stay alive like the rest of us. They don’t want to take any unnecessary risks. Can you blame them?” Smith said.

  “I suppose not,” I muttered.

  Cole slung his rifle over his shoulder and led us to a map of the base fixed to the crew room wall. The map was behind a clear plastic cover and similar but larger than the one Smith had used earlier. He pointed to the squadron building.

  “Okay, we’re here and we need to get to the fuel dump over here.” He pointed to another block shape on the map, some distance from the squadron building. “We primed the fuel dump with a ton of regular gas and diesel in some portable canisters a couple of months back. It’s too hot out there to pump the gas. We’ve got a jeep out back we can use to get us from A to B and then to C, which is your damn boat on the river.”

  “Sure thing, Chief,” Smith said. “Have you heard anything from anywhere else? I mean have you had comms links with any other base or military station since the outbreak?”

  Cole sighed and the huge man physically sagged as though the grim truth of a post apocalyptic existence had only just hit him. “We’ve had some scrambled comms now and then through the UHF and Emergency channels in the flight control tower over on the airfield, but nothing of any significance. A few of the Air Force guys hang out in the other squadron buildings and a month or so ago they told us there was a rumor that one of the comms guys in the control tower picked up an encrypted signal from an air base in England but we couldn’t verify that information. That guy who picked up the signal died soon afterwards. It’s hard to pick up any kind of radio frequency due to lack of power and nobody controlling the communications satellites.”

  Smith nodded. “Well, we certainly appreciate your help, Chief.”

  “Where are you headed, anyhow?”

  “New Orleans, into the city. We have a rescue mission to carry out. One of our original crew was kidnapped by some damn sex traders.” Smith blew out a frustrated sigh and rubbed his forehead. “We don’t even know if she’s still alive for sure but we have to go to the city and try and get her out.”

  “Bastards!” Cole spat. “There’s always some lame brained fucker trying to make a bad situation even worse.” He flapped his arms out to his sides. “Well, look, you seem a stand up guy. If you get into too much heat, come back here and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

  Smith nodded and held out his hand. The Chief took it and they shook hands forcefully.

  “There’s not too many good people left in the world, Chief but you’re certainly one of them.”

  Cole bit his bottom lip and nodded his head slightly. I’d never heard Smith being so complimentary about anyone before. Maybe he felt some kind of camaraderie with the big military guy. Smith probably felt he was in a similar position, taking charge of a rag tag bunch while trying to survive.

  “Do you need any weapons or ammo?” Cole asked.

  “Nah, we’ve got ourselves another situation back onboard the boat. Some asshole onboard is holding a woman hostage and told us not to bring any weapons back with us, only fuel. But don’t worry, his days are definitely nearly used up.”

  For the first time since we’d met him, Cole broke out in a smile. “You guys sure don’t do things the easy way, do you? Come on; let’s go get your juice.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  We asked to use the bathroom facilities before we headed out into the maelstrom and gratefully took the opportunity of a shit, shave and shower. A Navy guy, with a totally shaved head, kindly sorted us a change of clothes, consisting of white vests, khaki work shirts and green military fatigue pants, along with socks, underwear and combat boots. Smith’s footwear was a little tight and the Navy guy replaced them for a bigger size.

  Chief Cole assigned two other guys to our party. Milner was a tall, young Marine Corps corporal and Hernandez was a short, squat guy, who was some kind of Navy rank. Both the military men seemed relieved at being chosen for the mission. A break from the normal, mundane routine was probably welcome for them. They geared up, arming themselves with assault rifles, Colt 45 hand guns and plenty of spare ammunition. Cole himself decided to accompany us and led us through the squadron building to a fire door facing the airfield. The military guys donned green flak jackets hanging on hooks by the door and ushered us to do the same.

  “There’s a vehicle right outside we use for moving around the base,” Cole explained. “Get in the back as soon as we step out. Any sign of undead, let us take care of them.”

  Smith, Brady and I nodded in acknowledgement.

  Cole swung open the fire door and stepped outside. Milner and Hernandez rushed by us and headed for the vehicle, which was a military green Humvee with a bolted on armor kit around the bodywork and a heavy duty machine gun mounted inside the roof turret.

  “Wow, we should get ourselves one of those,” I said to Smith, as we moved towards the vehicle.

  I glanced across the concrete expanse of the airfield and saw some huge military planes standing redundant at the center. A few smaller aircraft were clustered around various hangers at the edge of the airfield. Cole closed the fire door behind us and followed at the rear, glancing around in a focal sweep of all directions. Milner fired up the Humvee engine and Hernandez sat beside him in the cab. Cole opened the doors to the rear compartment and nodded inside, gesturing for the three of us to climb aboard. We perched on the bench seats, Smith and I facing each other while Brady sat next to me. Cole clambered inside, secured the doors then moved to the machine gun on the roof turret. He cocked the heavy weapon and Milner pulled the Humvee away from the building. The heavy engine groaned as we gathered speed and Milner headed for the main road through the center of the base.

  Undead stragglers soon ho
ned into view, making their way on unsteady legs towards the vehicle. Cole rattled of a few rounds at a cluster of zombies who stood in the road, their heads exploded into clouds of reddish brown spray when the machine gun bullets hit the target. The loud rasp of gun fire reverberated around the Humvee interior. I wished we’d come across these guys before we’d had to tangle with the shit kicking crew on our own.

  Milner drove straight over the felled bodies before swinging the vehicle left down a side road. More zombies emerged from the spaces between the buildings on each side of the road. They launched themselves at the Humvee and slammed into the armor plating on the vehicle’s sides. Cole let fly with another burst of machine gun fire, chopping down another bunch of undead.

  “Dear God, protect us,” Brady stammered, nervously watching through the windshield.

  Milner swerved right down another side street and rammed a female zombie with the front of the truck. We felt the bump and jolt as the body smashed into the bull bars then disappeared from view, bouncing under the wheels.

  “We’re coming up to the fuel dump so get ready,” Cole hollered from the roof turret. “I’ll try and clear the area.” He fired off another burst of rounds as Milner slowed down. “Steady with your aim, guys,” he said to the two military men up front. “We don’t want any wild shots blowing up the gas.”

  Both Milner and Hernandez grunted a reply of acknowledgement. Hernandez cocked his assault rifle and readied himself to jump out of the passenger door.

  Cole leaned into the interior. “We’ll have to be in and out real quick. You guys load the gas cans into the back and we’ll try and keep the perimeter clear.”