The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone

by Christian Fletcher

  “Esplanade Avenue,” I whooped. “We’re nearly there.”

  We moved on and we heard music pumping from somewhere in the distance, along with a glow of bright lights illuminating the nearby rooftops. I caught sight of the white GMC Truck still parked on the corner.

  “The truck is still there,” I screeched, quickening the pace.

  Batfish grabbed my arm and held me back.

  “Hold on, Brett. What if it’s a trap?”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Batfish made a good point. What better way to catch everyone than to load up the truck interior with gun wielding goons?

  “You hang back with the girls and I’ll take a walk by to see if anyone is inside,” Batfish instructed.

  “Okay,” I agreed and ushered the Cajun girls into the shadows.

  Batfish casually sauntered to the truck and peered into the driver’s side window. She let out a brief shriek and recoiled a few paces backward. I wondered if my worst case scenario was panning out and reached around my back for the hand gun. Batfish hurried back towards us.

  “There are two guys inside the back,” she whispered. “I could only see one of them clearly and he looked like a real jerk. He waved a gun at me. Do you think he’s one of them?”

  “It definitely wasn’t Smith?”

  She gave me a ‘do you think I’m stupid’ look and I went on to describe what Headlong looked like.

  She nodded. “That sounds like the guy I saw but I can’t be certain.”

  There was only one way to find out. I’d have to take a look myself. Shit or bust.

  I told Batfish to stay with the girls and crept towards the truck with my Smith & Wesson held at my side. I didn’t want to start an unnecessary shoot out if I could help it. The side window was slightly misted and I saw a flash of movement inside. I gently tapped the window with my gun and the door opened slightly. A gun barrel poked out, aimed at my chest. I held my breath, thinking worst case scenario again.

  “You took your fucking time,” a voice hissed from the truck.

  I sighed in relief. “Headlong, for the first time since we met, I’m actually glad to see you.”

  “Come on, get in and hurry it up, will you?”

  “Did Smith make it?”

  “Sure,” Headlong rasped. “He’s sleeping in the back. We’ve been sat in here for hours waiting for your silly ass. Now, get in.”

  “I found her, Headlong. I found Batfish!”

  “Well, bully for you, kid. Keep your voice down and get in the goddamn truck, will you?”

  I turned and waved to the shadows where Batfish and the Cajun girls were hiding. They tentatively emerged into view and I hurriedly motioned for them to get a move on.

  “It’s okay, it’s cool,” I hissed.

  Batfish quickened her pace and I slid open the side door. The noise of metal sliding on metal caused Smith to jolt awake and he drew his hand gun in one lucid movement. I held my hands beside my head.

  “It’s all right, Smith. It’s only me.” I was glad to see Spot was still inside the truck.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Smith rapidly blinked the sleep from his eyes.

  I didn’t reply. Batfish moved between me and the open side door. Smith blearily blinked again, probably wondering if he was still dreaming.

  “Batfish…?”

  “Smith!” Batfish’s shriek was a little too loud.

  Spot went crazy, barking and wagging his tail, trying to leap at Batfish.

  “Spot! You’re still alive. Ah, hello, baby.” She bent down, hugging and kissing the small dog.

  Smith crawled out of the truck and wrapped his arms around Batfish, hugging her tight. He noticed the two Cajun girls standing on the sidewalk.

  “Who are they?”

  “They were locked in the same place as Batfish,” I explained.

  “Look, you’re all making my heart bleed,” Headlong interrupted. “Don’t you all think we better have our High School reunion out of sight of the street?”

  “Yeah, right,” I said and ushered everyone inside the rear compartment.

  I slid the door closed and turned to Smith. “What’s the plan?”

  “The first thing is to get away from here,” Smith said, crawling into the driver’s seat. “It’s a fucking miracle nobody’s found us yet.”

  He fired up the truck and turned the headlights on low beam.

  “It’s gone midnight,” he said, glancing at the dash clock. “We’ve missed our deadline. They’ll be out hunting us in force now.”

  Smith bumped the truck down the curb and pulled out onto the main road. He avoided the left turn down Bourbon Street and kept heading north. The headlights from a vehicle heading our way from the opposite direction prompted Smith to take a right. He snaked around the streets, glancing in the side mirrors to check we weren’t being followed.

  “Any idea whereabouts we are, Headlong?”

  Headlong clambered into the passenger seat and looked out into the urban sprawl.

  “Haven’t got the foggiest. You lost me back there when you turned off Esplanade.”

  “We didn’t have much choice. Do these patrol guys have any means of communications?”

  “I’ve seen them with some kind of walkie-talkie type things but Sammy once told me they were unreliable.”

  “Everything is unreliable,” Smith snorted. “What are the chances of getting through one of those check points and taking a gamble driving through the city?”

  Headlong shook his head. “Chances are worse than zip. If the guys on the check point don’t shoot us, the zombies will get us, for sure. I took a trip up to the barricades one time I was here and the whole place is swarming with those fuckers trying to break in. They know there’s fresh meat inside these walls.”

  “What’s our best route out of here?”

  Headlong grunted and snuffled like a hog. “Best way and the only way out of here is back by the docks. It’s guarded twenty-four/seven but usually only by three guys.”

  “Will they increase the numbers of guards if they think we’re heading there?” I asked.

  Headlong shrugged. “Maybe, but I don’t see any other way we can get away.”

  “We have to find our way there first,” Smith sighed, spinning the steering wheel to maneuver around a rolled vehicle.

  Smith turned onto a main street and a pair of headlights from behind us glared in the side mirrors. The glare became brighter as the vehicle rapidly closed the distance between us.

  “Shit! That looks like a patrol SUV,” Headlong barked.

  The pursuing vehicle flashed its headlights, following a few feet from our tail.

  “We pull over and we’re dead,” Smith said.

  The SUV pulled out from behind us and accelerated alongside to our left. The SUV passenger window slid down and the black guy, I’d earlier bribed with a kilo of cocaine, yelled at us to pull over. He leveled his semi automatic out the window and fired a warning shot over our roof.

  “Hang on, everybody,” Smith bellowed. “It’s time to take evasive action.”

  He swung the truck down a narrow side street to our right. We rocked to one side of the interior; the Cajun girls shrieked and clung on to me as we skidded across the metal floor. The SUV’s brakes squealed but still gave pursuit. A couple of bullets clanked into our back doors.

  “Shit, we’ve got to lose these guys,” I wailed.

  “I’m fucking trying.” Smith gritted his teeth and took a sharp left but still couldn’t shake the chasing vehicle.

  Smith steered around abandoned vehicles, rubble and disused dumpsters at speed, snaking through the urban streets. I couldn’t see the speedometer and didn’t really want to. I was sure we were going to crash any moment. The SUV took random pot shots at us when we were in range.

  “It’s difficult to hit a moving target from a vehicle,” Smith shouted, above the roar of the truck engine. I didn’t know if he was trying to calm us or convince himself.

  The
SUV rammed our back doors with its front crash bars and another volley of rounds rattled against the back doors.

  Smith hung a left and narrowly avoided a head on collision with another SUV speeding in the opposite direction. I briefly glimpsed a flash of headlights and a shocked looking guy in the second SUV driver’s seat. We all screamed while we were a coat of paints’ width from totaling the truck.

  We rolled right onto another main road but Smith had to drive on the left side lane. A high, wire meshed fence stood in the center of the right hand lane. A massed, squirming shadow loomed behind the fence wire.

  “What the hell is that?” I pointed at the thick, writhing shadow.

  Headlong glanced out of his side window. “That’s the fence line, buddy. We’re right out on the city limits. Beyond that fence is thousands of undead, ready and willing to rip you apart.”

  I squinted into the shadow and saw it was one swarming mass of hungry, reanimated corpses, all trying to rip and chew their way through the reinforced wire fence.

  “We must be on Elysian Fields Ave,” Headlong said to Smith.

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “It’s good in one way ‘cos now I know where the hell we are. But it’s bad in several ways ‘cos now we’ve got nowhere left to run and we’ll be passing a check point real soon.”

  “Is that it?” Smith snorted sarcastically.

  “Not quite.” Headlong was looking in his side mirror. “We’ve got a whole bunch of zombies on our right and now we’ve got two SUV’s on our ass and they’re closing on us real quick.”

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Smith flashed a glance in his side mirror and saw the SUV’s headlights getting closer. He put his foot down hard on the gas. I studied the road ahead and saw another two SUVs parked horizontally across the left lane, around two hundred yards in front of us. At least a dozen figures were positioning themselves in front of the vehicle. I noticed the shapes of rifle barrels in the guy’s hands, silhouetted against the sides of the SUVs.

  “Shit, Smith. Look out!” I yelled, pointing out the windshield. “They know we’re coming.”

  “So much for those unreliable radios,” he grunted and spun the steering wheel to the right.

  The GMC Truck bumped up the center curb and onto the grass verge between the left and right lanes. The overgrown grass hissed against the underneath of the truck floor but slowed us down. The tires were having a tough job gaining purchase on the dew damp vegetation.

  The patrol guys ran across the street and repositioned themselves, aiming across the verge. They fanned across the grass at an angle so they bottle necked us between their weapons and the fence line. We were only a few feet from the wire mesh and I could hear the accumulative wails and groans of the undead on the other side of the fence. The noise reminded me of the howling soccer crowd I’d witnessed when my dad had taken me to see Chelsea play in London, nearly twenty-five years in the past.

  One of the pursuing SUV’s followed our path onto the grass verge and the other drew alongside us, still moving on the left lane. I could see the check point to our right, which was no more than a heavy duty, metal gate recessed into the inner side of the fence line. More armed guards took aim at the side of the gate.

  “They’re going to open fire any moment,” I screeched.

  Smith nodded. “I know.”

  He buzzed down his side window and drew his hand gun. I wondered what the fuck he had up his sleeve. Smith had managed to get us out of numerous scrapes but he was going to have to do something spectacular to escape this particular situation.

  “We got to stop, Smith,” Batfish howled.

  “No way,” he growled.

  Smith yanked hard on the park brake and the back end of the truck skidded on the damp grass. The front end swung around as the vehicle spun in a semi circle and we were thrown from side to side in the back. Smith’s side mirror raked the wire mesh fence and broke off its mounting. He accelerated forward and away from the fence.

  The SUV that had been behind us was now almost nose to nose and still approaching. Smith leaned out of his side window, with his gun aimed at the looming SUV. He fired a few rounds in rapid succession. Smith’s accurate shots penetrated the SUV’s windshield, causing spider web like cracks surrounding several holes in the glass.

  Several things happened within a couple of seconds. The SUV skidded to its right and smashed into the wire mesh fence, causing the metal welds to dislodge and pop from the solid posts. The armed patrols opened fire on us from our rear and to our right. Semi automatic rounds peppered the side and rear of the truck. Smith fishtailed as he steered around the crashed SUV and put his foot hard on the gas.

  Dead hands reached inside the split wire mesh and wrenched it aside. I heard screams from the totaled SUV and briefly caught a glimpse of hundreds of zombies tumbling through the gap in the fence line before Smith bumped the truck down the curb back onto the road, slightly behind the second SUV.

  The check point guards no longer fired their weapons at us, swapping their targets to the swarm of undead who poured into the safe zone.

  We drove back down Elysian Fields Avenue, the way we had come. I tried but failed to release my grip from the top of each of the passenger and driver’s headrests. That was the white knuckle ride of my life. I checked on the girls behind me to see if they were okay and noticed several bullet holes along the right side, providing a view of the stars outside. The Cajun girls were huddled together, face down on the floor and Batfish had somehow squeezed herself behind Smith’s seat, clinging hold of Spot.

  “Shit, that was something,” Headlong whooped. “Keep on this road as far as you can then hang a right, which will take us back to the docks.”

  I noticed Smith had a pissed off look on his face.

  “You okay?”

  He nodded once.

  “What’s up, man? You look like you just sat on a hornet’s nest.”

  “Now this place is going to be overrun with zombies,” Smith growled. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  My fingers came easily off the seats and I sat back. Maybe we had inadvertently unleashed more misery, horror and a repeated fight for survival against the undead for the remaining survivors. A bad scenario for the people of the city who thought they’d cleared up a while ago. We’d just let loose a major problem for God only knew how many non-infected people, who thought they were safe, even if Lazaru ruled the city like Stalin’s Russia.

  “We have to hope those guards can drive those undead fuckers back,” I said.

  “Well, at least they won’t be so bothered about us, for the time being,” Headlong muttered.

  “You got a cigarette, Wilde?” Smith barked, in a tone that told me he was still pissed off.

  “Sure.” I lit three smokes and passed one to Smith and one to Batfish. I offered the pack to the Cajun girls but they shook their heads.

  “Can I have one of those?” Headlong asked. “I quit these damn things five years ago but I still keep having the cravings.”

  I handed him a smoke and saw my pack had only one left. No time to stop and stock up.

  At least a dozen SUVs sped by us, traveling in the opposite direction with their headlights on full beam. No doubt the vehicles were packed full of heavily armed guys trying to quell the zombie invasion.

  Smith drove along Elysian Fields Avenue heading south at a steady speed. I kept glancing at the fence line to the left, inwardly praying there were no more breaches or weak spots amongst the wire mesh. The shadowy crowd seemed to be moving in their droves to the north, towards the breached entrance into the city.

  Batfish asked me about a million questions that I was in no mood to answer. I just wanted to get the hell away from this place.

  I felt relieved when we reached the docks and Smith pulled the truck over on the curbside behind Sammy’s red VW.

  “That’s strange,” Headlong muttered. “Sammy should have left the docks hours ago. Those guys were due to change duties some ti
me before last night.”

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  We sat inside the truck and tried to see what was going on dockside but couldn’t see anyone around. The paddle steamer was still in its same position so Lazaru hadn’t felt the need to vacate the city yet.

  “You guys stay put and I’ll go and see Sammy,” Headlong said. “I’ll see if I can square it with him to let us all go free.”

  “Okay,” Smith agreed. “Just don’t be too long about it. We don’t know how much time we’ve got before this whole place turns into a bear pit.”

  Headlong nodded and climbed out of the truck. Smith sighed and leaned his head back against the headrest. We waited in silence for a few minutes before Headlong came rushing towards us out of the darkness with a look of terror on his face.

  Smith sat up, ramrod straight in his seat. Headlong opened the door and jumped into the passenger seat, breathing heavily.

  “What’s up?” Smith asked.

  “Zombies on the dockside,” Headlong panted.

  “Shit, that was quick,” Smith barked. “They couldn’t possibly have got here from the fence line before us. How many?”

  Headlong shook his head. “I don’t know for sure but I’d say about five, as a best guess.”

  “Where are Sammy and the other guys?”

  “I didn’t see them. Just a bunch of zombies wandering around down there but I didn’t look real close, to be honest.”

  Smith nodded. “All right, you guys hang back here and me and Wilde Man will clear up.”

  He gave me a glance for my approval and I nodded in agreement. I really didn’t feel in the mood for more zombie shooting but I was Smith’s right hand man. We were here to grab the shitty end of the stick, that’s what he and I did.

  Smith changed the magazine in his hand gun then jumped out of the truck. I drew my Smith & Wesson from my waistband.

  “Be careful out there, Brett,” Batfish warned, patting my arm as I slid open the side door.

  “Always,” I whispered and joined Smith on the sidewalk.