The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers

by Christian Fletcher

  “It’s quite something, isn’t it?” Smith mumbled.

  “I’m amazed there was no fire,” Rosenberg said.

  Something moving amongst the debris to the right caught my eye. I flinched for a second but relaxed when I saw a little dog wagging its tail and sniffing the ground between us. The dog whined and gave out a shrill little bark.

  “Is that a dog?” Rosenberg said like he’d never seen one before.

  “It’s a puppy,” I cooed like an eight year old girl.

  The little dog obviously realized I was friendly by my girly tone of voice. It slowly trundled towards me, avoiding the scattered debris on the road. My dad bought us a pup similar in looks, when my sister and I were kids growing up in London. The pup was a Jack Russell terrier and had sadly met its end on a main road, while chasing a cat. This little guy was all white except for a black spot on its back and one brown ear that stood up, looking like a leaf stuck to his head.

  I picked up the pup and checked if he was a little fellow, which he was. I ruffled his cute fluffy fur and he looked at me with appealing big brown eyes. I brought him close and a frail pink tongue reached out and lapped my face. His breath whiffed of axle grease and sweet candy, probably all he’d ate since he’d been here. I felt his heart banging away on the side of his rib cage and he whimpered and nuzzled against my chin.

  “Aaah. What a cute little guy,” Rosenberg cooed, stroking the pups little head.

  Even Smith seemed quite smitten with our newly found acquaintance. “Poor little bastard has probably been out here all on his own.” He tickled the dog’s chin.

  “I’m going to call him Spot,” I decided, due to the black clump of fur on his back.

  “He’s probably hungry,” Rosenberg said. “I’ll get some food and water from the van.”

  Rosenberg scurried off and came back a few minutes later holding an open can of pork and beans and a plastic plate with a bottle of water balanced in the middle. Batfish and Donna followed behind with a look of expectation on their faces.

  “Oh, look isn’t he cuuute!” Donna cawed. Batfish kissed him on the head.

  Even tough-ass Goth girls couldn’t help but go soft when a cute little puppy was on show.

  Rosenberg tipped the pork and beans onto the plate and set it down on the ground. Spot wriggled in my arms, desperate to get at the food. I put him down and he gobbled up the whole contents of the can in seconds. We all laughed when he let out a huge belch. Spot looked at us and wagged his tail and gave us a “What did I do?” look.

  It felt good to laugh again and briefly forget about our predicament, although it was difficult stood next to a multi- car pileup where numerous people had lost their lives. The small pup seemed like a little ray of sunshine in a darkened world.

  “I wonder what happened to its owners,” Rosenberg said, dreamily.

  “Take your pick,” Smith looked up at the wall of wrecks. “Could be any one of them. That little guy seems to be the only survivor in this shitty mess.”

  I hadn’t spared a thought for the owners and wondered if Spot was a gift to some kid who was nothing more than crushed bone and jello now. I also hadn’t thought to ask Batfish if we could take the pup along with us. I asked and she talked in baby language to the dog. I took that as a positive we had picked up another member in our party.

  “Time to get to work, people,” Smith turned to the mass of wrecked vehicles. “Let’s see if we can shift some of these bastards.” He clapped his hands and strode enthusiastically towards the pileup.

  I felt scared. I didn’t want to go anywhere near those wrecks for several reasons.

  1. It looked incredibly dangerous. Broken vehicles might tumble on top of you at any time.

  2. There might be zombies amongst the wreckage.

  3. I didn’t like the thought of seeing crushed and mutilated corpses.

  Smith studied the wall of cars for a moment. Rosenberg stood next to him with a confused expression on his face. The center barrier to the left was twisted and bent into a convex shape around several wrecks packed in tightly. The grass verge to our right was blocked by an overturned box van on its roof. The driver obviously tried to steer around the collision but had turned his vehicle over. Several vehicles had simply rolled down the verge.

  “I think the survivors must have gone back to Brynston when the road was blocked,” I remembered the traffic jam with old Pudgy Face the previous morning and the surge of zombies when Smith and I tried to leave town.

  I pictured the scene when the crash happened. A jack-knifed truck, a mass pileup of vehicles and throw in a few infected people just turning into zombies and there was a perfect recipe for panic, chaos and disaster.

  “Well, whatever happened, it’s over now,” Smith mumbled. He didn’t seem the kind of person to dwell on the past.

  “How the hell are we going to get through this wall of destruction, Smith?” I sighed in resignation. It looked impossible. We couldn’t go back to Brynston; the whole place would be one swarming mass of undead by now. We couldn’t go forward due to some weird road disaster.

  “Have a little faith, kid. Have a little faith,” Smith gave me a nod and a smug smile.

  I was sure Smith thought he was a movie character sometimes. But he was good at what he did and didn’t let us down this time. He righted a Jaguar car lying on its side with one hefty push.

  “The Brits make good cars,” he called out.

  He jumped into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine. Smith drove up the grass verge and U-turned by the overturned box van and reversed up close. He got out of the Jag and searched the trunk. He pulled out a tow rope and secured it to the box van’s tail gate. He revved the Jag’s engine and pulled forward, dragging the box van down the grassy slope.

  We clapped and cheered as Smith got out of the car and milked the applause by giving us a mock bow.

  Eazy came over holding his hand to his forehead, shielding the sunlight from his eyes. He didn’t look too happy with our route through the wreckage.

  “Listen, ya’ll. I don’t want to be the one to stick my dick in your cappuccino but I don’t think that van,” he turned back and pointed to the VW, “is going to make it over that ridge.”

  I hated to admit it but he had a point.

  “If that box van couldn’t get over the verge then that ol’ motherfucking camper got no chance.”

  “We can take the Jag,” Smith suggested, holding his arms out wide.

  “It would be too much of a squash,” Batfish flapped her hand dismissively at Smith’s idea. “Besides, we’ve got all our gear we may need in the VW. I doubt there would be room for it all in that other car,” she nodded at the stationary Jag.

  “I’m just trying to provide options.” Smith looked disappointed. I knew he was fond of muscle cars.

  “Let’s not rule anything out yet,” Rosenberg mediated.

  “We could always split up and use two vehicles,” Donna suggested.

  “I think we’d be better off sticking together in one vehicle. Strength in numbers and all that,” Batfish said and I had to agree.

  “Okay,” Smith sighed. He sounded pissed off. “Come with me, Wilde. I have a plan.”

  My heart sank. Smith’s plans usually involved danger in some capacity. He stomped forward and I picked up the pup and handed him to Rosenberg. Smith marched between the wrecked vehicles and I timidly followed.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked, not for the first time.

  “We’re going to shift these pieces of shit out the God damn way.” He kicked a broken, plastic wheel trim across the road.

  “What’s the matter? You seem a little pissed.”

  “I wanted to take the Jaguar,” Smith sneered.

  Smith hopped up onto the trunk and then onto the roof of a smashed Range Rover. I followed the pathway, hopping from wreck to wreck and running down the windshields and over the vehicles’ roofs. The vehicles made a metallic clang as I landed on them. I tried not to look through the su
nroofs. I didn’t want to see battered and shredded bodies. Smith made his way to the jackknifed truck in the center of the heap of twisted metal. He stopped two vehicles short of the truck.

  “If we try and get this bastard out the way first, there might be a big enough gap to get the camper through,” he said.

  I nodded and looked down in time to see a bloodied, gray hand rise from the open sun roof of the old blue Chrysler I was standing on. The hand grabbed my ankle and pulled me towards the darkness of the interior beneath. The head and torso of the male zombie came into view as it used my ankle to haul itself upward. The flesh was gray and puffy on the left side of its face but the right side was a smashed bloody pulp. The remains of an eye hung limply from its socket and a row of battered teeth were exposed due to the absence of any flesh on the cheek.

  I let out a small whimper in disgusted horror at the sight of the human remains attempting to use me as a climbing pole. I tried to shake the zombie loose from my leg but the vice like grip wouldn’t budge. I slipped on the shiny metal and went over on my ass. I tried to kick the hand away from my ankle but the grip held firm. The battered face was getting dangerously close to the flesh of my calf.

  “Just shoot him, Wilde,” Smith rumbled. “Stop messing about and just shoot the ugly bastard.”

  I fumbled for the Beretta but couldn’t remember where I’d put it. I was floundering about on top of the car with the half-faced zombie pulling me closer to the open sun roof. I grabbed at the radio aerial and tried to pull myself further onto the roof. The aerial snapped from its mounting and came off in my hand. I used it to whip the zombies’ hand and what was left of his face. Smith saw I was in trouble and bounded over the cars roofs. He tripped on the bar of a roof-rack and fell off the car next to me.

  I wriggled and fought but still couldn’t get Half-face off me. In desperation I turned the wire aerial over and stabbed him with the thin end. A thought flashed through my mind about Pudgy Face when he said to kill the head. I stabbed the aerial into Half-face’s empty eye socked, and then smacked the base with the palm of my hand. The aerial penetrated the brain and Half-face let go of my ankle and slithered back down the sun roof inside the car.

  I caught my breath and leant over the side of the car to see if Smith was okay. He lay on his back looking up at me.

  “I rush over to save your sorry ass and end up nearly killing myself,” Smith wheezed.

  I jumped off the car roof and gave Smith a hand to stand on his feet. He needed a moment to regain his breath. I told him how Half-face met his grisly end.

  We moved towards the truck once Smith had recovered. He put his hand on the door catch and drew his Desert Eagle. I eventually found the Beretta tucked in the back of my waist band and pointed the barrel at the door in anticipation. I couldn’t see any movement in the cab but we learned from bitter experience it was best to be prepared.

  Smith pulled the catch and flung open the door. A horrendous stench of dead, rotting flesh wafted from inside the cab and what looked like a million flies burst out into the morning air.

  “What the hell…?” I heard Smith say before I saw a fat, bald zombie sat in the passenger seat of the cab. The interior panels and the dash were smeared with blood and half eaten human body parts lay scattered on the floor and driver’s seat. The zombie gazed in our direction but carried on chewing on a hunk of flesh.

  I didn’t know if the zombie had been the truck driver in life but he was so huge that moving in and out of the cab would have been hard work whether alive or dead.

  “Looks like this lard ass has been eating all night,” Smith hissed. He aimed his pistol and fired. The top of the large zombie’s head lifted off and splattered against the driver’s window. He slumped in his seat and the morsel of flesh he was chewing dropped from his mouth and plopped onto the cab floor.

  “How are we going to move this thing?” I asked.

  I looked over the truck. It was a bright red Coronado with a huge chrome grilled front. The cab sat at a ninety degree angle to the long, white trailer. Several vehicles were buried beneath the trailer’s wheels and the bed itself.

  “These vehicles are stuck solid under there,” I said.

  “Everything has a breaking point,” Smith gave me that smile and wink again.

  “I get nervous when you do that.”

  Smith walked around the cab to the passenger door and wisely stepped back before he opened it. The huge zombie’s weight caused him to topple from the passenger seat and land with a noisy smack onto the blacktop. I noticed a bus lying on its side ten feet from the truck’s passenger door. Smith moved to one of the vehicles behind us and took a rug hanging over the back seat. He put the rug over the bloody interior of the cab. I grabbed a floor mat from another car and covered the passenger seat. We sat in the cab looking out over the mass wreckage and each lit a smoke.

  “Let’s see if this bastard will fire up,” Smith said.

  He turned the key and white smoke belched from the twin exhausts at the side of the cab, as the big six hundred horse power engine roared into life. He turned the wheel of the truck away from the trailer causing a crescendo of creaking and grinding metal from the wrecked cars underneath.

  The truck slowly crawled forward and the vehicles jammed under the axles of the truck crunched under the weight. Glass popped and shattered and the noise of grating metal sounded like someone was scraping their nails down a huge blackboard. Smith carried on the slow grinding crawl. He knocked vehicles out of the way, trying to clear a path. The truck lurched sideways and the cab titled so I was leaning against the door as we drove over the top of some kind of Sports car. We came back down onto the blacktop with a crash. Something popped in the engine and steam spewed from the grill, billowing up in front of the wind shield.

  Smith checked in the mirror and decided he was clear of the pile up. He pulled the truck over to the side of the road as the engine spluttered and died.

  “I think that ought to do,” he said and gave the steering wheel a slap of appreciation.

  I opened the cab door and hopped out back onto the road. A huge truck sized hole gaped right through the middle of the pileup. I didn’t like the look of some of the vehicles balancing on top of one another. They looked as though the briefest gust of wind would send them crashing down.

  “That doesn’t look too good,” I nodded at the teetering cars.

  “Nor does that,” Smith said.

  I turned to look at what he meant and saw what I can only assume was the remainder of the crash victims, about a hundred of them. All staggering towards us with the familiar undead gait.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Quick, we better get back to the camper van,” Smith barked.

  I wasn’t going to argue. If the zombies came through the opening we had just made, we’d be trapped on the road between the pile of wrecked cars and Brynston, with the undead squeezing us from both directions.

  We ran between the piled up vehicles and through the gap where the truck had been stuck. Smith was already yelling at the others to get back in the VW. Eazy must have realized what was going on and ran back to the camper van. He started the engine and told the others to get in. Smith and I got to the side door of the camper just as Rosenberg was climbing in.

  “Zombies,” I shouted. “Lots of them, on the other side of this wreckage wall.”

  “We got no choice but to try and cut right through them,” Eazy said.

  We agreed. Eazy swerved around the debris scattering the road and navigated the camper van through the gap. I winced as we drove passed the tilting cars on top of one another. The VW scraped down the side of one of the cars on our right. I looked out the side window and watched the pile of cars tilt back and forth. Thankfully, none fell on us.

  Donna gasped when she caught sight of the crowd of approaching undead. Many of them struggled to move with ease as their legs, necks and spines had been mangled amongst the twisted vehicles in the mass car wreck. They lumbered forward like a proce
ssion of maimed circus freaks, sporting horrendous injuries.

  “Just keep going steady,” Batfish sighed.

  I looked around and was relieved to see Rosenberg was tightly clutching our new acquaintance, the pup I’d named Spot. Luckily for him, he’d managed to crawl out of the right side of the wreckage.

  Eazy kept up a speed fast enough to prevent the zombies catching a hand hold on the vehicle. He swung the wheel left and right without losing control. If we rolled the vehicle we were dead, no question. The width of the five lane Interstate allowed him to steer between the groups of undead. They moaned in frustration as we streaked through their ranks as gnarled nails tore at the van’s paintwork.

  The VW zipped passed the crawlers, the ones who had no legs or who were too badly mangled to walk. I rubbed my face and felt a sense of relief as the morning sun beamed down onto the clear, open road.

  “How far is it to New York?” Donna turned her head and asked. I couldn’t remember her speaking to me before.

  “It’s roughly eighty miles from Brynston, so I reckon we’ve got another seventy to go,” was my guess. I didn’t know how long we’d driven when I dozed off but Smith didn’t disagree and probably knew the roads better than me.

  “In normal circumstances, it would take about an hour and a half from here. Maybe two if there’s heavy traffic,” Smith murmured.

  “But these aren’t normal circumstances, right?” Rosenberg said.

  Smith shook his head. “You got that right.”

  “So, tell me again about this flu?” I asked. Everything had happened so quickly I hadn’t given the cause of the world going to hell much thought. “It’s two kinds of flu mutating?”

  Rosenberg nodded. “It’s a mutation of avian flu and swine flu, somehow keeping the host in an animated state.”