My screaming ceased and I felt a warm glow of intoxication and light headedness. Was this the last sensation I was ever going to feel? For some reason the opening lines of the Beatles track, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” echoed around my head. Cracks like spokes on a bicycle wheel appeared in the ceiling before they began to spin in increasingly faster circles. The circle changed colors with each revolution before they blurred into one. The spinning kaleidoscope made me feel slightly nauseous so I closed my eyes and welcomed the numbness of unconsciousness.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Franco Dematteo woke from an induced sleep. He still felt groggy as he tried to recall what had happened to him in the last day or so. Memories of gun shots, zombies and soldiers swirled around in his mind. He tried to link the events together and suddenly the events clicked into place like a jigsaw puzzle.
He attempted to sit up and winced at the pain in his chest and side and remembered the gunshot wounds. His chest and side were heavily strapped with bandages, crisscrossed around his right shoulder under a loose fitting, olive colored hospital gown. It wasn’t the first time he’d been shot in his life and he knew it probably wouldn’t be the last.
Dematteo thought of his traveling companions, Brett Wilde, Eazy, Batfish, Julia and Rosenberg. Were they already dead? He’d not much cared for anybody over the last few years but kind of liked this new bunch he’d recently hooked up with. They all knew him as Smith but he didn’t need an alter ego anymore. No cops or law enforcement authorities would be chasing him to any further extent. He decided to try and help his new companions escape if he could but first he had to evaluate his own chances of a getaway.
Tubes and wires were attached to his chest, up his nose and his male organ. A bag of clear saline liquid hung from a chrome drip feed stand attached to a tube entering his arm. The drip feed stood on the left side of the bed next to a heart monitor which blipped showing a healthy heartbeat. Why were they keeping him alive? Fattening the calf before the kill, maybe.
He scanned the room and observed his surroundings. Several empty beds lay in horizontal rows of three around the perimeter walls. The room was an infirmary of some kind. Dematteo noticed a soldier slumped against the wall by the door. His rifle, flak jacket and an empty bottle of Tequila lay discarded at each side of his feet. His head rested on his chest, snoring slightly in an alcoholic induced slumber.
“Looks like they underestimated young, Frankie,” Dematteo whispered to himself. “This jerk thought he had the easy option of guarding me.”
These bastards holding him and his new friends’ captives had pissed him off and now they were going to pay. This rag-tag bunch of so called soldiers was just a cluster of washed up nobodies clinging to the fact they were once in the military.
Dematteo had spent twelve years in the infantry in the US Marine Corps, rising to the rank of sergeant. His specialty was unarmed combat and weapon handling. He saw combat action during the war against Iraq in 1991 and taken part in several Black Ops missions in Bosnia. The Marine Corps had been his life until he met his future wife and given up his military career for a settled life in New York City.
A promising second career as a New York Precinct cop beckoned when he left the Marines, living in a Brooklyn apartment with his new wife.
Dematteo’s life drastically turned for the worse when he was implicated in a police bribery scandal. He had made a little extra cash by supplying a criminal gang with a few snippets of information. Nothing damaging he’d thought at the time but evidence was discovered in an undercover operation by the FBI. Dematteo and several other cops names were linked with payments by the organized crime syndicate.
Three years in detention in Rikers Island prison was considered a lenient sentence by the New York press. Life in jail had been tough for Dematteo. A crooked ex-cop was considered the lowest of the low by the inmates. His wife only visited twice and filed for divorce after a year in incarceration. He never heard from her again.
Once released after serving his sentence, Dematteo had taken the only career path left open to him. He hooked up with the criminal gang, full of resentment and disillusioned with the outside world. He became good at the third career in his life and began obtaining more money than he’d ever earned making an honest living. Bribery, extortion, robbery and even murder became the everyday schedule of his life.
Dematteo had taken enough shit in his life and wasn’t going to let these bunch of losers end it performing some weird experiments. He pulled the tubes from his body and unattached the heart monitor tabs on his chest. The heart machine bleeped a monotonous tone and showed a continuous flat line on the screen. The soldier stirred in the corner of the room but didn’t wake.
Dematteo hauled himself from the bed, trying to ignore the pain in his side and chest. He stumbled trying to find his feet and steadied himself by clutching the drip feed pole. Nausea and dizziness threatened to take hold of his body. He forced himself to stand and took a few seconds to get his breathing under control.
He bent and clicked off the electric plug socket to the heart rate monitor to kill the perpetual bleep. He steadied himself again, leaning on the bed before slowly shuffling towards the slumbering soldier. Each footstep was racked with pain, shooting the width and length of his torso. He used the pain as determination of what he was going to do to these bastards.
He stopped dead in his tracks when he heard a noise from outside the room. A door banged shut and three shadows went by the infirmary door window, inaudible voices sounded as they passed. Dematteo waited a few seconds before carrying on his painful trek across the floor.
Dematteo leant his left shoulder on the wall and looked down over the shaven headed soldier.
“You stupid, useless fuck,” he whispered. Dematteo couldn’t believe how slack this guy had been. Drinking on watch and he hadn’t even secured Dematteo to the bed.
He considered how he was going to end this sorry, drunken sack of shit’s life. If he hadn’t been injured, he would have just broken the soldier’s neck with one quick twist. He felt too weak to try that maneuver. The easy way would be to pick up the rifle and riddle the fool with bullets but the gunshots were bound to alert more soldiers. He had to be silent and stealthy until he could free the rest of his group.
The soldier had a black handled sheath knife strapped to his thigh. Dematteo nodded to himself. He slowly bent down over the soldier and popped the catch, freeing the handle. Silently, he drew the knife out of the sheath and studied the razor sharp, four inch steel serrated blade. At least this asshole had chosen a good type of knife. Too bad his weapon of choice was going to end his life. Dematteo had seen the Swedish style hunting knife before, when he was in the Marines.
The handle weighed heavy in his hand. Dematteo knew he’d have to get the kill over and done with before the window of opportunity was lost. He positioned himself over the top of the soldiers head in a slight crouching stance.
Sudden hysterical screaming from the next room blocked Dematteo’s concentration. The shrieks jolted the soldier from his sleep. He looked up with bloodshot eyes that widened when he saw Dematteo standing over him brandishing the knife. He let out a terrified yell, loud enough for the whole building to hear.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Dematteo didn’t have time to wait now. He clasped his left hand over the soldier’s mouth to stem his petrified screams. This was no time for compassion. He jerked the soldier’s head back hard against the wall and ran the blade of the hunting knife in a deep slicing motion across the terrified man’s throat, ensuring to sever the jugular vein.
Thick, crimson blood spurted over Dematteo from the soldier’s throat wound. He kept his hand clamped firmly over the dying man’s mouth and nose to silence him and also to stem the gurgling sounds of death.
The soldier’s legs kicked in wild spasm as his body began closing down. Dematteo gripped the man’s head firmly for a few seconds until the body went limp and lifeless.
“One down, a few
more to go,” Dematteo growled.
He slumped down and leaned his back to the wall, in a crouched position, resting for a while. He ignored the pain and the urge to crawl back into the bed and sleep. The screams from next door sounded like a male and he wondered which one of his friends was being tortured in there.
Dematteo wiped the blood stained knife blade on the soldier’s upper shirt sleeve. He picked up the discarded flak jacket and wincing with the effort and against the pain, slung on the heavy garment. Next, he took off the sheath and strapped it to his own thigh and slid the knife back in place. He picked up the M-16 rifle, removed the magazine to check it was full before replacing it. He unclipped the soldier’s belt containing some spare ammunition magazines and attached it low around his waist.
He caught a glimpse of himself in a wall mirror to the right and studied the pale, ridiculous looking figure in the reflection. A blood stained lunatic in a hospital gown, armed with an assault rifle and a hunting knife. No time to clean up or worry about appearances, this was a combat zone.
Dematteo shuffled to the door and looked out into the corridor through the small, rectangular window. Nobody came to the dead soldier’s aid. The screams from the next room had probably stifled the soldier’s cries. He opened the door and peeked out the length of the empty corridor. A dull hum of power generators pulsed through the air. He slid with his back along the wall so he was next to the door where the screams came from. Moving slowly, Dematteo swayed to his left and took a glance through the door window. He saw some sort of laboratory inside, the doctor and his orderly pacing around. Brett Wilde lay strapped, unconscious to a chair in the center of the room. His face was pale and veins stood out on his forehead.
What in the hell had they done to him?
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Brett, come on wake up,” the voice commanded with some desperation.
Whoever was trying to wake me was obviously desperate to grab my attention. A hand shook my shoulder violently. I slowly opened my eyes trying to ignore the thumping pain in my head.
“Sam?” I croaked when I saw who was trying to shake me from my sleep. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Brett, please, it’s cold and I want to go,” she whined.
Sam stamped her foot and hugged herself with her arms across her chest and flicked back blond hair out of her blue eyes, a trait she always performed when she was in a bad mood. I stared at her for a few seconds realizing how beautiful she was. Sam was short, only five feet tall but I’d always loved how petite, cute and cuddly she was.
“We should never have broken up,” I muttered. “Will you take me back?”
I remembered all the dreams and hopes for the future we’d talked about and shared. Moving away from Brynston, getting good jobs in some cosmopolitan city, a three-bedroom house in the suburbs, raising kids, a dog called Lola, walks in the park on a Sunday afternoon. A swelling of sorrow and regret rose in my throat.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brett,” she sighed, wrinkling her nose. “We’ve been out all night and now I just want to get some sleep.”
“But the zombies,” I stammered. “Where are they? God, where are we? And where is Smith? Is he still alive?”
“Brett, you have to seriously stop taking drugs.”
“No, you don’t understand,” I wailed. “The zombies took over Brynston and then I looked for Pete and Marlon but I couldn’t find them. Then I met this guy called Smith and we escaped with these other bunch of people but someone got shot and another one burnt to death and then we found this dog. We were trying to meet dad on a yacht in New York but we got captured by soldiers at Newark Airport and Smith got shot. Then they were going to do these experiments on us and that’s all I can remember.”
“You seriously need some help,” Sam sighed. “Look around you, Brett. We’re in London. That’s London, England not London, Zombie World or wherever the hell you’re ranting on about.”
What the hell was I talking about? I felt weird. My brain wouldn’t function properly. I looked around and saw we were huddled inside an underground railway station. I recognized the logo of a red circle with a blue bar across the middle as a London tube train station on the grey tiled wall in front of me. The blue bar had the word “Embankment” in white block letters through the center.
“Why are we in London?”
“Will you stop all this weirdness, Brett? You’re scaring me,” she said. “We flew out of Newark Airport to London last week to come and stay with your mom.” Sam spoke in a slow tone as though I was having trouble understanding English.
I looked around the surroundings, black and white checkered floor tiles; shops with metal shutters pulled down over their fronts, not yet open for the day’s trading. I smelled the unmistakable odor of soot and stale air that only the London Underground has. I couldn’t remember anything about traveling to London from New York. I felt my face and wiped away a thin film of sweat from my forehead. I felt shaky and nauseous. What was happening to me?
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Sam chirped. “And when I get back, I expect you to have pulled yourself together, Brett,” she added before stomping away.
Around two dozen people ambled around the station lobby, either waiting for early morning trains or recovering from sleeping rough on the floor. I stared at a dirty, disheveled hobo who sat on the floor with his back against the wall, some ten feet away. I recognized his face but couldn’t figure where from. The hobo studied pages from an old, crinkled newspaper. He muttered and mumbled incoherent words to himself as he read, then abruptly stopped and turned his head to look directly at me.
“You’ve got to whack ‘em in the head. Totally destroy the fuckin’ brain,” he growled in a London cockney accent.
“Who are you?” I stammered. I felt scared and confused. Memories rose to the surface of my mind and darted away again like basking fish at the top of a sun drenched pool.
“It’s no good sitting on yer fuckin’ ass around ‘ere, son,” the hobo whispered. “You’ve got to get out while ya still can.” He stood up and shuffled towards the lobby entrance, flinging the crinkled newspaper pages to the floor.
“How do you know me?” I shouted after the hobo. Several people turned to look at me. “How do you know me?” I shouted again, rising to my feet.
“Brett, what are you doing?”
I spun around and saw Sam standing behind me with a look of concern on her face. A single tear formed in the corner of her right eye.
“Some old homeless guy just told me to get away.”
I remembered who he was, Pudgy Face from Brynston. He was the guy who had smashed the zombie’s head on the sidewalk during the first day of the crisis.
“There’s no one there, Brett.”
“Pudgy Face!”
“What?”
“That hobo guy was Pudgy Face from Brynston. He smashed a zombie’s skull to bits on the sidewalk right in front of me with dad’s golf club.”
“Brett, I think you should go and see a doctor, seriously.” Sam wiped tears from her eyes.
I knew she was worried about me but something wasn’t right. I bent down and picked up the hobo’s discarded newspaper pages and folded them out. The headlines froze the breath in my lungs.
“Look,” I handed the crinkled paper to Sam. “Read that.”
“The Dead Rise,” Sam read the headline. She silently read the rest of the article. “This is probably just some hoax.” She threw the paper on the ground. “Stories like this are in the news all the time. It doesn’t mean they’re real.”
“Maybe I’ve had some sort of premonition about the future.” I grabbed Sam by both shoulders. “Don’t leave me when we get back to Brynston, Sam. I can’t remember the date it all started but I know we had split up when the disaster began.”
“Let go of me, Brett. You’re hurting me.” Sam shrugged off my grip. “You’ve turned into some whack job.” She turned and ran away, towards the lobby door.
<
br /> I went to run after her but my legs wouldn’t move, like I was rooted to the spot.
“Sam, come back,” I yelled, suddenly overcome with an overwhelming sense of foreboding. “It’s not safe out there.”
I stumbled forward, regaining the use of my legs and ran to the lobby door after Sam. Brilliant bright light blinded me as I passed through the arched entrance. I blinked in the light and saw Smith, blood stained and pale, holding a rifle and staring into my eyes.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“When are we going to induce the patient with the first shot of contamination?” Finn, the orderly, asked.
“Oh, soon,” the doctor replied. “As soon as we’ve taken all the bits we need from Earkhart’s body.”
Both medical men turned sharply towards the door as it banged open.
“Okay you two bastards stand completely still,” a big guy in the doorway boomed. They recognized him as the trouble maker who had shot Earkhart earlier.
Dematteo moved into the room and shut the door behind him. He pointed the M-16 rifle left and right at the two medical men.
“Move closer together and raise your hands above your heads,” he commanded. The doctor and his orderly complied, raising blood soaked, gloved hands into the air.
Dematteo glanced at Brett Wilde strapped to the chair.
“What have you two vicious assholes done to my man, here?” Dematteo nodded in Wilde’s direction.
“We’ve only induced him with a sedative,” the doctor snapped.
Wilde’s head lolled inside the neck restraint and his eyes flickered under the closed lids. Dematteo didn’t like the deathly pale pallor of the young man’s skin. He seen battle casualties look in a better state.
The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers Page 18