The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers

by Christian Fletcher

  Smith stopped the boat, letting the engine idle and drew his SIG pistol. Batfish looked out of the cab feeling terrified. Smith heard a gunshot and quickly moved out onto the deck. The body of a zombie lay at Eazy’s feet. Smith looked at Eazy and saw the blood running down his right arm and the Springfield .45 ACP in his left hand. Smith felt the strength drain from his body.

  “You okay?” A dumb question he thought.

  Tears rolled down Eazy’s cheeks as he shook his head. “Nah, man, I’m fucked,” he whined and gave the dead zombie a kick in the ribs.

  Eazy bent down and grabbed the Coast Guard man by the back of his shirt and dragged him over the deck. He rolled the body over the side into the river and fired a few more shots at the floating corpse.

  “Motherfucker,” he screamed.

  Batfish tentatively staggered out onto the deck, feeling nauseous through motion sickness and felt even worse when she saw the wound on Eazy’s forearm.

  “Oh, no,” she gasped, standing behind Smith.

  “They got me in the end, Smith. They got me, man,” Eazy wailed.

  Smith looked down at his shoes. He liked Eazy and was sorry to see him go. Tears ran down Batfish’s cheeks as she covered her mouth with her hand, too distressed to speak.

  “It was a pleasure knowing you, kid,” Smith sighed.

  Eazy nodded and stood close to the side of the boat with the barrel of the Springfield .45 against his temple. Batfish sobbed and rested her forehead against Smith’s shoulder.

  “You two are the bomb, you know that?” Eazy sniffed.

  Smith nodded and gave Eazy a wink. Eazy smiled through his tears before he pulled the trigger. Smith looked down again and when he looked up Eazy was gone. Batfish wailed on his shoulder. Smith gulped down the sorrowful bulge in his throat and put his arm around Batfish. He held her close as she sobbed into his chest.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  I used to be quite good on a bike as a kid, doing all sorts of skids, swerves and maneuvers. Now, the years of self abuse began to take their toll again. My legs felt weak pushing the pedals around and my lungs burned. Sweat formed on my forehead and ran down my face.

  We cycled by some kind of stadium on our right between the tree lined road. Large numbers of undead stumbled around the entrance. The road curved around to our left and I saw a blue sign on a lamppost with “Pier A” written in white lettering and an arrow pointing to our right.

  “This could be the place, Denny,” I gasped.

  Sherman still ran alongside us dodging the swarms of undead. I swerved the bike right off the main street to a slip road that seemed to head around the back of the pier.

  “I don’t think this is the place, Brett,” Rosenberg said. “It’s a historic building. It doesn’t look like any ships sail from here anymore.”

  I briefly glanced up at the pier buildings. Rosenberg was right. The long gray building with a green roof and green flash looked like something from the Victorian age. The windows were boarded and scaffolding stood against certain parts of the structure.

  “Shit,” I spat and carried on pedaling passed Pier A and the old docks. The route we were now on looked like we had rejoined the coastal Esplanade.

  Zombies lurched through the trees of some park to our left. I looked into the distance and saw a ferry terminal dead ahead. I glanced right and caught sight of a large white yacht anchored a few hundred yards off the shoreline. Could this be the place we were looking for? I felt a tinge of excitement. I scanned the yacht’s upper deck looking for signs of life.

  “Look out, Brett” Rosenberg screeched.

  I turned my head, looking back to where we were headed. A zombie with smashed legs, bent in different directions, crawled in front of the bike across the path. I touched the brakes but couldn’t stop the impact. The front wheel crashed into the zombie’s skull and snapped the head backward with a sickening crack. I lost control as the handle bars twisted violently from my grip. Rosenberg and I were thrown from the rider’s position onto the asphalt. I flew over the top of the handle bars and rolled forward several yards. Rosenberg fell to the left side. Sherman slowed and rounded back, barking at the approaching zombies.

  Rosenberg sat up and tried to get to his feet, searching for his glasses that had fallen off his head in the collision. In the confusion, he didn’t notice the female zombie directly behind him.

  “Watch out, Denny,” I yelled.

  The circle of undead closed around us, moaning and lowing in anticipation of fresh blood. The female zombie behind Rosenberg lurched forward. Her long, black hair and cracked white skin made her look like a witch. The stumbled on top of Rosenberg’s shoulders and sank her teeth into the left side of his neck. Rosenberg screamed and blood spurted from the wound. He shoved the female zombie to one side and reached into his pockets taking out the bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

  “Run for your life, Brett,” Rosenberg shouted, his face pale and screwed up in pain. Blood rolled down his shoulder and chest.

  I staggered to my feet, feeling shocked and horrified. Rosenberg and I were sort of kindred spirits and now, through my negligence, I’d killed him.

  “I’m sorry, Denny,” I squawked.

  “Just go, Brett,” Rosenberg was struggling to speak. His words came out as a grunt.

  Sherman barked and circled me, trying to ward off the surrounding masses of undead. Rosenberg opened the bottle of hydrogen peroxide and then spilled the ketamine tablets into the top. He gave me a nod, replaced the lid and shook the bottle. The female zombie reached for him again. Several more undead closed in for the kill. Rosenberg hurled the bottle onto the asphalt.

  A bright, yellow light momentarily blinded me. The explosion rocked me back onto the seat of my pants. The sound hit me in a wave. Several of the undead surrounding Rosenberg blew to pieces. A few seconds later my vision cleared. Puddles of blood and body parts scattered the pathway and Rosenberg had simply disintegrated under the blast. I didn’t want to see if any of his body remained on the path. Jesus! Rosenberg had certainly gone out with a bang in every sense. That was some bomb he’d put together.

  Tears streamed down my face as I scrambled to my feet. The explosion had momentarily confused the undead and most of them stopped still, staring at the smoke spiraling in the air and the broken body parts scattered on the path.

  I ran towards the ferry terminal. Guilt and frustration washed over me in nauseous waves. Sherman trotted beside me, his eyes firmly fixed on my face. I didn’t know if he could sense my emotion, first Soames, then Julia and now Rosenberg. All gone in a matter of hours.

  I reached the glass fronted, white framed ferry terminal which resembled a giant conservatory. The interior was dark with shadows and no signs of life. I banged on the glass and tried the door which was locked. No more ferries from this terminal.

  Groups of undead came towards me, moaning with their hands outstretched. I’d be overwhelmed if I didn’t move soon. The clearest route was back the way we had come. Sherman barked a warning at the zombies closing in on us. Reluctantly, I turned away from the ferry terminal and ran, heading north towards Pier A again.

  Crowds of undead blocked the route back out onto the main street, Battery Place. I had no choice but to run around the back of the old pier. Maybe this was it, the end of the line and I was just prolonging the inevitable. I might as well climb the scaffolding and throw myself off onto the tarmac. All together the thought came to me that zombies couldn’t climb. The scaffolding was my temporary savior.

  A collapsed wire fence ringed the old pier buildings, where the construction workers had separated the structure from the public. Sherman and I leaped the fence in one bound. The limited defense of the fence wouldn’t keep the zombies out but gave us a vital few seconds to gain some ground.

  A sturdy wooden ladder stood against the first set of scaffolding we came to. I pulled the bottom of the ladder back across the jetty to allow Sherman more accessibility to climb. He wouldn’t go up at first and looked bac
k at me with uncertainty. I pushed his butt up the rungs.

  “Come on, boy,” I hissed.

  Eventually and hesitantly, he began to climb. I followed quickly shoving the poor dog every hesitant step of the way. We got to the first scaffold level and rolled onto the wooden boards. I lay on my back, gasping and dead beat looking back across the shoreline. Zombies filtered through the wire fence in steady pursuit. I sat up and summoned my last source of energy by pulling the ladder up onto our scaffold level. We were safe, temporarily.

  I lay back on the wooden boards trying to block out the sound of the zombie’s moans from below and the demise of my companions. Sherman pawed me on the stomach and then proceeded to lick my face. I stroked his head and looked into his big brown eyes, the only buddy I had left in this new, putrid world.

  “What are we going to do, boy?” I whispered.

  Options were incredibly thin on the ground. I just needed to get my breath for the moment. “Your options are…” I heard myself saying from my days on the phone in the call center. “Your options are…1 – get eaten by zombies, 2- kill yourself by whatever means to hand, 3 – try a pathetic escape attempt and get your friends killed in the process, sorry you’ve already done that, 4- Do nothing and stay on the scaffolding and slowly starve to death, or press 0 for the main menu.”

  “Can I redial and start again,” I laughed to myself.

  Damn, I needed a cigarette and was thankful to find I still had a crumpled pack and a lighter in my pocket. I lit one and enjoyed the smoke burning in my lungs. I blew the smoke out into the early evening, clear blue New York sky.

  “Get fucked,” I shouted down to the crowds of undead massing at the foot of the scaffolding.

  I definitely decided option 1 was out of the question. Fuck being one of those useless, walking pieces of crap.

  I tried to look out to the river again where the moored yacht was but trees from the nearby park blocked my view. Was Dad still alive and well on that yacht, drinking a cocktail and looking at a nice piece of ass? I’d loved to have introduced Julia to him as my girlfriend, a well spoken English girl who his son, Brett Wilde, had heroically saved from the jaws of death to lead a charmed lifestyle aboard a luxury yacht sailing to the remaining ports still unaffected by the undead virus. Nah, Brett Wilde was just another asshole who perished like the rest of them but got lucky for a while by hooking up with some lunatic called Smith. I saw my other self sitting against the opposite scaffold pole, casually smoking and drinking a cold Bud, giving me a knowing “told you so” look.

  Shit, I wished I had a beer, a nice cold bottle of beer, my throat felt like I’d been gargling gravel. One thing I realized was I needed to take a piss. I knelt over the side of the scaffold and took great delight in pissing over the zombies heads down below.

  “Hah! Drink that, you bastards,” I laughed, spraying those bunch of ugly fuck faces with a golden shower. “That’s the only piece of me you’re going to get.”

  I laughed harder when Sherman followed suit and cocked his leg over the side of the scaffold.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  “Wilde, put your dick away, you fucking pervert,” came a voice over a bull horn from somewhere to my right.

  The implacable voice was from Smith. I knew his tone. Where was he? Another voice in my head?

  “Get down here on this boat and we’ll see what the hell’s happening on that yacht,” the bull horn voice came again.

  What the hell was going on?

  I put myself away and looked around to the river. I saw a small boat bobbing near the pier, with a big guy and a large girl both stood at the edge.

  “Are you alone?” the bull horn voice screeched.

  I gave a thumbs up sign and instantly regretted it. A good thing to be alone? Lost all my crew, I knew Smith would call that a failure. I’d seen enough war and gangster movies to figure that.

  “100% casualties, sorry, sir!”- “What a complete fuck up, boy!” “Well, sir, I managed to rescue a dog!” – “Well done son, we lost the war but we saved a big, stupid, dog!”

  It was Smith on the shoreline! My mind went yellow for some reason. A ghost from zombie past! In a silly little boat, a boat that he said he wouldn’t take across the river.

  “Smith, is that you?” I hollered, across the bay.

  “Fucking right, man” the bull horn replied.

  “Smith, get me the fuck out of here!” I pulled no punches. Relief hit me like a clout around the face. “Escape route via sea by a man called Smith,” Just like James fucking Bond!

  “You got yourself into a situation from we what we can see here, kiddo.”

  “Yeah, only me left,” I stifled a sob. “Shit happens, don’t it, Smith?” I tried to sound like a big tough guy like on Sopranos or The Godfather movies.

  “Sure does, man. You got to get to us because we can’t get too close to the shoreline, otherwise those motherfuckers are going to jump all over us, you understand?”

  I knew from Smith’s tone he didn’t rate my chance of success. I looked across the scaffold and realized we’d have to climb higher to get anywhere near a good leap into the river to clear the pier and get near the boat. At best, into zombie soup at worst, strawberry jello on the pier.

  Well, what the fuck, eh?

  I glanced at my other self sitting smugly on the corner of the scaffold level. He flicked his cigarette butt into the air and tossed his beer bottle over the side.

  “Go for it, dude,” he mumbled. “Go for it, dude, fuck, yeah!”

  In the grand scheme of things, I didn’t have a lot to lose really.

  “You got some guns, Smith?” I yelled.

  “Yeah, we got some fire power from the shore, kiddo.”

  “We’re coming down.”

  I scrambled up onto my feet, grabbing Sherman by his collar and studied the scaffolding on the old pier. He didn’t want to move but this was our only chance of survival. We scrambled up the interior scaffold ladders to a higher level. We ran across the wooden boards, our feet causing a “planking” sound. The zombies below moaned with anticipation at our downfall.

  I dragged Sherman to the last part of the scaffolding at the end of the old pier and took a leap of faith off the wooden boards into the Hudson. My previous life flashed before me, Sam, Dad, Mom, Pete, Marlon, Julia, Rosenberg, Soames, Donna, Kell. Their faces came up one by one in my mind like an FBI wanted file, their smiles, hopes and dreams, all the thoughts they had in their minds.

  I hit the water a few yards from the boat and sunk under the surface. I let myself float down. The water was cool and refreshing on my sweat soaked skin. I wanted to stay under the water and let the current take me to the bottom of the river bed. Leave me here with the fish and the dead.

  I stayed below the surface until I could no longer hold my breath. I floated up and hit the open air, taking a huge gasp of air.

  Sherman had already swum to the boat. Batfish pulled him out of the water by his collar and into the deck.

  “Come on, Wilde man, swim,” Smith barked at me. He waved his hands towards himself, gesturing me to get to the boat.

  I turned my head back to the shore and watched the undead tumbling off the pier into the river. They had my scent and weren’t going to give up easily. I attempted a bad front crawl style swim stroke towards the boat with hardly enough energy to make the short distance and unintentionally swallowed huge gulps of river water. In my mind, the theme tune to the Jaws movie was playing. Beware of underwater zombie attacks!

  Smith grabbed my wrist and pulled me towards the boat. I struggled to haul myself over the side but Smith grasped the back of my jacket and dragged me onto the deck of the boat. I lay on my back, sopping wet, coughing out water and gasping for air.

  “I thought you were going to give me some covering fire?” I wheezed.

  “Good to see you too, kid,” Smith grunted and turned to the cab.

  Batfish was introducing Sherman to Spot. They sniffed noses and asses, both with wagging
tails. I noticed Eazy wasn’t about but didn’t ask where he was, the answer was too obvious. I liked Eazy, another member of our little gang lost.

  Smith powered the boat forward and steered away from the shore. He shouted something to me but I couldn’t hear over the noise of the engine. I crawled over to the cab and cocked my hand to my ear.

  “Do you think that’s your Dad’s yacht over there?” Smith pointed to the vessel I’d seen from the shore.

  I gazed across the bay and couldn’t see any more sea traffic in the vicinity.

  “It’s the only ship out here,” I said.

  “Okay, we’ll go and have a look.”

  Smith steered our boat towards the yacht. We circled around but couldn’t see any signs of life on the upper deck or through the smoke tinted windows of the structure.

  “Nice yacht,” Smith said. “Worth a few dollars.”

  We’d reached our destination, nirvana, Valhalla, but I had a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something didn’t feel right.

  “Smith, stop alongside that climbing ladder and I’ll go onboard and have a look,” I said, pointing to a rope ladder swaying on the yacht’s left side.

  Smith nodded and steered the boat towards the ladder. He handed me a big old hand gun.

  “You know how to use one of these now. It’s a SIG. Better take it just in case.”

  I nodded and took the weapon.

  The engine reduced revs as Smith brought us alongside the ladder, bobbing on the waves. I nodded to Smith and hauled myself up the rope ladder with the hand gun tucked in the back of my waist band.

  The yacht deck was quiet. Only a flag on the mast, flapping in the breeze broke the silence.

  “Hello, anybody here?” I called out.

  Nobody answered but I thought I heard a monotonous wail from somewhere in the bowels of the yacht. I drew the hand gun from my waist band and flicked off the safety.