“Try it again, Mac,” Smith barked.
McElroy turned the ignition key again. The engine rumbled then died. He tried again, the muffler belched out a big cloud of black smoke out of the rear of the truck. The engine spluttered into life but didn’t sound good. Diesel induced fumes lingered beneath the overhanging tree branches. McElroy pumped the gas pedal repeatedly and somehow managed to keep the engine running.
I heard Wingate shriek something but couldn’t make out her words above the revving truck engine.
“Keep it running, Mac,” Smith yelled.
McElroy poked his head out through the open door. “I’m going to try and pull the truck back up to the road. Make sure you’re all clear.”
Smith tugged the jumper’s crocodile clips off the battery and slammed down the hood.
“Hold on a second, Mac,” Smith shouted. “We need to load this damn thing onboard.” He lifted the jumper with one hand.
McElroy nodded. “Lob it in the back compartment.”
Smith moved to the heavy metal doors at the rear of the truck and wrenched the tailgate bolt open. I gathered up the farming tools and tossed them alongside the battery jumper that Smith had shoved onto the interior flatbed.
“You planning on doing some more gardening, Wilde?” Smith quizzed me.
I shook my head. “You never know, Smith.”
He grinned and slammed the tailgate shut. We rushed around the side of the truck. Wingate was already running over towards us.
“We have to go,” she screamed, as she hurtled away from the road. “They’re coming real close.”
Dante was already inside the cab, sitting alongside McElroy to his right.
“Shove over, dickhead,” Smith growled.
Dante hurriedly complied, looking increasingly scared. He bum shuffled up against the passenger door.
Smith and I waited for Wingate to catch up with us before we entered the cab.
“We want to hope this damn truck will get us out of here,” she gasped, clutching her rifle close to her chest. “That whole crowd of undead is right there on the opposite side of the barn. There’s got to be at least one hundred of those fucking things.” Her voice cracked and she was wide eyed with panic.
“Get in the truck,” Smith ordered, ushering Wingate inside the cab.
She clambered over the back of McElroy and slid onto the bench seat alongside Dante.
“You need somebody to see you back, Mac?” Smith asked.
“No, fuck that, Smith,” McElroy barked. “Just get the fuck in the cab will you.” He looked stressed, glancing between us and the dash. He dumped his boot on the clutch tried to ram the transmission into reverse gear. The gearbox whined and clunked as the cogs refused to conform.
Smith nodded sideways at me, ushering me to get in the truck. I didn’t complain and bundled across the back of McElroy to take my place alongside Wingate. I maneuvered my rifle around my body and held it across my chest. McElroy crunched the gear lever again and a bleeping noise sounded around the interior.
“I’ve got it in reverse,” McElroy yelled. “Come on, Smith, get the fuck in here.”
“Here they come,” Smith muttered and clambered into the cab, accidently kicking McElroy in the head as he lumbered over the top of him.
“Jesus, Smith. You big clumsy eejit,” McElroy shouted. “Cool yer jets, man.”
Smith bustled alongside me and the truck’s cab already felt cramped with five people squashed into the bench seat. McElroy slammed the driver’s door shut and glanced in his side mirror. I leaned over Smith and also took a peek in the mirror. A dust cloud surrounded the roof of the barn and the leaders in the shuffling undead pack appeared into focus. They reached out in front of them as though they were trying to grab at the cloying air. A collective sound of moaning and groaning drowned out the noise of the truck’s engine.
“Hold onto your hats, guys,” McElroy growled. “It might get a little hairy.” He released the clutch and booted the gas pedal.
The truck lurched backwards. The passenger side mirror scraped against the barn’s wooden wall, breaking the slats in a jagged line. The mirror frame caught one of the thicker, less rotten interior support structures. The mirror glass shattered and the whole frame was ripped from the side of the truck.
The vehicle lurched from side to side as the wheels spun in the ruts in the hard soil. The cab rocked violently and I clumped heads with Smith. We both winced and rubbed our temples.
“Oh, my god,” Wingate screamed.
McElroy tried to reverse the truck straight back onto the road but the deep ruts and damp soil beneath the wheels caused the vehicle to lurch sideways to the right, back against the barn wall. The right side of the cab crashed against the wooden struts and the force of the powerful vehicle broke the partially rotten support structures. The barn’s rusting tin roof and thick timber beams creaked and pitched over towards the truck.
“Holy shit,” I gasped. The whole fucking building was about to come down on us.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Get us the fuck out of here,” Wingate screamed.
The left side wall of the barn folded in on itself and the corrugated tin roof hurtled towards us. I momentarily caught sight of the hung corpses flailing sideways as the roof tore apart and crashed down onto the top of the truck.
McElroy revved the engine and continued to drive the truck backwards as a rain of wood and metal and dead bodies smashed against the cab roof. The passenger window shattered, showering us with glass chips. We recoiled and ducked down in our seats while broken glass rained across the cab. Dante screamed and I glanced to the right to see a dusty human head with tufts of black hair and a puffy gray face poking through the broken side window. The opposite end of a severed rope still wrapped around the corpse’s neck dangled between Dante’s legs. He squealed and shoved the dead body back out of the open window.
Rotten wooden beams snapped and rusty tin panels crunched beneath the truck’s wheels. A ton of mud, straw, dry bird shit and silt poured through the broken passenger window. It felt as though hell was raining down on us.
“Hang on in there, guys,” McElroy shouted. “I swear to god I’ll get us out of here.”
The cab rocked fiercely and I thought the whole vehicle was going to turn over on its side. I heard the back wheels spin aggressively against the rough terrain and glanced in the driver’s side mirror once again. The view had changed and along with the debris of the barn crashing all around us, a large crowd of undead surrounded the rear of the truck. Their cracked and mutilated faces leered in the mirror’s reflection. Their gnarled hands scraped against the vehicle’s mud spattered green paint. The screams and moans of the zombie crowd swarming around the vehicle drowned out the belching diesel engine.
“Oh, shut yer bake, yer bunch of pig ugly wankers,” McElroy yelled, glancing into the side mirror. He screwed up his face in determination, dumped his boot on the gas pedal and the truck reeled backwards at a fast pace, knocking down walking corpses like bowling pins.
“Go for it, Mac,” Smith barked.
Bones crunched and rotten bodies disintegrated beneath the truck’s wheels. Hands and fingernails scraped against the outside of the vehicle. McElroy spun the steering wheel, reversing through clumps of debris and multiple undead and back onto the road. He hit the brakes hard to avoid overshooting and reversing too far back off the road and into the ditch on the opposite side. The sudden stop caused us to thump back into our seats. My earlier feeling of nausea was already returning with a vengeance.
The undead flocked around the back and sides of the truck, grasping the exterior for any kind of handhold. The stench of their rotting flesh and general filth gusted in through the wrecked passenger window. Dante screamed and moved his head as far from the gaping hole as he could muster.
McElroy spun the steering wheel back the opposite way and slammed the gear lever into first. The gearbox clanked again and McElroy booted the gas. The truck lurched forward and McElr
oy quickly went up through the gears as the vehicle gathered speed. He turned the steering wheel left and right in quick succession, causing the truck to snake from side to side. I wondered what he was doing and glanced in the driver’s side mirror. Undead bodies tumbled from the side of the truck, unable to gain their grip any longer against the swerving motion. I watched the ghouls fall from the vehicle and roll along the dusty hard surface of the road. Their limbs flailed helplessly as they rotated through the combination of dry soil and sand and they reminded me of those tumble weed bushes in old cowboy movies.
McElroy seemed satisfied we had no more undead stragglers once we were around a mile along the bumpy road. He righted the truck, slowed our speed and kept driving in a neat line, following the center of the road.
I heard a collective sigh of relief from everybody inside the cab and we sagged into our seats a little further.
“Well, that was close to what you could term a major screw up,” Wingate groaned.
I watched a mud spattered road sign pass by, which was impossible to read. “How far to the airport?” I asked, already feeling cramped with all the bodies, rifles, baggage and the general stench inside the cab.
“I’d say around ten miles,” Smith nonchalantly replied. “It’s just off a right turn off this road we’re on. We can see it from the road when we come close by.”
“Let’s hope we getter better luck at the airport than we had in the port town,” Wingate sighed.
“What’s the problem, Sarah?” Smith asked, pulling a pack of smokes from his top pocket. “We got out of there in one piece, didn’t we?”
“Only just, Smith,” Wingate said. “Only just.”
Smith rumbled and offered the cigarette pack around. We all took one apart from Wingate, who didn’t smoke. The broken passenger window seemed to suck out the cigarette smoke but allow gusts of stinging grit to blast into the cab interior.
We sat in silence, staring out onto the overgrown and dusty landscape as the truck bounced along the potholed road. Large forests spread in the distance to our left and rose at an angle with the slanted landscape. Tangles of weeds and wild bushes spread amongst the dry, hardened soil ground on either side of the road.
I saw some large, bulky structures looming in the distance behind the backdrop of scrubland to our right. As we drew a little nearer, I realized I was looking at several buildings with light blue, curved shaped roofs dotted between large areas of partially sand covered blacktop.
I turned to Smith. “I’m guessing that’s the airport right over there?” I asked, pointing out the broken cab window.
“That’s it,” Smith said. “You’ll need to take a right turn about a mile up ahead, Mac.”
McElroy nodded.
I watched the airport emerge from the landscape. It looked exactly what it was from a distance, a post apocalyptic nightmare vision. Huge chunks of the pale blue aircraft hangar roofs had disintegrated or fallen away. A tall, beige concrete air traffic control tower with a bank of dark windows surrounding the top floor sat to the right, overlooking the whole miserable site. Several small light aircraft sat at different angles and a couple of larger, silver colored passenger planes sagged on their wheels, looking like beached sharks. All the aircraft were covered with a splattering of brown powdered mud and yellow sand.
A few figures lumbered around the runway areas between the aircraft. Their slow, staggering gait made my stomach roll over. I was naively hoping the airport would be free from the undead so we could get on with loading the rocket launchers relatively unhindered.
Smith and Dante had been the only people in our party to have visited the airport before so McElroy, Wingate and I were traveling into the unknown. Putting our faith in Smith and Dante to guide us through a safe passage was like jumping into a pit of venomous snakes and expecting not to get bitten.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
McElroy took the right turn to the airport that led down another bumpy track. The planes and rundown hangars drew closer. A number of weed covered and mud spattered signposts lined up on the bank to the left side of the road. Again, the signs were impossible to read.
“Okay, Smith,” McElroy said. “Where are these damn SMAWs and which hangar are we heading to?”
Smith leaned forward, closer to the windshield. “Right, you need to go onto the runway and head straight for that line of smaller hangars on the far side. Our target is the hangar right at the end of the line, in the corner to the right.” He waved his finger backward and forward, indicating the route.
“Got it,” McElroy said.
Dante jabbered insanely at the sight of the airport. He pointed at a large crowd of undead staggering around near the passenger plane next to a large rectangular shaped building with a bank of blue tinted windows. The building was the same pale blue shade as the hangars and I noticed some of the windows had been shattered.
McElroy’s head swiveled left and right, weighing up the scene in front of him. He slowed the revs, turned onto the runway and weaved the truck between two small bi-planes. Righting the steering wheel, McElroy picked up the speed and headed to the small hangar that Smith had pointed out. A few straggling zombies lurched into the truck’s path but were soon scuttled out of the way by the big front fender.
I followed Dante’s gaze. His eyes were still firmly fixed on the gaggle of ghouls milling around by the large blue building and the big silver passenger plane. The undead stopped their slow movement and turned to watch the truck rolling along the runway.
“What is it, Dante?” I asked. “What are you gawking at over there?”
His eyes flicked to mine for a split second then back to his spot of interest. He had a strange grimace on his face, like a man with constipation. Whatever was on his mind, he wasn’t willing to share it with me.
“He’s watching the airport terminal right there,” Smith butted in. “I had a little scuffle with him and his comrades over that way. They soon gave up the fight when the going got tough though.”
“This is more bad place,” Dante stammered. “Why you people always take me to bad place?” His voice grew louder with every word and he rocked nervously in his seat.
Smith groaned. “Everywhere is a bad fucking place, Dante. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
McElroy turned his head and glared across the cab at Dante.
“Aye, catch yerself on, wee man,” McElroy added, turning his attention back to the route ahead. “That guy is turning into a total head the ball, so he is.”
Sometimes McElroy’s Northern Irish lingo lost me but I guessed a head the ball was referred to as somebody who was losing the plot.
We continued driving slowly across the runway, watching the abandoned planes pass by.
“Why didn’t whoever owns those aircraft just take off and fly away from here?” Wingate asked.
“To where?” Smith grunted. “Where the fuck is there left to go?”
“Didn’t Tony say that people landed on the island on small planes because they thought they were going to be safe here?” I said.
“He did,” Smith confirmed. “And how wrong they were.” He sounded almost smug.
“God, if you think about the situation too long it becomes heartbreaking,” Wingate sighed. “All those poor people running around like sheep, thinking they’re getting away from all the horrors but in reality, they were simply running right back into them.”
“It’s a sad old world,” Smith said, with a hint of sarcasm.
Wingate leaned across me and elbowed Smith in his stomach.
“Okay, ladies, prepare yourselves for disembarkation,” McElroy said.
I scanned the small hangar we were closing in on. The silver metal roller door was open a few inches at the bottom. The blue topped shed like structure couldn’t have been more than twenty feet high by twenty five feet wide. The roller door was a few feet shorter in each dimension. It was more of a lock-up store than an aircraft hangar. A steeply sloping hill sat directly to the right of the building
, which cast the roller door in shadow. I guessed the weed strewn hill marked the outer boundary of the airport.
McElroy U-turned the truck and backed it up so the tail end was a few feet from the silver roller door. He gently used the foot brake until the truck was stationary then applied the park brake.
“We’ve plenty of gas in the tank so I’ll keep the engine rolling in case the bastard won’t start again,” he said.
“Sounds good to me,” Smith agreed.
“All right then, let’s get these damn weapons loaded,” McElroy whooped, opening the driver’s door.
I was glad to get out of the stinking cab and stretch my legs. My back was aching and a dull throbbing behind my eyes threatened to worsen. I stretched and tried to arch out my back ache.
Smith and McElroy moved to the roller door with their rifles held at the ready. McElroy flopped down into a push up position and shone his flashlight into the small gap between the ground and the bottom of the roller door. He whistled excitedly through his teeth.
“There’s a shit load of untouched crates in there, big man,” he said.
“I told you so,” Smith said, grinning as he spoke.
“It’s all clear of any goons in there too,” McElroy confirmed, sweeping the light beam around the hangar interior.
“All good,” Wingate said.
McElroy hopped up onto his feet and turned to look back across the runway. The smile immediately fell from his face.
“Well, we better get our asses in gear and start loading,” he said, nodding to the far side of the airport. “Those wee beasties across the way are making their way over here, so they are.”
We turned to where McElroy was referring to. The zombies clustered around the passenger plane and the airport terminal had turned their attention to us and lumbered in our direction in one large pack, scuffing up a cloud of dust and sand as they moved. The distance between us was still a good half mile over the open ground so I figured we had around fifteen to twenty minutes before they reached us. Their pace was painfully slow and we had the advantage of being able to monitor their progress.
The Left Series (Book 7): Left Amongst The Corpses Page 6