The Left Series (Book 5): Left On The Run

by Fletcher, Christian

  “Which way do you think they’ll try and come through?” Cordoba asked. “If I was running the show, I’d try and storm the place through the back entrance.”

  Smith nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right. They’re cutting off a possible escape route through the front door with their guys on the roof tops and squeezing us with an entry through the back doors.”

  “So, what do we do, guys?” Batfish squawked, the panic evident in her voice. “Fighting off zombies is one thing but a bunch of heavily armed, uninfected psychopaths is a different ball game all together.”

  “Tell me about it,” Wingate sighed. “I didn’t sign up to the army for this kind of shit.”

  “What are our chances of shooting our way out through the front door?” Cordoba asked.

  “Remember the end scene in that movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with Redford and Newman?” Smith countered. “Our chances are about as good as theirs were.”

  I remembered the movie he was talking about but for the life of me I couldn’t recall what happened. “Is that the one where they pull off that big con?”

  Smith groaned. “That’s The Sting, dumbass. Just forget about it. What I’m saying is we don’t have much of a chance of escaping through the front. Those guys up there on the roof tops will be all over us with their gunfire.” He pointed out of the window.

  I shuffled forwards and turned so I crouched between the two front windows with my back to the outer wall. “So, how do we get out of this one, Smith?” I asked, dreading his answer.

  “I haven’t quite figured that out yet, kid,” he sighed.

  “Well, we better hurry up and think of something and real quick,” Batfish said. “Those guys are probably going to bust through the back entrance any moment.”

  “If we stay put, we’ll be trapped like rats in a barn,” Cordoba added.

  “Do you want me to go and cover the back door with this?” Jimmy asked, raising the double barrel shotgun in his hands.

  “Nah, if we start splitting up, we’d be spread too thin, Jimmy,” Smith sighed. “Besides, two blasts on that thing would be all you’d be capable of firing before those guys would be all over you. They’ve got semi autos, remember?”

  “So, what do you suggest we do, Smith?” Wingate seethed. “Sit here and let ourselves get mowed down by those guys? What happens if they toss more stun grenades through the windows?”

  “My guess is they only had one stun grenade. If they had any more with them, they would have used them by now. All right, I have a plan,” Smith said. “But you guys probably won’t like it much.”

  “Okay, let’s hear it,” I sighed.

  The creaking sound of breaking wood echoed through the bar room. The noise came from somewhere through the corridor, towards the back entrance where Jimmy had showed us the way into the building.

  “They’re coming in,” Batfish whispered. “What do we do?”

  “Okay, I haven’t time to explain what we’re going to do but you’ll all have to bear with me if we want to get out of here in one piece,” Smith said. “Get all the gear together and be ready to move out in a split second when I give the word.”

  “Gotcha,” I said, wondering what Smith had up his sleeve.

  Jimmy and Batfish pulled rucksacks containing our food tins, ammunition and spare clothing onto their backs. I noticed Batfish tucked Spot, our little Jack Russell terrier dog into a pouch inside her jacket and then slide a fully loaded magazine into her handgun. Jimmy slid the other three rucksacks across the floor towards us. I hurriedly grabbed one of the packs and hauled it onto my back. Smith and Cordoba did the same. Only Wingate wasn’t carrying a rucksack as we’d lost some baggage when Smith had been sick a few days beforehand.

  “You all ready?” Smith asked.

  We nodded in the semi darkness.

  “This shit is about to get hairy,” Smith growled. He crouched and moved towards the candles in the corner of the room and blew them out. Only the pale moonlight from outside faintly illuminated the bar room.

  We all stood still, listening in silence as several sets of slow, plodding footfalls clanked across wooden floorboards approaching from somewhere beyond the bar room. Those guys were obviously cautiously treading forward, as though they were stalking a hunted prey.

  Smith held his index finger to his lips and ushered us towards the bar counter. I hesitated, worried we’d be moving into the line of fire from the guys outside and pointed towards the window.

  “It’s okay, they can’t see us in the dark and they won’t fire anyhow because they know their guys are inside the building,” Smith whispered.

  We slowly and silently moved behind the bar counter and Smith gestured for us all to hunker down.

  “Jimmy, find me two unbroken bottles of liquor from those shelves, will you?” Smith instructed.

  “Aye,” Jimmy grunted and began rummaging through broken glass.

  “Shh, keep the noise down, will you, Jimmy?” Batfish scolded.

  “Sorry,” Jimmy murmured and returned his search to the lower shelves, below the countertop surface.

  “Come on, Jimmy,” Smith urged. “Hurry it up. Those guys are almost at the door.”

  “All right, I got something here,” Jimmy said, passing two, full liter bottles of vodka to Batfish behind him.

  Batfish passed the bottles to Smith, who crouched down behind us all at the end of the line. Smith unscrewed the bottle lids and tossed them onto the floor. He took a long sip from each of the open bottles.

  “What? Are you nuts?” Wingate scolded.

  Smith ignored Wingate’s admonishment. “Jimmy, hand me two paper napkins from that shelf, will you?”

  Jimmy obliged, tossing a whole pack of dust covered napkins, wrapped in a sealed cellophane bag to Smith. Smith tore open the pack with his teeth, took out a couple of napkins and screwed them into scrunched balls.

  “What are you doing?” Wingate asked in a rasping whisper. “We can’t stay hidden behind this damn counter. Those guys are going to spot us as soon as they come through the doorway.”

  Smith picked up one of the open vodka bottles and shimmied silently from behind the counter to the internal entrance to the bar. He poured the whole bottle of liquor over the wooden floor boards in front of the door. The approaching, clanking footfalls stopped outside the internal door and I saw the shimmer of a flashlight from under the gap below the wooden frame. Hushed voices spoke from beyond the doorway. I couldn’t hear the exact words they were saying but it didn’t take much to figure out they were discussing how to storm the bar area. I sincerely hoped Smith’s crazy plan, whatever it might be, would work out.

  Smith scurried across the floor, grabbed the remaining vodka bottle and the pack of napkins and then crouched down, so his back was leaning against the front of the bar counter.

  I held my breath when I heard the slight squeak of the internal bar room door being pushed open.

  Chapter Four

  The first guy who came through the door into the bar room shone a bright flashlight in a head height sweeping arc, swathing the front windows in a silvery beam. He obviously didn’t see Smith, crouching beside the counter. I caught a glimpse of the guy’s silhouette behind the flashlight beam. He was thin and lean with long hair sprouting beneath some sort of beanie hat. The guy took a few tentative steps into the bar, hunched and waving a big handgun in line with the light beam.

  “They’re no in here,” the guy whispered to his companions behind him. “They’ve probably legged it on upstairs. Maybe we should take a look up there.”

  Smith soaked both the scrunched napkins with vodka and took out his Zippo lighter from his jacket pocket. He waited until the guy stood directly in the center of the liquor pool he’d poured onto the floor. In one fluid, rapid movement, Smith fired up the lighter, holding the flame to the vodka soaked napkin. The alcohol immediately ignited and I heard a gasp of shock and surprise from the guy who had entered the room. He swiveled to his left but his reac
tions were slowed by fear. Smith tossed the flaming napkin onto the pool of vodka in front of the doorway.

  The alcohol flamed up around the guy’s legs. He screamed and fired off a couple of rounds before the flames engulfed him. Smith had already rolled across the floor, out of the line of fire. The rounds from the handgun thudded low into the wall on the opposite side of the room. The guy’s arms floundered in circles and he dropped the flashlight and his handgun. An overpowering stench of burning clothes, hair and flesh suddenly filled the bar room and the discarded flashlight produced an eerie, spiraling ray of light as it rolled across the wooden floorboards. Smith lay prone on the floor, directly in front of the burning guy and had his M-16 aimed at the doorway. He fired a rapid burst of rounds at knee height through the open entranceway. We heard screams of pain and the thuds of bodies dropping to the wooden floorboards in the corridor outside the bar room.

  Smith rolled to his left and aimed the rifle at a red fire extinguisher fixed to the wall beside the doorway. He fired one round into the highly pressurized container and foamy liquid sprayed across the threshold, showering the burning man. The guy sunk to his knees, whimpering in pain and fell face first onto the floor.

  I lost sight of Smith and decided he might need my help. I barged my way by the others behind the counter and shuffled towards the smoldering body on the floor. I heard loud moans and shrieks of agony from the corridor beyond the bar.

  “Is that you, Wilde?” Smith barked from the darkness someplace.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” I whispered above the sound of human suffering.

  “Grab that loose flashlight and keep me covered,” Smith instructed.

  I scuttled across the floor, heading for the flashlight, which had come to a standstill against the legs of a wooden chair. I scooped up the flashlight and kept the light beam pointing at the floor. I noticed Cordoba had wriggled out from behind the bar counter and grabbed the burned guy’s discarded handgun. She adjusted her grip on the rifle and slid the handgun into her belt.

  “Don’t shine that light directly through that doorway, it’ll make you a target,” Smith barked. “Those guys may be injured but they’re still capable of taking a shot at your ass.”

  I kept the light beam low to the ground and scooted by the burned guy towards the wall beside the doorway to the corridor.

  “What do you want me to do, Smith?” I whispered.

  “Lean around the door and shine that light across the ground when I say,” he replied.

  Cordoba took up a position beside me, with her M-16 rifle held at the ready. I heard her heavy breathing next to my ear and felt her shoulder press into my bicep.

  “Keep your eye on the ball this time, Wilde,” she whispered.

  “No worries,” I muttered in reply. A dull ache still occupied my head but pure adrenalin had eradicated most of the painful twinges throughout the rest of my body.

  An ignited orange flame to my left caught my immediate attention. I turned and saw Smith’s face illuminated in the burning light. He held the remaining vodka bottle with a burning napkin shoved halfway into the neck. His rifle was slung across his back, with the barrel pointing upwards to the rear of his shoulder.

  “I want all you guys out there to drop your weapons or else you fry,” Smith commanded. “I guess those of you with leg wounds won’t be making a quick getaway anytime soon and I have a big old Molotov cocktail in my hand, just aching to be tossed in your direction.” Smith briefly waved the bottle beyond the door jamb to show he was serious.

  I listened to muffled yelps from the corridor. “Okay, big man. Don’t lob that burning bottie at us. We won’t shoot, okay?”

  Smith nodded at me. “Shine that flashlight through that corridor. Cordoba, if you see anybody with a gun in their hand then shoot them, okay?”

  “Roger that,” Cordoba said. She took a pace forward and to her right so she was lined up directly behind me.

  I gripped the M-9 handgun and the flashlight tightly with both hands and close together so I could aim the firearm along the light beam. I breathed in and out a few times in slow time, then swiveled my body against the door frame so the flashlight beam and my handgun barrel aimed down the corridor. Cordoba shuffled with me, aiming her rifle at the targets, with the muzzle a few inches away from my left shoulder. The flashlight beam lit up a bunch of disheveled guys, lying on the floor in a vertical line. Their hands clasped across leg wounds of varying severity. Blood pooled alongside the groaning bodies and an assortment of weapons lay on the floorboards beside them.

  “Are we good?” Smith asked.

  “We’re good,” I confirmed. “Looks like you knocked them all out.”

  “Ya shot us, ya bastards,” wailed a bearded guy wearing a big blue puffer jacket. “All we did is tell youse to leave the area.”

  “Don’t fret your pretty little head, fellah,” Smith said, pulling the burning napkin out of the top of the vodka bottle. “We’ll be out of your hair real soon.” He dropped the napkin onto the floor and stamped out the flame, then took a swig of vodka. “But first we need you guys to help us get out of this building and out of this danger zone.”

  Chapter Five

  Wingate, Jimmy and Batfish shuffled out from behind the bar counter. Cordoba moved centrally into the doorway so she could fully cover the injured guys with the M-16.

  “Collect up those weapons, will you, Jimmy?” Cordoba instructed. “But be careful.”

  “Aye, always careful me,” he muttered and stepped forward towards the corridor.

  Cordoba edged her way around so Jimmy didn’t move across her firing line. Smith set the vodka bottle down on the floor and moved forward to assist Jimmy gathering up the hostile guy’s weapons. I counted seven men in all, including the smoldering man lying on the bar room floor, who seemed to have passed out. Batfish and Wingate kept a vigil over his unmoving body. Wingate bent down to check he was still alive. She glanced up at Batfish and nodded.

  Smith whistled through his teeth when he picked up a sharpened machete with a two foot long blade. “Check out this bad boy,” he said. “Good for slicing and dicing. I’m keeping hold of this mother.” He slid the machete blade between the loops in his belt.

  “We thought you’d have left the building by now,” the guy in the puffer jacket croaked. “With all those bullets flying in at you, we thought you’d of fucked off out of here. Why did you stay inside the pub?”

  Smith turned towards me. “You hear that, Wilde? These guys let their guard down and paid the price for sloppiness. Take note, kid.”

  I felt my cheeks burn. “Point taken,” I muttered.

  “Jimmy, what’s out the back?” Smith asked, averting his attention from me. “Is there a way out of here?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Nah, just a small car park and a big brick wall, with a hoofing great load of razor wire running across the top of it. Not an easy way to get away from here, unless of course we have a big ladder and a pair of wire cutters.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Smith said. “That’s the reason I didn’t want to kill these pricks stone dead. We need them.”

  “What fer?” Jimmy asked. His mouth hung open in surprise.

  “Insurance, Jimmy. Come on, we best make a move or those guys out front will be coming through the windows real soon.” Smith leaned down and hauled the guy in the puffer jacket onto his feet. The man squealed as his injured right leg connected with the ground.

  “My leg, I cannae stand,” he groaned.

  “Well, you’ll have to live with it, pal,” Smith growled. “Hurts like a bitch when you get shot don’t it? We’re going out front and you’re going to lead the way.”

  “No way,” the guy wailed. “They’ll shoot me dead.”

  “You’d better pray they don’t,” Smith said through gritted teeth. He turned back to me. “Wilde, choose one of these guys, preferably one with a minor gunshot wound. We’ll need at least three of these guys to use as human shields.”

  I moved forward
into the corridor towards a small ginger haired guy, wearing a black jacket with the word ‘Police’ emblazoned on the left side. I was pretty sure the guy wasn’t a serving member of the local constabulary. He’d probably liberated the jacket along with several weapons from a cop station someplace. I shone the flashlight over his legs and saw he wore a pair of blue denims. His lower left leg was coated with blood around the outer region of his shin. I had no idea how bad the wound was but decided he was going to be my guy. I jabbed the handgun in Ginger’s face and he winced as I reached down to grab him. I hauled him to his feet, ignoring the whimpering sounds he made.

  “You’ve won the prize of being my human shield, Popeye,” I snarled.

  “Hang on a mo,” Jimmy said. “What if he’s right? What if those bastards oot there shoot at us anyway? They might just say fuck it and start blatting away right through these guys we’re going to be stood behind.”

  “They won’t,” Smith confirmed. “They’re a gang that’s banded together in spite of what’s gone on with the dead springing back up. They have a pack mentality and won’t shoot their own unless they get infected.”

  “How do you know so much, eh, big man?” Puffer Jacket spluttered.

  “Shut up,” Smith snapped. “If you want to live through the next ten minutes, I suggest you keep your mouth closed and do exactly as I say. Understand?”

  Puffer Jacket winced in pain as he raised his injured leg off the ground and nodded his head.

  “Good boy,” Smith said, slapping the guy around the face. “Okay, Cordoba, you pick another guy but I want you to cover our rear when we head on out so Batfish or Wingate will have to walk behind the guy you choose. Don’t forget, we’re going to have to prop these guys upright with a firearm nudged tightly against their asses.”

  “All right,” Cordoba agreed.

  I shone the flashlight over the remaining bodies splayed out across the corridor floor.