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

by Fletcher, Christian

  I felt my guts churn and flutter as the gates slowly creaked open. The view of the bridge beyond the gates looked foreboding with a few dozen undead wandering around the snow covered route.

  “Okay, here we go,” Smith grunted, bracing himself while gripping the steering wheel. “Everybody hold onto your hats. This could be a bumpy ride.”

  The pop-pop sound of discharging handguns echoed across the bridge when a few of Blue Jacket’s guys began to clear away a few of the infected close to the opening gates. Blue Jacket himself waved us forward beyond the entrance. Smith released the brake and began to roll the vehicle forward.

  “Go, go,” Blue Jacket screeched, waving us furiously through the gates.

  Smith nodded thanks to Blue Jacket and we drove between the heavy, steel doors and through the check point. The guys above us on the narrow gantry continued to plug away with small arms fire at the undead lumbering in our path. Skulls exploded and old brown blood jetted from the gunshot wounds as the zombies tumbled into the snow.

  When the guys on the gantry had cleared a path, they turned their aim to the undead staggering around on the sidewalks at the edges of the bridge. They opened fire and scored numerous headshots, stopping the emaciated creatures in their tracks. The walking corpses either dropped to the ground or toppled over the stone balustrades and into the river below us.

  I glanced out the back window and saw the huge gates closing behind us. As the firing from above receded, I knew we were now on our own.

  Smith drove slowly forward, slaloming around the felled bodies on the ground.

  “Well, that’s one obstacle we’ve overcome,” I said.

  “We lost one of our god damn rifles,” Smith seethed. “I shouldn’t have let that happen.”

  “We had no choice, Smith,” Batfish sighed. “It was either give away one of the guns or be gunned down ourselves. We were lucky they didn’t take everything we had, including the car.”

  “Aye, they definitely would have if we didn’t trade,” Jimmy said. “And the fact we had a little war with their rival gang probably helped us a wee bit too.”

  “I hate to bring the mood down,” Wingate sighed. “We really need to hurry and get to the hospital. Cordoba’s condition is getting worse by the minute.”

  Wingate felt Cordoba’s forehead and gave a pained expression. I didn’t like the way Cordoba was looking or breathing. She seemed to be rapidly paling to a deathly white color, with dark rings surrounding her eye sockets and she audibly wheezed as she drew in breath.

  “I can’t drive too fast in this snow or I’ll end up rolling the damn car over,” Smith snapped. “I’m sorry but I just want to make sure we get to the hospital on all four wheels.”

  I sighed in exasperation and glanced out through the window. A large glass fronted building stood on the opposite bank of the Clyde. Some white lettering stood above a veranda near to the building’s roof. A few of the letters had been dislodged or destroyed so the sign now read ‘GAL CAS NO,’ instead of, I guessed ‘GALA CASINO.’ Dead ahead, I saw a cluster of tall, square beige bricked structures, bearing the scars of the apocalypse. Windows had been broken out and some of the rooms and window frames were blackened by some previously burning fire.

  A small group of half a dozen infected ambled around the road at the very edge of the bridge. They fanned out, glaring in our direction and slowly plodding forwards to meet us head on.

  “Ah, shit,” Jimmy whispered. “Not more of those bloody things. I was hoping we’d have a clear route.”

  “No such thing as clear routes no more, Jimmy,” Smith sighed. He buzzed down the side window and reached beneath his buttocks to retrieve his handgun.

  Jimmy shuffled uncomfortably in his seat and I felt the cold breeze from the open window blow into my face. Smith leaned out of his window and fired a couple of shots at the approaching band of zombies. As usual, Smith didn’t miss with either shot. Two undead jolted as the rounds penetrated their skulls and they sank to the ground. He changed his aim to directly in front of the car and discharged another two rounds. A pair of undead, who used to be young men dropped to the snow in ungainly heaps.

  Smith shuffled back in through the window and buzzed it back up. He gave the remaining two zombies a wide berth, looping around them as the undead reached with splayed fingers for the side of the car. I glanced down below the bridge and saw a mooring berth between the two bridges and what looked like a ferry terminal further up the river, to the left. I wondered who the military guys were that Blue Jacket had talked about. Would they be friendly and why were they landing their boats in Glasgow?

  “Which way now, Jimmy?” Smith asked, as we drove off the bridge onto the roadway.

  “We need to get to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary,” Jimmy said. “It’s over the other side of town, I’m afraid. If we take a right turn down Clyde Street, we can follow the A8 road all the way up to the hospital.” He pointed to the right side of the crossroads in front of us.

  Smith nodded and took the right turn. Some lone zombies shuffled along on the sidewalks on either side of the street. They stopped in their tracks and turned to watch the Range Rover drive by. Some opened their mouths and emitted a moan. I watched as a couple of undead began to follow in our wake. I figured we’d be okay as long as we didn’t find ourselves in a bottle neck or encounter a whole horde of zombies.

  Smith drove around several long since abandoned vehicles, marooned at various angles along the road. A snow covered car stood half on the sidewalk, with all four doors hanging open. I noticed the vehicle’s interior was coated with dry blood and the skeletal remains of the former occupant still perched in the driver’s seat, with the bones picked clean of flesh.

  The road ran alongside the river in one straight route and seemed fairly clear of potentially restricting obstacles and large numbers of undead. We drove by another foot bridge over the river, which looked as though it had been half destroyed by some sort of explosion. The whole of the middle section of the foot bridge was missing, with twisted lattice metalwork bent at angles, as though the entire walkway had instantly fragmented.

  We drove towards an intersection with another road bridge on our right and a bend to the left. A line of immobile, gridlocked traffic faced us from the lane opposite. The route across the bridge was sealed by a tall, steel barricade, covered in various colors of spray painted graffiti. Some of the scrawling I couldn’t read or didn’t understand but one line of white spray stood out to me. The two foot high letters said “If you can read this – you’re stuck in the death zone - You will soon be a corpse. May God have mercy on your soul.”

  “I guess we’re heading left,” Smith said, slowing the Range Rover.

  “Aye,” Jimmy grunted, nodding. “It looks as though the road to the Old Fish Market is blocked. We can take the left turn along Bridgegate then through Saltmarket up to the hospital.”

  “Please hurry, whichever route we’re taking,” Wingate pleaded. “I don’t think Cordoba will make it unless we get there pretty soon.”

  I glanced over the back of the seat and was horrified when I saw Cordoba. Her complexion was almost green and her lips looked blue. I couldn’t even see her breathing and didn’t hear the wheeze she’d emitted before. She looked as though she was dead already.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Smith took the left lane and the Range Rover rumbled around two abandoned vehicles that had collided in the center of the road. A railway track ran over the top of the road and a cluster of undead huddled in the shadows beneath the overpass. Smith put his foot a little harder on the gas before the bunch of zombies had time to maneuver themselves into our path. The undead glared at us with those cataract-like eyes and screamed in frustration, clawing the air as we drove by.

  We took another left turn at the end of the road, onto a wide urban street. Old looking, brown brick buildings lined the street with boarded up storefronts on the ground floors of each structure. Stationary lines of cars and small trucks hidden beneath
layers of snow, sat on each side of the road. Some of the vehicles had been involved in collisions with each other and lay at strange angles. The drivers and passengers had long since fled the scene of the accidents and no doubt some of them had been infected as they rushed away in panic.

  We drove beneath another railway bridge with lattice work encasing the sides. A few zombies milled around outside a building front, standing in the shadows of the bridge. The building had been spared a covering of snow, beneath the shelter of the railway bridge. The sign above the doorway read – ‘Empire Bar’ in gold Gaelic lettering and I wondered if the glaring zombies had been former frequenters of the bar. Maybe some slight memory remained in their brains and they thought the bar was the place they should be.

  Smith steered the Range Rover around a cluster of immobile vehicles that had come to a standstill at a crossroads, slightly behind a set of traffic light signals on each of the sidewalks. A tall, brown brick, clock tower stood in the center of the road beyond the crossroads. The blue and gold clock had obviously stopped running and said the time was slightly after five o’clock.

  “Which way to the hospital, Jimmy?” Smith asked.

  “Keep going straight ahead,” Jimmy said, pointing his fingers directly at the windshield. “Stay on this road and it’ll lead us right up to the Royal Infirmary.”

  “How much further, Jimmy?” Wingate asked. The tension was clear in her voice and she shook her head as she spoke.

  Jimmy swiveled in his seat to take a look at Cordoba. “Not much further now,” he said in a hushed tone. “Please keep her with us.”

  “I’m doing my best,” Wingate groaned. “But I don’t think she’s going to survive much longer if we don’t get her on a ventilator real soon.”

  Smith skirted around the clock tower and took the route running on the left side of the tall structure. He was forced to slalom through a snarl of traffic further down the road and slowly nudged a small car out of our path. The Range Rover was fitted with a set of bull bars at the front so we sustained no damage whilst edging the car out of the way.

  The sound of metal crunching against metal attracted the attention of a few undead huddling in a store doorway. They stepped out into the road, reaching out to grab at the car. Smith accelerated but one of the zombies smacked a bloodied hand on the back window, causing me to recoil. The walking corpse was a male and wore the remains of a pale gray business suit, a ripped yellow shirt with old blood stains splashed across the front. Half his left cheek had been bitten away and I could see the sides of his teeth through the hanging flesh. The creature moaned in a guttural tone as his hand slid down the back of the car.

  Smith glanced in his rear view mirror as we drove away from the bunched knot of vehicles. I breathed out a long sigh of relief as I watched the zombie in the business suit fade into the distance.

  I saw more undead staggering along the sidewalks and down the side roads off the main route. They weren’t moving in large numbers, only in twos and threes at maximum but their numbers seemed to be on the increase the further we drove towards the hospital.

  A skinny, blonde haired female zombie stepped in front of the Range Rover with her hands raised and scowling with bared teeth. Smith didn’t slow down. He steered slightly to the right so the front bars would hit the woman at an angle to reduce the effect of the impact. I heard a dull thud then a crunching of bones as the Range Rover drove over the infected woman.

  “Wow, look at that,” Batfish muttered, glancing out of her side window.

  I turned my head and saw an old castle type, stone building on our right. More worryingly, a large cluster of undead roamed the exterior of the castle. Smith accelerated slightly so we wouldn’t have to encounter any zombies stepping in front of the car.

  More historical, block shaped buildings with stone balustrades lined the road to the right and another bunch of zombies meandered beneath a cluster of snow covered trees to our left.

  “This is the hospital,” Jimmy said, pointing a finger. “Just up here on the right.”

  “Which way do we go?” Smith asked. “The damn place is huge.”

  “Hurry it up and figure out where to go, guys,” Wingate pleaded.

  Smith took a right turn into a side road and the main hub of the infirmary loomed into view. The place was a combination of old brown brick and new silver gray paneled buildings, with a modern multi storey parking lot directly ahead of us.

  “We probably should go to the Accident and Emergency Department,” Jimmy said.

  “Where the hell is that?” Smith asked, with a disgruntled tone. “The damn snow is plastered all over the sign posts. I don’t know where the hell I’m going.”

  We drove around the narrow roads surrounding the hospital for a while, with Smith getting increasingly irate. The rest of us became increasingly worried for Cordoba’s deteriorating condition. Eventually, we found the accident and emergency department and Smith drove towards a set of wide double doors beneath a snow covered canopy. The doors were closed and I sincerely hoped they weren’t locked from the inside or we were going to have major problems.

  Smith brought the Range Rover to a halt a few feet from the doorway and slightly beneath the canopy.

  “Okay, everybody, grab the weapons and leave the packs in the back. Keep your eyes open for zombies or hostiles,” Smith said.

  I looked through the back window and saw a few of the undead slowly strolling around in small groups. Some wore light green hospital gowns or uniforms of some kind and others were totally naked. One small group started to make their way towards us.

  Smith jumped out the car first, followed by Jimmy. Jimmy opened the back and I crawled out of the compartment, glad to finally stretch my legs. Smith, Wingate and Batfish carefully hauled Cordoba out from the backseats of the Range Rover. She looked lifeless and pale and blood had seeped through the bandages that Wingate had applied. Spot hopped out of the back of the car, gingerly stepping through the snow and sniffing the air.

  “I’ll see if I can find a gurney or a wheelchair we can move her on,” I suggested.

  “All right,” Smith agreed. He looked over at Jimmy who stood beside me. “Come and take her a moment while I get the rifle and lock up the car.”

  Jimmy nodded and stepped towards the huddle. I made sure my weapons were fully loaded and headed towards the double doors.

  “Don’t stray too far, Wilde Man,” Smith called. “We don’t want to have to come looking for you.”

  I nodded and reached out for the aluminum bar, which opened one of the double doors. I pulled on the bar and was relieved to find the doors weren’t locked. My relief was brief. The door swung open and I was confronted by a figure who looked like a doctor. He wore a long, heavily blood stained white coat with a blue shirt beneath and may have been a doctor in his former life. Now, he was a member of the undead and he lurched towards me with gnashing teeth.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I only caught a brief glimpse of the former doctor’s face before he lunged towards me. He had a completely shaved head and the skin on his face was gray and cracked, as though he’d been dead for a long time. His mouth gaped open and he hissed, while he quickly moved his head towards my face.

  I didn’t have time to reach for my handguns, tucked inside my jacket but my instinctive reaction was to recoil and lean backwards. The zombie doctor was driven solely by hunger and stumbled further forward towards me, with his jaws snapping a few inches from my face. I twisted sideways and thrust out my left hand, grabbing the guy around the throat and shoving his head away from mine. Somebody shouted behind me but the words were inaudible. I was directing all my concentration on the undead doctor that was trying to chew my face off.

  The zombie doctor attempted to shake off my hand and lunged forward again. I hung on to his throat and shoved him back into the doorway. He made a gurgling noise when I squeezed my fingers tighter and I felt his decaying flesh squelch in my hand.

  “Hold it steady,” a voice boomed b
ehind me.

  I glanced around and saw Smith marching towards me with the machete raised above his head. I kept hold of the zombie’s neck and leaned back as far as I could. Smith brought the machete down with force and the blade cut a wide groove through the zombie doctor’s skull. Brown blood gushed from the machete wound, down the zombie’s face and the front of his white coat, splashing onto my fist. I released my grip, flicking the blood off my hand as the zombie doctor sunk to his knees then keeled over onto his side. Smith pulled the machete blade from the ghoul’s head and wiped off the excess blood in the snow on the ground. I pulled a disgusted face then cleaned off the blood from my hand in the snow.

  “Help me shift this piece of shit out the way,” Smith grunted, nodding at the body on the ground.

  We took hold of a sleeve each and dragged the corpse away to the side of the double doors. Smith waved forward Batfish, Wingate and Jimmy, who were all carrying Cordoba. I held the double doors open and we all filed inside the hospital.

  A set of sliding glass doors confronted us as we moved through the hospital foyer. I guessed the doors used to open with an automatic sensor but they didn’t budge as we approached. I also noticed several zombies roaming around the interior of the hospital reception area beyond the glass partition.

  “Looks like we’ve got a problem,” I sighed, gazing at the immobile sliding doors.

  “No problem,” Smith grunted, taking the shotgun from Jimmy. He aimed the firearm at the glass doors and pulled both triggers.

  The loud boom of the discharged shotgun cartridges was almost deafening and the sound was immediately followed by the sound of shattering glass. The sliding doors disintegrated in front of us and the zombies in the reception area turned towards the source of the noise.

  “Get ready to do some clearing up,” Smith said, handing the shotgun back to Jimmy. “We have to get through this area real fast.” He drew his M-9 Beretta handgun from a shoulder holster and checked the weapon was loaded. “Keep the shooting to a minimum. The sound of gunshots will only attract more undead.”