“Well, let’s take a look. Come on.” Smith grabbed my arm and led me to the basement staircase. “You wait right here while I get my machete.”
Out of habit, I reached for my pack of cigarettes while I waited for Smith. Realizing I didn’t have any only made me want to smoke more.
“Damn it, Smith,” I whispered to nobody. “I wasn’t even thinking about the lack of cigarettes before you mentioned them.”
Smith returned carrying mine and his cold weather jackets between his arms. He tossed me my coat and I noticed he held the machete and two M-9’s under his own jacket.
“I see you’ve been into my room then?” I snapped.
Smith took a look behind him to check nobody had followed and was watching from a distance, as we loaded the firearms.
“Yeah, look they’re all playing some silly assed board game at the moment so let’s sneak out while the going is good.”
“What about my weapon?” I asked.
“Okay, let’s take a look down in the store room but we’ll have to hurry.”
I felt as though we were a pair of kids playing hooky from High School.
Smith hadn’t been to the store room and I hadn’t ventured down into the incinerator compartment so I led the way through the corridor and through a set of double doors leading to the basement. I fished through my jacket and retrieved my flashlight, hoping it still worked. I clicked it on and thankfully the bright light lit up the staircase. I hurried down the vinyl covered steps with Smith following close behind.
The store room was long and rectangular shaped, filled with rows of shelving racks with various sized food tins lined in neat sections. The racks stretched back into the shadows, as far as the flashlight beam shone. An assortment of other equipment was piled to the left of the entranceway. Dusty old books, kid’s toys and various sports gear stood in separate stacks against the wall. I searched through the junk and found something I thought would amuse Smith.
“What about this?” I said, pointing to a kid’s plastic orange water pistol at him. “Stick ‘em up, punk.”
Smith sniggered. “If you want to take that out there, then go right ahead but I ‘aint coming to save your silly ass if you do.”
I tossed the toy gun back in the pile and rummaged through the sporting equipment and found exactly what I was looking for but didn’t exactly know what the object was. I held the long, wooden stick like thing up for Smith to see. It looked like a cross between a hockey stick and a paddle.
“What the hell is this?” I gasped, like I’d found some ancient treasure.
“Hey, way to go,” Smith said. “That’s a Hurley, as used in the game of Hurling.”
“Get the fuck out of here, Smith,” I scoffed. “There’s no such game, man. The only hurling game is when you drink too much hooch with your pals.” I mocked vomiting over Smith’s boots.
“You never heard of Hurling, seriously? You being a Mick and all? Shame on your ass, Wilde Man,” Smith scorned. “It’s an Irish game but it’s played all over the world, kid. Or used to be played all over the world, anyhow. They played it in America, sure enough. The Irish kids in Brooklyn taught me how to play in McCarren Park, back in the day.”
“Sorry, man. Never heard of it,” I said, shaking my head. “What the hell do you have to do, like smack people in the face with this thing?” I waved the stick close to Smith’s nose.
Smith grabbed the shaft of the Hurley stick and deflected the blade away. “Look, I’ll tell you all about it some other time. Right now, we should be making tracks before they figure out we’re AWOL.” He pointed to the staircase then pointed at me.
I studied my hurley stick as we moved down the corridor towards the staircase that led to the incinerator. I felt quite pleased with myself at my find, it made a great weapon. The stick was around three feet long, the shaft was solid and the end was flat and slightly curved. Ideal for smacking heads.
“This is it,” Smith said, pointing to a set of double doors. “The elevator obviously ‘aint operational, so we’ll have to take the stairs.”
We descended down into the gloominess of a concrete staircase. Smith flicked on a row of battery operated LED lights that Chandra or one of his now departed survivors had rigged up, crudely hanging on the walls suspended by nails and wire. Old lime green paint blistered from the walls and an oily stench of burned substances wafted up from below.
I stopped on the steps. I didn’t like it. My stomach knotted up and my breathing became labored. The reek of the incinerator compartment somewhere down in the darkness stank of death and destruction. My two old unwanted accomplices. All I could think about was Cordoba’s ghost, waiting for me in the shadows down in that terrible dank place.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I gripped the metal hand rail, feeling sweaty and nauseous. Smith bounded down a few more steps before he came to a standstill and looked back at me.
“Come on, kid. Hurry it up, will you.”
I tried to speak but my throat was parched. “I can’t go down there. I’m sorry, Smith,” I finally croaked.
“It’s okay, there ‘aint no zombies down there, man.”
“It’s not zombies I’m worried about,” I wailed.
Smith sighed in frustration but then the penny seemed to drop. “Oh,” he muttered. “Sorry, my bad. I wasn’t thinking. Cordoba, right?”
I slowly nodded. Hell! What was wrong with me? Every girl I got close to recently had died. Samantha – I didn’t know her outcome for sure but it was pretty obvious – Julia – KIA – Manhattan, New York – Estella Cordoba – KIA – Glasgow, Scotland.
Smith brushed his hand through his hair then leaned against the handrails. He sighed deeply and looked over the staircase. “Listen, kid. I never told no one this before. But my mom died of cancer when I was eight years old, right? My family was Italian Catholic so they had an open casket and all us kids were wheeled in to the front room to pass on our last respects before the funeral. Now, I don’t know how you stand on religion and I don’t much give a shit, to be honest but that sight of my mother lying dead in a coffin scared the living crap out of me.” He wiped his face and paused for a few seconds, obviously recalling the image.
“That moment stayed with me for a long while. Haunted my dreams. A few years later when I’m in my teens, I see this guy get mowed down in the street by some fucking drunk in a big assed sedan, who just carried on driving and crashed into a street light further down the road. He just knocked the guy totally off his feet, right in front of me and my pals. The guy’s head smacks against the sidewalk so hard it sounded like a piñata smashing open. There’s blood and brains all over the street and my pals are crying and puking. Me, I’m just standing there watching this guy dying on the side of the road. He looked at me as he took his last breath. Really looked right into my fucking eyes, man. And that’s when I realize, death is always on your shoulder. The Grim Reaper is always around and he don’t care how it happens. Cancer, drunk driver, stray bullet, disease, war zone, whatever. Hell, you could be in your own home and fry yourself with an electric toothbrush, for Christ’s sake. Some asshole who’s had a bad day could be totally pissed off with the world, all wired up and go out on a shooting spree - Boom!” He waved his hands in the air above his head. “You’re a goner.”
I started to wonder if Smith was simply talking to make me feel better or he had a point to make.
“So, my philosophy from that day on was – don’t fear death.” Smith opened his arms as though he had just finished a sermon in church. “Don’t fear nothing. Because sure as shit, there’s nothing you can do to change the outcome of what happens to you.”
I nearly laughed. Smith surely was one crazy son of a bitch. But extreme as his outlook was, it had served us well and kept us alive this long, although we’d experienced more than our fair share of luck along the way. I decided Smith was one of life’s lucky people, blessed with a survival instinct that couldn’t be taught. Maybe it was his rough upbringing on the st
reets of Brooklyn that had molded him that way. I hoped I was lucky too. Perhaps I had been lucky all this time and not realized it.
What if I hadn’t been suffering from a terrible hangover on that first day of the apocalypse in Brynston? What if Pete Cousins hadn’t owed all that money? What if I’d never met Smith? What if we’d reached my dad’s yacht a few days earlier in Manhattan? What if Podolski had shot us all at Newark Airport? What if I hadn’t found Batfish in New Orleans? What if we’d been sitting in different seats when the military plane crash landed over the UK? What if Maddy had killed me back at Connauld Castle? What if I’d covered the back door of the house with Jimmy instead of Cordoba? What if I was a fucking zombie? What if? What if? So many what if’s…So many small margins between life and death.
I closed my eyes and saw the words ‘What if?’ spin around in the center of black and white spiraling concentric circles in my mind.
“What if?” I said aloud.
“What?” I heard Smith murmur.
The simple truth hit me like a blow from the hurley stick I held in my hand. I opened my eyes and looked directly at Smith. I felt my tension and apprehension evaporate into the ether.
“So, what you’re trying to say is…you’re saying the phrase what if? It doesn’t really exist?”
Smith looked blank then shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “All I’m saying, kid, is shit really knows how to happen and there’s nothing anybody can do to change that shit. Shit is what it is and you have to deal with it.”
I wasn’t really sure we were on the same wavelength but for some inexplicable reason, I felt a whole lot better. Smith’s backward psychology had temporarily worked.
“All right, let’s go.” I released my grip on the handrail and caught up with Smith.
“Geez, kid. You had me worried for a second there,” he muttered. “I kind of thought you were freaking out on me.”
“You’ll never know,” I mumbled, gesturing down the staircase. “Come on, let’s get this shit over and done with.”
The LED lighting ran the length of the staircase, illuminating the route with an intense white light. The smell of the incinerator increased as we reached the ground floor and I nearly gagged at the odor hanging thickly in the air.
Three box shaped lights stood on top of tripods on the floor, towards the rear of the incinerator compartment. The lights cast a bright white glow, illuminating the whole room. The solid concrete floor was scorched black by the soot from the fiery furnace, standing against the wall to the left. Even though the incinerator wasn’t fully operational, I could still feel the heat radiating from the huge metallic contraption. I didn’t even want to look at it in case the thing evoked bad images of Cordoba flooding through my mind.
“The fire exit door is right across the room over here,” Smith said, pointing the way. “I noticed it when…well, when I was last down here.”
I nodded and followed Smith across the scorched floor space. Smith placed his hand on the central exit bar running across the door but I grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Hey, won’t this door trigger some kind of alarm? We don’t want the whole damn place to fire up a bunch of screeching sirens.”
Smith turned to look at me with a quizzical expression. He obviously hadn’t considered that particular scenario.
“Well, the smoke alarms didn’t sound so maybe the fire alarms are on the same system,” he muttered. “Let’s try it and if the alarms go off, we’ll close up the door and try another route.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “Let’s get this over and done with.”
Smith depressed the exit bar and pushed on the door. I breathed a slight sigh of relief when no alarms sounded but the icy cold air from outside seemed to suck my breath away.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Smith opened the fire door a crack and peered through the gap at the outside world. He slowly edged the door open further and I craned my neck to take a look out onto the snowy landscape. I saw one lone, male zombie lurching around, moaning to himself in the small side street beyond the main hospital building. The ghoul was dressed in the ripped remnants of a set of dark blue coveralls and black work boots. The left sleeve of the garment was completely torn away, revealing the mutilated flesh of his bicep and forearm, injuries obviously sustained by multiple bites. The solitary zombie groaned and either tripped or sunk to his knees. He patted at the snow and rubbed his hand across the surface as though it was evoking some distant memory from his former life.
“Just one shithead to deal with,” Smith rumbled. He made to step out of the doorway but I grabbed the back of his jacket with my free hand.
“Hold up,” I whispered.
Smith shot me a frustrated glance over his shoulder. “What now?”
“This door. If we go on out there and the door shuts behind us, we’ll have no way of getting back in here. We’ll be locked out with our asses hanging in the breeze.”
Smith thought for a moment. “I see your point. Downside to that is, if we prop it open a whole bunch of dead fuckers could come waltzing right on in here. The others won’t know what hit them until it’s too damn late.”
I sighed. “Maybe we should abandon this plan for now, Smith.”
“Hey, no way, Jose,” Smith rumbled. “We’re going out there and we’re getting those damn packs. We’ll be ten minutes – fifteen tops.”
“Do you even have the god damn car keys on you?” I groaned. “I seem to remember you locked that thing up before we came in here.”
Smith looked at me with an incredulous expression. “What do you think I am, some sort of fucking idiot? Of course I brought the damn keys.” He patted his jacket pocket, as if to double check.
“Well, what do you suggest?”
Smith sighed and quietly pulled the fire door closed. “We’ll have to find something to keep the door from closing but keeps it so it looks like its shut.” He moved back into the center of the incinerator room and began searching around the floor space.
“Absolute genius,” I whispered. “I’d never have thought of that.”
“Hey, quit with the smart ass remarks and help me look for something, will you.”
I shook my head. This half assed plan of Smith’s was already going down the pan.
“Aha, this is the guy for the job,” Smith said, holding up a rusting, short handled shovel.
“What in the hell are you going to do with that?” I sighed.
“We wedge the blade between the door and the jamb at the bottom so it can’t close itself.”
“What if the door blows open the other way?” I asked, already noticing a huge flaw in the plan. “The door opens outward, right? So what happens if a gust of wind blows the door fully open? It’ll leave the whole place with a gaping breach.”
Smith sighed. “So who made you Mayor of Toy Town? Okay, we find something to block the door from the other side. What about that?” He pointed to a rickety, black plastic chair with slightly bent metal legs, standing at an odd angle by the incinerator. “We stand that against the door from the outside to stop it blowing open.”
“It doesn’t look very sturdy,” I pointed out.
“It’ll be fine, trust me,” Smith muttered. He moved across the room and grabbed the chair.
Smith’s plan did work. He placed the shovel between the door and the outside step and leaned the chair against the outside of the door, so it pushed it back as far as the shovel blade would allow. It didn’t look exactly inconspicuous though and I hoped the undead wouldn’t notice the change in the outdoor scenery.
The air outside was bitterly cold and the temperature must have been somewhere below zero and the snow crunched beneath our feet as we secured the fire door. A slight damp, gray mist hung across the landscape, which would help to conceal us while we made our way to the Range Rover.
The zombie in the blue coveralls noticed us goofing around outside the door and started to stagger over to investigate.
“Stay here while I
take out this chump,” Smith muttered, nodding at the approaching zombie.
“Okay, man. Whatever,” I agreed.
Smith glanced from left to right to check no more zombies roamed around in the near vicinity before he stepped forward to meet the coverall clad ghoul head on. I tucked my hurley stick under my arm and rubbed my hands together to try and keep the cold from seeping into my fingers. Smith flicked the hem of his jacket to one side and drew the machete from his belt. He held the weapon at his side as he walked towards the ghoul. I imagined he looked like some ancient Highland warrior striding through the mist to confront his foe.
The zombie dressed in the blue coveralls groaned, seemingly in surprise that a potential meal was closing towards him. Smith’s boots crunched in the hardening snow. He took another quick look on each of his flanks before he raised the machete at a wide angle. The undead didn’t have any sense of self preservation and never tried to duck out of a blow or attempt to defend themselves. Their greatest strength was in numbers, cornering their prey. The element of shock, at its highest when the epidemic had first hit the world was long since beyond us. People couldn’t quite believe the dead were reanimating and attacking them in those early days and they would simply stand still, rigid with fear and disbelief when the bodies of their friends, families and associates began biting lumps out of them.
Smith made a kind of grunting sound as he swung the machete one handed in a sideways swipe. The blade sliced through rotten flesh, sinew and bone with ease. The ghoul made a croaking noise before the head tumbled from the body and thumped into the snow. The body stood for a brief moment before crumpling into a heap beside the head. I had to hand it to Smith. He had certainly mastered the art of decapitation. Something told me he’d had some experience of the action in his sordid and violent past.
Smith speared the separated head with the tip of the machete blade, to ensure the brain was totally non-functioning before he wiped the excess blood in the snow. He strolled back towards me as if he had just stepped off a bus. Killing zombies to him was no different to anybody else squashing a cockroach.
The Left Series (Book 5): Left On The Run Page 13