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

by Fletcher, Christian

“The name is Sammy O’Neil,” the guy said, offering his hand. “We did meet briefly last night but the drink was flowing and the memory becomes a little fuzzy.” He smiled again.

  “Brett Wilde,” I stated, returning the handshake.

  “This is something of a crisis meeting we’re holding at the moment, Brett,” Sammy explained, his smile slipping immediately from his face. “The damn Russians have cleaned the city out. There’s nothing left out there in the way of food, water and medical supplies.”

  “I had a real problem just finding some insulin for old Seamus, as you know,” McElroy added.

  “We’ve only enough supplies to last us for a few more days,” O’Neil said. “What, with the influx of our new friends, not that I’m saying you’re all not welcome but it’s going to stretch our limited resources even further.”

  “What happened in the city?” I asked. “Why is everything so wrecked out there? Did the Russians blow everything up after they’d looted the place?”

  O’Neil emitted a slight wheezy laugh. “No, no, nothing like that. I can’t even blame our Russian friends for the carnage in the city.” He sighed deeply and glanced at McElroy with an allusion of sadness in his eyes.

  Batfish slowly walked into the room and hunkered down beside Wingate. She purposefully avoided my gaze. I wondered if our relationship was now ruined forever.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  “When the outbreak of the disease started here in Belfast, the whole city was quarantined,” O’Neil explained. “The infrastructure was ideal to keep the infected people from entering the city. I’m not sure how aware you fellows from America are with the history of the troubles in Northern Ireland, but at the height of the disturbances, big old partition walls were erected and check points were in place to separate the warring factions.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Smith said. “I read all about the troubles, back in the day. I thought it was all over with.”

  “Well, after the truce and the Peace Process, those barriers stayed in place. They made an ideal defense against the waves of infected trying to enter the city,” O’Neil continued. “Unfortunately, old rivalries between the Protestants and Catholics resurfaced. Old grudges and hatred returned with a vengeance. All the secret stockpiles of weapons and explosives that were supposedly handed into the authorities after the Peace Process were reclaimed and used against each other. It was a very bad time.” He sighed and glanced at the floor in front of him, obviously reliving the traumatic period in his mind.

  “When the killing started, people were blowing each other up, shooting each other in the streets,” McElroy added. “With no law or governing authorities, it was total and all out warfare. Gunfights in the streets, homes and buildings were bombed and burned out. The carnage was everywhere, so it was. Innocent people were caught up in the fighting, just going about their daily business of trying to find enough food and supplies for their families.”

  “Wow,” Smith muttered. “So everybody was too busy fighting each other instead of defending the place against the infected, huh?”

  O’Neil nodded. “That’s about the size of it. The infected trickled into the city a few at a time but of course nobody noticed until it was too late. Some people tried to escape the city but we’ve never seen or heard anything of them since. The few of us left that lived in this tower block decided to make a stand and barricade ourselves in, until the shooting and explosions stopped. When it did finally end, there was nobody left, just a whole load of staggering corpses wandering around the city and feeding on the bodies of the dead.”

  “My god, that’s terrible,” I sighed, slightly regretting I’d asked what happened.

  “We reckon we’re the only living people left in Belfast,” McElroy said. “The others are all dead or walking around in an infected state or they fled to some other place. We haven’t seen anybody else apart from the Russians for months.”

  “Did the Russians hassle you in any way?” I asked. “They didn’t try and liberate you?”

  “I don’t think they even knew or cared that we were here,” McElroy said. “They were more interested in taking everything they could carry.”

  “Why were there so many undead in the dockyard?” I asked.

  McElroy shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe they followed the Russians there. They might have underestimated their numbers. More and more infected seemed to flock into the city every day before the winter. It was as though they were coming here from everywhere for miles around. We’ve had to go out there and scavenge for supplies in the stores but now it looks like the well has run dry.”

  “So we have to figure out a way to solve our problem, right?” I sighed.

  There always seemed to be a massive flaw whenever we found a safe haven. The bottom line was we’d slowly starve to death inside the tower block unless we came up with a solution.

  “Do you have access to any more of those weapons?” Smith pointed to McElroy’s handgun holster.

  “That’s one thing we do have plenty of,” McElroy sighed. “But you can’t eat guns and ammunition. We found a stash of weapons and explosives in a house on the Shankill Road after the fighting stopped. We found more and more stores of armaments wherever we went, along with a load of combat clothing, hence the balaclavas and black clothing when we go out onto the streets. We keep the weapons and ammo locked away in an apartment on the ground floor. They’re not things you want the wee kids picking up and playing with, if you know what I mean.”

  “That’s good,” Smith muttered.

  I wondered what kind of crazy plan was forming in his mind. No doubt I’d get to hear it when he’d thought it through.

  “What do you have in mind, Smith?” O’Neil asked, his eyes wide in anticipation.

  Smith cleared his throat. “Okay, just hear me out with this one, all right?” He flashed me a brief glance and I knew he was about to drop a bombshell of a suggestion.

  “We take that Russian ship, the good one not the one that hit the docks.”

  O’Neil and McElroy both huffed and a hubbub of chatter from the other people filled the room.

  “I know it sounds a little crazy but…”

  “Crazy? It’s bloody suicidal,” McElroy butted in, laughing sarcastically.

  “I know your intentions are good, Smith but half of us are women and children and old folk. We can’t fight the Russian Army, otherwise we’d have had a crack at them while they were looting the place,” O’Neil groaned.

  “Catch yourself on. Get real, will you,” jeered a big guy, sitting by the rear wall.

  Smith raised his hand to cease the torrent of verbal rejections from around the room. “Okay, just hear me out,” he said. “That’s all I ask. If you don’t like it, you all can tell me to go hang myself. But just listen for a moment, okay?”

  The room fell silent and Smith began to relay his plan.

  “By my estimation, it will take the Russians at least a couple of days to fix up the ship. They won’t want to put it to sea in case it takes on water and they have a danger of sinking. They’ll have a tough time trying to make their repairs and fend off the zombies at the same time. That means they’ll put all their efforts into keeping that area clear. They won’t expect us to board the other ship and they’ll be slightly off guard.”

  “How the hell are we all going to just waltz onboard without them seeing us?” O’Neil snapped. “There must be around one hundred people, all in all.”

  “We don’t,” Smith said. “We take a small crew at night; I’ll lead it if you want. We find a small boat in the dockyard someplace and board the ship from the side facing the sea. The guards onboard won’t be looking out to sea. They’ll only be worried about keeping an eye dockside.”

  “Go on,” McElroy muttered.

  “A load of those Russian guys on that ship got munched and I think they’ll only have a skeleton crew onboard, just to keep it secure. We only need one guy, a navigator to get us out of the port. We slip the moorings and head around to
the other side of the docks where the rest of you will be waiting. We get the rest of you onboard as quick as we can and we sail off to find someplace new.”

  “Yeah? Like where?” McElroy asked.

  Smith looked at me. “That Russian Colonel…what was his name?”

  “Chernakov,” I said.

  “Yeah, right. Well, didn’t he say all those ships are nuclear powered?”

  “He did,” I said, nodding.

  “That means they don’t need refueling, for like thirty years or something. We can go anyplace we want,” Smith said, with a hint of a grin. “If we take a Russian navigator and a few crew members, some guys who know how the engines work, we can head off to an island someplace or even back to the States if we want.”

  “Surely, the Russians will come after us if we somehow manage to get out to sea?” O’Neil whined. “They won’t let us just sail away into the sunset.”

  “No, but we’ll be long gone by the time they fix up their damaged ship and we’ll have at least a day’s sailing time ahead of the rest of the fleet heading to Stavanger. We’d be out in the middle of the Atlantic by that time.”

  Smith’s idea did sound appealing. Whether it would work or not was a different matter.

  “The ship is loaded with medical supplies and food from the city so we’ll be well stocked for a long voyage,” Smith continued. “Chandra over there is a qualified doctor so anybody who falls sick will be well cared for.”

  “I used to work in the dockyard so there’s nothing you can’t tell me about ships,” the big guy beside the rear wall chipped in.

  “There you go,” Smith said, clapping his hands. “What do you guys think?”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  The room fell quiet in a kind of stunned silence. I didn’t know whether the others were so appalled by Smith’s suggested plan that they were too shocked to speak.

  “It sounds feasible, even alluring,” O’Neil said. “But there seems to be a lot of ifs and buts with your plan. You seem to be assuming a great deal and how are all of us going to manage to get to the dockside without the infected catching on to us?”

  “We need some kind of transport,” I blurted, talking before I thought.

  “What?” O’Neil muttered.

  “Well, if we had some sort of bus or big truck, we could pile everybody inside and drive on down to the dockyard,” I explained.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, Mr. Wilde, the whole city is in total disarray. I doubt whether we’d find a vehicle like that anywhere around here,” O’Neil sighed.

  “I know where there are some trucks we could use,” McElroy piped up. “There are at least two of them at the Crumlin Road Gaol. They’re armored type trucks they used to use to transport prisoners around the city. I saw them there a wee while ago when we took that steel door. They’ll probably need a jump start but they’ll be ideal for the job.”

  “The Crumlin Road Gaol closed its doors as a working prison in 1996,” the big guy by the wall jeered. “Why have they still got armored vehicles there?”

  “The place was used as a kind of museum, Connor,” McElroy snapped. “They still have all the old equipment stored there from when it was a working prison and the courthouse across the street. That includes the armored trucks from the days of the troubles.” McElroy spoke with an irritated tone to his voice, as though he resented the big guy questioning him.

  “If the shit hits the fan and the plan goes up in smoke, you can just drive back here in the trucks like nothing ever happened,” Smith said.

  “I doubt that,” O’Neil sighed. “If this all goes wrong the Russians will definitely come after us and they won’t stop until they’ve annihilated us. So you better be sure about this, Mr. Smith and you better not fuck it up.”

  Smith shrugged and looked a little defensive. “Hey, Wilde Man will tell you. I’m the master at pulling off the impossible. ‘Aint that right, kid?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I spluttered with mock conviction. “Smith’s tactics always go according to plan and they’re meticulous in their details.”

  He narrowed his eyes and flashed me a grimace, which told me I was overdoing the bullshit.

  “Well, we can’t do anything unless we get those armored vehicles up and rolling,” McElroy said. “We should go and take a look at them first and see if we can get them fired up.”

  “Sure,” Smith said, hauling himself to a standing position. “Let’s go. Come on, Wilde. We need you to tag along.”

  “Mind if I come with you, Tom?” the big guy by the wall asked. “Like I said, I worked in the dockyard for over twenty years and I know my way around an engine, whether it’s a boat or a vehicle, I’m yer man.”

  McElroy thought for a moment. “Okay, but just the four of us. No more. Too many people cause too much noise and there’s more chance of being spotted by the infected. If you follow me downstairs, I’ll get you all kitted out with some black combats and a weapon.”

  “Hold your horses,” O’Neil cried out, stopping us from moving out of the apartment. “Getting the trucks mobile will be a start, but I don’t want anybody flying off on any wild, foolhardy missions until we’ve thought this thing through thoroughly.” His last five words were spoken as ‘taught tis ting true turaly.’

  “Got it,” Smith said. “We won’t do shit until we’ve come up with a watertight plan.”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Smith,” O’Neil crowed. “I’ve seen enough good people killed needlessly to last me a damn lifetime, so I have. I don’t want to see no more of it.”

  Wingate and Batfish flashed Smith and I a guarded look. I knew them well enough to know their expressions and that look told us to be careful and not mess up, without them having to speak a word.

  The big guy introduced himself on the way down the staircase. His name was Connor Hannigen and he seemed to be slightly resentful of us and the refugees arriving at the tower block. He was tall and heavily built, with long arms and legs. His wavy brown hair was slightly graying at the temples and I’d have guessed he was somewhere around his mid forties.

  McElroy led us to an apartment located on the ground floor at the far end from the entrance and exit point. I guessed they wanted to keep the ammunition and explosives as far away as possible from the living areas.

  McElroy fished around in his pockets and drew a set of keys. He unlocked the door to the apartment and ushered us inside. The room was gloomy as wooden boards were nailed to the inside of the windows. Only small slats of daylight shone through into the apartment from the gaps between the boards.

  “Sorry if you’re having trouble seeing your way around,” McElroy muttered. “But it goes without saying we have to keep this room secure. I use it as the armory.” He pulled out a small flashlight from his jacket pocket and switched it on. He set the flashlight down on top of the first in a row of gray, metal lockers. The light cast the room in an eerie white glow.

  “All right, let’s get you guys suited and booted,” McElroy said, pulling open one of the lockers. “At a guess, I’d say you two were an extra large size.” He nodded at Smith and Hannigen. “And you’re probably a medium, Brett.”

  He tossed us some sets of black combat fatigues as well as a black ski mask each.

  “What’s your weapon of choice?” McElroy asked, pulling open the doors on the adjacent locker.

  Smith whistled through his teeth as he studied the array of handguns and rifles in the lockers. “You weren’t kidding when you said you had plenty of artillery. Man, that must have been some battle out there on the streets.”

  “It was,” Hannigen snapped, pulling on his combat clothing.

  “Most of this gear came from Libya and some from, erm…other parts of the world,” McElroy explained. “They funded a whole lot of terrorism in this country during the troubles. He nodded at the lockers. “I keep all these weapons clean and well oiled.”

  Smith and Hannigen chose to use an Armalite AR-18 rifle each and I plumped for a Taurus semi-automatic, 9mm han
dgun. I found rifles heavy and awkward to use. McElroy handed out some spare loaded magazines of ammunition.

  “You not arming up?” Smith asked him.

  “I keep my AK47 in a gun locker by the front door,” he said. “Just in case we have to make a speedy exit out of here or if some unwanted guests arrive. The guy who is on duty at the door is armed but I like to keep a couple of rifles at the entrance point, just as a safety precaution. You never know when you might need to defend yourself.”

  “That’s certainly true,” Smith said, hanging up his Russian military uniform on a coat hook on the wall opposite the lockers.

  I loaded my Taurus handgun and noticed it was US made by the stamp on the handle.

  “Hey, this gun is from the States,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t be so proud of that fact, if I were you,” Hannigen spat. “All that means is your country was also funding the terrorists.”

  “Okay, let’s not get into a heated debate about that now, Connor,” McElroy interjected, before Hannigen’s temper rose any higher.

  After we’d dressed in our black combats and locked and loaded, McElroy led the way to the exit door. Seamus Heath sat on his chair, reading through a paperback book. A pair of small glasses sat perched on the bridge of his nose.

  “You on access duty again, Seamus?” McElroy asked.

  Seamus looked up from his book. “It keeps me out of trouble so it does, Tom. I like it down here its quiet and gives me the chance to get through me Jack Reacher novels.” He held up the book. “I’ve nearly read the whole lot of them now, so I have. Never had time for reading before the outbreak and look at me now – a proper old bookworm.”

  McElroy smiled and opened the gun locker to retrieve his rifle.

  “We’re on our way out just now, Seamus,” McElroy said.

  “Oh, you are, are you?” Seamus muttered, his eyes flicking back to the pages of his book. “Going anywhere nice?”

  “We’re heading off to the Gaol, so we are.” McElroy loaded the AK47 and stuffed some spare magazines in his top pockets of his jacket.