The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink (20 page)

“What is it?”

Smith swiped some of the pot plants off the desk with the muzzle of his rifle. The ceramic pots clattered to the floor and broke into pieces. The flashlight beam reflected against the wall, making Smith’s face look like a serial killer in an old black and white movie.   

“Take a look at this,” he said.

I stumbled over the broken pots and dry soil to stand next to Smith. He was highlighting an internal map of the airport terminal, fixed to the wall behind a Perspex cover. I studied the map but still had no clue where we were.

“The fuel pump and internal generators are here.” Smith tapped a spot on the map on the lower levels.

I saw some scrawlings next to a picture of what looked like a bunch of strange shapes. The last time I’d seen those kinds of etchings was on a stupid job application when I was supposed to follow the next shape pattern. I had no clue what I was looking at back then and I was none the wiser now.

“How do you know?”

Smith sighed and I knew he was flashing me his incredulous look. “Jesus, Wilde! You are one dumb son of a bitch. Didn’t they teach you anything in that High School in Shitsville, Pennsylvania?”

I didn’t know what the hell he meant. “What? I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking at.”

“That’s my point,” Smith snorted. He tapped the Perspex with the M-16 again. “GEN is an abbreviation for generator.” He spoke slowly as if I was some kind of retard. “And FP stands for fuel pump. Got it?”

“Oh, okay. If you say so.” I was
n’t just deliberately trying to piss him off with my ignorance.

He sighed again. “Never mind, kid. Go back to the fool’s school. Take it from me, the fuel generator pumps are located right there.”

“So…where are we in terms of these stupid, fucking pumps?”

Smith huffed. “I don’t fucking know.” He
put the M-16 on the desk, grabbed the side of the Perspex screen and tore it off the wall. “Let’s see if we can make some sense of this damn map.” More pot plants and the computer screen crashed to the floor as the Perspex screen popped from the wall, knocking the contents of the desk flying.

“You might want to make a bit more noise,” I sighed. “The zombies on the upper level didn’t quite hear you.”

“Ah, shut up,” Smith snapped. “We’re making progress here.”

“Is that what you call it?”

Smith ignored my digs. He placed his rifle on the desk and pulled the map away from the wall. He spread the curling paper document on the desk surface and placed small plant pots on each side to stop the map rolling itself back up. I moved alongside him as he studied the diagram. He held the flashlight over several points, deep in thought.

“I think we must be here.” He dabbed the map with his forefinger.
“That means we’ve got to go back up that staircase and down the other side.”

I sighed; the feeling of weariness sapped my body. “Not up and down more fucking stairs
? I’m done with running around this place.”

“No choice, kiddo,” Smith snapped, folding the map. “I don’t want to be rattling around in this
goddam
airport anymore than you do but if we want to get the hell out of here, we got to get to those damn pumps.”

I knew Smith was right but I’d had enough of running around in the dark. I was sick of running away, period.
The last six months had been the most strenuous, stressful time of all of my thirty-one years of life on this planet called Earth. A lump of rotating rock and sea, mostly inhabited now by walking, flesh eating corpses. My mind wandered again, strange how long term sleep deprivation alters the conscious state. I thought about aliens from another planet as I followed Smith out of the office back into the open plan area. What the hell would they make of our world if they landed here now?

“Strange planet this one, Spock. The humans die and then come back to
an animated state and try to eat each other. I think we’ll give this place a miss, don’t you?”

“Roger that one, Kirk. Best leave those crazy assed humans to it! Get the fuck out of there while you can, buddy!”

“Don’t worry, Spock! We’re out of here! The human race has fucked itself over and wrecked what was once a beautiful place and turned it into the junkyard of the universe.”

“Did you hear that?” Smith hissed, snapping me from my own, private Sci-Fi experience.

“What?” We stood still in the open plan office area.

“I heard a noise from that last office we didn’t check.”

“You sure? I didn’t hear nothing.”

“That’s your problem, Wilde. You’re head’s too far up your ass to notice what goes on.”

I didn’t know if Smith was having a genuine dig at me or he was just clowning around. I knew I could be a bit of a dipshit at times but there was no field manual for surviving a zombie apocalypse. You had to simply go with the flow and ride your luck. So far,
Lady Luck
had been on my side, why she chose me, I really didn’t know why. I was nobody special.

We stood in silence for a few seconds and I heard a scuffle from the last room to the right of the three office doors.

“It could be a mouse?”

“Mouse, my ass,” Smith growled and moved towards the office door.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Smith gripped his rifle and gestured for me to open the door with a nod of his head.
I pulled the handle down, kicked open the door and took a few steps back. A single gunshot came from the office, breaking the silence and piercing the wall inches from Smith’s head.

“Whoa! Don’t shoot, we’re friendlies!” Smith yelled.
He crouched down and shone the flashlight beam around the office interior.

I hit the floor with my finger on the M-16 trigger, ready to fire if necessary.

“Milner…is that you?” A deep voice called from the office.

“No, it’s Smith and Wilde out here. Do not fire!”

“All right. Is there any of those things out there?”

“Not at the moment,” Smith groaned. “But if you keep shooting, there soon will be.”

“Okay, man. We’re coming out.”

“What the fuck?” Smith shrieked. “We’re on the same side here. We’re not in a hostile situation at present. Just come on out. We won’t fire on you and you don’t fire on us, it’s that simple.”

Smith kept the flashlight beam on the office doorway and I saw Johnson and Cordoba emerge from the darkness.

“S
…sorry,” Cordoba stammered. “We didn’t know it was you two. I didn’t mean to fire at you.”

“Well, good job your aim wasn’t straight,” Smith growled, standing upright. “Otherwise I’d be as dead as that poor bastard in there.” He nodded towards the first office we’d entered.

“The light was in my eyes, if not you’d be dead,” Cordoba retorted.

I was going off her rapidly. She was too gung-ho and trigger happy for my liking. In my experience of the apocalypse, someone like that was likely to get themselves and everybody else in their party killed. I got to my feet and let my rifle rest by my side. 

“Have you been down here all this time?”
Smith asked.

“Yeah,” Johnson sighed. “We had no comms with the others and we didn’t know where the hell to go. We were hoping to get some word of what was going on over the radio.”

“The frequency has gone to hell. There’s very limited communications with Cole and we haven’t heard a word from Milner and his crew,” Smith explained.

“So what the hell do we do now?” Johnson whined. “We can’t stay down here forever.”

“No, we’re heading out of here, back up the staircase and down to the generator room,” Smith said.
“I’ve got a map and we think we know where to go.”

“You only
think
?” Cordoba snapped. “We want to be sure where we’re going. Not running around on some wild-assed goose chase.”

“Listen, Sweetheart,” Smith bawled. “We were running around out there trying to find out what was going on while you and your buddy were cowering away down here
, like a pair of lost sheep.” 

I sensed the situation was heading towards a heated argument.
Cordoba took a deep inward breath, ready to hurl back some vitriolic abuse but I intervened. A full blown quarrel was not what we needed right now.

“Hold the phone, you guys,” I shouted, standing between Cordoba and Smith, who were squaring up to each other in front of the office doorway. “Let’s just get to this damn pumping station and see if we can get the fucking things working.”

Smith sniffed and moved away. I heard Cordoba breathe out a sigh of relief. She was obviously a tough cookie but Smith was an intimidating figure, especially when somebody had just taken a shot at him.

I let them cool off for a few moments before I suggested we vacate the office and try and find our way to the pumping station. Johnson muttered something but Cordoba and Smith remained silent. I guessed Smith may have put a bullet in her head if Johnson and I hadn’t been in company.

I led the way back through the open plan office to the doorway next to the exit staircase. Smith lit the way with the flashlight behind me and Johnson and Cordoba followed.

Smith shone the flashlight beam up the staircase and we listened for any moans of the undead at the bottom of the steps. We didn’t hear any sounds, only the noise
of our heavy, nervous breathing. I took the lead and led the way up the staircase. I could almost feel the tension in the air between Smith and Cordoba. The last thing we needed right now was to encounter a bunch of zombies heading down the staircase in our direction.

I trod cautiously but quickly up the concrete steps, listening for any sounds above. The others in the group remained silent and I just wanted to find the pumping station as quickly as possible so we could get the hell out of this place.

Much to my relief, we arrived back at the top of the staircase without any untoward incident. I stopped and leaned on the balustrade, waiting for the others to catch up. Something or somebody banged around in the corridor in front of me. It sounded like a few people bumping across the walkway up ahead. Moans and wails drifted through the air.

I leaned back over the balustrade and saw the other three emerging from the darkness. “Come on, you guys, hurry it up. I think we’re going to have some company
real soon,” I hissed.

Smith mumbled something I didn’t catch but all three of them quickened their pace. We started down the opposite staircase with Smith leading this time.

“We need to keep out of sight of those things, otherwise we’re going to be trapped down there,” Johnson said.

“Too true,” I muttered, wondering how we were going to get out of the building when and if we got the fuel pumps going.

At the foot of the staircase, the area opened out into a corridor with several doors on each side, leading off to God knew where. We stopped and looked up and down the passageway.

“Which way now, Smith?” I asked.

Smith handed me his M-16, took out the map and unfolded it. He shone the flashlight over the document, deep in thought.

“It looks like this whole area is the power source of the whole place. The generators should be located in a room at the end of this
passage.” He pointed further down the corridor.

Smith took back his rifle and shone the flashlight down the corridor. The concrete ground was painted gray and the block walls were whitewashed. A few notice boards, with health and safety flyers pinned to them, hung on the walls between the doors.   

We moved deeper into the passageway, following Smith but I stopped when I heard a clanking sound from behind one of the doors to our right. Johnson bumped into me from behind. 

“What was that?” I hissed.

“I didn’t hear nothing. You’re just getting spooked,” Johnson grumbled.

“No, I definitely heard something or somebody behind one of those doors,” I insisted. “I’m not playing games, something made a sound.”

Johnson sighed. “There’s nothing down here, man. Look, I’ll show you.” He pushed open the door immediately to our right.

A dark shape lurched from the room beyond and wrapped itself around Johnson. That was when all hell broke loose.