The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink (23 page)

I turned slowly towards the vinyl strips, covering the entrance and braced myself for the inevitable undead onslaught.

“Get ready, Smith,” I said into my radio. “I’m going to have to get across that floor space as quick as I can so hang on tight.”

“Go for it, kid,” Smith replied. “We’ll try and keep them off you for as long as possible.”

The long haired zombie still banged and scratched at my side window and I wondered how long the glass panel would hold out before it shattered. I’d put the M-16 rifle behind the driver’s seat and couldn’t get to it very easily. A handgun was more effective in close proximity combat.

I hit the gas pedal and the forklift lurched forward, gathering speed. Smith and Cordoba ducked down as we flapped through the long vinyl strips and into the motor pool
area. We moved across the floor at a speed I thought was similar to a normal running pace of a human. My long haired friend at the side window couldn’t keep up and eventually disappeared from view.

The zombies inside the motor pool all turned when we made our way across the main floor expanse. They began trudging in our direction and I wanted to cover as much ground as possible before they blocked our path. Smith and Cordoba continued to shoot from the cage at the nearest zombies. I noticed most of the undead wore the remains of coveralls and uniforms of some sort. They were probably maintenance workers, engineers or
mechanics in their previous lives and had been stuck down here ever since the apocalypse began.

Streams of walking corpses flooded towards us from all directions as I scooted across the floor. My heart hammered inside my chest and I felt beads of nerve induced sweat form on my forehead.

“Where are we heading to, Smith?” I squawked into my headset.

I heard more gunshots and saw a few zombies drop to the deck before he answered.

“Keep heading in a straight line across the motor pool,” Smith yelled. I can see the office around one hundred yards dead ahead.”

I craned my neck, looking through the windshield and trying to ignore the swarms of zombies in our path. I saw a flight of descending steps leading to a separate, enclosed white building, constructed of sheet metal and situated roughly thirty feet from the ground.

“I see it,” I shrieked into the headset, just as the front of the forklift smashed into a zombie who wore an orange construction hat.

The truck lurched sideways as the wheels ran over the zombie’s torso. I thought for one horrible moment the whole forklift
truck was going to roll over sideways. The wheels righted themselves but I heard the cage rattle violently on the forks.

“You okay, Smith?” I yelled into the microphone.

“We’re still here, kid,” came the reply. “Just keep this damn thing steady.”

I didn’t slow the speed. I couldn’t afford to. We were only slightly outpacing the undead horde and Smith and Cordoba were doing their best to take out the zombies directly in
the way of our route to the motor pool office.

Milner and his crew appeared at the staircase summit and began to fire on the zombies surrounding their immediate vicinity, clearing a path for us. I started to slow the
forklift around twenty yards from the staircase, releasing my foot gradually off the gas pedal but not applying the brake. A sudden stop might cause the cage to slide off the forks.

I brought the forklift to a gradual halt
, then slowly maneuvered forward so the cage rested against the staircase. Smith told me when to stop moving forward and I felt the resistance as the metal cage met the staircase frame.

Milner and his crew of five began climbing into the cage from the stairway but I was quickly surrounded by snarling, desperate ghouls. They beat and hammered against the glass with their fists and a large crack appeared in the left side window.
Two zombies crawled across the back windshield and pulled at the metal frame. The whole truck rocked from side to side and I was worried we’d be turned over any second.

“Get them off me, Smith,” I shrieked into my headset.

Smith said something in reply but his words were muffled by gunfire from above me. A few zombies dropped but I was surrounded by a sea of pale, half rotten faces with bared teeth and snarling mouths. The noise built to a feral crescendo, like a pack of wild dogs closing in on an injured deer.

The window panel on the cab’s left side shattered, spraying me with chips of glass and bony, grasping hands reached inside to try and grab me.
I screamed instinctively in terror and reached behind my seat for the M-16. A gnarled hand gripped around my ankle but I managed to shake it off and kick it away. I scrabbled across the small cab to the right side, trying to make myself as small as possible but I knew it wouldn’t be long before the window behind me was also breached.

I pointed the rifle barrel out of the smashed window, flicked the safety catch up
two clicks and pulled the trigger. Three shots fired into the crowd of zombies, jostling to climb into the cab with me. Not enough to quell the tide of gnashing teeth and clawing finger nails.

My number was up unless I did something quickly.

The zombies to my right pushed hard on the glass panel trying to get at me. I was only a fraction of an inch, a pane of glass’s width from their grasping clutches and hungry mouths. The motion of their shoving caused the forklift to rock violently from side to side once more.

I heard the cage clattering on the forks and then a figure dressed in cold weather combat gear fell from above. I heard the screams as whoever it was hit the deck and
was immediately pounced on by several flesh eaters.

“We’ve lost Clements,” somebody yelled from the cage.

Some of the zombies trying to get into the cab turned around at the smell and sense of fresh meat. Poor Clements was already being torn to pieces by around a dozen ghouls. The fall had probably broken a few bones and rendered him unable to even get to his feet. His screams were muffled under the pile of bodies on top of him and it was horribly obvious he was a goner already.

I briefly glanced upward, trying to make out the position of the cage through the cab’s smoked glass roof. A bald headed zombie reached inside with his jaws wide open, ready to bite into my arm. I pulled my arm from his grasp and the rifle twisted in my hands. I tried to reaffirm my grip but my finger accidently activated the trigger.
The three shot burst fired skyward and shattered the smoked glass roof, sending chips raining down on me and the bald zombie who I grappled with.

As I shook the glass chips from my face, it suddenly occurred to me that I had just created an escape route. Somehow, I had to crawl out of that roof space.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I screamed and twisted the M-16 barrel towards the bald zombie. When the muzzle was lined up under his chin, I pulled the trigger to let off another three shot firing burst. The rounds exited through the top of his skull, sending a splattering of blood and brains out through the broken window. Another zombie had hold of my foot and gnawed at the leather toe cap of my boot. I shoved the remains of the bald zombie off me and his heavy torso sent a couple more undead, who were trying to climb into the cab, back outside, falling on top of those who were busy devouring Clements.

A swift kick to the face put paid to the zombie who was trying to eat my boot then I quickly slung the M-16 over my shoulder. I scrambled up the interior, leaning my back against the glass and reached for the square shaped roof frame, where the shattered smoked glass previously sat. I hauled myself skyward and felt hands grabbing at my dangling legs. Kicking the grasping hands away, I dragged myself out through the gap and onto the forklift roof.

I hung on to the frame sides as the truck rocked violently. The surrounding zombies reached up and tried to pull me off the roof.

“Wilde!” I heard a shout from the staircase.

I swiftly turned my head and saw Smith hanging on to the sides of the cage, staring at me intensely. Cordoba, Milner and the rest of his crew had got back out of the cage and stood on the staircase taking shots at the zombies below.  

“Get your ass over here, now,” Smith bellowed.

I held onto the forklift frame with my hands and clambered across the roof then onto the top of the fork casing. Smith held his arms out towards me and I leapt up towards the cage. Smith caught hold of my wrists and hauled me over the side of the cage. We steadied ourselves from the rocking motion then climbed out of the opposite side
, onto the staircase to join Milner and Cordoba.

“I thought you were a goner for a while there, Wilde,” Smith shouted in my ear then slapping me on the back. 

My legs felt like jelly and I could hardly stand upright as I turned to survey the scene of carnage below. The whole horde of zombies surrounded the forklift and some still feasted frenziedly on Clements’s corpse. Our escape route was cut off but at least the cage prevented the zombies from gaining access up the staircase, although it wouldn’t hold out forever. The undead still furiously rocked the forklift and crawled underneath the cage, spurred on by the taste and smell of fresh blood.

“Shit, what are we going to do now?” I panted.

“We’ll have to think of something,” Smith said, shaking his head. “It was a decent idea to use that forklift, kid, but it only got us one way. Now, we’re stuck here.”

Milner told the rest of his crew to cease firing and conserve the ammunition.

“I think we should fall back to the office, out of sight,” Milner suggested. “They’ll keep trying to get up here as long as they can see us. We can still keep an eye on the staircase through the window.” He pointed to the side of the office where a small window was situated in the center of the sheet metal panels.

“Okay, let’s take some cover and
grab a breather,” Smith agreed.

“Fall back to the office,” Milner commanded through the radio headsets.

We backed up the staircase and headed towards the small motor pool office. One of the remaining air crew closed the door and engaged the lock once we were all inside. I still heard the cage rattling on the concrete steps and the sounds of the undead, snarling and whining as they rocked the forklift truck.

The office was a bland, rectangular shaped room, with four desks standing in a vertical line, one behind the other against the wall on the right side. The desks contained blank computer monitors and a few box files but no fun trinkets or family photos like the previous office area Smith and I had encountered. Filing cabinets lined the left side of the floor space with a row of box files neatly stacked on their edges sat on top. This was a strictly work related office area.

I sucked in air, regaining my breath and leaned my back against one of the filing cabinets. Smith handed me a cigarette and we both lit up. Several more of Milner’s crew joined us for a smoke. One of the remaining air crew, I recognized as Kauffmann, kept vigil by the small window overlooking the staircase.

“We appreciate you coming to get us, Smith,” Milner sighed. “But we’re back to square one now.”

Smith nodded. “At least most of us are in the same place,” he said.

Milner rubbed the back of his neck. “Shit! I can’t believe we lost Clements, though. He was the senior engineer in the crew.”

“We lost Johnson on the way too,” Cordoba chipped in.

Milner
briefly shut his eyes and hissed under his breath. “We’re losing too many people on this operation,” he groaned. “There are still four personnel unaccounted for and we still can’t get comms with Cole.”

“Yeah, these radios don’t seem to have much frequency range on them,” Smith sighed.

“It might be something to do with blind spots in the terminal,” Milner said. “Certain places will prevent transmissions. There may be a frequency jam in this area because of the generators and sheet metal cladding or we’re just too damn far away.”

“I don’t expect the blizzard outside helps,” Cordoba said.

“We got to figure out a way out of here,” Smith sighed, moving to the window.

“Not only a way out of here,”
I croaked through the cigarette smoke. “We’ve got to double back somehow and get those fuel pumps working.”

“I really didn’t think
there’d be this many zombies inside the building,” Milner sighed and thumped the top of a filing cabinet with his fist.

“I suppose they locked the place down when the epidemic hit,” Smith mused. “They didn’t realize they were condemning themselves to death.”

I stubbed out my cigarette on the top of a filing cabinet and joined Smith and Kauffmann by the window. We looked out across the expanse of the zombie infested motor pool.

“A few more than one hundred out there now, huh?” I said.

Smith rumbled and leaned his arms on the window sill, staring out at the motor pool.

I racked my brains for some sort of escape plan, studying the layout of the floor space below.
Huge, metal roller shutter doors stood at regular intervals in the wall opposite the office. Presumably they led to the airport runways. I glanced at the selection of stationary vehicles and back at the roller doors. A crude plan formed in my mind.