The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink (36 page)

We’d driven cautiously along the roads for around fifteen minutes when Milner slowed the Humvee at the entrance gate to the Porton Down base. The abandoned
, half red brick, half brown colored sheet metal gatehouse looked foreboding and dark inside. A circular shaped, brick built flower bed stood at around knee height in front of the gatehouse. A red sign reading “
Stop Police
” in white lettering, hung loosely from the bricks. Some low level, white buildings stood further along the road into the base, beyond the gatehouse. Green mold covered the once red and white traffic barriers blocking the entrance and exit to the establishment.

“The barriers are closed. We can’t get in,” Batfish groaned.

“Those barricades won’t stop this baby,” Milner chimed, turning the vehicle towards the exit barrier. He revved the Humvee engine and picked up speed. The big military vehicle crunched into the metal barrier. The impact against the front crash bars caused the red and white pole to fold and crumple in the center as though it was made of paper.

The Humvee seemed virtually indestructible.

“Easy there, Milner,” Cole yelled from the gun turret. “Stop jerking this beast around.”

Milner giggled to himself as the Humvee clattered over the wrecked barricade. “Apologies, Chief,” he shouted back.

We drove onward, up the slightly inclining road, between wire mesh fences towards the white buildings. The road leveled off and the vast area of the whole base honed into view. Numerous, gloomy looking, block shaped buildings stood amongst overgrown grassy areas. The rain had ceased to a light drizzle but the whole place gave the appearance of an abandoned, bleak ghost town. No people, animals or even zombies roamed the grounds. Milner stopped the Humvee at a crossroads; each separate route snaked around to different areas of the base.   

I took a quick glance at Rogers and studied his puss ridden face behind the Rad-Haz hood. What kind of awful secrets and lethal chemical products did this
desolate place hold?

“Okay, where is the motor pool?” Milner asked Rogers.

Rogers remained silent. His eyes flicked across the buildings as though he wasn’t sure where he was.

“Where are we headed, guy?” Milner
repeated, the impatience apparent in his voice.

Rogers said something which was muffled behind the respirator but his tone suggested he hadn’t a clue where to go.

“What? I can’t hear you,” Milner shrieked.

“What’s going on? Why have we stopped?” Cole boomed from the gun turret above us.

Milner gave Rogers an accusing stare and held out his gloved hands with his palms facing up. Rogers shook his head rapidly and shrugged.

“I can’t remember,” he squawked, amid some incoherent babbling.

“This fucking guy has no clue where to go,” Milner shouted up to Cole.

We exchanged nervous glances inside the interior. I looked through the windshield and studied the expansive area in front of us. A parking lot stood in the distance to our right, with a few vehicles still static in their respective spaces.

“What about taking some of those cars?” I suggested, pointing to the parking lot. I spoke loud enough so Chief Cole could hear.

“We really need some military vehicles or at least a truck that’s capable of hauling all our freight,” Milner said.

“All right, let’s take a look around the place first,” Cole ordered. “Proceed with caution. We don’t know what we might come up against.”

“Okay, Chief,” Milner acknowledged and slowly moved the Humvee forward. He took the right lane that looped around in a wide arc towards the parking lot and the buildings behind.

We drove by the parking lot. The few vehicles left standing looked tired and neglected. Some sat on sagging tires, a few had sun visors left open from the long past summer months and no doubt
, all had flat batteries and possibly seized brakes.

Milner pressed onward towards the buildings. Rogers seemed to become more agitated as we approached. He was now surplus to requirements and I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. I still hadn’t forgiven him for whacking me around the head back at Stonehenge.
The painkillers were starting to wear off and I felt the wound stinging and a dull ache pulsed behind my eyes. Rogers was making me feel uneasy, like he knew bad things were going to happen and I began to wish I hadn’t agreed to venture out on this trip. It wasn’t going to be a simple case of jumping into a vehicle and driving it the few miles back to the C-17. As usual, what we thought was going to be a simple operation was turning into another almighty fuck up.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

The windows spread evenly amongst the building’s exterior walls shed no light or signs of life from inside. The sun began to dip and daylight started to fade and become hazy. The wind whistled across the empty, flat space between the base buildings and the Humvee.

The signposts positioned along the roadside pointed the routes towards places that were full of acronyms and didn’t mean anything to us. I was beginning to wonder if this damn place even had a motor pool of any description. Maybe Rogers was leading us into some kind of trap. I wanted to be the first to shoot the son of a bitch if he was deliberately fucking us over.

Milner continued to follow the road ahead and snaked around the building perimeter. They all appeared to be simple office blocks with no sign of any mechanical workshops or garages of any kind. Milner thumped the steering wheel in frustration.

“There ‘aint nothing here, Chief,” he hollered and turned to face Rogers. “This fucking jerk is yanking our chain.”

“Try driving around the back of the buildings,” Cole called down. “We’ll see how the land lies.”

“Roger that,” Milner barked. He wasn’t the only one getting increasingly pissed off with the situation.

Milner followed the road around the back of the mass of gloomy looking buildings and slowed the Humvee so we could study the landscape to our right. A few small, one storey structures stood amongst a vast stretch of overgrown grass. The
beige colored, stand alone buildings looked nothing more than ramshackle huts that had been constructed from prefabricated materials a long time ago. Weeds and brambles formed a tangled mess crawling up the walls and over the flat, gray roofs. A burnt out carcass of one of the sheds stood to the far left of the row. The structures looked so dilapidated that one gust of strong wind would have surely blown them down. The field grass between the huts and the main body of buildings was intermittently disturbed with shallow, muddy craters spread here and there, as though somebody had attempted to dig fox holes. Presumably, the holes had been used as an inadequate form of defense when the base was overrun by the undead.    

More white colored buildings, constructed in a tight circular shape stood around a mile in the distance behind the rundown shacks.

“What now, Chief?” Milner asked, sounding exasperated.

“I don’t know,” Cole replied. “The light is fading fast. I’m thinking about aborting for the night and heading back here first thing tomorrow.”

“Sounds good to me,” Milner responded. “This place is giving me the creeps.”

I was glad it wasn’t only me who wanted to get the hell out of the deserted base. Although we couldn’t see any signs of life, it felt as though somebody or something was watching us and
observing what move we were going to make next.

“Fuck it! Let’s go back,” Cole decided. “I don’t want to be stuck out here in the dark.”

“Aye, aye, Chief,” Milner whooped. “I hear you loud and clear.”

He rolled the Humvee forward, turned the steering wheel to the right and bumped the front wheels up the curbside to U-turn the vehicle on the grass alongside the road. Rogers became increasingly agitated, shrieking behind his respirator.

“Shut the fuck up,” Milner barked. “You can get out if you want to and crawl back under whichever pile of shit you were spawned from.”

“Don’t drive on the grass, don’t drive on the grass,” Rogers kept shrieking.

“Why the hell not?” Milner snapped, turning his head to face Rogers.

“It’s full of buried mines…”

I briefly saw Milner’s eyes widen and his mouth hang open a split second before a blinding orange flash and an ear splitting explosion rattled through the vehicle. My whole world turned upside down, the stench of scorching hot metal and acrid smoke attacked my senses. Searing pain exploded in my head as I was tossed around the vehicle interior like a baby on a roller coaster ride. My stomach lurched from my nuts to my throat and back again several times. I couldn’t hear anything and my eyes sent me a vision of a spinning jumble my brain couldn’t comprehend.

The Humvee eventually ceased tumbling
and came to a halt, lying upside down on its roof. All I heard was a monotonous ring. I knew I was coughing but I couldn’t hear it, only feeling the wheezing sensation in my chest. My head felt as though it had been split in two by a meat cleaver and my left shoulder ached liked I’d used it to charge into a brick wall. I rolled onto my back, trying desperately to clear my head and heard the faint sound of a female shrieking, as though she was very far away. At least my hearing was slowly returning.

I touched the top of my scalp, where the pain was at its worst and felt the sticky, warm substance of my own blood. Shit, the stitches had popped open and only hell knew what other damage my body had suffered.

My senses gradually returned but the pain in my head and shoulder acutely increased. I blinked my eyes as my vision cleared and I coughed again, retching as I did so. It seemed bizarre that I was staring up at the Humvee floor. I couldn’t move for a few moments and briefly wondered if I was paralyzed. The female still shrieked but I didn’t know who was dead and who was alive. I felt myself drifting into unconsciousness but fought against it.

I heard coughing from the front seats and forced myself to prop myself up on my right side, doing my best to ignore the pain in my head and left shoulder.
Milner was still sitting in the driver’s seat, suspended upside down by the seat belt.

“What the fuck…?” He groaned, released the seat belt strap and slid on his back from the chair onto the interior of the roof.

I glanced to the passenger seat and saw Rogers, twisted and motionless, pressed against the cracked windshield. The chemical suit hood was tight against his face and the rubber respirator breathing mask pressed against his cheek, instead of covering his mouth and nose. I shook my head, trying to comprehend the train wreck of a scene in front of me. Rogers’ eyes were glazed and unblinking and his face was completely white.

Milner rolled into a crouching position on all fours. He looked at Rogers then to the rear of the vehicle. He saw me propping myself up on my side.

“Wilde! Are you okay, man?”

“I don’t know,” I groaned
, wiping blood from my face. “I think I split my head again.”

“Batfish, you all right?” Milner croaked, looking over my aching left shoulder.

I turned my head as best I could and saw Batfish slumped behind me holding her nose. Blood seeped through her fingers and her eyes looked glazed. She briefly nodded and stifled a snivel.

“Motherfucker!” We heard from the near darkness of the rear compartment. I knew it was Smith’s voice and the sounds of him
thrashing around told me he was okay.

“Where’s Cordoba?” I asked, peering into the shadows. I couldn’t see her anywhere and hoped she was okay.

Smith emerged from the gloom with a bloody gash above his right eye and a swelling around the same side of his face. He wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve and I noticed purple bruising around his cheek bone.

“Sorry, guys,” Milner spluttered. “I didn’t know we were driving over a minefield.”

“That prick, Rogers should have warned us sooner,” Smith raged. “I’m going to kill the bastard when I get my hands on him.”

Milner glanced at Rogers then performed a double take. “I think you’re too late, Smith.” He crawled over to Rogers and gave him a shake, which produced no response.

“Where’s Cordoba?” I repeated.

Smith glanced at Rogers’ twisted corpse then turned back towards the rear compartment.

“I’ll have a look back here,” Smith muttered, regaining his focus.

“Yup, Rogers is definitely a goner,” Milner confirmed. “I think his neck is broke judging by the bruise line I can see through the hood.”

I couldn’t say I was sorry to hear of Mr. Rogers’ demise. I thought it seemed a bad idea to let him ride with us. He could have simply drawn us a map to the base.

“Cordoba’s back here under these damn chemical suits,” Smith said.

We heard her groan. I was glad at least she was still alive.

“I’m all right, Smith,” she said and crawled from the mess of NBC suits, spilled respirators and extra foul weather clothing that had fallen from the interior stowage compartments. She had an egg shaped bump above her left temple and her face looked groggy.
I sighed in relief. We were all slightly injured and shaken up but only Rogers had lost his life. But I realized we were still one crew member short. I looked at the gun turret beside me but luckily Cole wasn’t still jammed in there between the interior and the ground.