The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink (38 page)

“Quit goofing around, kid,” Smith growled. “This shit is serious.”

“All right,” I protested. “I was just trying to lighten the mood.”

“You sure pick your moments, kid. I’ll give you that,” Smith sighed.

“I wish we could lighten our footsteps and levitate over this damn field,” Batfish said.

If I was a betting type of guy, I wouldn’t have laid good odds on all of us crossing the mine field successfully. Any moment, I was expecting to hear a loud boom followed by a brief, painful floating sensation then scattering myself in small pieces across the field.

Batfish and I kept moving toward the road but our steps had become smaller with each stride. Neither of us wanted to be the one to trip a mine underfoot. We were so close, around six feet from the curbside when we heard a thunderous explosion in the field to our left. Our heads swung in unison to the source of the ear splitting noise. A cloud of smoke and mud billowed in the dusk air, around two hundred yards from where we stood.

“What the hell set that mine off?” Cordoba shrieked.

We caught the whiff of damp soil and hot metal as the smoke cloud drifted over us.

“Probably an animal of some kind,” Milner said.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Smith groaned.

As the smoke cleared, we saw at least one hundred zombies stumbling through the field towards us.

Chapter Sixty

Batfish and I had no choice now but to hurry over the last few feet of grassy ground between us and the road.
I bit my bottom lip so hard it hurt, gripped Batfish’s hand tightly and dragged her to the curbside. We both breathed a brief sigh of relief when our feet touched the concrete curbstone blocks. One problem was solved but we’d now landed headlong into another.

“Well done, guys, you made it,” Cordoba sighed and gave us both a brief hug.

Smith and Milner reloaded their respective weapons and scanned the landscape for a way out.

“Shit
! Zombies and a mine field behind us, goons with guns to the front of us,” Smith sighed.

“And we’ve lost our ride out of here,” Cordoba chipped in
, while she reloaded her M-9.

“And we lost the Chief,” Milner groaned.

“We can get out of this,” Smith grunted. “We’ve got out of worse situations than this. This ‘aint no sweat.”

“What do you have in mind?” Milner asked.

Smith studied the dark mass of the main buildings where the hooded guys had appeared from.

“We can get into those buildings; they’re all interlinked so we can cross a big distance without needing to go back outside. We keep going to our right as far as we can, exit the building, which will bring us back out near that fork in the road.”

“Not wanting to be negative, Smith. But what the hell will that achieve?” Batfish asked.

“Well, here’s the thing.
We can’t’ go around the back of the buildings because of the mine field. We go back the way we came along the road and that’ll lead us nowhere but into darkness and a long detour. We go through those buildings, the route will take us to the other side of the camp. Now, there may or may not be a motor pool of some sort there. If there is, we grab a vehicle and get the hell out of here. If not, we’re a bit closer to the parking lot where we’ll have to try and get one of those old wrecks going.”

“How are we going to do that?” I protested. “All the car batteries will be flat and we don’t have no keys.”

Smith sighed. “I was brought up in Brooklyn, kid. You don’t need no keys to start a car.”

“Yeah, but what about the flat batteries?”

“Most cars in the UK have a manual transmission. We push the damn thing down the slope,” Smith explained. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, kid. I know what I’m doing.”

“Listen up, guys,” Milner interrupted. “Whatever we’re going to do, we better do it real quick otherwise we’re going to have to shoot our way through those zombies.” He pointed to the approaching horde of undead.

They seemed to be moving more quickly than the ones we’d previously encountered. The zombies trotted, almost in a run towards us. Another mine exploded beneath a hunched male zombie, ripping off his arms and legs and sending the emaciated head and torso high into the air.   

“Okay, let’s go,” Smith hissed.

Moving at a rapid pace was more difficult than I anticipated. My injured shoulder hampered my motion and the quicker I moved, the more the blood seeped from my head. Batfish and I remained locked arm in arm as we followed Cordoba, Milner and Smith towards the rear of the dark buildings. I shivered in the increasing cold. I’d forgotten how quickly the temperature dropped during British winter evenings. Cordoba glanced back at us with a concerned expression on her face.

“We’ll patch you both up
a bit when we get inside that building,” she said.

We moved into the shadows at the rear of the main buildings, Smith moved towards an exit door and tried to pull it open. Predictably the door was locked from the inside. Smith took a step back and fired one shot. The door j
olted in the frame and creaked open inwards. The interior beyond was dark but we could make out a crisscrossing staircase ascending in the gloom.

“Anybody got a flashlight?” Milner asked. “I left all my gear back on the Humvee.”

“I got one,” Smith said, taking the light from his side pants pocket. “Hope it still works after being caught up in that explosion.” He clicked it on and it didn’t work at first. I didn’t relish the thought of entering that building full of crazy, hooded people in the dark. Smith tapped the flashlight lens and the light beam thankfully illuminated the concrete slabs beneath our feet.

Throaty roars and high pitch screams echoed across the space between us and the pursuing band of zombies. I looked back at the expanse of grass and saw a few ghouls surrounding Cole’s charred remains. I felt sickened. There wasn’t even the slightest amount of dignity in death any more.

“We better get inside,” Milner prompted us.

Smith led the way, lighting our route with the flashlight. We climbed the staircase slowly and cautiously, anticipating an attack by the crazy gang with every turn on each level.
Each step was an ordeal to climb and I wanted to lie down and for all this to go away. The stairway leveled inside a corridor on the top storey of the building. We took the door to our right and heard the zombie crowd bustling into the building through the open door below.

“Brett and Batfish need patching up with the medical kit,” Cordoba said to Smith and Milner.

“I know but we need to put some distance between us and those fucking zombies first,” Smith muttered. “Otherwise, we’re going to need more than a medical kit, if we hang around.”

The corridor walls were whitewashed but took on an eerie blue glow in Smith’s halogen flash light beam. Open doorways lined each side of the corridor walls and the whole place seemed deathly silent. Smith led the way, holding the flashlight in his left hand and resting his right over the top with the M-9 poised and at the ready. Milner followed, clutching the M16- rifle. Cordoba pushed Batfish and I forward so she could cover our rear as we moved in single file through the corridor.

I checked my own M-9 handgun was still in place in my holster but didn’t bother to draw it. We had enough fire power at present but I’d use my Beretta if the shit hit the fan.

The open doorways we passed led to abandoned offices with paperwork and discarded electrical equipment strewn over the floor space.
A stench of damp, rotting carpets wafted from the rooms.

Smith stopped still when we heard an audible tapping sound coming from an office ahead of us and to our right.

“What the hell is that?” Milner hissed.

Smith shrugged. “I don’t know but we can’t go backward now. Those zombies will be climbing the staircase
right now.”

We plodded slowly onwards. I hoped we were actually putting some distance between ourselves and the zombies behind. I knew we had to move cautiously but
our progress was too slow for my liking.

The tapping became louder and more rapid the closer we moved to the office. It sounded like something metallic hitting a hard surface. Smith drew level with the office door and made to turn to face the room beyond.

Batfish screamed when a hooded figure loomed from the blackness into Smith’s light beam. The figure held a metal bar, raised above his head with the intention of clouting Smith around the head with the weapon.

Chapter Sixty-One

Smith didn’t flinch or lose his poise. He aimed the handgun at the sacked head and fired once. We briefly saw a smoking black hole appear in the center of the hessian hood. The iron bar flew into the darkness in the room behind and the figure shot backwards onto the floor in the doorway.

“Fuck! These guys give me the shits,” Milner hissed.

He wasn’t the only one. This situation was the stuff of nightmares. These hooded freaks were like the bogeymen, popping up when you least expected.

Smith continued on through the corridor with us following closely behind. Batfish gripped my arm with intensity. Cordoba repeatedly spun to scan the area behind us. No better tactic than to ambush an enemy from the rear, plus she had to keep an eye out for the advancing zombie army.

We’d moved another few yards when another two hooded goons leapt out from the doorways on each side. One held a bolt action rifle and the other brandished a machete. Smith took out the guy with the rifle with a single shot to the head but the mad machete wielding freak screamed and stumbled forward with the blade raised beside the right side of his hood.

Milner stepped to his right and crouched, firing one round into the machete guy’s chest.
The blade glinted in the flashlight as it flew from the guy’s hand. The bullet stopped him in his tracks and sent his body the opposite way to which he moved. Machete Man went down heavily on his back and blood pumped from a large, smoking hole in his chest.

“Thanks,” Smith rasped.

Milner nodded.

“Everybody down,” Cordoba yelled from behind us.

We dropped to our knees without hesitation as she ordered. Smith swung the flashlight around to our rear and illuminated another hooded mutant fumbling with a bolt action rifle. He’d emerged from a room somewhere behind us but he wasn’t good enough or quick enough to successfully complete his ambush. Cordoba fired once and we caught a brief glimpse of a spray of blood behind his hooded head, caused by the exit wound.

We rose up and carried on with our perilous journey
along the corridor. Batfish clutched my arm, making little whimpering sounds. I wasn’t sure if it was down to her damaged nose or the grip of genuine fear.

“
Warning, warning, bullshit alert
…”

We heard a prerecorded voice from somewhere inside the nearest office to our left.

“
That ‘aint even bullshit, that’s horseshit
…” The second prerecorded voice was supposed to sound like an American hillbilly.

Smith slowed, alert and crouching, covering the doorway with his flashlight and the
handgun. A flashing red light was tossed from the office and landed on the floor in front of us. Smith recoiled, obviously worried the object was a grenade of some sort. He shone the flashlight at the ground and we saw the object was a plastic, press activated, novelty office toy with the word “BULLSHIT” emblazoned in white lettering across the red button.

A gunshot fired at us from somewhere to our left. The bullet hit the wall above our heads and we dropped to a crouch. Smith swung the flashlight back around to the office doorway and we briefly caught sight of a hooded freak trying to reload his bolt action rifle. The figure tried to duck out of the way when he realized he was a lit target. Smith fired twice; we heard a yelp but no sound of a body falling. Retreating footfalls echoed from the room until we were left in silence once more.

“These damn offices obviously interlink so those goons can pretty much move around without us noticing,” Smith whispered. “We’re going to have to stay frosty. Keep your eyes peeled in all directions.”

Smith kept his M-9 trained on the office doorway as we moved by. An inner door at the end of the corridor stood facing us. Smith crept to the door and kicked it open. Another long passageway
ran into the blackness beyond the flashlight beam’s limit.