The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold (26 page)

“Why?
Why did you do it, Jimmy?”

Jimmy turned his head to the light, his red eyes squinting against the flashlight. I lowered the beam slightly so it wasn’t shining directly into his eyes.

“He made me do things with him,” Jimmy spluttered. “Horrible things I didn’t want to do. He’d made me do those things for a long time. I couldn’t take it anymore so I stole the knife from Mo’s room and stabbed him with it.”

“Why didn’t you say something to the rest of us
?” Chloe asked.

Jimmy sniveled but composed himself a little more to speak. “He was doing it to me long before you came here. He used to abuse me and
Shona. That’s why she killed herself. I’ve been trying to hide away but he caught me in the kitchen when I was taking food. He said he’d tell Alex and have me thrown outside with those horrible creatures if I didn’t do what he said.”

I felt sick. Trevor not only was guilty of viewing indecent images but of full blown mistreatment of this young man and that young girl, who had taken to hanging herself rather than face more exploitation at the hands of her abuser. I’d been shocked when I first saw Trevor’s body and the way he was killed but now I understood why Jimmy had finally snapped and taken his revenge. With no law and order or court system to protect the innocent, people like Trevor were free to commit their vile crimes without fear of prosecution.

“Chloe,” I whispered. “Let’s get him out of here and get him cleaned up.”

She nodded and crouched over Jimmy and took hold of his arm to try and help him up.

“These two are called Brett and Batfish,” she said. “They are good people and they are going to get us out of here.”

I flashed Batfish a worried glance. It looked like Chloe had just invited Jimmy along for the ride.
Another burden. Batfish gave me a slight shrug, as if to say ‘
what can we do
?’

“We’ll take you to the wash room and get you cleaned up,” Chloe said. She turned to face
us as she helped Jimmy to his feet. “The log fires heat the water tank but our wash room is basic. The water pumps around the whole castle on its own system, so Alex has told me. I’ll take you there with Jimmy.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

Chloe and Batfish climbed the staircase with Jimmy between them. I led the way, still with my M-9 by my side. I didn’t know what the hell this place was going to throw up at me next.

Chloe
took the lead when we reached the upper level and she bypassed the recreation room and the dining area through a narrow walkway, beyond the spiral staircase. She seemed to know the castle passageways avoiding the main thoroughfares and I realized she must have used these routes to keep tracking us while staying hidden in the shadows.

I shone my flashlight inconspicuously around, trying to shine the light on Jimmy for a better look at him while he walked in front of me. He was small, skinny and looked both underdeveloped and malnourished. I’d have guessed he was around fourteen years old. I couldn’t remember seeing his name amongst the employment files in the office but I was curious to know if he was an ex-criminal as well. 

“What work did you used to do here, Jimmy?” I asked, trying to take his mind away from the horrific act he’d recently committed.

He sniffed, wiped his nose on his sleeve and turned his head slightly. “I used to be a caddy. You know?
Helping the golfers around the course with their golf clubs. Basically, carrying their bags for them and handing out the clubs they asked for. It was a good job, so it was. I used to get plenty of good tips from the rich guys who used to come and play here.”

His accent was definitely Scottish but he had more of an urban drawl to his speech.

“I got the job straight after coming out of a young offender’s institution,” he explained. “I got into a wee bit of trouble when I was a youngster, you know?”

I sighed, wondering what heinous crime this young guy had committed.

“Oh, okay,” I muttered. “You don’t look very old now.” How long had he been a criminal?

“I’m seventeen,” he proclaimed, as though he was a veteran. “That’s old enough, isn’t it, Brett?”

“I guess so, Jimmy,” I said.

“I didn’t do anything that bad,” he griped.
“Just a wee bit of shop lifting and got caught by the police a few times. They decided to make an example of me and put me inside for six months.” His accent was harsh and slightly hard to decipher, pronouncing ‘police’ as ‘
puh-liss.
’
 

“Are you from around here, Jimmy?” I asked.

“Not far,” he replied. “I’m from Glasgow, south of the river, from Govan.”

“
Govan is full of Neds,” Chloe added.

“Is not,” Jimmy argued, seeming slightly offended.

I had no idea what a ‘Ned’ was but assumed it wasn’t a term of endearment. The word was probably a colloquialism for ‘
asshole
.’

“What about you two?” Jimmy asked. “You sound like a pair of Yankees. Have you come all the way from America?” He rather amusingly pronounced ‘
America
’ as ‘
Amerikee
.’

“Ah, it’s a long story,” I sighed. “
Yeah, we’re from the States, I’ll tell you all about it later.” I couldn’t go into our long travel account while we still had so much to do. At least Jimmy seemed to have cheered up slightly and had come out of his shell.

Chloe led us to a
spacious, dark room with a white tiled floor. I shone my flashlight through the arched entrance and saw several large, white porcelain bathtubs inside cubicles in a horizontal line along the back wall. Shower partitions stood in a line next to racks of folded white towels to the left of the wash room.

“I’ll go and find you some clean clothes, Jimmy,” Chloe said
, turning away towards the passageway.

“Do you need a flashlight?” Batfish asked. “You can borrow mine. Brett has one we can use.”

Chloe shook her head. “I’ll be better off in the dark. Nobody can see me coming.” Then she was swallowed up by the blackness as she moved down the corridor.

For some reason, her words sent a shiver down my spine.
It sounded like a tag line for a horror movie.

Batfish handed her flashlight to Jimmy so he could see in the washroom. He placed it on the towel rack so the room was illuminated with a dim light. Batfish and I waited outside the washroom while Jimmy took a shower. We listened in silence to the running water for a few minutes. I thought I could do with a shower myself but we didn’t have the time.

The water ceased running from the shower faucet and Batfish and I smoked a cigarette each while we waited for Jimmy to dry himself off. I recoiled when I saw a figure emerge from the gloom then breathed a relieved sigh when I realized it was Chloe. She’d returned quicker than I expected, carrying a fresh set of Jimmy’s clothes folded across her arms.

“Okay?” I asked.

She nodded. “I didn’t run into anyone, thank god.”

Batfish and I quashed out our cigarette butts on the tiled floor and Chloe entered the washroom carrying the fresh set of clothes.

“I’ll put your clean gear in the first bath cubicle,” she said, heading for the row of partitioned tubs.

“Right, you are,” Jimmy acknowledged.

Chloe nudged open the door of the bathtub compartment then screamed hysterically a moment later, dropping Jimmy’s clothes onto the floor. Batfish and I exchanged concerned glances and rushed into the washroom, pulling out our M-9 handguns.

“What the hell is it?” I yelled.

Chloe backed away from the cubicle, pointing to the door. Jimmy padded over to us with a towel wrapped around his waist.

“There’s a dead body in that bathtub,” Chloe wailed. “It looks like it’s all cut to pieces.”

I shone my flashlight at the partition door. The light reflected against the maroon colored paint. The door wasn’t open wide enough for me to fully see inside the cubicle but I could make out splashes of blood covering the white tiles surrounding the bathtub. I held out my Beretta in front of me as I slowly approached the cubicle. I doubted the killer was still inside but didn’t know what to expect in this crazy place.

I lifted my foot and pushed the door slowly open then shone the flashlight around the bath booth interior. The walls were awash with blood spatters and the tub contained the remains of a sliced up human body
, coated in blood.

“Fuck,” I hissed. My heart hammered against my ribcage and my breathing became a rapid wheeze.

The body’s head was perched on top of the severed limbs and torso. Despite all the blood, I recognized the face and my stomach lurched.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I turned my head and the pie I’d eaten at lunch time resurfaced in congealed form
, lurching from the pit of my stomach and splashing over the tiled floor.

“Oh, fuck,” I croaked, spitting out the last of the stomach bile in my mouth.

“Do you know who it is, Brett?” Batfish called from outside the cubicle.

I let the door bang shut behind me and had to compose myself for a few seconds.
I knew who the body was all right. We had inadvertently found Gera but it wasn’t quite the happy reunion we’d hoped for. How the hell was I going to tell Batfish what had happened to her boyfriend? And more importantly, who the hell had done this despicable deed? Being eaten by zombies was one thing but to die like that was simply horrendous.

I stumbled out of the cubicle, ensuring I closed the door behind me. I scooped up Jimmy’s clothes and tossed them at him.

“Get dressed, Jimmy,” I croaked. “Come on, guys, let’s go. Let’s get out of here.”

I caught sight of myself in one of the wall mounted mirrors opposite the row of bathtub cubicles. My eyes were red and puffy;
my nose was purple and swollen, the rest of my face was ashen white and beads of cold sweat formed on my forehead. I was inadvertently doing a good impression of a zombie myself. 

“Who was it, Brett?” Batfish demanded. I think she already knew the answer, judging by my shocked appearance. Tears welled in her eyes and her face screwed up with emotion.

“Don’t go in there, Batfish,” I spluttered. “Don’t look at him like that.”

She held her forehead with her free hand and doubled up in gasping sobs.

“I’m so sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t want to find him like this.” I slipped my M-9 back in the holster and wrapped my arm around Batfish. 

“Who is it?” Jimmy asked. “I didn’t kill whoever it is in there, I swear.”

I heard Chloe mumbling quietly to him. She was obviously informing Jimmy about Gera’s disappearance and explaining his relationship to us.

“Ah, bloody hell,” Jimmy
gasped.

“Do you want us to bury him?” I asked Batfish.

She sighed and shook her head. “We don’t have time. The ground will be frozen and we’ll have to find some way of carrying him. Is he really in pieces?”

I breathed outward, still feeling nauseous and nodded my head
slightly. “It wasn’t zombies that tore him apart either. This was done by another living person.”

Batfish glanced at Jimmy and Chloe. “Any idea
who did this?”

They both shook their heads with glum expressions on their faces.
My number one contender was that crazy bastard, Rory.

“There’s a covered patch of ground at the back of the castle where they bury bodies,” Chloe said softly. “They used to use it as an indoor flower garden but now they use it as a graveyard. That’s where they would have buried
Shona. The ground will be hard and frosty but at least there’s no snow on the ground.”

“I guess it would have been nice, in normal circumstances,” Batfish sighed. “But we can’t dig in the dark and I
guess we’ll be leaving at first light.”

I nodded. “Yeah, but I’m sure the others will help bury him, if you want and we’ll have to see how well Smith is before we move out.”

Jimmy moved into a dark recess and pulled on his clean clothes as we talked. He left his bloodied, filthy old clothes in a pile on the floor beside the shower he’d used.

“I want to leave this room now,” Batfish groaned. “It must have been awful for Gera in here in those last few minutes of his life.”
She sniffed back tears and composed herself. We’d been in some emotional situations in the past and no doubt, we’d have to endure more in the future. It was part and parcel of modern, post-apocalyptic life. 

“All right,” I agreed. “Come on, Jimmy, let’s go,” I called.

Jimmy scurried from the dark recess, fully dressed in his fresh clothes and looking one hundred times better than when we’d first met. But he still had a gaunt, harried expression on his face that we all probably wore in these times.