The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers (30 page)

The tree branch cracked into the side of the big guy’s head, making a satisfying
“thonk”
sound. Two things happened at the same time. The big zombie sunk to his knees from the blow and the tree branch broke into two short, useless pieces.

I hoped the big zombie would stay down on the ground. He didn’t. He thrashed around, obviously stunned, down but not out on his hands and knees. Spot leapt on the zombie’s back and frenziedly shook the ripped shirt between his teeth.

“Oh, shit. Spot get off, now,” I commanded to no avail.

I threw the stump of the tree branch which clunked off the side of the zombie’s head and moved to grab the dog. I snatched up the snarling Spot in my arms and turned to run back to the RV. I felt enormous hands grasp my left ankle and shin from behind. I tried to pull away but the strength in the big guy’s hands and arms was immense. Spot wriggled in my arms, yapping and snarling, trying to break free to get at our attacker once more. I lost balance and tumbled face first into the grass. I kicked out frantically, trying to shake the vice like grip from around my leg. The big guy rose to his knees and shuffled closer towards me with his jaws wide and teeth bared.

I didn’t know whether to let Spot go or hang on tight. It looked like one or neither of us was going to make it back to the RV. The big zombie held my leg in place, pinning me to the ground with all his weight. He shuffled on his knees closer to my face, moving his giant hands up to my thigh and hips. He wanted to taste bare flesh. Biting through clothes wouldn’t make a clean enough incision to taste warm, flowing, living blood.

I hurriedly looked around on the ground next to me for a loose rock or tree branch or anything I could use for a weapon. Only long, green grass surrounded me. I felt the rise of panic, fear, humiliation, resignation and regret of unfulfilled and unresolved situations. My bladder threatened to release its contents. I wriggled, bucked and twisted but still the relentless grip didn’t cease.

I realized my other self was right. I was a pathetic, useless piece of shit wriggling around in the dirt like a worm in my last living moments.

A series of pop sounds rang through the early morning air and the big zombie’s hands went limp around my leg. I turned my head and saw blood running down his face before he slumped sideways and rolled onto his back.

“What the hell…?” I muttered.

“Are you injured or bitten?” a voice asked from somewhere.

I twisted around the ground and saw Dr. Soames standing in the grass with his small pistol, still smoking, pointed at my head.

“No…no, it didn’t get me in the end,” I stammered, clutching Spot close to my chest. “You got here just in time. You saved me…us.”

“Stay where you are,” Soames ordered, still leveling the gun at me. He walked over to the prone zombie and briefly made certain he was dead then came slowly closer, looking me up and down as I lay on the ground.

Soames slowly checked my legs, arms and face, then checked Spot for bites or scratches. When he was satisfied he replaced his pistol in a shoulder holster.

“The dog didn’t bite the infected person, did he?”

“He bit the guy’s shirt but didn’t draw blood,” I explained.

“Okay,” Soames said, seeming satisfied. He offered me a hand and hauled me to my feet. We stood silently watching the pale sun rise for a few moments.

“Thanks for coming to our rescue,” I sighed, hearing the emotion in my own voice.

“I didn’t sleep very well in the car and heard the dog barking,” he said.

We started to walk slowly back towards the RV. I kept Spot tightly clutched in my arms as I didn’t want him running away again.

“Can we keep this incident to ourselves?” I mumbled. “I shouldn’t have come out here on my own.”

The doctor nodded. “Okay, it’s your call,” he said. “I’m only a passenger on this journey. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I get somewhere I’m needed and somewhere safe.” He turned and walked back to his Lexus.

I felt a little sorry for Doctor Soames and a bit guilty at how we’d all shunned him. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

Nobody had stirred inside the RV which gave me the opportunity to use the shower first. The water was hot and felt good as I rinsed away the days of stale sweat and grime from my skin. The earlier events with the big zombie replayed in my mind. I decided to compartmentalize that situation, put it in a box and store it away in a vault in a dark, faraway place in my mind. So many situations over the past few days were stored in that vault. I knew the time would come when the vault would be full and the boxes would all tumble out and spill the contents, flooding my brain with horrific images.

Eazy and Rosenberg were up and around when I came out of the bathroom. Julia yawned and stretched, awoken by us trudging around the RV. Eazy and Rosenberg took turns in the shower and Julia used the contents of the kitchenette cupboards to make breakfast. She glanced me that smile again as I shuffled passed. Batfish woke and crawled out of the bunk. Smith stirred and sat up and asked for a cigarette. Rosenberg checked Smith’s wounds and the dressing. I dressed in some clean clothes, ready for the day.

After eating Julia’s excellent pancakes, we decided to have a look around the Auto Pound for some gas. Batfish and Julia wanted to take some time to shower in peace and Smith was still healing so Eazy, Rosenberg and I would go into the pound. Hopefully, we wouldn’t be long and get back onto the Interstate and finally rendezvous with dad at Battery Park later in the day.

Eazy turned the RV around in the two lane and parked length ways, horizontal to the gates at the pound entrance. Doctor Soames followed and tucked in behind the RV. I walked over to his window and explained what we were doing. His face was sullen through the windshield, behind the wheel of his car. He nodded once without saying a word.

Eazy and I armed ourselves with Smith’s handguns and Rosenberg carried his baseball bat. We opened the pound gates and walked into the vast uncovered ground. Weeds sprouted here and there between cracks in the blacktop surface. Cars of all makes and colors were parked in uneven rows. The office and security hut stood to our left, looking dark and deserted, no movement or light behind the glass windows.

“Where do we look first?” Rosenberg asked.

“They must have some gas cans laying around here somewhere,” Eazy said.

“Maybe someone already took them,” I said. “After all, that chain on the gate was cut. Maybe someone was thinking the same as us.”

“Let’s take a look around,” Eazy said and led the way through the huge parking lot.

Some of the vehicles had obviously been in the pound for a long while. An old 1980’s truck sat on flat, perished tires, sagging into the ground. The body work was covered in big rusting holes. The gas tank had an old style screw cap on top.

“What about that one?” I pointed at the truck.

Eazy smirked. “Forget that, numb nuts. The gas in that will be well beyond use.” He spun around in a circle, looking all around the lot. “We need a can of some sort.”

We looked around, 360 degrees spinning in a circle. No obvious solutions. Nothing jumped out at us and said “here I am.” So near yet so far. We were within twenty miles of our destination but it seemed a million continents, oceans and universes away. No gas, no guarantees we were going to get where we were heading.

“Do you both think this is such a good idea?” I said to Eazy and Rosenberg.

They looked at me quizzically.

“Say what?” Eazy said.

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “Do you think we should carry on?”

Eazy and Rosenberg looked at me like I needed urgent medical help.

“I don’t even know if dad’s ship, yacht or whatever it is will still be there. I can’t call him now because Podolski took all our cell phones.” I thought of the words of my other self. “I’m not sure we’re going to get through the city. Certainly not in the RV. Look at the problems we’ve had so far on relatively straight forward open roads. How difficult is it going to be in one of the biggest cities in the world? Maybe we should just find somewhere to hole up.” I blurted the words, close to tears. I felt like I couldn’t go on. I didn’t want to face any more life threatening situations and I didn’t want to look at any more of those awful, dead cracked, rotting faces. Shells of once good and bad people reduced to rotting husks. The vision of those two kids in the back of the SUV on the bridge kept showing a repeat in my mind. Maybe the image vault in my brain was full up and straining to spill out.

Eazy sighed. I sensed the weariness and tension in his body language. He had adopted the leadership since Smith had been injured. Every group needs a leader. In every shitty situation in history, no matter what the consequence, someone always stood up and said “
we can overcome.
” Churchill did it for the Brits in 1940 against the Nazis, Ho Chi Minh, Caesar and Gandhi did it.

All Eazy had to say was, “What the fuck else are we going to do?”

Chapter Forty-Eight

“What else are we going to do?” Eazy said like he was rapping the words to a tune. “Give up and go home?” He moved closer with an aggressive expression. I thought he was going to head but me. “Get this straight, motherfucker, there aint no home no more.”

He grabbed the side of my head with both hands and shook me into submission.

“Come on, man. You got to focus,” he said, shaking my head between his hands. “We need something to focus on. We need some kind of destination. If we die on the way then so be it. But at least we died trying.”

I looked into his eyes and the emotion gushed out of me in waves. In between sobs I told Eazy and Rosenberg about my dreams, fears, hallucinations, inner doubts and everything that was bad about my life. I noticed they gave each other a nervous glance as Eazy let my head loose and took a step back.

“It has been tough on us all, Brett,” Rosenberg said, putting an arm around my shoulder. “We have to keep going though. That’s one thing I’ve learnt since meeting up with you guys. You all have kept me alive and hopefully vice versa. We all have our part to play in this episode of our lives.”

I sniffed, wiping tears and snot away and attempted to eliminate the depressive expression from my face. “Okay,” I muttered unconvincingly. “Let’s find some fucking gas.”

Things went slightly weird again. Sound became distorted like a bad TV signal.

Eazy said in a London cockney accent, “All right, we’ll have a butchers in that hut for a gallon of the smelly stuff.”

“Okay, you geezers with the shooters go in first and I’ll cover ya with Babe Ruth’s best mate,” Rosenberg said in an equal colloquial London accent.

“Are you two okay?”

They gave each other an edgy glance again.

“Yeah, we’re top dog, man,” Eazy said, back in an east coast American accent.

I shook my head and drew the hand gun from the back of my waistband. What the fuck was going on in my head?

“You okay with that shooter?” Eazy asked. He gave me a quizzical look before glancing nervously at Rosenberg.

I nodded. “Let’s do it,” I said as convincingly as I could. “Let’s get the gas and get the fuck out of here.”

We trudged closer to the office with our weapons at the ready. I wasn’t sure what the fuck I was doing and wondered if I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I felt like stripping off all my clothes and running through Liberty Park, stark naked, then plunging into the Hudson River on the other side, never to surface again. Game over. No more traveling, no more Eazy, no more Smith, Rosenberg, Spot, Batfish, Dad, Soames, even Julia, and definitely no more fucking zombies. Easy. Let the world carry on and go fuck itself without me polluting its air, because it seemed to want to wipe out our species anyhow. Why not give Mother Nature a helping hand?

“
Acid, I’m going to give you acid,”
the tune pumped in my head. Who the fuck did that tune?

We approached the office, dark and unassuming. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be anywhere. I looked at the shiny chrome pistol in my hand. Maybe I should have pointed it at my own head and pulled the trigger. Game over. Easy.

Eazy led the way, holding his hand gun outstretched in front of him. Rosenberg followed with his bat at the ready and I was positioned at the rear. Eazy banged on the office door with his free hand. No answer. He tried the handle but the door was locked from the inside.

“Okay, stand back,” Eazy said, herding us away from the door. “I’m going to shoot this damn lock off.”

He aimed at the handle and fired two accurate rounds into the door, blowing the lock and jamb to pieces. The door jolted inwards. Swarms of big, overfed flies lazily buzzed out of the office. A foul stench of rotting meat wafted from the open door.

“Something is very dead in there,” I said, holding my hand over my nose.

“Jesus, that is definitely some unholy stink,” Eazy said, pulling his jacket over his face.

“I can’t go in there,” Rosenberg croaked, turning away. “I think I’m going to hurl.”

I followed Eazy as he crept to the open door. We peeked inside and saw a mish mash of guts, remains of severed limbs and entrails strewn over the once white vinyl office floor. The structure was a long, narrow trailer, converted into a work area and secretarial pool. An overturned desk, blood soaked paperwork, filing cabinets on their sides, vehicle keys and a few landline phones lay amongst the mutilated body parts. Blood smears and bloody hand prints covered the brown wooden paneled walls.

“What the fuck went on in here?” I gasped.

“Looks like a serial killers convention went down,” Eazy said.

He slowly moved up the two steps into the office. I followed and was careful not to tread on any of the heavily messed up areas. I didn’t want that shit on the bottom of my shoes and stinking out the RV. We looked around, searching for a can or something we could hold gas in.

A thought suddenly occurred to me. “Hey, Eazy? What gas does the RV take, regular or diesel?” I asked in a whisper.

Eazy looked blank. It was clearly not something he’d thought of. He shrugged. “Good point. I don’t know,” he whispered back. “Hey, Rosenberg?”