The Left Series (Book 5): Left On The Run (3 page)

Chapter Four

The first guy who came through the door into the bar room shone a bright flashlight in a head height sweeping arc, swathing the front windows in a silvery beam. He obviously didn’t see Smith, crouching beside the counter. I caught a glimpse of the guy’s silhouette behind the flashlight beam. He was thin and lean with long hair sprouting beneath some sort of beanie hat. The guy took a few tentative steps into the bar, hunched and waving a big handgun in line with the light beam.

“They’re no in here,” the guy whispered to his companions behind him. “They’ve probably legged it on upstairs. Maybe we should take a look up there.”

Smith soaked both the scrunched napkins with vodka and took out his Zippo lighter from his jacket pocket. He waited until the guy stood directly in the center of the liquor pool he’d poured onto the floor. In one fluid, rapid movement, Smith fired up the lighter, holding the flame to the vodka soaked napkin. The alcohol immediately ignited and I heard a gasp of shock and surprise from the guy who had entered the room. He swiveled to his left but his reactions were slowed by fear. Smith tossed the flaming napkin onto the pool of vodka in front of the doorway.

The alcohol flamed up around the guy’s legs. He screamed and fired off a couple of rounds before the flames engulfed him. Smith had already rolled across the floor, out of the line of fire. The rounds from the handgun thudded low into the wall on the opposite side of the room. The guy’s arms floundered in circles and he dropped the flashlight and his handgun. An overpowering stench of burning clothes, hair and flesh suddenly filled the bar room and the discarded flashlight produced an eerie, spiraling ray of light as it rolled across the wooden floorboards. Smith lay prone on the floor, directly in front of the burning guy and had his M-16 aimed at the doorway. He fired a rapid burst of rounds at knee height through the open entranceway. We heard screams of pain and the thuds of bodies dropping to the wooden floorboards in the corridor outside the bar room.

Smith rolled to his left and aimed the rifle at a red fire extinguisher fixed to the wall beside the doorway. He fired one round into the highly pressurized container and foamy liquid sprayed across the threshold, showering the burning man. The guy sunk to his knees, whimpering in pain and fell face first onto the floor.

I lost sight of Smith and decided he might need my help. I barged my way by the others behind the counter and shuffled towards the smoldering body on the floor. I heard loud moans and shrieks of agony from the corridor beyond the bar.

“Is that you, Wilde?” Smith barked from the darkness someplace.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I whispered above the sound of human suffering.

“Grab that loose flashlight and keep me covered,” Smith instructed.

I scuttled across the floor, heading for the flashlight, which had come to a standstill against the legs of a wooden chair. I scooped up the flashlight and kept the light beam pointing at the floor. I noticed Cordoba had wriggled out from behind the bar counter and grabbed the burned guy’s discarded handgun. She adjusted her grip on the rifle and slid the handgun into her belt.  

“Don’t shine that light directly through that doorway, it’ll make you a target,” Smith barked. “Those guys may be injured but they’re still capable of taking a shot at your ass.”

I kept the light beam low to the ground and scooted by the burned guy towards the wall beside the doorway to the corridor.

“What do you want me to do, Smith?” I whispered.

“Lean around the door and shine that light across the ground when I say,” he replied.

Cordoba took up a position beside me, with her M-16 rifle held at the ready. I heard her heavy breathing next to my ear and felt her shoulder press into my bicep.

“Keep your eye on the ball this time, Wilde,” she whispered.

“No worries,” I muttered in reply. A dull ache still occupied my head but pure adrenalin had eradicated most of the painful twinges throughout the rest of my body.

An ignited orange flame to my left caught my immediate attention. I turned and saw Smith’s face illuminated in the burning light. He held the remaining vodka bottle with a burning napkin shoved halfway into the neck. His rifle was slung across his back, with the barrel pointing upwards to the rear of his shoulder. 

“I want all you guys out there to drop your weapons or else you fry,” Smith commanded. “I guess those of you with leg wounds won’t be making a quick getaway anytime soon and I have a big old Molotov cocktail in my hand, just aching to be tossed in your direction.” Smith briefly waved the bottle beyond the door jamb to show he was serious. 

I listened to muffled yelps from the corridor. “Okay, big man. Don’t lob that burning bottie at us. We won’t shoot, okay?”

Smith nodded at me. “Shine that flashlight through that corridor. Cordoba, if you see anybody with a gun in their hand then shoot them, okay?”

“Roger that,” Cordoba said. She took a pace forward and to her right so she was lined up directly behind me.

I gripped the M-9 handgun and the flashlight tightly with both hands and close together so I could aim the firearm along the light beam. I breathed in and out a few times in slow time, then swiveled my body against the door frame so the flashlight beam and my handgun barrel aimed down the corridor. Cordoba shuffled with me, aiming her rifle at the targets, with the muzzle a few inches away from my left shoulder. The flashlight beam lit up a bunch of disheveled guys, lying on the floor in a vertical line. Their hands clasped across leg wounds of varying severity. Blood pooled alongside the groaning bodies and an assortment of weapons lay on the floorboards beside them.

“Are we good?” Smith asked.

“We’re good,” I confirmed. “Looks like you knocked them all out.”

“Ya shot us, ya bastards,” wailed a bearded guy wearing a big blue puffer jacket. “All we did is tell youse to leave the area.”

“Don’t fret your pretty little head, fellah,” Smith said, pulling the burning napkin out of the top of the vodka bottle. “We’ll be out of your hair real soon.” He dropped the napkin onto the floor and stamped out the flame, then took a swig of vodka. “But first we need you guys to help us get out of this building and out of this danger zone.”

Chapter Five

Wingate, Jimmy and Batfish shuffled out from behind the bar counter. Cordoba moved centrally into the doorway so she could fully cover the injured guys with the M-16.

“Collect up those weapons, will you, Jimmy?” Cordoba instructed. “But be careful.”

“Aye, always careful me,” he muttered and stepped forward towards the corridor.

Cordoba edged her way around so Jimmy didn’t move across her firing line. Smith set the vodka bottle down on the floor and moved forward to assist Jimmy gathering up the hostile guy’s weapons. I counted seven men in all, including the smoldering man lying on the bar room floor, who seemed to have passed out. Batfish and Wingate kept a vigil over his unmoving body. Wingate bent down to check he was still alive. She glanced up at Batfish and nodded.

Smith whistled through his teeth when he picked up a sharpened machete with a two foot long blade. “Check out this bad boy,” he said. “Good for slicing and dicing. I’m keeping hold of this mother.” He slid the machete blade between the loops in his belt.

“We thought you’d have left the building by now,” the guy in the puffer jacket croaked. “With all those bullets flying in at you, we thought you’d of fucked off out of here. Why did you stay inside the pub?”

Smith turned towards me. “You hear that, Wilde? These guys let their guard down and paid the price for sloppiness. Take note, kid.”

I felt my cheeks burn. “Point taken,” I muttered.

“Jimmy, what’s out the back?” Smith asked, averting his attention from me. “Is there a way out of here?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Nah, just a small car park and a big brick wall, with a hoofing great load of razor wire running across the top of it. Not an easy way to get away from here, unless of course we have a big ladder and a pair of wire cutters.”

“That’s what I figured,” Smith said. “That’s the reason I didn’t want to kill these pricks stone dead. We need them.”

“What fer?” Jimmy asked. His mouth hung open in surprise.

“Insurance, Jimmy. Come on, we best make a move or those guys out front will be coming through the windows real soon.” Smith leaned down and hauled the guy in the puffer jacket onto his feet. The man squealed as his injured right leg connected with the ground.

“My leg, I cannae stand,” he groaned.

“Well, you’ll have to live with it, pal,” Smith growled. “Hurts like a bitch when you get shot don’t it? We’re going out front and you’re going to lead the way.”

“No way,” the guy wailed. “They’ll shoot me dead.”

“You’d better pray they don’t,” Smith said through gritted teeth. He turned back to me. “Wilde, choose one of these guys, preferably one with a minor gunshot wound. We’ll need at least three of these guys to use as human shields.”

I moved forward into the corridor towards a small ginger haired guy, wearing a black jacket with the word ‘Police’ emblazoned on the left side. I was pretty sure the guy wasn’t a serving member of the local constabulary. He’d probably liberated the jacket along with several weapons from a cop station someplace. I shone the flashlight over his legs and saw he wore a pair of blue denims. His lower left leg was coated with blood around the outer region of his shin. I had no idea how bad the wound was but decided he was going to be my guy. I jabbed the handgun in Ginger’s face and he winced as I reached down to grab him. I hauled him to his feet, ignoring the whimpering sounds he made.

“You’ve won the prize of being my human shield, Popeye,” I snarled.

“Hang on a mo,” Jimmy said. “What if he’s right? What if those bastards oot there shoot at us anyway? They might just say
fuck it
and start blatting away right through these guys we’re going to be stood behind.”

“They won’t,” Smith confirmed. “They’re a gang that’s banded together in spite of what’s gone on with the dead springing back up. They have a pack mentality and won’t shoot their own unless they get infected.”

“How do you know so much, eh, big man?” Puffer Jacket spluttered.

“Shut up,” Smith snapped. “If you want to live through the next ten minutes, I suggest you keep your mouth closed and do exactly as I say. Understand?”

Puffer Jacket winced in pain as he raised his injured leg off the ground and nodded his head.

“Good boy,” Smith said, slapping the guy around the face. “Okay, Cordoba, you pick another guy but I want you to cover our rear when we head on out so Batfish or Wingate will have to walk behind the guy you choose. Don’t forget, we’re going to have to prop these guys upright with a firearm nudged tightly against their asses.”

“All right,” Cordoba agreed.

I shone the flashlight over the remaining bodies splayed out across the corridor floor.

“What about this guy?” Cordoba asked, pointing down to an older man, who looked as though he was in his fifties with thinning dark hair and a bushy gray beard. The man was small but wizened looking. His pale blue eyes burned in anger and he remained silent, despite suffering a gunshot wound to his right ankle, which must have stung like a bastard.

“I don’t like the look of that guy. He looks nasty but he’ll do,” Smith snorted. “Be wary though and check their pockets for any shanks or other weapons.”

We moved into the bar and checked out our gathered prisoners. Cordoba found a small knife inside the old guy’s jacket and Smith discovered Puffer Jacket had concealed a cut throat razor in his pants pocket. My guy, Ginger was clear of all weapons but he did smell a little violently of body odor and unwashed hair.

“What do we do with all these shooters?” Jimmy asked. He’d lined the guy’s weapons up along the bar counter.

“Unload them and take the ammo,” Smith instructed. “We don’t have room in these rucksacks for any more gear but we can slip the mags into the side pockets. We’ll check if the ammo is a matching caliber at some point later.”

Jimmy nodded and Wingate helped him unload the firearms and store the spare magazines into their backpacks.

“What about them?” Batfish nodded towards the corridor.

Smith glanced back and closed the door. “Forget about those guys. They can’t get very far.”

I glanced towards the front windows when I heard a deep male voice shouting from across the street outside.

“Stewie? Stewie, what’s going down there?” The voice had a thick Glaswegian accent and he pronounced the word ‘
down
’ as ‘
doon
.’