The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers (23 page)

Dematteo leant his left shoulder on the wall and looked down over the shaven headed soldier.

“You stupid, useless fuck,” he whispered. Dematteo couldn’t believe how slack this guy had been. Drinking on watch and he hadn’t even secured Dematteo to the bed.

He considered how he was going to end this sorry, drunken sack of shit’s life. If he hadn’t been injured, he would have just broken the soldier’s neck with one quick twist. He felt too weak to try that maneuver. The easy way would be to pick up the rifle and riddle the fool with bullets but the gunshots were bound to alert more soldiers. He had to be silent and stealthy until he could free the rest of his group.

The soldier had a black handled sheath knife strapped to his thigh. Dematteo nodded to himself. He slowly bent down over the soldier and popped the catch, freeing the handle. Silently, he drew the knife out of the sheath and studied the razor sharp, four inch steel serrated blade. At least this asshole had chosen a good type of knife. Too bad his weapon of choice was going to end his life. Dematteo had seen the Swedish style hunting knife before, when he was in the Marines.

The handle weighed heavy in his hand. Dematteo knew he’d have to get the kill over and done with before the window of opportunity was lost. He positioned himself over the top of the soldiers head in a slight crouching stance.

Sudden hysterical screaming from the next room blocked Dematteo’s concentration. The shrieks jolted the soldier from his sleep. He looked up with bloodshot eyes that widened when he saw Dematteo standing over him brandishing the knife. He let out a terrified yell, loud enough for the whole building to hear.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Dematteo didn’t have time to wait now. He clasped his left hand over the soldier’s mouth to stem his petrified screams. This was no time for compassion. He jerked the soldier’s head back hard against the wall and ran the blade of the hunting knife in a deep slicing motion across the terrified man’s throat, ensuring to sever the jugular vein.

Thick, crimson blood spurted over Dematteo from the soldier’s throat wound. He kept his hand clamped firmly over the dying man’s mouth and nose to silence him and also to stem the gurgling sounds of death.

The soldier’s legs kicked in wild spasm as his body began closing down. Dematteo gripped the man’s head firmly for a few seconds until the body went limp and lifeless.

“One down, a few more to go,” Dematteo growled.

He slumped down and leaned his back to the wall, in a crouched position, resting for a while. He ignored the pain and the urge to crawl back into the bed and sleep. The screams from next door sounded like a male and he wondered which one of his friends was being tortured in there.

Dematteo wiped the blood stained knife blade on the soldier’s upper shirt sleeve. He picked up the discarded flak jacket and wincing with the effort and against the pain, slung on the heavy garment. Next, he took off the sheath and strapped it to his own thigh and slid the knife back in place. He picked up the M-16 rifle, removed the magazine to check it was full before replacing it. He unclipped the soldier’s belt containing some spare ammunition magazines and attached it low around his waist.

He caught a glimpse of himself in a wall mirror to the right and studied the pale, ridiculous looking figure in the reflection. A blood stained lunatic in a hospital gown, armed with an assault rifle and a hunting knife. No time to clean up or worry about appearances, this was a combat zone.

Dematteo shuffled to the door and looked out into the corridor through the small, rectangular window. Nobody came to the dead soldier’s aid. The screams from the next room had probably stifled the soldier’s cries. He opened the door and peeked out the length of the empty corridor. A dull hum of power generators pulsed through the air. He slid with his back along the wall so he was next to the door where the screams came from. Moving slowly, Dematteo swayed to his left and took a glance through the door window. He saw some sort of laboratory inside, the doctor and his orderly pacing around. Brett Wilde lay strapped, unconscious to a chair in the center of the room. His face was pale and veins stood out on his forehead.

What in the hell had they done to him?

Chapter Thirty-Six

“Brett, come on wake up,” the voice commanded with some desperation.

Whoever was trying to wake me was obviously desperate to grab my attention. A hand shook my shoulder violently. I slowly opened my eyes trying to ignore the thumping pain in my head.

“Sam?” I croaked when I saw who was trying to shake me from my sleep. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Brett, please, it’s cold and I want to go,” she whined.

Sam stamped her foot and hugged herself with her arms across her chest and flicked back blond hair out of her blue eyes, a trait she always performed when she was in a bad mood. I stared at her for a few seconds realizing how beautiful she was. Sam was short, only five feet tall but I’d always loved how petite, cute and cuddly she was.

“We should never have broken up,” I muttered. “Will you take me back?”

I remembered all the dreams and hopes for the future we’d talked about and shared. Moving away from Brynston, getting good jobs in some cosmopolitan city, a three-bedroom house in the suburbs, raising kids, a dog called Lola, walks in the park on a Sunday afternoon. A swelling of sorrow and regret rose in my throat.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brett,” she sighed, wrinkling her nose. “We’ve been out all night and now I just want to get some sleep.”

“But the zombies,” I stammered. “Where are they? God, where are we? And where is Smith? Is he still alive?”

“Brett, you have to seriously stop taking drugs.”

“No, you don’t understand,” I wailed. “The zombies took over Brynston and then I looked for Pete and Marlon but I couldn’t find them. Then I met this guy called Smith and we escaped with these other bunch of people but someone got shot and another one burnt to death and then we found this dog. We were trying to meet dad on a yacht in New York but we got captured by soldiers at Newark Airport and Smith got shot. Then they were going to do these experiments on us and that’s all I can remember.”

“You seriously need some help,” Sam sighed. “Look around you, Brett. We’re in London. That’s London, England not London, Zombie World or wherever the hell you’re ranting on about.”

What the hell was I talking about? I felt weird. My brain wouldn’t function properly. I looked around and saw we were huddled inside an underground railway station. I recognized the logo of a red circle with a blue bar across the middle as a London tube train station on the grey tiled wall in front of me. The blue bar had the word “Embankment” in white block letters through the center.

“Why are we in London?”

“Will you stop all this weirdness, Brett? You’re scaring me,” she said. “We flew out of Newark Airport to London last week to come and stay with your mom.” Sam spoke in a slow tone as though I was having trouble understanding English.

I looked around the surroundings, black and white checkered floor tiles; shops with metal shutters pulled down over their fronts, not yet open for the day’s trading. I smelled the unmistakable odor of soot and stale air that only the London Underground has. I couldn’t remember anything about traveling to London from New York. I felt my face and wiped away a thin film of sweat from my forehead. I felt shaky and nauseous. What was happening to me?

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Sam chirped. “And when I get back, I expect you to have pulled yourself together, Brett,” she added before stomping away.

Around two dozen people ambled around the station lobby, either waiting for early morning trains or recovering from sleeping rough on the floor. I stared at a dirty, disheveled hobo who sat on the floor with his back against the wall, some ten feet away. I recognized his face but couldn’t figure where from. The hobo studied pages from an old, crinkled newspaper. He muttered and mumbled incoherent words to himself as he read, then abruptly stopped and turned his head to look directly at me.

“You’ve got to whack ‘em in the head. Totally destroy the fuckin’ brain,” he growled in a London cockney accent.

“Who are you?” I stammered. I felt scared and confused. Memories rose to the surface of my mind and darted away again like basking fish at the top of a sun drenched pool.

“It’s no good sitting on yer fuckin’ ass around ‘ere, son,” the hobo whispered. “You’ve got to get out while ya still can.” He stood up and shuffled towards the lobby entrance, flinging the crinkled newspaper pages to the floor.

“How do you know me?” I shouted after the hobo. Several people turned to look at me. “How do you know me?” I shouted again, rising to my feet.

“Brett, what are you doing?”

I spun around and saw Sam standing behind me with a look of concern on her face. A single tear formed in the corner of her right eye.

“Some old homeless guy just told me to get away.”

I remembered who he was, Pudgy Face from Brynston. He was the guy who had smashed the zombie’s head on the sidewalk during the first day of the crisis.

“There’s no one there, Brett.”

“Pudgy Face!”

“What?”

“That hobo guy was Pudgy Face from Brynston. He smashed a zombie’s skull to bits on the sidewalk right in front of me with dad’s golf club.”

“Brett, I think you should go and see a doctor, seriously.” Sam wiped tears from her eyes.

I knew she was worried about me but something wasn’t right. I bent down and picked up the hobo’s discarded newspaper pages and folded them out. The headlines froze the breath in my lungs.

“Look,” I handed the crinkled paper to Sam. “Read that.”

“The Dead Rise,” Sam read the headline. She silently read the rest of the article. “This is probably just some hoax.” She threw the paper on the ground. “Stories like this are in the news all the time. It doesn’t mean they’re real.”

“Maybe I’ve had some sort of premonition about the future.” I grabbed Sam by both shoulders. “Don’t leave me when we get back to Brynston, Sam. I can’t remember the date it all started but I know we had split up when the disaster began.”

“Let go of me, Brett. You’re hurting me.” Sam shrugged off my grip. “You’ve turned into some whack job.” She turned and ran away, towards the lobby door.

I went to run after her but my legs wouldn’t move, like I was rooted to the spot.

“Sam, come back,” I yelled, suddenly overcome with an overwhelming sense of foreboding. “It’s not safe out there.”

I stumbled forward, regaining the use of my legs and ran to the lobby door after Sam. Brilliant bright light blinded me as I passed through the arched entrance. I blinked in the light and saw Smith, blood stained and pale, holding a rifle and staring into my eyes.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“When are we going to induce the patient with the first shot of contamination?” Finn, the orderly, asked.

“Oh, soon,” the doctor replied. “As soon as we’ve taken all the bits we need from Earkhart’s body.”

Both medical men turned sharply towards the door as it banged open.

“Okay you two bastards stand completely still,” a big guy in the doorway boomed. They recognized him as the trouble maker who had shot Earkhart earlier.

Dematteo moved into the room and shut the door behind him. He pointed the M-16 rifle left and right at the two medical men.

“Move closer together and raise your hands above your heads,” he commanded. The doctor and his orderly complied, raising blood soaked, gloved hands into the air.

Dematteo glanced at Brett Wilde strapped to the chair.

“What have you two vicious assholes done to my man, here?” Dematteo nodded in Wilde’s direction.

“We’ve only induced him with a sedative,” the doctor snapped.

Wilde’s head lolled inside the neck restraint and his eyes flickered under the closed lids. Dematteo didn’t like the deathly pale pallor of the young man’s skin. He seen battle casualties look in a better state.

“Okay, tell me now what you had planned for us. Tell me what these experiments as you call them were for,” Dematteo snarled.

“We were going to induce the subjects with low levels of infected blood and monitor the changes in the human body,” Finn gibbered, sweat dripping from his face.

“So you were going to make us all into zombies? Well thank you very much,” Dematteo said through gritted teeth. “If I didn’t need you two goons to get me and my pals the fuck out of here, I’d riddle you both with bullets and piss all over your dead corpses.”

“We were trying to activate a cure for this dreadful disease. We were going to monitor how areas of the brain keep working even though the body is dead. We meant nothing to you personally,” the doctor stammered.

“Well, I am taking it personally,” Dematteo growled. “Now shut up and get this kid out of these restraints.” He pointed at Wilde in the chair. “Is there any way we can wake him up?”

“I can give him an adrenalin shot which will help him regain consciousness but he still may be confused and suffer hallucinations,” Finn said.

“Jesus, as if this kid isn’t loopy enough as it is. All right, give him the shot,” Dematteo agreed. He was starting to feel weak and nauseous and hoped Wilde could take over organizing the escape attempt. He had to keep going, the opportunity to escape probably wouldn’t arise again and with two dead soldiers on his hands, Podolski would almost certainly execute Dematteo on the spot.

The orderly took another syringe from the trolley and injected clear liquid into Wilde’s arm. Dematteo knew it was a risk as the orderly could have injected Wilde with any number of substances and he wouldn’t have known the difference. Finn detached the straps from Wilde’s neck, hands and feet.

Dematteo gestured Finn to stand away, next to the doctor. The three of them stared at Wilde and waited. His eyelids flickered and opened. Wilde’s pupils were still dilated which made him look like a zombie. He blinked with a dazed, vacant expression on his face.

(Insert – Circus, Video game)