The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers (31 page)

We heard a wail from outside which constituted an acknowledgement.

“What kind of gas does the RV take?” Eazy had to repeat the question before Rosenberg answered.

“Most RV’s take diesel and why are you whispering?”

Eazy looked at me and shrugged again. “Why are we whispering?”

“It seems a bit spooky in here,” I said.

“What is this, the fucking Marx Brothers?” Eazy groaned. “Hey, what’s that?” He pointed to the floor somewhere in the middle of a pile of guts to the right of my feet.

“It’s a rotting piece of meat, Eazy,” I sighed. I thought I was the one who was losing it. “It was probably once human, just like you and I.”

“No, dumb ass, that thing just next to that shit. It looks like a gas can.”

I reluctantly stepped a little closer and looked down. It was hard to tell what the object was, covered in blood and gore with little light shining in from the grilled windows.

“Pick it up so I can see it,” Eazy said.

“I’m not picking it up. It’s covered in someone’s guts,” I spat.

“For fuck’s sake,” Eazy sighed. “I’ll find a cloth or towel or something.” He looked around the floor but everything was covered in blood or body parts.

“Is that a closet behind you?” I asked, pointing to a door I hadn’t noticed when we first entered.

Eazy turned and tried the door. He opened the door outward and stepped into whatever was beyond and out of my vision.

“It’s some kind of locker room in here…” Eazy said before the door swung gently shut on spring hinges and his voice became an inaudible mumble.

“Eazy?” I called. I didn’t like us splitting up.

I slowly moved to the door, avoiding treading on the mess on the floor. I put my hand on the handle and stopped when I heard a series of clangs from the room beyond.

“Eazy?” I hissed.

I held the hand gun out in front of me with my right hand and jerked open the door with my left. The room beyond was in semi darkness. One small, caged window was situated high in the wall opposite, around ten feet away. To the right lay a bank of gray metal lockers running the height of the room. Brown stains I guessed from dry blood coated the locker fronts. I stepped closer and saw a space between the lockers with another row behind.

“Eazy? Come on, let’s just get the hell out of here,” I called. I began to feel edgy. Where the hell was Eazy?

My question was immediately answered. Eazy sprang from behind the second row of lockers with a look of shock on his face. He barged past me.

“Come on, Wilde, run,” he garbled.

I didn’t hesitate and turned and followed. We bundled through the door and Eazy closed it behind us.

“What the hell is going on?” I hissed.

“Two huge...”Eazy’s words cut short as the door banged open.

‘Two huge’ was right. Two tall, naked men tried to bundle through the doorway at the same time, wedging each other between the door jambs. Both were around three hundred pounds, with shaven heads and colossal bellies, covered head to foot in congealed blood. They growled and grasped trying to get through the doorway. I remembered watching amateurish, obviously staged wrestling bouts on TV as a kid with my Dad in England. These two hefty zombies reminded me of a tag team who used to frequent the wrestling rings every Saturday afternoon.

“Shoot them!” Eazy urged. “Shoot them both in the head.”

I raised the pistol, took aim at one of the zombie tag team and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened except for a metallic “click.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

“Take the safety off, Wilde,” Eazy screamed, backing away to the open door behind us.“Shoot the bastards, now.”

I struggled with the pistol, I couldn’t find the safety catch and to be honest, I didn’t even know what I was looking for. The Beretta from the gun shop back in Brynston seemed a hell of a lot easier to use than the six shooter thing I held now. I even pointed at myself for a brief moment of panic.

“What are you doing?” Eazy screamed as the zombie tag team freed themselves from each other’s belly compression and bundled into the office. “Quick, toss me the gun,” Eazy hissed, realizing I was no good at all with the pistol.

I flipped the weapon up in the air to Eazy, a distance of around five feet. I was so conscious of getting the throw right that I didn’t look where I planted my feet when positioning myself. My left foot skidded on some entrails and I went down flat on my back. I felt the pungent, sticky mess of blood and guts ooze through the back of my shirt.

Eazy flicked off the safety and fired two rounds in quick succession. He didn’t have much time to aim properly. The first shot took off the leading tag zombie’s ear and the second round hit the other guy square in the chest.

Luckily for me, the zombie tag team seemed to both be focusing their attention on Eazy. I squirmed around in the goo trying to get up, feeling like an upended tortoise.

“Eat this, you ugly motherfucker,” Eazy spat and inserted the gun barrel into the gaping jaws of the lead zombie. He fired once and the back of the zombie’s head blew out, showering the following guy with scattered brain and skull fragments.

The remaining tag member must have been temporarily blinded by the sudden shower of shit or the flash of the gun. He staggered into the pile of rotting guts, slipped and fell to the floor right next to me. I flapped around whimpering, my feet slipping in congealed blood. The tag zombie must have smelt me as he slithered through the disemboweled body parts and grabbed my shoulder with a meaty arm.

“Hang on, Wilde,” Eazy shouted. “I’ve just got to get a clear head shot.” He took a couple of steps forward, aiming the pistol at the zombie’s head.

The tag zombie slid me across the floor so he could get a decent bite of my flesh. I thrashed around and found a severed hand amongst the gore. I picked it up, twisted and rammed it into the zombie’s open mouth, fingers first.

“Shoot it, Eazy,” I squealed. Rolling around the floor with zombies was becoming an unwelcome habit.

Eazy jigged from side to side trying to get his shot. The gun finally fired but the round didn’t enter the zombie’s head as I’d hoped. Instead the bullet made a perfect round hole in the office ceiling as Eazy lost his footing in the bloody mess and ended up on his backside amongst the dead meat. The pistol flew from his hand after he pulled the trigger and clattered into the back wall and fell out of sight behind the upturned desk.

Eazy scrabbled to stand up but had the same trouble as me. He couldn’t get a firm foothold amongst the slippery, bloody glop.

The tag team zombie chewed off the fingers of the hand in his mouth and discarded the remaining bloody stump. He writhed left and right, trying to grab Eazy and keep hold of me at the same time. The three of us sprawled around amongst other people’s body parts like mud wrestlers in a Las Vegas show.

“Get the gun, Eazy,” I screeched.

“I’m trying, you stupid prick,” he muttered.

I heard a
“whoomp”
and felt something pass through the air near me. The tag zombie’s skull suddenly shattered into several pieces like a cracked coconut. He slumped into the goo and lay still. I looked up and saw Rosenberg standing over us with the bloodied baseball bat in his hand.

“Like you said, Brett, you got to hit them in the head,” he said, holding out a hand to help me up.

“Careful you don’t slip over in this shit,” I said, hauling myself up.

Eazy crawled out of the stinking pile and vomited onto the floor. “Filthy bastards,” he spat. He stood up and went behind the desk to retrieve his gun.

I stood with my hands on my knees, trying to get my breath. “Why didn’t you tell me about those two?” I sighed. “I thought we could have at least got out of the office before we started in our bout of
blood
wrestling.”

“I tried,” Eazy began. “There was a shower back there in the locker room and I pulled back the curtain and those two gorillas were in there eating some dude who looked like he’d hung himself. I dropped my gun back there and anyway why didn’t you just shoot these two clowns in the first place?” He gestured to the two tag team zombie’s bodies on the floor. “It’s not my fault you can’t use a bang bang properly,” he scowled.

“Come on, guys,” Rosenberg interjected. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Hold the phone,” Eazy said. “I’m going back to that locker room to get the other gun and see if that shower is working. Man, I’m covered in shit.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said. “You got a flashlight, Denny?”

Rosenberg nodded and handed me a small light. “Yeah, you better rinse that blood off, it will be infected.”

Rosenberg was spouting the obvious again but I didn’t let it irritate me. He’d just probably saved our lives, after all.

“Hey, Wilde. Grab that motherfucking gas can will you?”Eazy pointed to the floor. “Now we’re already covered in shit, you won’t need no God damn rag.”

I picked up the can and followed Eazy through the door to the locker room once more. We slowly crept around the maze of lockers, Eazy held the gun out in front of him. We couldn’t take a chance of being caught out again. Thankfully, no more zombies leapt out at us. I shone the flashlight around the floor and we found the other pistol by the shower tray. Eazy pointed to the partially closed curtain and I shone the light over the cubicle. He pulled back the curtain like a magician revealing a trick. The body of a man dressed in a ripped, brown security guard uniform was suspended from the shower head from a thick, leather belt around his neck. The uniform tunic was ripped open and the man’s stomach had been torn apart. What looked like a string of sausages hung from the man’s gaping wound.

“Look at that. They were gnawing on the guy’s intestines,” Rosenberg said.

“Those sick motherfuckers really had a taste for human guts, huh?” Eazy said.

“They looked like the kind of guys who were eating people’s guts before they were zombies,” I said.

“Help me get this poor bastard down from here, Wilde” Eazy said.

I handed Rosenberg the flashlight and reluctantly gave Eazy a hand removing the dead guy from the shower. We unceremoniously dumped his body by the lockers at the back of the room.

The shower still worked but was cold and had little pressure. Eazy and I both stood under the water, fully clothed washing the blood, gore and bits of skull and bone off us. Someone had kindly left half a container of shower soap on the shelf which we shared. I washed off the gas can and handed it to Rosenberg, who held the flashlight and the two pistols.

“Hey guys, I think this gas can may be an antique of some sort and quite valuable,” Rosenberg muttered as we stepped out of the shower. “You can tell by the hexagonal shape that it’s quite old and probably a limited edition.” He shone the flashlight over the red colored can. “Look it’s got pictures on it as well.”

“Rosenberg, I don’t give a fuck if it’s got a picture of a pair of giant titties and an ass on it,” Eazy sighed. “We’re using the can to put some damn gas in. Now we’re out of here.”

Rosenberg looked slightly hurt but didn’t utter a word.

“Come on, Denny,” I said. “You can keep the can after we’ve used it for gas, if it makes you happy.”

We trudged out of the office without a second glance at the dead wrestling tag team and their accumulation of body parts. Eazy took the can from Rosenberg and made his way to a Ford Sedan parked opposite the office.

“This is an older diesel car. Let’s just hope it’s got gas in it,” he said. “Older makes are easier to get gas from because they weren’t made with anti-siphon devices,” he explained. “Now, we need about a six foot length of hose.”

We searched around the lot and found a hose in the back of an old pickup truck. Eazy sent Rosenberg back to the RV to cut a length of hose, get his cigarettes and also explain to Batfish and the others why we were taking so long.

Eazy and I stood silently in the sun, trying to dry off. Rosenberg jogged over to us a couple of minutes later, looking pleased with himself. “Six foot of hose exactly,” he said. “I found a measure in the tool box.”

“It didn’t have to be exact,” Eazy sighed, taking the hose and a packet of cigarettes from Rosenberg. He offered me one and we lit up. “Better smoke these before we start fucking around with gas tanks,” he said.

“Why do you think there were so many bodies in that office?” I pondered as we smoked.

“I don’t’ know,” Eazy muttered. “Maybe a whole bunch of people holed up in there. Locked themselves in and thought they were safe. It only takes one bad motherfucker to be bit in a locked room with no way out and you got yourselves a shit situation waiting to happen. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee were the last two bad asses standing.”

I went through the scenario in my mind and it played like a sketchy, internet movie. How many people had started out, locked in that office? Five, six? Plus the tag team and the suicide guy. All thinking they’re safe and sound from the outside world but one of them is harboring a dreadful secret. They secretly got bit and didn’t tell anyone, probably one of the tag team. They turn and bite someone, probably Suicide Guy. Suicide Guy knows the score and hangs himself. The first tag guy bites the other tag guy; both are turned and go ape shit on the rest of them inside. The door keys get lost in the melee and they all get slaughtered.

“Brett? Are you okay?” Rosenberg asked. “You had a kind of faraway look for a minute there.”

“I’m good,” I said, the
in head
movie concluded with no rolling credits.

“Okay, let’s get this gas,” Eazy said, stamping on his cigarette butt.

He took a big wrench from the back of the pickup truck and smashed off the Ford Sedan gas cap. He stuffed the end of the hose inside the tank hole and threaded it down. Eazy told Rosenberg to remove the cap of the can and place it on the ground next to the Sedan.

“This is the worst part,” he muttered and sucked the free end of the hose and spat a mouthful of diesel on the ground. He stuffed the hose end into the can and waited until the diesel overflowed. “Let’s go,” he snapped.

“Why are you all wet?” Batfish asked as Eazy poured the diesel into the RV gas tank. “Rosenberg said you had a bit of trouble in there and we heard gun shots. What the hell went on?”