The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers (41 page)

Shit, I wished I had a beer, a nice cold bottle of beer, my throat felt like I’d been gargling gravel. One thing I realized was I needed to take a piss. I knelt over the side of the scaffold and took great delight in pissing over the zombies heads down below.

“Hah! Drink that, you bastards,” I laughed, spraying those bunch of ugly fuck faces with a golden shower. “That’s the only piece of me you’re going to get.”

I laughed harder when Sherman followed suit and cocked his leg over the side of the scaffold.

Chapter Sixty-Four

“Wilde, put your dick away, you fucking pervert,” came a voice over a bull horn from somewhere to my right.

The implacable voice was from Smith. I knew his tone. Where was he? Another voice in my head?

“Get down here on this boat and we’ll see what the hell’s happening on that yacht,” the bull horn voice came again.

What the hell was going on?

I put myself away and looked around to the river. I saw a small boat bobbing near the pier, with a big guy and a large girl both stood at the edge.

“Are you alone?” the bull horn voice screeched.

I gave a thumbs up sign and instantly regretted it. A good thing to be alone? Lost all my crew, I knew Smith would call that a failure. I’d seen enough war and gangster movies to figure that.

“
100% casualties, sorry, sir!”- “What a complete fuck up, boy!” “Well, sir, I managed to rescue a dog!” – “Well done son
,
we lost the war but we saved a big, stupid, dog!”

It was Smith on the shoreline! My mind went yellow for some reason.
A ghost from zombie past! In a silly little boat, a boat that he said he wouldn’t take across the river.

“Smith, is that you?” I hollered, across the bay.

“Fucking right, man” the bull horn replied.

“Smith, get me the fuck out of here!” I pulled no punches. Relief hit me like a clout around the face.
“Escape route via sea by a man called Smith,” Just like James fucking Bond!

“You got yourself into a situation from we what we can see here, kiddo.”

“Yeah, only me left,” I stifled a sob. “Shit happens, don’t it, Smith?” I tried to sound like a big tough guy like on Sopranos or The Godfather movies.

“Sure does, man. You got to get to us because we can’t get too close to the shoreline, otherwise those motherfuckers are going to jump all over us, you understand?”

I knew from Smith’s tone he didn’t rate my chance of success. I looked across the scaffold and realized we’d have to climb higher to get anywhere near a good leap into the river to clear the pier and get near the boat. At best, into zombie soup at worst, strawberry jello on the pier.

Well, what the fuck, eh?

I glanced at my other self sitting smugly on the corner of the scaffold level. He flicked his cigarette butt into the air and tossed his beer bottle over the side.

“Go for it, dude,” he mumbled. “Go for it, dude, fuck, yeah!”

In the grand scheme of things, I didn’t have a lot to lose really.

“You got some guns, Smith?” I yelled.

“Yeah, we got some fire power from the shore, kiddo.”

“We’re coming down.”

I scrambled up onto my feet, grabbing Sherman by his collar and studied the scaffolding on the old pier. He didn’t want to move but this was our only chance of survival. We scrambled up the interior scaffold ladders to a higher level. We ran across the wooden boards, our feet causing a
“planking”
sound. The zombies below moaned with anticipation at our downfall.

I dragged Sherman to the last part of the scaffolding at the end of the old pier and took a leap of faith off the wooden boards into the Hudson. My previous life flashed before me, Sam, Dad, Mom, Pete, Marlon, Julia, Rosenberg, Soames, Donna, Kell. Their faces came up one by one in my mind like an FBI wanted file, their smiles, hopes and dreams, all the thoughts they had in their minds.

I hit the water a few yards from the boat and sunk under the surface. I let myself float down. The water was cool and refreshing on my sweat soaked skin. I wanted to stay under the water and let the current take me to the bottom of the river bed. Leave me here with the fish and the dead.

I stayed below the surface until I could no longer hold my breath. I floated up and hit the open air, taking a huge gasp of air.

Sherman had already swum to the boat. Batfish pulled him out of the water by his collar and into the deck.

“Come on, Wilde man, swim,” Smith barked at me. He waved his hands towards himself, gesturing me to get to the boat.

I turned my head back to the shore and watched the undead tumbling off the pier into the river. They had my scent and weren’t going to give up easily. I attempted a bad front crawl style swim stroke towards the boat with hardly enough energy to make the short distance and unintentionally swallowed huge gulps of river water. In my mind, the theme tune to the
Jaws
movie was playing.
Beware of underwater zombie attacks!

Smith grabbed my wrist and pulled me towards the boat. I struggled to haul myself over the side but Smith grasped the back of my jacket and dragged me onto the deck of the boat. I lay on my back, sopping wet, coughing out water and gasping for air.

“I thought you were going to give me some covering fire?” I wheezed.

“Good to see you too, kid,” Smith grunted and turned to the cab.

Batfish was introducing Sherman to Spot. They sniffed noses and asses, both with wagging tails. I noticed Eazy wasn’t about but didn’t ask where he was, the answer was too obvious. I liked Eazy, another member of our little gang lost.

Smith powered the boat forward and steered away from the shore. He shouted something to me but I couldn’t hear over the noise of the engine. I crawled over to the cab and cocked my hand to my ear.

“Do you think that’s your Dad’s yacht over there?” Smith pointed to the vessel I’d seen from the shore.

I gazed across the bay and couldn’t see any more sea traffic in the vicinity.

“It’s the only ship out here,” I said.

“Okay, we’ll go and have a look.”

Smith steered our boat towards the yacht. We circled around but couldn’t see any signs of life on the upper deck or through the smoke tinted windows of the structure.

“Nice yacht,” Smith said. “Worth a few dollars.”

We’d reached our destination, nirvana, Valhalla, but I had a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something didn’t feel right.

“Smith, stop alongside that climbing ladder and I’ll go onboard and have a look,” I said, pointing to a rope ladder swaying on the yacht’s left side.

Smith nodded and steered the boat towards the ladder. He handed me a big old hand gun.

“You know how to use one of these now. It’s a SIG. Better take it just in case.”

I nodded and took the weapon.

The engine reduced revs as Smith brought us alongside the ladder, bobbing on the waves. I nodded to Smith and hauled myself up the rope ladder with the hand gun tucked in the back of my waist band.

The yacht deck was quiet. Only a flag on the mast, flapping in the breeze broke the silence.

“Hello, anybody here?” I called out.

Nobody answered but I thought I heard a monotonous wail from somewhere in the bowels of the yacht. I drew the hand gun from my waist band and flicked off the safety.

A cabin door opened from the main structure. Something that resembled my Dad tumbled out of the doorway. His face was pale with deep, gouges around his cheeks, crusted with dried blood. His eyes were milky white and he moaned at me, raising his arm as if waving a greeting.

I’d had about all I could take. I felt the breath in my lungs instantly sucked out and my legs almost failed to hold me up.

“Dad, what the hell happened to you?” I whispered.

He moaned again and took a few steps towards me. More zombies stumbled through the door behind.

I raised the hand gun and took aim, firing one shot. The bullet hit the body that used to be my father, square in the middle of the forehead. He went down on his back.

Time to go. I’d caused the death of a lot people trying to get to a refuge that didn’t exist and probably hadn’t been safe for a while. And now I’d just shot my own Dad in the head. Once a loser, always a loser. Was life better than death?

I hurried back down the ladder onto the boat feeling drained of all emotion.

“I heard a shot,” Smith said.

I gave him a quizzical look. “Ah, I just shot my dad.”

Smith stared at me for a few seconds. “So…the yacht’s off the program then?”

“Pretty much.”

“You okay?”

I nodded and handed Smith his gun back before I turned it on myself.

Smith steered the boat away from the yacht back out onto the expanse of the river. Two men, one woman and two dogs in a little boat. The state of my sanity and where the hell we were headed were both a complete mystery.

THE END