The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone (15 page)

The jetty was only a few yards away and I rowed forward towards the wooden slats. Two zombies wandered around the pontoon, not far from Simey’s dead body. I whacked another male ghoul, who tried to pull himself over the dinghy side. He slid back into the water and vanished from sight. I leaned forward, reaching across my other self and grabbed the rope to secure the dinghy to the jetty.

“Don’t mind me,” my alternative self muttered.

“I wasn’t. The least you could do is help me.”

“I can’t help you.” My other self laughed as he spoke. “I’m your hallucination.”

I grabbed the side of the jetty and quickly fed the rope through the wooden slats before tying a loose knot. The chain mail and wet suit was heavy and I had difficulty hauling myself from the dinghy onto the jetty. Simey’s body lay next to me. His lifeless eyes were open and glazed. His face and hands were drained of color. The blood looked thick and brown trickling from the wound in his head.

I glanced back to the dinghy bobbing on the water. My other self had thankfully disappeared back to hallucination land. The undead still thrashed in the canal, surfacing a few feet from the raft. The two zombies on the jetty had noticed me and were making their way closer, moaning and holding out their hands like beggars in the street.

Flies buzzed around the bloody, axe wound in Simey’s head and I swatted them away while I crouched over his body. Sweat dripped from my forehead. I knew I’d have to be quick. I rifled through Simey’s pockets, searching for anything that resembled a key to the yacht.

The dinghy swayed from side to side as dead hands reached for the inflated edges. My route back to the yacht would be cut off if they burst the rubber material. The two zombies on the jetty lurched closer, moaning louder in anticipation of a feed. Frantically, I stuffed my hands in dead Simey’s pockets.

“Christ! Come on, Bathtub. Where are your fucking keys?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

My worry was the keys may have fallen out of his pocket and slipped into the drink between the jetty’s wooden slats. If that was the case, I was wasting my time and putting myself in unnecessary danger.

The water splashed around the dinghy as gray, rotting hands burst through the surface. The two zombies on the jetty were only around twenty yards away. Several more undead lumbered onto the pontoon in blind pursuit of a potential feed.

I felt sweat running down my back inside the encompassing wetsuit.

“Shit!” I spat, as I began going through all Simey’s coverall pockets for a second time.

“Hurry up, Wilde,” Smith yelled from the yacht across the water.

“The keys are not in his fucking pockets,” I hissed, more to myself as I knew Smith wouldn’t hear me.

“You got that right,” a voice said above me.

I glanced up and saw my other self standing on the jetty with a smug grin on his face.

“What the fuck do you want?” I spat.

“I’ve come to help.”

“Come to gloat, more like.”

“No,” he said slowly. “Think about what Simey was doing when you first saw him through the window this morning.”

“He was walking around in small circles,” I snapped. “What has that got to do with anything?”

I glanced back across the jetty when I heard a hoarse moan. The two zombies were around ten yards away. I was either going to have to use the revolver or abort the mission in a few seconds.

“Do you think, even in his zombie-like state, he was searching for something?”

“I don’t know,” I barked. “Some zombies do seem to remember odd things from their past lives.”

“There you go,” my other self said.

“Don’t play fucking games,” I snapped, frantically rifling through Simey’s pockets for a third time.

“No, there you go.”

I looked up and my additional self nodded to a spot on the jetty a few feet away. Something metallic glistened in the sun between the wooden slats. I rolled away from Simey’s body and crawled towards the metallic object. A chunky, chrome key fob with a ‘
Manchester United
’ soccer club crest emblazoned on it was jammed between the slats. I grabbed the fob and pulled it from the wooden boards. A bunch of keys jangled at the other end of the fob.

I saw scuffed shoes and torn denims approaching in my peripheral vision. The two zombies were nearly on top of me. I rolled back towards Simey’s body to give myself a couple of seconds to get to my feet. I clutched the keys and hauled myself up. The two male zombies scowled and hissed. One had short, matted hair with bulging eyes and crusted blood around his gaping mouth and chin. His thumb and forefinger were missing on his right hand with only bloody stumps remaining. His accomplice was an older ghoul, with no hair on the top of his head but long and straggly around the back and sides of his head. He had a long beard with pieces of rotting flesh stuck between the curling, bushy hairs.

Around a dozen zombies followed behind the two leaders, roughly twenty yards further down the jetty. I thought about using the revolver but decided to try and conserve the ammo. The guy with the bulging eyes plodded forward towards me, raising his arms as though he was going to hug me.

I stood side-on to the guy and waited a beat until he got close enough, then delivered a right forearm smash to his chin. The chain mail and the velocity of the blow proved enough to send the zombie tumbling from the jetty into the canal water. He splashed into the surface and disappeared from view.

“Hey, way to go, Brett,” my other self cheered behind me. “I didn’t know you’d taken up WWE.”

I ignored my other self’s jibes as I still had one zombie in close proximity to deal with. The second guy’s gait was slightly different than the first ghoul I’d already dispatched. He kind of staggered from side to side like one of those robots from 1950’s B-movies, which made using the same form of attack a little more tricky. I thought about trying a Bruce Lee style Kung-Fu kick into the zombie’s guts but I would probably end up on my ass with the undead guy on top of me. I couldn’t afford to lose my balance and fall into the zombie infested water.

Beardy came forward to try and grab me, his loose, green shirt flapped in the breeze. I stepped back over Simey’s prone body, attempting to put a little distance between us, although I couldn’t allow myself to be cut off from the dinghy. Whatever I was going to do, I had to do it quickly.

I held the bunch of keys tightly in my hand and remembered something I’d seen in a movie a few years ago. What the hell, I’d try it. I placed a key between each of my fingers on my right hand so the jagged edges poked outwards.

Beardy stumbled over Simey’s body and nearly went over the edge of the jetty but managed to keep his feet. I gripped the key fob tightly and balled my hand into a fist around the protruding keys. He came towards me, hissing like a wild animal. I firmly planted my left foot forward and swung my right hand like a baseball pitcher, aiming at the top of Beardy’s bald head.

My punch landed in the middle of Beardy’s forehead. The key’s serrated edges pierced rotten flesh and then bone, driving the metal points into his brain. I withdrew my hand and saw three, neatly spaced holes in Beardy’s skull. He tottered on unsteady legs, groaned and fell sideways into the canal.

“You’re a mean motherfucker,” my other self crowed behind me.

I turned and snorted disapprovingly at my alternative self, then moved quickly towards the dinghy. I stopped briefly while stepping over Simey’s body to wipe blood from my hand and the keys on his coveralls.

The canal waters still churned around the dinghy, with undead hands and heads bobbing and breaking the surface. I looked down at the raft, tilting in all directions and knew I was going to have to land bang in the middle. The zombies on the jetty lumbered closer. I took a deep breath and jumped, aiming myself at the center of the dinghy.

The dinghy lurched to one side while I was in mid-air. I yelled in frustration and briefly glimpsed gnashing teeth in the water below me. Somehow, I landed on the inflated side, the firm rubber knocking the wind out of me for a second. I concentrated on keeping a tight hold on the bunch of keys.

A hand grabbed my left ankle and tried to pull me into the water. The zombie’s head erupted from the surface and jaws clamped onto my calf. Luckily, the chain mail did its job and the female zombie didn’t pierce my flesh. Her wet, dark hair stuck to the sides and front of her head, slightly covering a greenish, white face.

I instinctively kicked out and caught the woman in the throat with the bottom of my foot. I heard a cracking noise, like a tree branch breaking in the wind as her head snapped backwards. The woman tried to maintain her hold on my ankle but the blow caused her to plummet into the depths of the canal.

I shuffled to my right and rolled onto my back inside the dinghy. The sides rocked back and forth and I gripped the sides, trying to haul myself into a sitting position. A muddy, wet hand grabbed my forearm and squeezed at the chain mail. I grabbed the oar and prized the fingers off my arm with the paddle end. The fingers slid across the wet rubber side and back into the water. I pulled the rubber seal open on the left wrist of the wetsuit and pushed the keys up the sleeve. At least I couldn’t drop them if they were inside the wetsuit. 

I leaned forward and untied the rope holding the dinghy to the jetty. My arms felt like lead from the exertion of rowing and fighting for my life. More hands reached out of the water, trying to grab me as I untied the knot, leaning slightly out of the dinghy. I flicked the rope back into the center of the raft and shuffled backward so I was on my haunches. The dinghy lilted from side to side as I grabbed the oar and hurriedly swung around in the water.

I began paddling furiously on alternate sides of the raft. The thrashing of zombie hands in the water receded slightly but my problem was the yacht was drifting further away from me.

Chapter Twenty-Five

My rowing slowed as weariness prevented my arms from working properly. I puffed and panted and sweat poured down my face. My body was so hot as the rubber wetsuit didn’t let my skin cool down.

The yacht seemed to be drifting away from me faster than I could row. Smith stood on the deck waving me forward and shouting encouragement. I stopped paddling to take a breather. I felt like I couldn’t go on any more.

“Maybe I should just shoot myself in the head,” I muttered to myself, patting the revolver strapped to my thigh.

“Maybe you should.” My other self had appeared again, sitting facing me in the dinghy.

“Not you again,” I sighed.

“Hey, I found the keys for you, didn’t I?”

I shrugged. The yacht drifted towards the center of the canal, even further from me.

“Come on, Brett. What are you? Some kind of pussy?” Smith yelled from the deck.

My other self giggled hysterically.

“What are you laughing at?” I growled.

“You are a pussy.”

“Fuck you. In that case, you’re a pussy too because you’re me.”

“I’m not as easily offended as you. I forgot how touchy-feely you are.” My other self pulled a weird face and wriggled his fingers in front of my face.

I let my chin drop on my chest as I breathed hard. My arms felt as though they had turned to stone. I couldn’t even lift the oar.

“Those zombies around the jetty will soon be swimming or floating out towards you,” my other self said, in an unusually quiet voice.

“I know,” I whispered.

“So what are you going to do, Brett? Just float around this crappy canal until some fucking ghoul pops your little boat?”

“It’s a dinghy not a boat,” I snapped in irritation.

“What about those poor bastards in the yacht? Smith and that Trippy woman. Are you just going to let them drift around until they’re overrun?”

“It’s Tippy. Why do you always try to deliberately rile me?”

“Only asking a simple question, my friend,” my other self said and lit another cigarette.

“Well don’t. Just quit talking to me.”

“You may about to get lucky.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I snapped.

I looked up but my other self had vanished again. I also noticed the yacht had snagged on the floating dock in the center of the canal. The yacht was around sixty feet in length and was wedged on the floating dock on its port side.

I knew I had to reach the vessel before it became dislodged again in the breeze or any zombies crawled onto the floating dock. I picked up the oar and paddled slowly to my destination.

Luckily, no more zombies tried to throw me out of the dinghy as I slowly rowed to the yacht. Smith lowered a rope to the waterline and I tied it to one of the dinghy handles. I stood up in the center of the raft and tossed the oar up to him, then reached up with both hands. Smith leaned out and clasped my sweaty palms in firefighter style. I had a horrible thought that the weight of the wetsuit, chainmail and the heaviness of my spent body might cause us both to topple into the water. But Smith was as strong as a gorilla and had no trouble hauling me up onto the deck.

I collapsed onto the deck, sweating and gasping for breath.

“Can you get me out of this damn wetsuit?” I rasped.

Smith pulled up the rope and slung the dinghy onto the deck next to me.

“You took your time, Wilde,” he teased. “Did you get those keys?”

I nodded. “Inside the suit.”

Smith and Tippy unstrapped the chainmail from my arms and legs, unzipped the black rubber wetsuit and peeled it off my body. I’d changed into a pair of Simey’s old short pants and one of his old T’s before I dressed in the wetsuit. The garments were drenched in my own sweat. The fresh air instantly cooled my body, which was a welcome relief. I felt like I was going to boil in that God damn suit.

The keys jangled out of the sleeve onto the deck. Smith picked them up and moved quickly to the control cabin.