The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone (30 page)

I didn’t know how we were going to get the diesel from the Jerry cans into the boat’s fuel tank. Smith had always refueled the Coastguard boat when we were at sea and I’d seen him use various pipes and connectors during the process. Fuelling a boat wasn’t just like pumping gas into a car at a station.

Smith and I finished our coffees and he handed me his empty cup, then looked around the boat deck. He kicked a metal valve that resembled a small fire hydrant.

“That’s the inlet valve for the diesel,” he said. “We need to somehow get the juice through that valve into the tank.”

“Best you get on with it,” Headlong barked.

Smith sighed and rubbed his cheek in thought. “We’re going to need a funnel or a piece of pipe to do this.”

“Just hurry it up and get a shift on, will you?” Headlong waved the rifle in our direction. “You people are beginning to piss me off with your God damn stupid ways, now get what you want and get it done real fast or I’ll start shooting.”

We searched the upper deck lockers and I found a small, plastic funnel in one of the compartments. It didn’t look man enough for the job but it was all we had. I held it in place at an angle with the tapered spout inside the valve inlet. Smith poured the diesel from the Jerry cans and managed to spill generous doses of the foul smelling liquid all over me.

The whole process took more than an hour to complete and my sleeves were soaked in diesel by the time we’d finished. Headlong scuffled around the deck while we carried out the operation, yelling obscenities and telling us to hurry up. He raised the rifle and threatened to shoot us dead on a few occasions. The guy seemed to be losing control of himself. He shook and sweated profusely, looking like he was going to keel over any moment. I wondered if he’d caught an infection in his injured leg or was sick or something.

Smith closed the fuel inlet valve and made his way to the control cabin. He primed the boat’s engines and went back out on deck to winch up the anchor.

“Okay, let’s get going,” Headlong ordered, when we had the engines rolling and the anchor housed. “Keep heading up river and I’ll tell you where to go when we get nearer.”

I stayed with Smith inside the control cabin. Headlong forced Tippy to stay beside him, holding her at gunpoint on the upper deck.

Smith turned the boat and headed against the flow. The day was still misty and visibility was poor.

“There’s something wrong with him,” I said. “He’s shivering and sweaty. You don’t think he’s been bitten, do you?”

Smith shook his head. “Nah, the guy’s probably a junkie in desperate need of his next fix. We’ve been out on the water a couple of days now and he’s had to go without, that’s why he’s acting more cranky than usual.”

The thought of a junkie denied his self medication worried me. The guy was irrational at the best of times, what was he going to be like when he was in the middle of a bout of cold turkey? The day had started badly and I didn’t have any optimism it was going to get any better.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Shapes of buildings on each side of the riverbank loomed out of the mist like ghost ships lost for centuries at sea. Smith kept the speed down to nothing more than a crawl, much to Headlong’s annoyance. Several times our captor yelled for us to go faster until Smith complained he couldn’t see shit.

We steered around several bends in the river and the population of undead grew in number the nearer we came to the city limits. They stood on the banks hollering and groaning in the mist as we sailed by. Some of them followed us into the river and soon disappeared beneath the murky water. A shiver ran down my spine. The whole scene looked like something out of a horror movie.

Headlong took a few pot shots at the zombies on the riverbank, I guessed to relieve his frustration. He missed more times than he hit and didn’t score too many killing head shots.

“He’s wasting ammo,” Smith growled. “What does that dickhead think he’s doing?”

“Be thankful he’s not taking shots at us,” I chipped in.

“With an aim like his, he’d probably miss if he was standing right in front of you,” Smith sneered. “His aim is pathetic.”

“A junkie with a gun isn’t exactly the greatest combination.”

“True but he’s getting the shakes so bad, I’ll be surprised if he can still hold that damn rifle by the time we hit Orleans.”

I looked at Smith and sniggered. I’d always enjoyed his dark sense of humor. He could always crack a joke or spin a funny pun in the direst situations.

“That’s a very British trait, you know.”

“What is?”

“That kind of gallows humor thing you have.”

“I worked with the Brits on a few military ops back in the day,” Smith mused. “Good guys. They were pretty cool and liked a beer or two.”

I thought about my old street back in London when I was a kid. I wondered how the other kids I’d been to school with had turned out. Maybe some of them were still alive in a similar situation to us. But then again, whose life would be this crazy? I doubted anyone else left alive would be going through the same freaky shit we’d had to endure.

My reminiscing of past times was soon ended when a stranded yacht emerged from the mist, bobbing and swirling on the tide. The vessel came in nose first on our starboard side, bumping into our bow.

Headlong went ape shit, swearing and yelling at the floundering yacht to back off. Ripped, white sails covered the upper deck as the vessel ground alongside us.

“Shit!” Smith muttered, as he tried to steer us around the stranded yacht.

The yacht bow raked down our right side and Headlong screamed at Smith to go around and get back on track.

“I’m fucking trying to, you asshole!” Smith yelled back.

Our forward movement caused the yacht to spin in the water and it came alongside us, facing downriver in the opposite direction to us. The sails flapped upwards in the breeze and I saw around a dozen members of the undead stumbling around the yacht’s upper deck.

“Oh, shit! There are zombies onboard,” I screeched, pointing through the control cabin window.

Smith glanced to his right and saw the green faced, rotting ghouls making their way towards us. The undead had seen Tippy and Headlong and went into some kind of hunger driven frenzy. From where he was standing, Headlong’s vision was obviously obscured by the draped sail and he hadn’t noticed the approaching flesh eaters. Tippy screamed and Headlong finally noticed the zombies trying to clamber onboard our boat. He barked something inaudible and let fire with a burst of the M-16. His aim was predictably terrible and the bullets flew high and wide of their intended target, ripping gaping holes in the white sails.

Two, then three zombies tumbled onto our deck. The rest of the undead gang followed.

“Christ! We’re getting overrun,” Smith roared. “Doesn’t that asshole, Headlong, know how to use that fucking weapon?”

“It doesn’t look like it. Fuck! We’re in trouble here, Smith.”

Headlong fired off another inaccurate burst of rounds, scoring only one hit which caught a bald headed zombie high in the shoulder. Not even a kill shot. He tried again but the rifle only clicked, magazine empty. The asshole hadn’t had the foresight to bring a spare, full mag up on deck with him. He backed up across the deck, hurling obscenities at the rapidly advancing zombies.

“He should have used the 20mm,” Smith hissed. “It’s too damn late now.” 

Tippy was paralyzed with terror. She didn’t move, just stood still screaming hysterically. Ripe for zombie food. Two ghouls pounced on her from either side, a male and female wearing the remains of a tuxedo suit and a cocktail dress respectively. The undead duo bit into her saggy, fleshy neck below her ears. Blood spurted across the deck in opposite directions as the zombies tore into Tippy’s flesh. She screeched and went down under the weight of the two attacking bodies. I couldn’t see her from where I was inside the cabin but I knew that was curtains for the poor, old girl. Miserable in life and now a terrible, painful death. 

“Oh, fuck! They got Tippy, Smith,” I screamed.

“I know, kid. I’ve got eyes in my fucking head.”

Headlong turned the M-16 around and used the rifle butt to club away the zombies trying to grab him.

“Get the fuck away from me, you dirty motherfuckers,” he screamed, batting away the grasping, rotten hands.

“We got to do something, Smith,” I pleaded. “We’ll never find Batfish if Headlong croaks.”

The zombies still hadn’t noticed us yet. They were more preoccupied with Tippy and Headlong. It was a certainty they’d head towards us once they saw us and the thin, glass panel inset into the door wouldn’t offer us much protection.

Smith slowed the engines to keep us in a stable position and glanced out across the deck.

“We’ll have to be quick. Grab Headlong and get down below – fast. We need those spare mags and the hunting rifle. I don’t want to be shooting inside the compartment. Bullets will end chasing us around the cabin.”

I opened one of the lockers along the back wall and grabbed Spot to shove him inside out the way for his own safekeeping. I noticed a small, red colored fire axe lying at the bottom of the locker. I swapped the axe for the dog, whispering an apology as I shut him inside. Poor Spot didn’t appreciate being confined inside the dark locker and immediately started whimpering and clawing at the inside of the door. I bet he was thinking “what the hell are they doing to me now?” Poor little bastard.

I held the axe up so Smith could see it. The axe had a sharp, pointed spike on the opposite side to the blade.

“Not much of a weapon but it’ll do for now,” he said.

“It’s slightly better than a lug wrench,” I quipped.

“Whatever happened to that?”

“I left it inside the Humvee. We could do with it right now.”

“Never mind about that, kid. Just try and keep those zombies off Headlong and get to that hatch. We can secure the door from the inside and we can fight back once we’re armed. You ready?”

“I was born ready.” A bold statement that I wasn’t totally convinced of.

Chapter Fifty

My heart was hammering inside my rib cage. I felt the tingle of an adrenalin rush through my body as Smith held onto the door handle in anticipation of us springing into action for some more zombie battling.

“You ready?”

I nodded.

“Okay, here we go.”

Smith wrenched the door open and I leapt out of the control cabin with the axe raised above my head. I emitted a blood curdling war cry as though I was some kind of medieval warrior bounding into combat.

The first zombie that came for me was a horribly disfigured female. The left side of her head was totally stripped of skin, flesh and hair, leaving a half yellow bone skull. I didn’t dwell on the once human monstrosity. Her injuries could have happened post or pre-death but I didn’t really give a fuck. At that moment, the disfigured creature was trying to rip me apart.

I swung the axe in a looping arc, like a boxer’s haymaker. The axe blade smashed into the zombie’s half exposed skull, generating a satisfying cracking noise. Sometimes, in the hurdy-gurdy situation of close combat when you’re fighting for your life, your brain goes into overdrive and everything else in the world is blocked from your senses. I didn’t see Smith behind me, all I was concentrating on was busting heads with the small axe.

The first female zombie went down on the deck but another came for me from my right. I saw the approaching ghoul out the corner of my eye and swung again in a back handed motion. The spike struck the zombie on the right side of the jaw. Bone and old, rotten blood spilled onto the deck and I saw the blow had torn away the zombie’s lower jaw. The shattered bone hung loosely, attached by parched skin, from the opposite side of the ghoul’s face.

I swung around to face the zombie head on. He was male, probably would have been in his mid forties before the disease had kicked in and wore the tatty remains of some kind of maroon colored uniform. The creature still came forward and made some sort of gurgling sound. I lifted my arm and swung the axe straight down in a kind of chopping action. The blade struck the zombie directly in the center and the top of the skull. The axe made a ‘
thunk
’ as it split the skull and penetrated the zombie’s brain. Straw colored fluid leaked from the thick groove in the top of his head and ran down the remainder of his decaying face.

I pulled the axe blade from the skull and the zombie sunk to his knees before keeling over on the deck. I spun around in a three-sixty arc, hunched and waiting for the next attack with the axe at the ready in my hand.

I caught sight of Smith, who was using a fire extinguisher as a weapon by smashing the bottom end into a zombie’s face. He was making better progress towards the lower deck hatch, edging his way closer by batting the undead out of his path.

“Get to Headlong,” he screeched above the moans.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and swiftly spun around. A thin, boney faced man stood a few inches from me. His eyes were still intact and wide but covered with that ugly, milky coating. He opened his mouth and leaned forward. I thought he was trying to bite me at first but then he let out an almost pleading groan, as if he was trying to say ‘
put me out of my misery, please
.’ I obliged his request and dispatched him with a side swing, catching him with the axe blade around his left temple. The old zombie clattered onto the deck and I stepped over his prone body towards Headlong, who was doing his utmost to get away from three undead surrounding him. He was making heavy weather of slugging the zombies with the rifle butt.