The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink (16 page)

The boatman didn’t say a word when he dropped me on the shore on the U.S. Stateside. He nodded, turned his boat around and sailed away, as though he was disembarking a passenger from a morning’s fishing trip.
I stood on the dock clutching the sports bag watching him disappear across the horizon. The guy was a hard-nosed professional, I’d give him that.

The journey back to Manhattan was a sweaty blur, trying to drive in the hot summer afternoon, fighting against fatigue and the pain in my arm and shoulder.
I knew Larry was none too pleased when I turned up back at his office later that day and handed him the twenty grand in the sports bag. The ungrateful bastard moaned about still being thirty grand down but he still paid me in full. After all, the mean son of a bitch hadn’t had to pay out for Jimmy and Toni’s share and Marques and his team had been dealt with.

To sum things up, the operation had been a fuck up from start to finish. It would take me a long time before I could face going out on a boat again. Every time I saw the sea or a lake,
a chill ran down my spine as I thought of Jimmy and Toni lying and rotting at the bottom of Lake Ontario.

Smith stirred and his eyes blinked open. He lamented the Canadian operation with regret and rubbed his scared arm and shoulder as a painful reminder of what happened that night. At least Halifax was nowhere near Lake Ontario and he wouldn’t be battling any Puerto Rican or Chinese gangsters. Only members of the undead stood in his way and in comparison, they were easy pickings.

Chapter Twenty

My eyes snapped open and I sat forward in my seat. At first, I didn’t know where the hell I was and then the memories came flooding back. I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized I was still relatively safe, sitting onboard the C-17 aircraft heading for Nova Scotia.

Smith, Batfish and Spot were all still sleeping and Chief Cole snored loudly in the seat behind me. Fragments of my dream or nightmare about the Roadhouse whirled around my mind and I wondered if I was going to ever be capable of sleeping properly again.

My mouth was dry and I had a dank taste on my tongue. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and unbuckled my safety belt. I had no idea how long we’d been in the air and hoped our destination wasn’t too far away.
Batfish had a water bottle at her feet so I picked it up and took a huge gulp and swirled the liquid around my mouth.

I stood up on stiff legs and took a quick walk around the aircraft interior.
My neck and back ached; I rolled my shoulders and took another sip of water.

Milner sat talking to a Naval Airman in the seat to his left along the side of the interior. I made my way over and nodded a greeting.

“Any idea where the hell we are?” I asked.

The Naval Airman looked at his watch.
“We’ve been in the air for nearly three hours now so I guess we have another hour before we land.” He was a well built blonde guy with blue eyes and tanned skin and spoke with a mid west accent. I noticed his surname was Kauffmann by the name tag on his shirt.

“Brett Wilde, good to meet you,” I said and proffered my hand.

“Frank Kauffmann, likewise.” He shook my hand with a firm grip.

Kauffmann
, Milner and I shot the breeze for a while, talking about our hopes and expectations of the expedition before the aircraft began to jolt heavily from side to side. I staggered left and right, trying to keep my balance.

“Shit! What the hell is going on?” I wailed.

“Probably a little turbulence,” Kauffmann said. “Nothing to worry about.”

“I hope you’re right,” I shouted above the bumping noises of the cargo
.

I heard a chiming noise and an overhead sign lit up telling all crew to return to their seats and buckle up. Milner and
Kauffmann fastened their belts and I decided to do the same. I pointed back to my seating area and gave them a wave.

The rumbling noises and shaking had woken Batfish, Smith and Spot.

“What the heck is happening, Brett?” Batfish shrieked at me as I fastened my seat belt.

“Only a bit of turbulence. Nothing to worry about, allegedly,” I hollered.

The aircraft’s flight path returned to normality a few minutes later but I couldn’t relax. The turbulence had shaken me up and I realized just how vulnerable we were up in the sky.

I tried to make small talk with Smith and Batfish
, simply to take my mind off the flight but suddenly my ears refused to hear properly and I felt my stomach rising.

“We’re going down,” Smith said loudly. “We’re starting our descent.”

I wished the aircraft had some windows onto the outside world so at least, I could see where we were heading. I didn’t like being enclosed and tossed around like I was on a theme park ride. Our lives were undeniably in the hands of the flight crew. I was no pilot but I knew landing the aircraft would be tricky with no landing lights or communication with air traffic control on the ground. The one thing in our favor was no other planes would be lifting off as we attempted our landing.

“I hope these guys know what they’re doing,” I wailed as we descended further.

“Relax,” Smith snapped. “They’ve landed this bird, probably a million times before.”

“I hope you’re right.”
I shut my eyes but it only made me feel worse.

Smith sighed, shook his head and sat back in his seat as though he was relaxing on a sun lounger around a pool.
He’d probably flown on these enclosed military aircraft many times in the past but I wasn’t used to not seeing the ground steadily approaching from the viewing windows.

I felt a bump then a jolt and the roaring sound of the engines decreased dramatically.

“There you go,” Smith said, smiling sarcastically. “We’re down on the ground. You happy now?”

I nodded but realized our problems were only beginning.
We were in the depths of winter in a cold country and we hadn’t a clue how many undead or other hazards lay before us outside the aircraft.

We rocked forward in our seats with the motion when the flight crew applied the brakes, bringing the aircraft to a stop. Smith unbuckled his belt and lifted himself out of his seat. Batfish and I followed suit and the three of us stood around not quite knowing what to do. Chief Cole stood up, stretched his arms above his head then rolled his neck. He made his way to the intercom system at the rear of the interior.
Cole spoke periodically into the microphone and listened carefully to the replies. The rest of the passengers left their seats and crowded behind Cole, waiting for instructions. When the Navy Chief finished conversing with the flight crew, he turned towards us.

“We need to dress in full cold climate gear, people,” he said. “The weather is bad out there and we need to keep as warm as possible. We refuel and get out of here as quickly as we can.
All those not involved in the refueling operation, please stay away from the loading ramp. Don’t take any unnecessary risks and watch each other’s backs. I don’t need to tell all the refueling and security crews to stay frosty. Good luck to you all.”

I turned to Smith. “I take it we’re not involved in this process?”

Smith shook his head. “Let the military guys handle this one.”

Smith, Batfish and I, along with half the interior’s passengers shuffled towards the front of the cargo compartment. Those involved in the refueling operation had obviously been previously nominated before we took off from New Orleans.

I saw Milner and a few more Marines break open a container. They pulled out several padded, light green jackets, pants and hoods, all wrapped in transparent cellophane bags and handed them around to the aircrew refueling team. The Marines and aircrew ripped open the packages and dressed in the cold weather gear over the top of their uniforms. They slipped on pairs of goggles over their eyes. The complete outfits made them look like aliens.

Milner and the Marines took an M16A4 rifle each from a weapon rack near the loading bay and loaded up their magazines.
Some of the air crew took tool kits with them in backpacks.

“You don’t need me to remind you boys to keep any shots away from the refueling zone,” Chief Cole told the Marines.

The Navy Chief hadn’t changed into the cold weather gear. Instead, he prepared some radios, attaching the headsets with microphones to the handsets. He handed them out to each of the Marines and the aircrew.

“Keep me informed of what is going on down on the ground,” Cole said to Milner, donning a radio headset of his own. “The flight crew is on this channel as well, so we can all keep in contact with each other.”

The Marines and aircrew nodded and proceeded to check communications with each other. They each had a codename and they made sure every one of the headsets were working correctly and were all on the same frequency channel.

I had to say, I was impressed by the whole preparation of the operation. Any undead in the vicinity would probably have frozen in the cold climate anyhow. What could possibly go wrong?

Chapter Twenty-One

I patted Spot’s head as he sat contently in Batfish’s arms. We huddled at the forward end of the interior compartment and watched as Chief Cole lowered the cargo ramp. The Navy Chief had donned one of the padded cold weather jackets, presumably for the duration of lowering of the ramp.

A bitterly cold blast of air whipped inside the aircraft interior as soon as the ramp opened, revealing a
hazy white sky blustering with huge snowflakes. Chief Cole squinted into the freezing wind and waited for the ramp to fully descend. Milner and the Marines stood at the edge of the ramp, ready to disembark.

I saw a carpet of
deep snow on the ground as the ramp moved further down. Batfish held her hand over Spot’s head and turned her head against the Arctic breeze.

“Shit! That’s fucking cold,” she screeched.

The ramp hit the ground and Milner led the dozen or so Marines out into the snowstorm. I saw them fan out around the rear of the aircraft before they were lost from sight in the blizzard. A few seconds later, Chief Cole waved the refueling aircrew forward.

“All clear! Go guys,” he yelled above the howling wind.

The aircrew moved quickly down the ramp, into the snowstorm. Cole began raising the ramp when the last of the refueling crew had disembarked. I was glad when the ramp clunked back into place and we were sheltered from the biting cold.

“Must be some bad winter they’re having up here,” Smith muttered. “I pity the poor bastards who are still surviving out there.”

I thought about how difficult it would be to move around in the snow. “Do you think there’s anybody left around here?” I asked.

Smith shrugged. “The Canadians are tough people. They’re used to the rough weather. Maybe it’s more zombie free in these parts.”

The image of people holed up in log cabins in the Canadian wilderness popped up in my mind. Maybe they had been better off over the last few months. The vastness of the country and relatively small population may have protected them from swarms of undead overrunning huge rural areas. The cities would have suffered for sure, and probably endured the same fate as America and the rest of the world.

“Talk to me, guys. What’s happening out there?” Cole was yelling into his microphone headset
, with a look of concern on his face.

Smith walked over to where Chief Cole was standing by the edge of the sealed cargo ramp. I followed, curious to know what was going on outside.

“Problem, Chief?” Smith asked.

Cole held his hand up, palm facing us while holding the headset to his ear
, listening intently.

“They’ve run into some trouble out there,” Cole jabbered before listening to another message on his headset.
“Shit! There’s no power in the refueling pump and the hoses have frozen up.”

“What about zombies? Have they had to engage any undead out there?” Smith asked.

Cole shrugged. “They’ve seen a couple and dispatched them but visibility is so bad, they’ve got no way of telling how many are in the vicinity.”