The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold (14 page)

I felt the cold begin to creep back into my flesh and decided to jump under the duvet as quickly as possible. I stripped off
my clothes, carefully placing my loaded M-9 beside the candle and shivered before sliding into the bed. I leaned over to blow out the candle but decided to leave it lit, simply so I’d have some orientation if I woke in the night.

I made myself comfortable under the crisp duvet that smelled of clean washing soap and let my head sink into the deep pillows. It had been a long, hard day and I was ready for a lengthy, deep sleep. The night, however, proved to be anything but peaceful.

Chapter Twenty

My senses dulled as I lay in the bed, listening to the wind whistle through the eves in the castle’s roof tower somewhere above me.
The solitude and seclusion in a relatively safe environment and the increasing weariness of the day allowed me to totally relax and let the onrush of sleep wash over me. The day’s incidents flashed through my mind like an edited sports TV show, replaying the highlights and scary moments again and again. I never thought I’d sleep ever again in those first few days of the zombie outbreak. Every time I closed my eyes in those early days, I saw horrific images that I felt had scarred my soul forever. In time, the affects wore off and I occasionally managed an eight hour, unbroken slumber.

I heard a tap on the opposite side of the door. I ignored it, putting it down to the creaking sounds of the
old building contracting in the cold of the night. The tap came again, a little more insistent the second time. It was definitely somebody on the other side, trying to grab my attention. Was it Maddie, maybe knocking on my door in the hope of some late night loving? Or Cordoba feeling a little lonely and cold? I instinctively reached for my gun.

“Hey, Wilde Man…are you awake?” a voice whispered from the other side of the door.

“Smith,” I groaned. What the hell did he want?

Sighing loudly, I pulled back the duvet, threw on my underwear and the fleece top and moved to the door. I opened up and saw Smith in the corridor with a bottle of Scotch in his hand.

“Want a nightcap?”

“Not really but it looks as though you do,” I sighed, showing him into my room.

“Were you awake?” Smith said, as he strolled into the bedroom.

“I wasn’t but I am now. What do want, Smith?” I asked, closing the door. “I thought you’d be in with Wingate
, if you wanted some company.”

Smith took a slug from the whisky bottle. “Good hooch this, I swiped it from the lounge earlier.
” He winced against the liquor burn as he spoke. “Nah, Wingate told me to stay the fuck away from her tonight. I gave her a knock just now and she said she wanted to be alone tonight to catch up on her sleep.”

“I know how she feels,” I groaned, stifling a yawn.

Smith passed me the bottle and I decided what the hell? I took a couple of small sips. The Scotch was smooth and warming on the way down. Smith leant with his backside resting against the sink and ran his hand through his hair. I perched on the edge of the bed facing him. 

“That’s
an eighteen year old Malt,” he said, pointing to the green bottle. “That stuff’s worth around eighty dollars a bottle back home. Here, they drink it like water.”

“What’s on your mind?” I knew Smith too well.

“Huh?”

“You didn’t come into my room in the middle of the night to talk about the price of Malt Whisky,” I said. “You’ve got something crawling up your ass.”

Smith sniggered and took the bottle back from me. I recognized an evil glint in his eyes, accentuated by the candle light. I sometimes forgot what a ruthless son of a bitch this guy used to be and still was at times. He took another swig then waved the bottle neck, pointing it around the room. In the dim light, Smith looked and sounded like a gangster in one of those old black and white movies, in which the characters were all called
Frankie Knuckles
or
Machine Gun Joe
or an equivalent moniker. His Brooklyn accent and strapping physique leant credence to his mobster facade.   

“This is all very nice and I don’t want to seem ungrateful but don’t you think these people seem a little weird?”

The same thought had crossed my mind but I just put it down to the long duration they’d been stuck together, locked up in the castle.

“Weird how?”

Smith screwed up his face. “Weird as in…” He moved his head from side to side, thinking for the right word. “Weird, as in a little overfriendly.”

I laughed out loud. “Wouldn’t you rather have them being overfriendly than overly hostile?”

Smith pulled out a pack of smokes from his pants pocket. He took one out and tossed me the pack. He lit his with his Zippo and I used the candle flame. The small room soon filled with cigarette smoke.

“Yeah, but everybody else we’ve encountered since this whole thing started hasn’t exactly welcomed us with open arms.” Smith spoke with the cigarette wobbling up and down in his mouth. “These guys seem like they’re desperate for us to stay, no matter what. This place is miles from anywhere. What happens when the food and supplies run dry? Will they be so eager for us to stay then?”

I thought about Joan’s strange behavior at the dinner table and Maddie’s flirting. Alex did seem a bit overfriendly but maybe that was his nature. I mulled over Maddie’s over reactions to Alex’s jibes for a brief moment. 

“Maybe they all just got bored with each other’s company and are glad to see some new faces Remember when we were stuck on that boat for a long time?”

Smith nodded.

“We hardly spoke to each other when we were at sea. They’ve been cooped up inside this castle since the whole thing started, more or less.” I didn’t know why I was defending the
castle’s inhabitants. Maybe I didn’t want the situation to end badly, as so often happened to us.

“You may be right, kid,” Smith sighed. “Maybe I’m just getting too cynical in my old age.”

“You’ve always been cynical,” I said with a laugh. “You’ve never trusted anybody as long as I’ve known you.”

Smith grunted a laugh, removed the cigarette from his mouth and jabbed the glowing tip at me. “
In my experience, it’s the best way. Don’t trust no motherfucker.”

“Hell, Smith,” I sighed. “You trust me, don’t you?”

“Hah, okay, so there maybe a few exceptions to the rule. I kind of trust you, Batfish, and Wingate but you know who I do trust, one hundred percent?” He took another swig of Scotch.

I shook my head with a smile on my face. Smith’s logic was always an endless source of amusement for me. It was as though the rules of life had been ripped to pieces and rearranged in some bizarre fashion by somebody who didn’t understand the language
it was printed in.

“God almighty?”
I guessed.

“Uh-ah.” He shook his head
and stared at me expectantly, as though I was going to carry on guessing who he meant.

“I don’t know, Smith,” I said, laughing.
“
Barney
, the purple fucking dinosaur?”

“Close but wrong animal. The only living thing I trust with complete certainty that is not going to fuck me over is that little dog curled up with Batfish.” He pointed towards the door with his cigarette.

I gestured for the whisky bottle and he passed it over. “That’s a fucking wacky way to look at things.”

“It’s the living truth, kid,” Smith groaned
, flicking his cigarette ash down the sink. “The fact is, it is simple human nature to rat somebody out if your life depends on it. That dog would never do that.”

I weighed up what Smith said as I took a sip from the bottle. It made a kind of strange sense, in a Smith type way. “I suppose you’re right,” I sighed, handing him back the Scotch.

He took the bottle and had another swig. I leant over and stubbed my cigarette out in the candle holder. Smith unceremoniously dunked his cigarette butt in the sink. I got the impression Smith might want to add something more to this late night conversation.

“Is that all you’ve got on your mind?” I asked.

He looked me straight in the eye. “Just be careful with that Maddie chick. I’m not dumb and nor is Cordoba.”

“I’m not up to anything with her, Smith,” I protested. “I swear.” I
was shocked and didn’t realize her flirting had been so obvious.

He shrugged.
“Makes no odds to me, kid. I really don’t give a damn who you bump bits with but I’m telling you as a friend, we can’t afford no major bust ups in our little troop.” He tapped his temple. “Think with this.” Then he groped his crotch. “Not with this.”

“All right,” I sighed, feeling slightly embarrassed. “I got it.”

Smith opened his mouth to say something more but stopped short when we heard a shout from the landing outside the bedroom.

“Zombies in the castle grounds!” the female voice screamed.

Chapter Twenty-One

Smith and I briefly glanced at each other then bolted for the bedroom door. I was still dressed in nothing more than my underwear and Smith was clothed in a white vest and combat fatigue pants. He wore his pistol holster around his shoulder, containing a loaded M-9 Beretta but my weapon still lay on my bedside table.

Mrs
McMahon stood in the landing, dressed in a long white nightgown with a worried expression on her face. She carried an old fashioned lantern and held it up at head height. Wingate and Cordoba joined us. They both wore vests and shorts, looking disheveled, as though they had been disturbed from the throes of slumber.

“What’s going on?” Smith demanded.

“Some zombies have got into the castle grounds,” Mrs McMahon whispered intently, as if the undead would hear her if she spoke too loudly. “They’ve come through the gate by the conservatory.”

“That’s the way we came in,” Smith mused.

“I’m sure Alex locked that gate behind us,” Wingate added, ruffling a hand through her hair. “Wait a minute. I’ll go put some clothes on.” She disappeared back into her room.

“Me too,” Cordoba groaned.

Smith and I retreated into our respective bedrooms to throw on some cold weather gear and I needed to grab my handgun. I slipped on my combat fatigues, boots and wrapped the parker jacket around my torso before seizing hold of my M-9. Smith, Cordoba and Wingate were already back on the landing by the time I’d hurried through my bedroom doorway. Smith and Cordoba carried their M-16 rifles, slung over their shoulders.

“All right,”
Mrs McMahon chimed. “Let’s go and get rid of those nasty zombies.”

She led the way down the staircase and through the series of corridors until we crossed through the conservatory once more.

“Where’s everybody else?” I asked, glancing around the cold, deserted room.

“Oh, they’ll be
out there somewhere, I’m sure,” Mrs McMahon replied. She unlocked the door and opened it up. A blast of freezing cold air blew inside the conservatory pricking at my skin beneath my jacket.

Wingate and Cordoba flicked on their flashlights before we stepped through the doorway and out into the cold, dark night.
Mrs McMahon slammed the door shut behind us and we heard the key rattling in the lock.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Wingate shouted. “She’s locked us out of the castle.”

I didn’t know what the hell was going on or where the heck the others were but we had an immediate danger to repel. Moans and growls of the undead in our immediate vicinity drifted through the darkness.

“Shine your flashlights out in front of us,” I barked. “
I can hear fucking zombies out there in the dark.”

“Where the hell is everybody?” Smith bleated, whipping his rifle off his shoulder. “Why are we the only ones out here?”

“I don’t know,” I hissed. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

Wingate and Cordoba swept their flashlights around in swift, sweeping arcs.
The light picked out a number of zombies dotted around the courtyard in small groups. They hissed at the light and began to lumber towards us.

“They’re all pretty much spread out,” Cordoba cried.

“Check that side gate,” Smith barked. “Close it up. We don’t want any more of those bastards pouring through that entrance.”

Wingate swung her flashlight beam across the outer wall
, until she lit up the side entrance. The wooden gate stood halfway open with more of the undead bundling through the threshold.

“We need to close it up,” Wingate shrieked. “They’re going to keep on coming through.”