The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold (16 page)

I sighed in exasperation and replaced the handgun on the bedside table. “What do you want?” I groaned.

The voice belonged to my alternative self, who came to haunt and taunt me at stressful times. My alter ego hadn’t appeared for a while and I didn’t know why he was choosing this particular time to materialize.

“That’s no way to greet your best friend.”

“You’re not my friend,” I snapped. “Every time you show up, I know I’m in for a bad time of it. Somebody always gets killed or something really bad happens.”

“Well, okay.
I’m sorry you feel like that.”

My other self leaned against the sink with his back to me, staring at me in the mirror. His eyes looked dark in the pupils
, with huge black rings around his sockets. His face was deathly pale and the skin looked stretched across the cheek bones. Dressed all in black, he was the image of me as if I was dead.

“Look, it was a tough day yesterday,” I sighed, eager to go back to sleep. “Things got a little weird around here and I need some rest. I think Smith is planning to move out as soon as we can, maybe even today so I’d appreciate a
few more hours sleep.”

“Okay, I can take a hint,” my other self muttered. “I came to warn you, is all
.”

“About what?”

“Don’t take everybody you meet at face value.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped.

My alternative self took a swig from the whisky bottle on the sink. “You figure it out, if you’re so smart.” He placed the bottle back on the shelf. “Heed the warning.”

“You’re not making any sense. What warning? What are you talking about?” I flicked back the duvet and swung my legs around to stand up. The cold air enveloped around me as I hauled myself from the bed. “You have to tell me what you mean,” I hissed.

But my words went unheard. My alternative self had vanished back to hallucination land. I stood all alone in the center of the small bedroom. The candle still burned but only had around an inch of wax left before it melted away.

I couldn’t comprehend what my not so friendly hallucination was hinting at and I was still too tired to try. I checked the door was still locked before I crawled back into bed
, feeling like
Scrooge
in
Dickens’s
‘
Christmas Carol
.’ Would I be visited by more ghosts before the dawn broke?

My mind churned over with jumbled images and spiraling landscapes. Sleep took hold of me but my dreams were troubled. I ran away from something inescapable, as though I was running through maple syrup from an ever closing, unseen assailant.

Furious hammering on the outside of my bedroom door awoke me after what felt like another ten minutes sleep. The pale sun shone through the curtainless, cross shaped window and I blinked into the haze of a white sky glaring through the glass from outside.

“Wilde Man, get up,” Smith’s voice boomed from the landing
, outside my door.

“Jesus, won’t that guy ever leave me alone?” I groaned, shielding my eyes
from the daylight. I was still tired and had a slight headache from the wine and whisky I’d drunk the previous night.

I hauled my ass out of bed, coughing violently and opened the door a crack. Smith’s unshaven, sullen face appeared in the narrow gap. 

“You look like shit.”

“You don’t look so hot yourself,” I countered. “What’s up? Why all the
freakin’ noise at this time in the morning?”

“We need you to get dressed, man,” Smith sighed. “Gera’s gone missing. He’s not in his room but all his gear is still in place. We need to organize some kind of search.”

“What do you mean,
he’s gone missing
?” I was confused.

“
It means - we don’t know where he is, genius. What do you think it means?” Smith spoke in a slow tone, pulling a crazy face. “Now, come on, put on some damn clothes.”

“All right, give me a minute,” I groaned and closed the door on him.

I’d hoped for a day relaxing in front of the fire before we continued on our trek across the harsh, snowy landscape. No chance of that. I washed in the sink and brushed my teeth but didn’t bother to shave. I pulled on some clean clothes, checked my M-9 and gathered some full magazines in my belt pouches, then threw on the cold weather jacket.

Smith, Wingate, Cordoba and Batfish were already standing in the landing all dressed and geared up ready to go on the search. Batfish’s face was pale and she looked extremely worried.
It was unlike Gera to go off on his own without telling anybody. I paid a visit to the bathroom while the others waited.

“Okay, so what’s the plan?” I asked
, glancing around the faces of my companions while we stood on the landing.

“He wasn’t in his room this morning when I went to check on him,” Batfish babbled, her voice cracking with emotion. “It looked like his bed had been slept in and all his stuff is still in there.”

“What about his weapons?” I asked.

“All still there in his room,” Smith confirmed.
“I’ve locked all the spare weapons and ammo in my room and I’m keeping the room key on me.”

“And you’ve checked around the castle?” I knew I was asking obvious questions but sometimes people overlook the simple
facts.

“I’ve looked everyplace,” Batfish whined.

“We’ve been looking around for around an hour,” Smith chipped in.

“Have you told Alex or any of the others?”

“No sign of any of them, at the moment,” Wingate said. “Maybe they don’t get up too early.”

I knew how they felt. I’d still be in bed if it was up to me. Gera was an early riser and had probably gone to find some breakfast or just gone to explore the castle. It would take longer than an hour to search the whole of the huge castle interior.

Gera’s room, as I recalled was next to mine.

“I didn’t hear him moving around during the night,” I said and went to open his bedroom door.

“Oh, I’m in that one,” Cordoba stammered. She seemed a little uncomfortable. “Gera and I swapped rooms soon after we turned in. I…wanted to be next to you, Brett.” Her gaze turned to the floor in embarrassment. “Just in case I couldn’t sleep, you know?”

Smith smirked and flashed me a wink. I felt my face redden slightly.

“And I suppose Gera would want to be nearer to Batfish’s room.” I quickly tried to diffuse the uncomfortable situation.

“Well, it really don’t matter who wants to be next to who,” Smith said, helping me out. “The fact is, Gera’s missing someplace and we need to find him. We also need to quiz these fucking castle goons about what the hell was going on last night.”

“Go easy on them,” Wingate scolded. “They haven’t actually done anything wrong, Smith.”

“I’m going to get some fucking answers.” Smith drew his M-9 and checked the magazine.
“One way or another.”

I knew Smith’s history and how he was capable of extracting information from people using unpleasant methods.
If the castle dwellers were playing some kind of game then they’d chosen the wrong guy to start pissing off. Smith would wipe them all out in one brutal gun totting rampage if he felt threatened.

“Okay, let’s go find our friend,” Smith growled and stomped towards the staircase
.

We followed Smith back down the staircase and through the corridors to the Great Hall. Still nobody else occupied the room. The fire had died out and there were no signs of life. The castle seemed eerily silent.

“Let’s split into two groups,” Smith suggested. “Me and Wilde Man will take the lower floors and work our way up. You girls start from the top and work your way down. That way we’ll cover the whole of the interior.”

“That could take hours,” Wingate groaned. “This castle is huge.
And that means we’ll have to troop all the way back up that staircase again.”

“It’ll cut the time down,” Smith argued. “We can meet in the middle floors someplace. How about in the dining room? That was roughly in the center of the building. We’ll try
looking outside if we still can’t find Gera.”

“All right,” Batfish sighed. “Just holler if you find
Gera or anybody else.”

The three women trudged out of the room to commence their search from the top of the castle. I didn’t particularly like the malevolent glint in Smith’s eyes. He was riled up and I knew somebody was going to suffer.

Smith glanced at me with a steely glare. “Right, let’s go and find out what’s really going on in this fucking castle.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Smith drew his M-9 as we marched across the Great Hall to the doorway leading to the corridor. We hadn’t seen much of the castle interior and the passageways and various staircases resembled a rabbit warren. Finding anybody who didn’t want to be located was going to be a difficult task.

I had the feeling Smith wanted the girls out of the way so they wouldn’t hold him back if he came across anybody who he wanted to question.
I could guarantee his methods weren’t going to be pretty.

“Where do you start?” I groaned, glancing around an empty, stone walled reception room.

“We’re going to start from the bottom of this place and work our way up. I’m going to search every inch of this damn place until I find somebody,” Smith growled. “I don’t know if those people are hiding but I’m going to find out what the hell is going on.”

We moved through several more empty rooms and some containing stacked up furniture and
piles of dusty cardboard boxes. Another corridor led us to the main reception area at the castle’s front entrance. The desks remained unoccupied, with blank computer monitors sitting on top.

Smith
holstered his M-9 and pulled a golf club from a white sports bag leaning against one of the reception desks. He swung it through the air one handed, the bulbous head making a swishing noise.

“I never got the whole golf thing,” he said. “Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said ‘
golf is a good walk spoiled
?’ Whoever said that was damn right.”

“I have no idea,” I replied. I had my own bad experiences with golf some years previously. “My dad was a keen golfer. He used to play in Ireland.”

Smith ignored my family memoir and carried on swinging the club in different directions and combinations, using it like a martial arts weapon.

“I don’t think that’s how you are supposed to hit a ball down the fairway, Smith,” I mocked.

“These things would be better used for cracking heads than hitting stupid little balls around,” he said, tossing the club into the air so it spun end over end.

I gazed through the front entranceway windows across the snow covered driveway, towards the portcullis gate. A crowd of zombies still huddled in front of the portcullis, reaching through the latticed gaps.

“What do you think has happened to Gera?” I asked. “What’s your best guess, now we’re away from Batfish?”

Smith caught the golf club one handed then shrugged.
“I don’t know but it don’t look good for the poor guy. It’s a goddamn pity, I liked Gera. But don’t worry, if I find out they’ve wacked him, I’ll make them pay. Every last one of them.”

I smacked the brass reception bell with palm of my hand. The bell chimed a hollow ring but obviously no smiling receptionist appeared from the offices at the rear.

“I’ll bet i
t cost a bundle to stay in this place,” I said, glancing around the summit of the dark wooden, double staircase standing behind the reception desks.

“Well, it’s free of charge now,” Smith sighed. “Come on, let’s carry on our search.”
He carried the golf club with him, swinging the end across the floor.

We moved away from the reception area, through the deserted bar and lounge. Tables and chairs were scattered and upturned as though there had been an almighty scuffle in the area.
Old blood smears stained the cream colored carpets between the wrecked and overturned furniture. I remembered Maddie saying how they’d struggled to clear the castle of the undead during the past few months.

French windows looked out onto what I guessed had been the castle’s gardens and lawns
, situated between the castle and the outer wall. I imagined a bunch of golfers, dressed in their bizarre clothing mingling in the bar, sipping a few Scotches and chatting about the rounds they’d played during the day. Another human activity probably lost forever.

Smith eyed the
various bottles of Malt Whisky behind the counter but resisted the temptation to indulge at such an early hour. We trawled more deserted function rooms and storage areas until we found a wooden trapdoor in the center of the stone floor inside a small chamber. Smith unlocked the heavy, cast iron bolts and we lifted up the trapdoor, revealing a downward spiraling stone staircase.