The Left Series (Book 5): Left On The Run (32 page)

“What do we do now, Brett?” Batfish hissed at me. “We need to make a snap decision here.”

I took another brief glance at the city. The place looked decimated and offered little in the way of sanctuary or refuge. The waste ground route was also going to be troublesome, trying to dodge a large number of undead while attempting to locate Smith and the others. I sighed, feeling totally disillusioned with the whole debacle.

“I guess we better head through the fence and with any luck, we’ll catch up with Smith somewhere along the way,” I huffed.

Spot growled at the approaching zombies and Batfish kind of shrugged and nodded all at once.

“Okay,” she sighed. “It’s not like we have any great options open to us, is it now?”

“Nope,” I spat. “Come on, we better get moving. You better tuck Spot into that harness of yours or the leash could snag on the fence or the undergrowth along that waste ground.”

“Uh-ha,” she mumbled, lifted the dog and tucked him away inside her jacket. “How is it that I always get to take care of the dog?”

“I need free hands to clear a path,” I said, lifting the fire axe. “Let me lead the way.” I nodded towards the corner.

Batfish followed me as I stepped around the side of the building, with the side wall to my right and the wire fence to the left. A few zombies still milled around the space between, seeming unsure how to negotiate the fallen fence or why they had to follow the others. The distance from the side wall to the fence line was around fifteen feet. Now we really did have to make it to the fallen section of fence, otherwise the pursuing zombies behind would trap us in a dead end if we tried to retreat.

An undead boy, of around fourteen years of age was the first to notice Batfish and I approach the hole in the fence. He stopped moving in slow circles, looked at us and scowled with a wide open mouth. He had lank, greasy hair and stood around five feet tall. Killing kids still rankled me, even though they weren’t human any longer. I didn’t like terminating them, it still didn’t feel right.

The boy trudged slowly towards us. He held his fingers, hooked like talons out in front of him. His scowling and hissing alerted the other undead around him of our presence. I tried to momentarily disengage myself from what I was doing when I swung the fire axe at the boy’s head. The blade connected with his skull, causing a sound like a hammer smashing an egg. The boy fell into the long grass and a quick glance downward told me he was no longer infected with the disease. He was now simply a dead boy.

We moved onward. I was vaguely aware that the axe blade was caked in diseased, brown blood and gooey clumps of brain matter. An infected woman, with half her right foot missing hobbled towards us. She could barely stand and I didn’t know whether her foot had been chewed away or the injury was the result of an accident or maybe even frost bite. Not that it really mattered.

I lifted the axe above my head and brought it down in a chopping blow. The blade crunched through the woman’s skull. She made a slight sighing noise a fraction of a second before her head caved in under the blow. It almost sounded as though she was resigned to her fate and welcomed her termination.

Batfish followed close behind me, making small whimpering noises every time I axed a zombie out of our pathway.

I’d always said, the undead posed no problem if you had a decent weapon and they were separated in small numbers. It was when you were faced with a whole swarm of them in an enclosed space that you were going to run into difficulties.

I managed to quickly cut a path through the straggling undead, to the section of fallen fence. The remaining zombies I’d dispatched had all seemed to be either young when infected or those with limbs too badly decayed or eaten to be able to maneuver with any great ease. You also had to ensure those kinds of zombies were properly terminated; otherwise they could easily grab your leg and start taking lumps out of you.

More of the undead roamed around the waste land. They’d obviously lost sight of the others and didn’t know in which direction to head. The zombies were spread out thinly and the brambles sprouting from the ground hampered their progress along the flat terrain.

I took a glance behind us and saw the undead who had followed us from the dockyard still gave chase. We could easily put some distance between us if we kept moving at a fast pace.

“Spot still okay in there?” I asked, as we trod across the fallen fence on the ground.

“He’s always okay in there,” Batfish sighed. “It’s his second home. Now I know what it’s like to be pregnant, carrying this damn weight around the whole time.”

Trudging across the waste land was slow and heavy going. Not only did we have to avoid the straggling numbers of zombies, causing us to deviate from our direct route slightly, the debris and clumps of thick brambles also hampered our progress. The undead also became snared up amongst the foliage so their approach was sluggish. We wanted to avoid any time consuming confrontation if possible so we decided to give the ensnared, ragged ghouls a wide berth.

The waste ground petered out onto an overgrown footpath. We cautiously followed the pathway, keeping a vigil for any undead ready to spring out from the undergrowth. I brushed clumps of tall growing nettles and spiky thistles out of our way with the axe blade. Some of the foliage was battered down in places and I noticed a steady stream of footprints in the remainder of the snow on the ground.

“This pathway has definitely been used recently,” I said quietly to Batfish. I thought I sounded like I was attempting to be some kind of North American trapper from the 1800’s.

“No shit,
Tonto
,” Batfish murmured. She obviously wasn’t impressed with my impersonation of a frontiersman.

The footpath led us to a wide roadway, which was probably one of the main driving routes to the dockyard. The road glistened in the sun with the melting snow, revealing the blacktop beneath. A sidewalk ran each side of the roadway and several abandoned vehicles sat at the curbside. A few lone zombies milled around the roadway or around the stationary cars. They gazed in our direction and began lumbering in our direction.

I looked for more footprints but it proved difficult. Many sets of boot prints were imprinted in the remainder of the snow and it was impossible to detect which were old or which were from Smith and the rest of the refugees.

Batfish freed Spot from the harness around her waist and set him down on the ground. It was just as well he was set free as he stooped down and did his business on the sidewalk, as dogs so love to do.

“Which way now then,
Davy Crockett
?” Batfish asked, glancing at the approaching undead.

“I don’t know,” I sighed, totally stumped in which direction to head. “If we take a right turn, surely that would take us back to the dockyard. I don’t think they’d have gone that way.”

I couldn’t understand why Smith and the others hadn’t waited for us. I guessed they’d thought we’d either been caught by the Russians or brought down by the undead. Either way, I thought Smith would at least have wanted to make certain and he alone would have doubled back to check.

“Okay, so let’s go left,” Batfish said. “We should move quickly before our new found friends start to get snappy.” She nodded towards the zombies stumbling towards us.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I muttered, also taking a quick glance over my shoulder, back down the footpath. “I guess some of those following us are going to come down that pathway real soon too.”

We took the left turn, moving at a brisk, half running pace to evade the zombies shuffling our way. I gazed into the distance and saw a few dull gray, concrete high rise tower blocks standing to the right and the ruined city center to the left. Which direction would Smith go I asked myself? I really couldn’t come up with an answer. We’d head along the road and make a decision depending on what kind of obstacles cropped up along the way.

Batfish, Spot and I walked further along the road and a row of low standing, small brick buildings stood on the opposite side of the street. I could see large groups of undead roaming around, further down the road. I pointed them out to Batfish and we slowed our pace.

“Maybe Smith and the others got trapped someplace,” I whispered. “Oh, to still have a working cell phone.”

Spot started growling at the zombies up ahead and Batfish had to crouch and place her hand on his head to silence him.

“Look Brett, I don’t know what’s going on but we’re hanging with our asses in the wind by moving around out here in the open,” she sighed.

“I agree,” I muttered. “I’m totally bewildered with the whole situation. We seem to be chasing ghosts. It’s as though they all just completely disappeared.”

“It’s going to be dark in an hour or so,” Batfish said, staring at the lowering sun. “We should seriously start looking for some safe place to hole up for the night.”

“Okay, but I don’t like the look of those buildings opposite,” I said. “They look too small and too easy for the zombies to breach. They haven’t seen us yet but I’m sure they’ll catch our scent sooner rather than later.”

“What do you suggest?” Batfish asked.

The truth was, I didn’t know what to do or where to say to go. Belfast looked as though it had suffered badly during the apocalypse and I wasn’t sure if we weren’t the only living people left in the city. Nowhere throughout the urban landscape would be safe.

Chapter Fifty-Three

As I was mulling over our situation, the decision on where to go was made for us. I frowned when I noticed a figure, clad in all black, complete with ski mask, pop out from one of the low standing buildings and duck behind a beaten up car.

“Did you just see that?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t about to endure another bout of hallucinations.

Batfish shook her head. “What?”

“Some dude just came out of one of those buildings and hunkered down by that beat up old Ford,” I said, pointing to the red vehicle.

“Listen Brett, it’s been a long day and I know you’re a little stressed and freaked out but I think…”

“Psst…hey you two,” a voice hissed from the opposite side of the street.

Batfish and I remained silent for a moment, listening out for the voice again. Spot heard it too and began rumbling. Batfish crouched to silence him again.

“I told you I saw something,” I muttered.

“Keep quiet,” Batfish admonished.

The figure rose from behind the car. The head and shoulders were only visible behind the Ford’s trunk. I noticed a weapon sling around the figure’s left shoulder. He or she furiously waved us forward towards the car. Batfish and I hesitated to move, unsure who the figure was and why they wanted us to approach.

“Come over here and hurry it up, will you,” the figure hissed again. His voice was definitely male and had the accent of a citizen of Northern Ireland.

“Who are you?” I called out.

The figure physically winced. “Keep your voice down and get over here if you want to stay in the land of the living.”

“Come on, Brett,” Batfish muttered, stepping forward off the sidewalk towards the car.

I grabbed her jacket to hold her back. “What are you doing?” I rasped. “We don’t know who the hell this guy is. He might be hostile.”

“
I’m
going to get totally hostile if we have to stay out here much longer,” Batfish growled. “Now, man-up and let’s go. Can’t you see the guy is trying to help us? If he was hostile, he’d have shot us up by now.”

She had a point but it still didn’t stop me feeling a little apprehensive. I shuffled alongside Batfish, feeling queasier with every forward step.

“Come on, quickly before you get spotted by the dead,” the figure whispered.

Batfish quickened her pace and I kept up. Spot reluctantly walked alongside us, pulling backwards on his leash. He too was obviously nervous of the black clad figure.

We rounded the bashed up Ford and the figure stood up straight. He was a tall man, broad chested and I could see he had a muscular physic even through his black jacket and black combat fatigues. An old style, Soviet AK47 Kalashnikov assault rifle hung around his waist, attached to the brown leather sling across his shoulders. I didn’t know much about firearms but the weapon was unmistakable by the curved magazine, positioned to the front of the trigger guard. I’d seen that type of assault rifle used in plenty of movies to know what model it was. He was also armed with a handgun, tucked in a leather holster around his waist. 

The big man took a quick glance further down the street to check on the clusters of zombies still wandering around the area.

“Okay, it looks like we’re in the clear,” the man muttered. “Follow me.”

He led us through the doorway of one of the small buildings, standing behind the wrecked Ford.

I hesitantly stepped into the gloomy room beyond the threshold. The place looked as though it was once a small family home. We moved swiftly through what used to be the living room. Patches of the drywall ceiling had collapsed onto filthy, upturned and broken furniture. A heavily blood stained, dark green couch sat on the opposite side of the room and a flat screen TV, with a cracked screen still clung on the wall. Beige wallpaper peeled in curls from the graffiti strewn walls. Debris, broken glass and a few discarded kids’ toys lay strewn over the dirty lime green carpet. I trod on something that made a high pitched squeaking noise, presumably one of the toys and received a stern glare from both Batfish and the man in the ski mask.