The Left Series (Book 6): Left On An Island Read online

  LEFT ON AN ISLAND

  By Christian Fletcher

  Copyright 2016 by Christian Fletcher

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Christian Fletcher.

  Also by the author –

  Leftovers

  Left Alone

  Left On The Brink

  Left In The Cold

  Left On The Run

  Before The Dead Walked

  Green Ice – A Deadly High

  War Memorabilia

  Operation Sepsis

  Kindle Author Page US: Amazon.com: Christian Fletcher: Books, Biography, Blog, Audiobooks, Kindle

  Kindle Author Page UK: Amazon.co.uk: Christian Fletcher: Books, Biogs, Audiobooks, Discussions

  Contact me on Facebook: Christian Fletcher Novels | Facebook

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/CFletcherNovels

  “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

  Winston Churchill

  Chapter One

  I felt the icy fingers of insanity threaten to reach deeply into my brain as I sat on my bunk onboard the Russian warship. I wasn’t seasick but the rocking motion and isolation drove me crazy. The people I bunked up with bored me rigid and my old pal, my alternative self came almost every night in my dreams to berate me.

  I’d even dreamed that myself and my old friend, Steve Cousins planted a bomb in Buddy’s Bar back in Brynston, Pennsylvania, the place where we’d lived before the nightmare of the living dead began. The bomb had exploded in the bar room and killed almost everybody inside the building and some people in the parking lot. Eazy, Batfish and Donna amongst the casualties. How Steve and I whooped when we saw the devastation we’d caused. I awoke with a mixed bag of emotions. How good it had been to laugh and spend some time in Steve’s company again. It felt good but why the hell was I dreaming of blowing up mostly already dead people? Freakin' weird!

  Anyhow, Colonel Oleg Chernakov of the Russian Army was no Christopher Columbus. A navigator of a sea going vessel he fucking wasn’t. Smith had messed up big time by grabbing him off the opposing Russian ship when we were back in Northern Ireland. This big gray bitch of a warship was just plowing through the Atlantic like there was no tomorrow and we hadn’t seen so much as a square foot of land in eight goddamn weeks. We’d sailed through rainstorms and waves that would have sunk the most enthusiastic Captain Ahab imitators out there on the sea.

  In one moment of reckless and ridiculous temper, I’d thrown a Lapis Lazuli jewel encrusted ring overboard into the deep briny. A gift given to me by my late girlfriend, Estela Cordoba, who was unfortunately killed in action like so many others I’d briefly been acquainted with since the rise of the undead. What a dickhead! For the life of me, I didn’t know why I did that. That ring was all that was left of her and I’d tossed it into the sea like it was nothing. A part of a person I’d never get back. Why do we do these stupid things on impulse? I thought about her as I leaned against the ship’s guard rails with the salty sea breeze blasting into my face.

  “I hope there is a heaven and you’re right there amongst it,” I muttered. Same to all those who had gone in the face of this terrible, new apocalyptic world, where the dead walked and wanted nothing more than to feast on the living.

  The upside of life onboard the ship was a well stocked bar, full of genuine Russian Vodka that my Scottish and Irish counterparts and I fleetingly appreciated. Maybe a little too much. Sometimes I was happy just to drink my life away. We’d mix booze and banter on the upper deck and a few of the guys would burst into songs of old and all things Celtic past, then we’d hurl our empty glasses into the sea. It was a fun activity for the first couple of weeks. We were simply celebrating being alive and living someplace where nobody, alive or dead could touch or harm us. No threat at all for the time being. Live for the moment was the genial consensus.

  But alas I, Brett Wilde, was not to lead a life of such prolonged mirth and cheerfulness, as I let the details unfold…

  “Hey, Smith,” I called. “O’Neil wants to talk to you.”

  Smith flashed me an irritated glance as he strolled down the main drag of the ship’s numerous corridors. “Tell him I’ve left the country,” he snapped.

  I shrugged in frustration. “Smith, we’re on a goddamn boat. We leave countries all the time.”

  “It’s a ship, not a boat,” Smith corrected me, before disappearing from view around a corner.

  Smith had been spending most of his time during our voyage to nowhere with Thomas McElroy, an Irish guy from Belfast who had helped us escape the clutches of the Russian Army. McElroy was a man’s man, big and tough, not afraid to be violent when he had to and very similar to Smith in lots of ways. McElroy was probably more on Smith’s psychotic level than I could ever be. If I was honest, I felt a little jealous and a bit left out of the equation. Smith was supposed to be my buddy but he’d blown me off to spend all his time with this guy.

  Smith and Thomas McElroy and his Northern Irish paramilitary crew were the tough guys of the world. Born fighters and born survivors no matter what kind of shit the world threw at them.

  I was a lowlife deadbeat who’d been extremely lucky to survive through this whole zombie apocalypse thing. I knew my place in the pecking order. I was no military guy, no Rambo or Terminator but I’d learnt how to use a gun and I’d learnt how to survive. Plus one for the jerks and nerds of the world. Yeah!

  But I felt a little annoyed I’d been left out of the loop on our chartered route. I always had the impression that Smith and I we’re survival buddies, if there was such a thing, and he’d always consult me on our way through a continued existence. Obviously, that was not the case. Thomas McElroy had taken my place, and to be honest, he was more than worthy of that lofty position.

  Batfish, my longtime apocalypse counterpart seemed to be avoiding me, only fleetingly, smiling and welcoming when Spot, our Jack Russell dog and fellow survivor came to greet me. We’d had a drunken moment together in Belfast and hadn’t spoken of the prevalence or of much since. Sarah Wingate, Smith’s girlfriend and former U.S. Army Medic often dragged me to one side and asked me if I was okay.

  The guy who’d wanted a word in Smith’s ear was a Northern Irish politician from Belfast called Sammy O’Neil. We’d met up with the last living inhabitants of the Northern Irish capital when we were on the run from the undead and the Russian Army while in the city. They’d been holed up in a tower block, surviving day to day like the rest of us. O’Neil basically called the shots, governing their existence in their hideaway, as he had done when the world was normal. He was a tall, skinny guy with thinning gray hair and a hooked nose, like a hawk. He was probably in his late fifties or maybe early sixties.

  Now onboard the ship, like all fading people who used to hold positions of power, O’Neil still thought of himself as an influential character. His ideologies not going down too well with some of the Scottish contingent but it was all in good faith, almost laughable as politics didn’t seem to matter anymore. Protestant and Catholic and their religious fractions of their past were now a forgotten occurrence. Long standing hatreds dissolved and alliances newly formed. I didn’t have any great pull to religion but some of these guys were quite passionate with their piousness, praying every day to some higher entity which, personally I was sure d
idn’t exist.

  In essence, nobody seemed to listen to O’Neil anymore and Smith and McElroy seemed to be governing the whole shebang. And not doing it very well. We were in the middle of the ocean without a glimmer of sight of land, let alone the Caribbean Islands we were supposedly destined for.

  The ship’s crew consisted of four abducted Russian sailors, manning the engine room, along with their commanding officer, Colonel Oleg Chernakov, who was supposed to be navigating our passage. Also onboard were around one-hundred and fifty to two hundred refugees from Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as our own party from the United States, which included myself, Smith, Batfish, Sarah Wingate and our little Jack Russell dog, ingeniously named Spot, due to the small patch of black fur blemishing the rest of his all white coat.

  We’d fled our native homeland some time ago in the vain hope we could find a safer place to see out the rest of our days, away from the clutches of the undead. It hadn’t worked out too well for us and we’d lurched from one crisis to another on our travels throughout the UK, losing plenty of good people along the way.

  The Scots and Irish people we’d teamed up with were all amiable and friendly, welcoming us with open arms when we were in big trouble. The Russian military had spread through Glasgow in Scotland, stripping the city bare of its assets and threatening to intern us all into some kind of horrific communion in their home country. We’d escaped their detention and commandeered one of their Navy’s warships in the process.

  To add to our navigation worries, we also had the disturbing prospect of the Russian Navy chasing our asses across the Atlantic to try and retrieve their stolen ship.

  Sarah Wingate was a tough cookie and also a genuinely lovely person. She was Smith’s full time girlfriend and had stood by us since we’d flown out of the States from New Orleans a while back. Batfish had been with us since the whole world went to shit. She was a self styled Goth chick when we’d first met up back in Brynston, Pennsylvania, in what seemed several life times ago.

  Batfish had a previous relationship with one of our party. A U.S. Army soldier named Gera, who was a genuinely good guy but had been murdered by some psychotic woman back in Scotland. I’d also had a brief affair with a female soldier, the gorgeous Estela Cordoba, now sadly no longer in the land of the living. I’d also shared a few glorious fleeting moments with a girl named Julia at the beginning of the undead outbreak. Typically, Julia had also perished from a fall off a tall building in New York. I carried the burden of guilt with me as I considered her death was due to bad planning on my part.

  That was me all over. Bad planning and anybody I started deeply caring about went to meet their maker pretty quickly.

  Batfish and I had shared a bed one drunken night back in Belfast. I am sorry to say, I can’t remember anything about our caper under the sheets except for waking up naked the following morning with the world’s worst hangover. She seemed to be continuously embarrassed in my company after our dalliance and had barely talked to me since. Batfish stayed close to Sarah Wingate when she wasn’t with Smith, as well as mingling with the rest of the motley crew.

  Two dark haired young Irish girls, at a guess below the age of ten, had taken Spot to their hearts. They regularly walked him around the upper deck, fed him cans of corned beef and laughed wholeheartedly while clearing up his poop.

  That left me pretty much alone. Of course, I conversed with the other people onboard. I wasn’t that much of a fruit loop. I spent much of my time listening to music. Some Russian dude had left his IPod onboard with a few cool tunes from ‘The Ramones,’ ‘Motorhead,’ ‘Iggy Pop’ and ‘The Clash’ amongst some Eastern European Heavy Metal. I plugged in the earphones and got lost into my own little world. But I felt isolated and abandoned, left stewing in my own inner stupor with my alternative alter-ego conversing with me on a regular basis. If the world had still been as it was before the undead outbreak, I’d probably be sectioned into some mental asylum by now.

  I’d been suffering these psychotic episodes for a while, after some despot doctor had pumped me full of mescaline at Newark Airport, back in the States, claiming his methods were an attempt to discover a cure to save humanity from the undead disease. The said doctor had also perished at the hands of the undead and had succumbed to a gruesome death. After all this time, I felt glad. Good riddance to bad rubbish and bad people. Doctor Soames hadn’t really tried to save anybody; he’d simply tried to slowly exterminate me and would have killed all of us and gone on killing the survivors until he ran out of living people.

  We’d somehow broken out of the compound inside Newark Airport, although I can’t exactly remember how. My mind was kind of fuzzy due to that mescaline shot and I felt as though some of my former personality had died in that stinking place.

  Chandra Yadav and I killed some time by playing chess on a few occasions but to be perfectly honest, my interest in moving small, wooden figures around a checkered board had slightly waned. Chandra suggested the times of the chess games and guilt tripped me into playing after I’d initially refused several times. I had the feeling he kept needling me to play to try and break me away from my inner turmoil. Also, probably for a little company and to gain the satisfaction of annihilating me at chess.

  Chandra Yadav was a very friendly, highly intelligent and warm human being. He was also far away from his homeland, initially originating from Delhi, India. He had immigrated to Glasgow, Scotland as a qualified doctor and we’d found him locked inside the city’s hospital, cowering, frightened and all alone.

  During one of our marathon and frankly boring afternoon chess sessions, an Irish guy, Duffy as I remembered, burst into the communal mess deck with an expression of excitement spread over his face.

  “We’ve spotted land, so we have,” he yelled, in his heavy Northern Irish accent. “On the starboard side. Looks like an island of some sort.”

  Chandra and I exchanged apprehensive glances from opposite sides of the chess board.

  “About fucking time,” I sighed.

  Chapter Two

  Duffy turned and rushed back out of the mess deck, presumably to continue to spread the news of the sighting of land.

  Chandra continued to stare straight at me.

  “What?” I asked. “It’s your move not mine.” I pointed to the chess board.

  “No, forget about the game.” He waved his hand over the pieces, dismissing kings, queens, bishops and pawns alike.

  “OMG, Chandra, are you feeling okay? You sure you haven’t been popping a bunch of those goddamn pills down in the medical store?” I mocked. “This is the first time you’ve ever wanted to quit halfway through a game.”

  “Stop blaspheming, Brett,” he scolded, wagging his finger. “Don’t you think we should be going onto the upper deck to take a look at this sighting of new land?”

  I breathed out a long sigh, as though I was considering his suggestion. In reality, I was itching to get up from the table and go outside.

  “It would mean you forfeit the game though, right?”

  “Yes, yes, whatever you wish,” Chandra said, nodding his head repeatedly in quick succession. “You drive a hard bargain, my friend. Are you certain you’re not part Asian?”

  I snorted a laugh. “Maybe, somewhere down the line. Come on, let’s go check out the new frontier.”

  We left the mess deck and scurried up ladders and walked through long corridors until we came to a hatch that opened onto the upper deck on the right side of the center of the ship. The breeze blew into our faces and ruffled our hair as we stepped out into the bright sunshine.

  Several more passengers lined the covered over walkway along the ship’s side. They gazed into the distance across the rippling sea to a patchy brown and green line on the horizon. The ship was turning to the right so the bows pointed at the newly sighted land. Some of our fellow crew members squeaked excitedly as they hugged each other and pointed into the distance.

  I felt an apprehensive uneasiness rise within me. Land. Sinc
e the dead had risen and the world had gone to shit, the land and most of the people on it had offered nothing but trouble, fear and too many near death experiences to count.

  Maybe I should have been happier onboard the Russian warship. Perhaps my unhappy state was purely one of self loathing and inner selfishness. Would I rather be fighting for my life and scared shitless in some wrecked town or city, the undead crawling within a few inches of me than sailing around on a big ship without a care in the world? We had plenty of food, medical supplies, hot and clean running water, working toilets and enough weapons onboard to keep us going for a very long time. Why would we want to get off this ride and find ourselves in some god forsaken shit hole and being attacked from all sides by walking corpses or irate survivors?

  All these questions were no-brainers. We should be staying where we were, onboard our ship.

  “Shall we go up onto the top deck for a better look?” Chandra asked, breaking me away from my inner mayhem.

  Some big Scottish guy, half drunk on excitement or Russian vodka or both, bustled into my back. I nodded at Chandra.

  “Yeah, good idea. These guys right here are getting a little too energized.” I jabbed a thumb behind me.

  We hustled our way along the walkway and climbed the ladder to the more open expanse on the top deck. The wind blew stronger but the view was slightly clearer. A few more clusters of people stood on the top deck, staring out to see in the direction of the land.

  The ship’s bows swiveled and pointed directly at the small, shady blot on the landscape. Chandra and I shaded our eyes from the sun and studied the land strip ahead.

  “Where do you think we are?” Chandra asked. “What country is that?”

  I shook my head. “I have no clue. Let’s go onto the bridge and see if the geniuses in charge have got it all figured out.”

  “Wait.”

  Chandra grabbed my arm.

  “Don’t you think we should leave them alone? They might not want us in there disturbing them.”