The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink Read online

  “That’s the way the Chief was talking about,” Smith said, pointing through the windshield to the sign to our left. He steered onto the road indicating the exit and accelerated up to slightly over forty miles an hour. Long grass sprouted amongst neat rows of pine trees on the banks either side of the exit road. “We’ll bypass the base hub where all those zombies are gathered.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, flicking the cigarette butt out of the open window. “We don’t want to be hanging around too long.”

  I glanced at the illuminated clock on the dash. It read 04:27.

  “Do you think that thing is showing the right time?”

  Smith shrugged. “Seems to be around the right time.”

  “What time does it get light around here?”

  “Around six A.M. at a guess.”

  “That gives us roughly around an hour and a half to get back here. But we need to cut that time down, if we can. We need to be onboard that plane in good time before it takes off.”

  “Gotcha, Skipper,” Smith said. He grinned and chopped me off a mock salute.

  I laughed. “Sorry man, I wasn’t trying to bust your balls, just trying to put our timeline into perspective.”

  Smith glanced at me and grinned. He turned back to watch the road and I noticed the grin not so much slip but fall from his face. I felt the Mustang lurch as Smith stamped on the brake. Smith stared ahead out the windshield with a look of shock on his face.

  “Oh shit! What were you saying about that timeline, Wilde?”

  I followed his gaze and audibly gulped at the scene ahead of us. Our timeline suddenly took a turn for the worse.

  Chapter Ten

  A string of zombies milled in a horizontal line across the narrow back road. They must have numbered around fifty in total and stood shuffling in a huddle, blocking our route.

  “They weren’t supposed to be here,” Smith howled.

  “What are they doing?” I pointlessly asked.

  “Eating donuts and whistling fucking Dixie,” Smith growled, through clenched teeth. He twisted his head and looked through the back window. “We have two options here. Either go back and try and get through the main route or try and get around these bastards somehow.”

  I didn’t like either of our options. The streets amongst the base were teeming with undead and we’d have no clear path through if we were bottle necked. The Mustang was a great car but it stood low to the ground and wouldn’t offer us much protection against a hungry zombie mob. They would soon smash the windows and we’d be sitting ducks stranded inside the vehicle. I remembered how Milner had struggled to maneuver the armor plated Humvee through the tide of undead as they swarmed around the modified military vehicle last time we were on the base collecting diesel canisters. The Mustang would stand no chance against a similar kind of situation.

  “It’s around fifty zombies this route against five hundred the other way,” I stated.

  The undead crowd fanned out further across the road and began shuffling towards the headlamps, like moths attracted to a light bulb. The zombie’s mouths opened and closed and I guessed they weren’t singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ I couldn’t hear their usual monotonous moans over the sound of ‘The Doors’ on the stereo. I didn’t want to hear that terrible noise any more. One more trip and I’d never have to hear that sound again. The track on the CD moved along to ‘Waiting For The Sun.’ If only we were waiting for the sun. We were more like racing against the sun.

  We sat listening to the song for around thirty seconds. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. I was listening to the song and Smith was obviously mulling over his next course of action. He finally slapped the dash with the palm of his hand.

  “Fuck it!” Smith banged his foot down hard on the gas pedal and the Mustang’s tires squealed on the blacktop before we shot forward at speed.

  I double checked my safety harness was engaged, as I knew we were going to be in for a bumpy ride. Smith slowed slightly and bounced the Mustang up the concrete curb on our right. The advancing undead were around twenty feet from the front fender. They were already clawing the air, demonstrating what they planned to do to us. The leading zombie was clad in the remains of green combat fatigues and military style black boots. An assault rifle still hung uselessly across his back and the skin on his face was half peeled from his skull.

  The Mustang lurched sideways as the tires skidded on the dew damp grass and soft mud beneath. Smith fiddled with the paddle controls surrounding the steering wheel and changed the traction control settings, using a blue digital on-screen option. The rear wheel driven tires gripped the spongy surface beneath and Smith was able to regain control of the vehicle.

  The overhanging pine tree branches rattled the Mustang’s roof. Smith turned the lights to low in an attempt to make us a less visible target. We moved roughly twenty yards from the road but still traveled on a parallel route. I briefly glimpsed a pair of hands reaching for me through my side window. Bony fingers clunked against the side of the car and I caught sight of an eyeless, rotting face with the jaws wide open. The terrifying image stayed imprinted in my mind’s eye for a few seconds.

  Smith couldn’t accelerate away too quickly in case the car’s wheels spun and produced rutted grooves in the soil that we wouldn’t be able to get out of. The surrounding trees became denser and Smith had to swerve left and right to avoid colliding with the thick trunks. I looked at the speedometer that told me we were traveling at no more than fifteen miles an hour. Quicker than a zombie could move but not fast enough to escape the massed horde.

  “Nice and easy, don’t lose sight of the road,” Smith murmured to himself, increasing the car’s speed.

  The foliage from a low hanging pine tree branch brushed over the windshield, obscuring our vision for a second. When the branch had scraped over the roof, we saw a female zombie standing no more than two yards directly in front of us. Her snarling, emaciated face was captured in the low beam headlamps. Her lower jaw drooped wide open, the skin around her white filmed eyes was mottled and parched. Tangled black hair hung around the sides of her head and she was dressed in the tatty remains of a once white nurse’s uniform. She spread her arms wide away from her body as though she was offering a welcoming embrace.

  Smith swerved left to try and avoid the female ghoul, but she was too close. The angled corner of the front fender clipped the undead ex-nurse. I heard glass breaking a fraction of a second before the body tumbled across the vehicle’s hood and crashed against the windshield. A loud cracking noise filled the interior, even above the sound of Ray Manzarek’s haunting keyboard playing on the stereo. The windshield glass fractured and huge spider-web shaped cracks obscured our view of the outside world. I heard the female zombie clatter over the roof and caught a brief glimpse of her grubby, off-white uniform as she was tossed into the long grass.

  “Shit!” Smith croaked. He hit the brakes but the car skidded on the dampness. I saw a tree trunk looming directly ahead of us and braced myself against the collision impact. The crunching and folding of metal and sounds of breaking glass reverberated around the interior. Smith and I lurched forward from the bucket seats, the safety belt dug hard into my shoulder. The front air bags engaged and puffed out in front of us like huge balloons. Dusty powder blew up my nose and down my throat. I coughed and nearly retched and wiped the powder off my face. The engine cut out and the stereo went silent.

  I batted the air bag down and looked out of the side window, trying to gauge how close any zombies were to us. Smith wrenched on his own air bag and shoved it out of the way of the steering wheel. His face and hair were also coated in powder from the release of the airbags but he didn’t seem to be showing any discomfort. From my side window, I saw at least a dozen undead emerge from the darkness, approaching us and winding their way through the trees.

  “I hope this damn thing still drives,” Smith growled.

  Luckily, the engine restarted but didn’t sound too healthy. The music blared from the speak
ers too loudly. Smith rammed the gear shift into reverse. The airbags gradually deflated and I silently apologized to Jim Morrison when I hit the ‘off’ button on the stereo.

  The front of the Mustang creaked and groaned against the tree bark as Smith maneuvered the car backwards. The engine was still running but sounded a whole lot different now than before the collision. Something rattled loudly inside the hood and steam spewed from the battered grille. Smith stamped on the brake when we were clear of the tree trunk.

  “Those military guys are going to be pissed when they see what we’ve done to their car,” I spluttered, still gagging on the chalky powder.

  “That’s the least of our worries, right now,” Smith growled, thrashing through the gears. He drew his Beretta and held the barrel while he frantically batted the broken windshield glass with the gun’s hand grip, until he’d made a hole big enough to see through.

  “Err…Smith, I don’t want to alarm you further, but there are a bunch of zombies closing in on us.”

  The gear cogs whined in refusal to engage, no matter how hard Smith wrestled with the shift stick.

  “Fucking thing!” Smith seethed through clenched teeth.

  The nearest zombie approaching my side of the car used to be female. She rasped in short little growls, as though she was scolding a disobedient puppy, while hobbling closer to my side window. She wore a torn, dark shirt and a conventional skirt. Maybe she’d been some kind of admin worker in her former life. Her long, straight dark hair hung either side of her head, masking her face in shadow. More shambling, once human shapes loomed in the shadows behind her. I reached around my back and drew my Beretta. The thin window glass didn’t offer me much protection but I wasn’t about to open it and start taking pot shots at our attackers.

  “We should have taken a more suitable vehicle,” I whined.

  “Quit griping,” Smith barked. “It’s not my fucking fault this route was full of zombies. Cole said it was a clear path to the main gate and at the moment, we’re stuck with it.”

  I heard gear cogs whirr and grind in mechanized denial but eventually Smith managed to find a forward gear that engaged. He switched the headlamps to full but only one beam shone across the grassy ground. The Mustang fishtailed as Smith hit the gas, the side of the vehicle slamming into the leading female zombie and a few more of the undead behind her, sending them sprawling through the undergrowth.

  Smith regained control of the vehicle and sped as fast as the damaged engine would allow us. He looped around, through the tangle of trees and overhanging branches, searching for the solid road surface. I was worried about the loud knocking sound emitting from under the car’s hood. It sounded like a skeleton was trying to punch its way out through the metal.

  “How long do you think this engine can run for?”

  “Long enough to get the hell out of here,” Smith growled.

  My front view was limited through the cracked windshield glass and I hoped Smith hadn’t become disorientated and heading in the wrong direction. Twenty yards to our left, I saw a glisten of blacktop between two high curbs illuminated in the moonlight.

  “Over there, to the left, Smith,” I bellowed, pointing the way.

  Smith craned his neck to the direction I was pointing, peering through the hole in the windshield glass.

  “Got it,” he snapped and swung hard to our left.

  The Mustang slewed sideways, knocking down two zombies in the process. Smith spun the steering wheel left and right, gaining some traction on the soft turf. The front wheels bounced down the high curb onto the road and I heard a sickening scraping noise as the car’s low hung undercarriage grated across the concrete blocks.

  “Ooh, shit!” I winced. “There goes the tail pipe.”

  Smith flashed me a threatening sideways glance that told me to shut up. The rear wheels bounced down the curb and the whole car juddered. I thought for one horrible second that the whole thing was about to fall to pieces around me like those clown cars you used to see at the circus.

  I turned to look out of the back window and saw the main body of the undead crowd still lumbering along the road, around thirty feet behind us. Smith glanced in his mirror and must have seen the same horrific sight. As he attempted to pull away, a horrendous screeching sound screamed from the engine. Maybe the skeleton inside the hood was now burning his ass on the red hot engine block and squealing in agony.

  “I don’t think this car is going to go on much further,” Smith yelled above the rattling and screeching.

  “Oh, you think?” I wailed.

  The poor Mustang now resembled something I remembered last being driven by a cartoon character called ‘Dick Dastardly,’ in a TV show called ‘Wacky Races.’ The aforementioned animated villain usually had an oversized ‘ACME’ anvil dropped on his car from a great height every week but he always lived to fight another day, or another hilarious scenario. The similarities with my cartoon friend ended there. I never remembered an episode of the show when old ‘Dick’ was being pursued by a number of blood thirsty zombies.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Mustang spluttered and coughed and screeched but somehow still carried on running. Every second it crept forward allowed us a little more space between us and the undead horde. I leaned across the front seats to look at the speedometer and saw we were traveling at twenty-seven miles an hour.

  “That’s with my foot right down on the gas,” Smith muttered, flashing me a glance. “I daren’t try and change gear in case it won’t engage. I think it’s in third.”

  “We might get lucky when we hit the main gate. Somebody might have left their keys inside a vehicle,” I said in vain hope.

  Smith shook his head. “The batteries will all be flat by now, if they’ve been standing unused all this time.”

  “I don’t want to have to get back to the boat on foot,” I sighed. “We can’t carry that damn ammo box all the way back here.”

  “Don’t talk too soon, kid,” Smith huffed. “We’re not even at the river yet.”

  The Mustang juddered onwards on the scenic road and through the darkness. I wondered how far we had to go to reach the main gate, remembering the undead crowd that had trapped us on the way in. We couldn’t rely on Milner and his crew to come and save us again. They’d be busy packing the plane, excitedly anticipating a fresh life in pastures new.

  The tree-lined route looped around the base perimeter. I saw an empty assault course with vines and weeds growing the height of the thick wooden poles that formed the structures of the climbing apparatus. Partially overgrown signposts pointed the way to nature trails and the various buildings which shaped the main base hub. A few rabbits scurried across the road in front of us, returning to the safe confines of the woods to our right. We saw the odd zombie milling around between the trees, turning and moaning at us as we drove by.

  I pointed to a faded sign on the roadside that read the main gate was one mile away.

  “Let’s just hope we get there,” Smith grunted.

  “I hope that whole bunch of zombies isn’t still there. No way will we be able to plow our way through that lot in this crippled thing.”

  “You’re full of optimism, aren’t you, Wilde?” Smith sighed. “We’ll figure something out. We always do.”

  That was my main worry. Our luck had to run dry sometime and with an escape from the zombie infested country only minutes away, I hoped irony wasn’t going to play a cruel hand in our situation.

  My breathing rapidly increased as we neared the main gate. I leaned with my head at a crooked angle towards my side window, trying to peer around the roof pillar as I couldn’t see through the splintered windshield glass. Smith struggled to turn the steering wheel to the right off the ring-road and back onto the main thoroughfare. The car’s lone, wonky headlamp picked out the overhanging canopy above the abandoned security offices. There was enough room for our battered vehicle to pass by the immobile vehicles lined up on the entrance and exit road but I could make out some shuff
ling shapes milling around the canopy.

  “Ah, damn it, Smith. There are still a shit load of those bastards still wandering around out there,” I groaned.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Smith muttered. “Keep your weapon drawn and fire if you have to. The bag of spare ammo is on the backseat. You better grab it and keep it handy in case we need it in a big hurry.”

  I swiveled around in my seat and grabbed the day sack from the rear and placed it between my feet. The Mustang emitted another rasping splutter as we approached the main gate. Several ambling human forms shuffled out of the shadows in front of us, anticipating our arrival. The undead still had some sense of improvisation as far as prey was concerned. It was hard to miss the sound of the rattling vehicle in the still night.

  “Here we go,” I muttered, steeling myself for the inevitable onslaught.

  “I’m going to keep us heading through, hold tight,” Smith said, sounding determined.

  I didn’t share Smith’s resolute optimism. The Mustang seemed like a coffin in waiting. Something I was so impressed by less than twenty minutes previously, now felt like a death trap. We edged closer to the security canopy, meeting the undead head on.

  The nearest zombie stepped off the curb to our right and directly into the one cockeyed headlamp beam. He was once a mailman, still dressed in ragged remains of a pale blue shirt and navy short pants. A blue mail bag with ‘United States Postal Service’ logo scrawled in white lettering across the center, still hung pointlessly across his shoulders. The mailman zombie’s shirt was torn open, revealing substantial abdominal injuries, caused by human teeth and hands. His face was a mask of gray snarling aggression.

  Smith steered into the mailman, bumping his gaunt frame with the Mustang’s front wing. The blow was enough to knock the zombie off his feet and sent him sprawling into the gutter.