The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold (10 page)

Alex opened the door for us and waved us through the entrance. We moved into a huge room with dark wood paneling around the walls and a high ceiling with wooden beams running horizontally across the roof space. Coats of arms and silver metal shields and swords hung from the walls between cast iron holders that held lit candles. A large, stone fireplace stood in the center of the room with chunky logs burning on the hearth. A small table, two thick framed chairs and a chaise longue with a green, velvet covering sat in front of the fire. 

“That looks inviting,” Batfish said, moving towards the fireplace.

“This is the Great Hall,” Alex explained. “You can warm yourselves for a while before we go upstairs to meet the others, if you want.”

Batfish and I slipped our backpacks
, gloves and parker coats off and dumped them beside the chairs. We both stood in front of the flames with our hands held out in front of us, relishing the heat the fire kicked out. Spot scratched his ear with his back leg and sat in front of the fire. Alex stood behind us with his hands shoved into the jacket pockets.

“Can I get you both a drink?” he asked. “I expect you could do with a wee dram.”

“What’s that?” Batfish asked.

“A shot of whisky,” I answered, before Alex could speak. “That would be perfect, Alex.”

He nodded then turned and moved through another doorway opposite the fireplace. Batfish and I rubbed our hands in front of the burning logs. The fire and the candles provided enough light to see and the orange glow of the flames felt relaxing.

“He seems okay,” she whispered.

“Yeah, he seems like a nice guy,” I agreed. “He certainly saved our asses back there outside. I thought we were goners for a minute, there.”

“Me too,” Batfish said. “I thought maybe we’d have to shoot ourselves.”

I laughed, as if the idea was ridiculous but I had been thinking exactly along the same lines. Batfish didn’t mention about the fact I’d held the gun to my head and I was glad. I didn’t want to have to explain the inner turmoil I was perpetually going through.

Alex returned to the hall with a tumbler glass, half filled with brown liquid, in each hand.

“This’ll help warm you up,” he said, placing the glasses on the table. “Come on upstairs and join us when you’re ready.” He turned and headed up the wooden staircase positioned in the far corner of the hall.

“Where the hell do you think the others have got to?” Batfish asked.

“I don’t know,” I huffed. “I thought they’d be here by now. They were way ahead of us when we took a left turn.”

“I
just hope they are okay,” she sighed.

I moved to the table and picked up a tumbler glass. The whisky smelled good and I took a sip. Batfish joined me and we both savored the taste and burn of Scotland’s finest export.

“I wonder how many people are living here,” Batfish said.

“Shall we put in an appearance and find out just who is around the place?” I asked.

“Okay.”

I led the way across the stone floor and up the wide wooden staircase.
Spot scampered alongside us and reached the summit first. My back and feet ached and I looked forward to a lie down in front of the fire. The staircase led to another large room with cobbled stone walls and a long wooden table surrounded by high backed chairs. The table ran through the center of the floor space and a huge stone fireplace burned brightly at the opposite end of the room. A few people sat at the table facing each other and their chatter ceased once they saw Batfish and I approaching. Alex was amongst the crowd at the table and smiled as we drew near.

“Come and meet the rest of the gang,” he said.

Batfish and I shuffled closer to the congregation of a half dozen people, plus Alex, sitting either side of the long table.
Two half empty bottles of red wine and some stemmed glasses containing various amounts, stood on the table between the gathering.

“You had a wee spot of bother outside the castle grounds, then?” asked a big guy
, with long, brown hair and a full, bushy beard.

Batfish glanced at me and I knew she hadn’t understood a word the guy had said.

“Yeah, we got cut off from the rest of our party and we were surrounded until Alex, here, saved us.” I pointed at Alex for a more dramatic attempt at a tribute.

“We hear you’re from Stateside,” said a petit
e, blonde girl with pale blue eyes. “Whereabouts are you from?” She pronounced ‘
whereabouts
’ as ‘
wheraboots,
’ in her Scottish accent.

“We started out from a small town in Pennsylvania,” Batfish answered, before I had the chance to speak.

The girl nodded. “I used to visit the States a lot before the world went to shite. I used to be a singer in a band. We were quite popular in America, as it goes.”

“You weren’t that popular,” Alex teased. “You sang to a crowd of drunks in some wee shitty clubs
, more like.”

The girl looked slightly hurt but shot Alex a sarcastic smile.

“Anyways, let me introduce you,” Alex carried on. “This delectable creature, the singer is Maddie Wellbeck.” He gestured to the blonde girl. “Her first name is quite appropriate because she is bloody mad.” Alex sniggered but Maddie again looked unimpressed.

Alex introduced us
, then he went through the roll call of names in turn around the table. The big hairy guy’s name was Davie. Another thin faced guy, wearing huge rimmed glasses, had his head shaved at the sides with a big mop of black curly hair on top, was named Maurice but preferred the shortened ‘
Mo
’. The three people on the opposite side of the table consisted of two females sitting either side of another man. The guy and the woman to his right were probably a little older than the rest of the gang, looking as though they were in their mid-forties. They could have been a couple. The guy was named Trevor and seemed a jolly sort of chap, smiling all the while and wearing a blue blazer with a white shirt and maroon bow-tie beneath. The woman, in contrast, looked totally bored with the proceedings and her long brown hair flopped either side of her bowed head, helping to hide the dour expression on her lined face. Her name was Joan and I took an immediate dislike to her. The remaining, slim female was named Chloe and looked as though she was barely out of her teenage years. She was strikingly pretty with a pale complexion, long brown hair, dark eyes that darted around the table at each individual and a smile that revealed a row of perfect white teeth.

“So, now that’s the formalities over with, come and join us for a glass of wine,” Alex said, gesturing for us to sit at the table.

Batfish and I complied. She sat next to Chloe but I didn’t want to sit next to the miserable looking cow at the opposite end of the row, so I rounded the table and took the chair next to Maddie, the ‘
mad
’ singer. At least she seemed more friendly and talkative.

Alex poured us a glass of wine each and slid them across the table.
I took a swig and the dark wine tasted good and fruity. I glanced around the room, looking for Spot and saw him curled up on a wooly white rug in front of the roaring fire.   

“How comes you ended up here, in
Connauld Castle?” Maddie asked me. “It seems a little out of the way of Pennsylvania.” She laughed slightly and her face looked cute and elfin like in the dim candle light.

“It’s a long story,” I sighed, then took another glug of wine.

“Well, I’ve got all night,” Maddie said, almost in a whisper and I detected a little flirtation in her body language as she stared me in the eyes and leaned a little closer.

“Okay,” I agreed, smiling like an embarrassed school boy. I recited the tales of our travels since we’d embarked from
Brynston in Pennsylvania, sailed around the east and south coast of America and then flown to England in the military C-17 aircraft.

“Are you and Batfish a couple?” she asked.

I laughed slightly. “No, we’re just friends. We’ve been traveling together awhile.”

Maddie
seemed to listen intently to my traveling anecdotes and I threw in a few of the gory details of our zombie encounters for dramatic effect. Alex kept topping the wine glasses up, retrieving more bottles when we all ran dry. He talked across the table to Batfish while the others joined in the chat. All except the miserable woman, who sat with her head bowed but staring at me from between the matted clumps of her fringe. I wondered if she was slightly disturbed and needed to be avoided.

“Are you okay?”

I looked back at Maddie. “Sorry?”

“You just drifted off in mid-sentence there, Brett. You were telling me about the
Glenross Hotel.”

“Oh, right, sorry,” I stuttered. “I completely lost my train of thought.”

Something about that despondent looking woman across the table was freaking me out. I carried on with my story regardless, trying to ignore the piercing glare from the old hag opposite.

Chapter Fifteen

Maddie told me about her own experiences of the zombie apocalypse after I’d completed my tale of my roundabout trip. She had been performing at a festival in Scotland the previous summer and was due to play at an open air party at Connauld Castle the following weekend. Maddie arrived early, a few days before the rest of her band but had never seen or heard from any of them since. She’d been at the castle since the outbreak of the disease. I glanced up to see if Joan was still glaring at me while Maddie talked. Lo and behold, she was.

The conversation moved on to a more personal level.
I told her about my British roots, when I was a kid growing up in London and how my family had traveled backward and forward across the Atlantic, never settling anyplace for too long. Maddie edged her chair closer to mine as I talked and she brushed my thigh with her hand. We had downed several glasses of wine and she became slightly tipsy and increasingly flirtier. My thoughts turned to Cordoba and I became anxious about her and the rest of my party’s whereabouts.

“What’s the matter, Brett?”
Maddie asked, grabbing my wrist as I swirled the wine in my glass. “You look all upset, all of a sudden.”

“I forgot about the rest of the guys in my group for a moment,” I admitted. “I really should go out there and look for them.”

“But it’s dark out there now,” Maddie protested. “You won’t be able tae see your hand in front of your face, let alone all those dead creatures sneaking up on you.”

“I need to know they’re okay,” I sighed, dumping my glass on the table. “They could be in trouble and need my help.” I glanced across at Batfish, who was deep in conversation with Alex and the jolly Trevor.

“Batfish,” I hissed. She looked around at me with a gleam of irritation burning in her eyes. “We really need to find Smith and the others. We’ve been sat here for around an hour now and they still haven’t shown up yet.”

Batfish let out a slight groan. She didn’t want to go back out in the cold anymore than I did but we couldn’t just leave the rest of our party to fend for
themselves in the dark, cold night. The castle was warm and comfortable and I was enjoying the wine and slightly flattered at Maddie’s flirtations but I couldn’t very well sit there while Smith, Cordoba, Wingate and Gera were left out in the harsh wilderness.

I rose from my chair, still aching and fighting off affects of fatigue. “We really
should go out there,” I repeated.

“Listen, Brett,” Alex said, ushering for me to sit back down. “If you wait until after supper, we’ll all help you look for your friends.”
He glanced around the table for support and gained a series of nods and grunts of agreement. “I hope you’ll join us, you must be hungry. The cold saps your strength and builds up a ravenous hunger, you know.”

“We’d love to stay for supper, Alex,” Batfish chipped in, before I could answer.

“We can’t leave it too long though, Alex,” I warned. “They could freeze to death out there.”

A plump, middle aged woman stomped into the room, carrying a large silver bowl with a domed cover over the top. The woman’s entrance caused everyone around the table to immediately forget about my intended search for my comrades. I glanced at Batfish and she returned a small nod.

“Ah, this is
Mrs Sally McMahon, our resident chef and expert cook,” Alex chimed, gesturing towards the plump woman. “What delights have you rustled up for us tonight then, Sally?”

Mrs
Sally McMahon looked suitably pleased with herself as she approached the table with the big dish.