The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Smith closed the files and looked up at me. “Just because they committed crimes in the past doesn’t make them bad people now,” he said.

“Would you trust them?” I argued.

“You trust me, don’t you? I’m an ex-con.”

“Yeah, but that’s different. I’ve known you a while.”

“Just because they’ve committed some crimes doesn’t make them psychos,” Smith pointed out. “This place probably had a deal with the cops or the courts or whoever to employ ex-felons. They do it all the time nowadays, or did do. It’s called helping people back into the community or some such bullshit.”

“I hope you’re right,” I hissed, picking up my drink. “Because we’ve left the girls roaming around in here on their own.”

Smith pulled a pained face. “They’re capable of looking out for themselves. Those three are tougher than most guys. And besides, they’re all armed. You worry too much, kid.”

I drained my glass, already feeling the effects of the alcohol. “I think we should go find the girls and check they’re okay.”

“All right,
if it’ll stop you whining” Smith agreed and necked back the remainder of his Scotch while I stuffed the files back on the shelf.

A small bathroom was located next to the office and Smith and I washed the
congealed blood off our faces after relieving ourselves in the facilities.

We carried on along the corridor, looking for a staircase to take us up the floor levels. I wondered where
Mrs McMahon had scurried off to and realized she’d headed in the opposite direction to where we were going. The air in the passageway felt colder and the rooms either side of us looked as though they hadn’t been bothered with for some time. Layers of dust sat on the shelves and surfaces inside the areas we walked by.

“It doesn’t look like anybody has been around these parts of the castle in a while,” I said. “Maybe we should turn back and head the way we came.”

“That’s what they’ll expect us to do,” Smith said. “If those guys are up to any bad shit, they’ll anticipate us following the routes we know. We’ll keep heading in this direction until we come to a staircase or another exit.”

I didn’t know if Smith was right or not. Maybe I was being a little paranoid but nearly everybody we’d run into since the zombie apocalypse hadn’t exactly been friendly. Alex and his gang had seemed okay but maybe they did have ulterior motives for welcoming us into the castle with open arms.
Mrs McMahon had showed us another side to her character by pointing a loaded shotgun at us and that fucker Rory certainly wasn’t pleased to see us. It was nice to sleep in a warm bed for the night and have a roof over our heads but what was it going to cost us? I was beginning to regret splitting up to search for Gera. We should have stuck together.

Smith and I plodded along the dim passageway, side by side.
I couldn’t help worrying about Gera and the girls. The thought which gave me some relief was that Maddie and the young girl, Chloe were both outsiders and hadn’t been harmed, as far as I knew. I also wanted to find out who the remaining three mystery faces were inside the castle.

“There you go,” Smith muttered, as he pointed to a crisscrossing staircase situated in a recess to our right.

The staircase balustrades were carved in dark brown wood and the light blue carpet runner flowing down the center of the steps was heavily stained with what looked like blood. I gazed down at the stains as we approached and rubbed my foot over the reddish brown blemishes.

“These look like old stains,” I said.
“Maybe it was from when they were clearing the place of zombies.”

“Never mind shit stains on the carpet, kid,” Smith whispered. “Look up there.” He pointed up the staircase.

I followed his gaze and saw a white faced, long haired female hanging by the neck, suspended from a rope tied to the top banister.

“Jesus,” I blurted.
“Who the fuck is that?”

“It’s nobody we’ve seen and it looks like she’s been here a while,” Smith said, moving slowly up the staircase.

I followed his ascent but couldn’t keep my eyes off the dead girl dangling between the two sets of banisters where the staircase crossed over. She wore a white dress with a light green cardigan over her torso and I’d have guessed she wasn’t much over twenty years of age, although it was difficult to tell as her skin had begun to discolor. Her eyes remained half open and her head was slightly bent forward, causing her long dark hair to drape in front of her shoulders.

We brushed by the dangling corpse and I was glad I couldn’t smell the musty stench of death through my shattered nose. I noticed Smith held his hand over his nose and mouth as we moved by.

“Do you think she was bit?” I asked.

“She
don’t look bit,” Smith replied. “I don’t see no blood on her.”

“You think we should, like maybe cut her down?”

“Maybe later, kid,” Smith sighed. “We got to find the others first.”

We continued cautiously up the staircase. I didn’t know what
or who was going to pop out at us next. The stairway leveled off to a wooden boarded landing that looped around the back of the staircase and led to several more dark, dreary rooms. I ducked my head inside a few of the open doorways and saw stacks of discarded mattresses in one room and a pile of broken bed frames in another. The gloomy walkway continued through the castle interior, heading further into the main building itself.

“This is leading us nowhere, Smith,” I protested. “We should have gone back the other way.”

Smith stopped moving and placed his hand across my chest to halt me in my tracks.

“Did you see that?” he whispered.

“What?”

“Up ahead. That figure you were talking about before. They just ran across the corridor in front of us.”

“I didn’t see nothing,” I sighed. “But I think whoever it is, is following us.”

“How can they be following us if they’re always ahead of us?”

“Well, you know what I mean. I don’t like this; it’s beginning to shit me up.” A cold shiver ran through me.

“Hey, you,” Smith yelled, staring directly ahead
down the passageway.

Nobody answered and we listened for any sound of footfalls but heard nothing.
Smith drew his handgun and I followed suit. The zombies outside the spooky old castle seemed the least of our worries. It was the living inside the medieval fortress that was our immediate concern. 

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The walkway led us by several dark empty rooms that hadn’t looked inhabited for a number of years. Loose single light bulbs hung between curtains of spider’s webs in the center of the ceiling spaces. White paint flaked from the small, wooden window frames, which didn’t allow much light into the rooms.

The corridor opened out into a wider area that circled around another inner staircase. We looked down below and saw a burning fireplace in the center of the room and an outer door at the far side.
A big cushioned sofa and two chairs sat opposite the fire but nobody occupied the furniture. A half drunk glass of wine stood on a small table next to the sofa. It was as though somebody had got up and left the room the moment they’d heard Smith and I approaching.

“This place is beginning to feel like a ghost town,” I sighed. “Where the hell did everybody go?”

“Let’s just keep moving on,” Smith muttered. “Sooner or later, we’re bound to come across somebody.”

We shuffled further along the corridor and turned at a
right-angle, heading to our left. My blood almost froze when I felt a bony hand on my shoulder and I spun around to face my assailant with my handgun held at the ready. I recognized the scrawny figure of Joan, standing a few inches away from me. She’d lurched from the doorway of a room on the right side of the passageway.

“Back the fuck off,” I hissed. “Or I’ll shoot you in your damn ugly face.” After the debacle with Rory, I wasn’t in the mood to be pissed around. Smith turned around, also raising his M-9. 

Joan leapt backward, holding her hands beside her head. “Don’t shoot me,” she pleaded. “I’m trying to warn you.”

“Go on,” Smith growled. “Warn us about what, exactly?”

“You need to get out of here, while you can,” Joan insisted. Her face was screwed up with intensity. “These people here are not what they seem. You can’t believe anything they say. ”

“I’m not in the mood for riddles, ma’am,” Smith sighed. “Just cut to the chase.”

I lowered my handgun and Smith did the same. Joan visibly breathed out a relieved sigh and lowered her hands by her sides.

“Everybody here is…not what you’d call normal,” Joan stammered, searching for the right words. “They play a little game with everyone who comes to the castle. Some leave by escaping and some don’t get so lucky.”

“How comes you’re still here then?” I quizzed.

“I have nowhere else to go. The castle is the only safe place for miles around,” she explained. “I came here around four months ago, before the winter with a few other survivors but they’ve since left or disappeared. The person you really need to be wary of is…”

“Joan, what are you doing around here?” boomed a voice from behind us.

Joan immediately clammed up and looked sheepish for talking to us. Smith and I spun around to see Alex McNeil standing in the passageway behind us.

“You know we rarely use these parts of the castle, it might not be safe here,” he said.

“Do you know you have a dead girl hanging from a staircase, back there?” Smith said, gesturing back down the corridor with his M-9.

Alex looked confused. “A dead girl?”

“Yeah, and it looks as though she’s been there a while,” I added.
“Young girl about twenty, dark brown hair in a white dress and green sweater.”

“That’s
Shona,” Joan wailed. “She came here when I did. I haven’t seen her for a few weeks.”

“Joan, shut up,” Alex snapped. “Now
, go back to your room and I’ll get Davie and Mo to go and cut her down and bury her in the castle grounds.”

Joan briefly glanced at Smith and I in turn and the fear in her eyes was evident.
She shuffled off down the passageway towards the inner guts of the castle. Alex stood around ten feet away from Smith and I with a look of contempt on his face.

“Sorry about her,” he said, nodding down the corridor after Joan. “She’s delusional and lives in a bit of a dark fantasy world, I’m afraid but she’s harmless enough. What happened to you two
, by the way?”

“We ran into the local whack job, Rory,” I explained.

“Ah, him,” Alex sighed. “He isn’t the easiest guy to get on with.”

“Oh, you think?” Smith said, reaching into his jacket pocket for his pack of smokes.

“So, what about this dead girl, Alex?” I pressed. “Like, who the hell was she and what the fuck is going on inside these four walls?” I was going to mention his violent criminal background but I thought I’d leave that trump card if we needed it later.

Alex sucked in air and shook his head. “She came here with Joan and a few others, some months ago and we haven’t seen her in a while.” He talked as though he was being interviewed by the police. Everything seemed matter of fact and slightly recited, as though he was telling us about the weather. “
Shona seemed in a bit of a distressed state on the few occasions I saw her and one day, she simply disappeared. This apocalypse thing does some weird shit to people’s heads, you know? Maybe once she was safe inside the castle the reality of the new world dawned on her. It’s not for everybody this alternative lifestyle.”

Alex was a good talker and he had me almost believing what he was saying.

“So, how come nobody found her? She’s been missing for a while and nobody thought to look for her?”

Alex sort of chuckled. “As you know, it’s a big place. People can become easily lost in all the different sections. We barely use this end of the castle so that’s probably why
Shona decided to take her life there. It was somewhere where nobody would find her to stop her from doing it.”

“All right,” Smith sniffed. “There’s some crazy shit going on here that doesn’t concern us but we’ve lost one of our people and just want to find him so we can move out of here.”

“You’re leaving?” Alex seemed astonished.

“Too right,” Smith sighed, lighting his smoke and handing me one. “This damn place is far too freaky for us.”

Alex laughed. “Oh, you get used to us after a while.”

“No thanks,” Smith snapped, lighting my smoke.
“Now, about our friend, Gera. Have you seen him?”

Alex’s eyes bulged and he blew out, shaking his head.
“Nah, not since last night. As I say, it’s a big place. He could have gone for a wander and got lost in the towers or the cellars somewhere.”

“Yeah, the cellar,” I said. “That’s another thing. How come you’ve got zombies down in one of the basements?”