The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold (30 page)

“Where are the water bottles, Chloe?” I asked, as I slowly edged further into the room.

Chloe and Jimmy followed behind me.

“They’re in the cabinet, in the corner,” Chloe whispered. “I’ll fetch them, if you want.”

“All right,” I muttered. “But be careful.” From bitter past experiences, I didn’t like scrabbling around in dark rooms.

Chloe strolled across the kitchen and I followed her with the flashlight beam, lighting her path. She reached out and grabbed the closet handle to open it up. I heard a metallic clattering behind me and instinctively swung around.

“Watch out!” Jimmy screamed.

I caught a brief glimpse of a hideous, screwed up face looming at me in the flashlight beam. The face was full of hate and anger,
spittles of saliva rained onto my cheeks as the gruesome figure screeched out at me.

I felt a searing, red hot pain shoot through my left shoulder, as though I’d been hit by a bolt of lightning. The flashlight fell from my grasp and I fired a wild shot that pinged into the ceiling as I fell backwards onto the tiled floor.
The air in my lungs felt as though it was sucked away as I hit the ground with the figure on top of me. I lost my grip on the handgun and it clattered onto the tiles and slid away from me.

Chloe and Jimmy screamed in terror. Jimmy was shouting something to me but I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying, the pain in my shoulder was too intense. The flashlight rolled across the floor, partially illuminating the figure on top of me. I recognized the hate filled face as
Mrs McMahon, although her features were contorted like a demon.

“You killed my brother, you bastard,” she screeched and dug the knife point further into my shoulder.

I yelled as the pain racked itself up another notch and I felt the steel tip skid across my collarbone. Mrs McMahon knelt with one knee on my chest and the other across my left arm. She tried to pin my right arm to the ground with her left hand but I managed to wrestle it away. She leaned closer to me and screamed into my face, pushing the knife blade further into my shoulder. I howled in pain again, as I felt the sharp tip rip right through my flesh and slice through the skin at the back of my shoulder. The knife blade had gone all the way through, severing its way through tissue, bone and sinew.

“Get her off me. Get her off,” I yelled to Chloe and Jimmy.

They didn’t immediately come to my aid. I didn’t know if they were both scared stiff and frozen by terror but they were my only hope of survival.

Another burst of pain jolted through my body, accompanied by a sickening sucking noise as
Mrs McMahon wrenched the sharp weapon out of my wound. She raised the kitchen knife above her head and the blood stained blade glinted in the flashlight beam. Droplets of my own blood dripped onto my face.

I briefly glimpsed the crazed, murderous expression on her face, her eyes bulged and her mouth
twisted in a crooked sneer. She was about to plunge the knife blade deep into my chest. I tried to pull her off me with my right arm, I grappled but I felt too weak and exhausted to complete the maneuver. Whatever Chloe and Jimmy could have done for me was going to be too late. I was a dead man.

I clenched my teeth in a
tight grimace, anticipating the intense pain I was about to briefly endure before the grasp of death plunged me into eternal darkness.

They say your life flashes before you, the
split second before you die. My experience was a series of jerky, still images, as though somebody was rapidly clicking through a whole bunch of photos on a computer screen in front of my eyes. Some of the images were comforting, happy times with my family and friends and life before the apocalypse, while other mental depictions were terrifying in equal measure. Visions of hundreds of mutilated corpses and snarling, rotting zombies flashed through my mind. Maybe death wasn’t such a bad thing. Perhaps it would be a release from the world full of pain and mental suffering. At least I was going to die in the knowledge I’d never be a walking corpse, confined to a sub-life of shuffling around in the search of human flesh, until I finally rotted and my body fell to pieces.

Before the homicidal old bitch,
Mrs McMahon could thrust the long kitchen knife through my heart, an incredibly loud booming sound exploded through the kitchen. The noise was so loud I was temporarily deafened. Mrs McMahon seemed to almost fly off the top of me and I was showered in warm, red liquid and a spongy, pulp like matter.

I yelled in shock and agony but couldn’t hear myself due to the deafening noise. The silhouette of a slim female figure approached me from the gloom. My right hand instinctively clamped onto my injured shoulder and I fought against the pain. I hollered every profanity I could think of
in a kind of mental combat against the scorching hot sensation throbbing through the left side of my torso, even though I couldn’t hear my own voice. The stab wound felt as though I’d been pierced by a red hot fire poker, but at least I wasn’t dead.

The female figure hunkered down over me and her face was illuminated by the flashlight.
Maddie said something inaudible and blew me a kiss, then raised herself back up. Was she going to try to kill me as well?

I twisted around on my back, trying to see what crazy
Maddie was going to do next. She stood over the body of Mrs McMahon, holding the still smoking shotgun across her chest. I glanced back at my wound and saw blood seeping through my fingers. I’d have to get the gash seen to or I was going to bleed out. I twisted my head around and saw Maddie kick away the kitchen knife that lay next to Mrs McMahon’s corpse. I heard the knife skittle across the tiles as my hearing began to return.

Loud s
creaming from each side of the kitchen attacked my audible perception as I regained my senses. I twisted my head to look around the room to try and make some sense of what was going on. Chloe was backed up against the water closet, bent over with tears streaming down her screwed up face and her mouth hung open while she continued yelling in terror. Jimmy was slumped against the wall in near darkness on the opposite side of the kitchen. I couldn’t see him clearly but he was howling like a scolded dog.

“Silly old
bitch,” Maddie spat and booted the side of Mrs McMahon’s prone, blood spattered body.

I tried to sit up but the pain in my shoulder got the better of me and I collapsed onto my back again. I needed to find my handgun and somehow pick it up.
Maddie was already reloading the shotgun, standing over the dead body. I didn’t know if she was going to fire at me or Chloe or Jimmy or all of us. Gritting my teeth and fighting against the pain, I roared in defiance, then grunted as I pushed myself onto my right side. I performed an unintentional impression of a new born deer as I tried desperately to haul myself to my feet. The pain was so bad I thought I was going to pass out at any moment. It wasn’t like in the movies when the hero gets stabbed multiple times and carries on as if nothing has happened. This injury hurt like nothing I’d ever endured before. On a scale of one to a shitload, the pain was way off the scale.

Maddie
snapped the shotgun barrels shut and tucked the weapon under her arm. She approached me with a smirk across her face, as I scrabbled around, attempting to stand. Chloe and Jimmy’s screeching had died down to constant whimpering.

“Let me help you up, sweetheart,”
Maddie said and took hold of my right elbow as my arm was crossed over my torso.

All I could muster was a grunt in reply. I spat a grisly lump off my lips and tasted blood in my mouth. I glanced at
Mrs McMahon’s corpse and saw her head had completely exploded under the impact of the shotgun blast. A gory stump of spinal cord protruded from the back of the torso and the lower part of the jaw bone remained intact, still attached to the neck. Pieces of skull and brain and blood spatters covered the wall, countertop and floor around me. I was also drenched in the remains of Mrs McMahon’s shattered head. The thought made me physically retch and I leaned forward to spew out a belly full of hot stomach bile. The process of throwing up caused my shoulder pain to remind me it was still there with renewed eagerness. I felt incredibly weak and my head thumped as though a bunch of construction workers were building a bridge between the inside of my temples. The dying option would have been far simpler.

“Aw, you poor baby,”
Maddie cooed, as though I was a toddler who’d fallen out of their stroller. “We need to get you cleaned up. I’ll take you to the washroom.”

I frantically shook my head, making the pain lurch through my body again. “I don’t want to go in there,” I mumbled, fighting to hold on to consciousness.
Every time Maddie took somebody into the washroom, they ended up as sliced and diced as a chicken in a high-class restaurant. I tried shrugging off her grip but I didn’t possess the strength to get her off.

“Oh, come on,”
Maddie groaned. “Don’t be shy, I won’t bite. I’m not a zombie.” She giggled in a high pitched tone like a school girl and led me slowly towards the doorway. I was too weak and disorientated to resist. “Don’t fret, pet. That nasty old Mrs McMahon can’t hurt you anymore. I blasted the old bastard’s head off with the shotgun.” She glanced back to the corpse behind us. “I never liked that snooty old cow anyway.”

We shuffled past Jimmy, who cowered against the wall
, while slumped on the floor. He whimpered and covered his head with his arms when Maddie looked down at him. The poor kid was really spooked by her presence and he genuinely looked petrified.

The flashlight beam shone directly against the back of mine and
Maddie’s heads and we both inwardly turned into the light, blinking against the glare.

“Put the shotgun down and leave Brett alone, you mental bitch,” the voice behind the light commanded.

I gasped when the flashlight beam lowered slightly and I saw Chloe holding my M-9 handgun and pointed it directly at Maddie. I sincerely hoped Chloe had the balls to carry out what she’d started.

Chapter Forty-Three

Maddie
still had the shotgun tucked under her arm but raised it slightly so the barrels pressed against my stomach. I grunted under the strain of the gun metal depressing into my guts.

“Put the gun down,
Maddie,” Chloe demanded. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

“Shut up, you stupid little girl,”
Maddie hissed back. “You just want him for yourself, don’t you? Well, I’ve just saved his life and he’s mine. I’d rather kill him now than let you have him, you frigid little bitch.” Her voice rose in volume as she spat out every word.

“Brett
has
a girlfriend, Maddie,” Chloe countered. “He’s with Cordoba. Why can’t you understand that?”

“He doesn’t really like her,”
Maddie roared. “It’s nothing serious, he already told me that. Tell her, Brett.”

She glanced at me
with a steely glare, as if I was going to concur with her. It was true, I had told her me and Cordoba weren’t currently planning a white wedding and spending the rest of our lives together but I wasn’t exactly going to elope with Maddie either. I used my unfortunate predicament to my advantage to deflect the awkward situation.

“Girls, please…I’ve just been stabbed and I’m bleeding all over the place
,” I groaned. “Can I please just sit down before I fall down?”

“We need to patch him up,”
Maddie said, with a little more clarity to her tone. “We’re going to back up into the dining room where he can sit at the table.”

“Okay, but
remember I’ve still got this gun pointed at you,” Chloe said.

I had to hand it to Chloe. She had managed to compose herself really quickly and wasn’t showing any signs of backing down against
Maddie.

We stumbled slowly backwards.
Maddie still held onto my elbow and guided me through the kitchen doors into the dining room, with the shotgun still pointed at my stomach all the while. Chloe plodded forward at the same pace, never quivering or showing any sign of weakness as she aimed my handgun at Maddie. Jimmy launched himself to his feet when Chloe drew level with him and we all shuffled into the dining room.

“I need to sit down,
Maddie,” I gasped, as we stood next to the table in a kind of stand-off. My legs shook at the knees and the clear sight of blood flooding down the front of my jacket made me feel nauseous.

She guided me to the table and perched on a seat, then pulled me down onto the chair beside her so I was between her and Chloe.
We sat sideways on in the chairs and Maddie pressed the shotgun barrels into the small of my back. One minute she was saving my life from the crazed attack by Mrs McMahon and proclaiming I was her heart’s desire and now she was holding me as a kind of hostage. I guessed passion was a strange thing.

To her credit, Chloe circled wide across the room, rounding behind me so she could still cover
Maddie with the handgun. Jimmy stared intently at my wounded shoulder, breathing deeply and constantly rubbing his hand over his face. He still looked shaky but seemed to be attempting to pull himself together.