The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold (36 page)

“It’s not going to happen, Maddie,” I shouted. “We’re never going to be a couple and we’re not going to live happily ever after, so forget it.”

“Oh,
don’t be like that, Brett,” she sighed. “I was waiting here for you. Let’s put the past behind us and carry on as if nothing happened, eh?”

I laughed incredulously, spitting out a smoke ridden taste in my mouth. “You got to be shitting me.” She seemed to think I was just going to forget about her murderous ways and we were going to skip off together into the snowy hills.

“Ever since you came to the castle, I can’t stop thinking about you,” she gushed.

I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger of my rifle, even though a voice in my head and every instinct
in my body told me to do so. Maddie came closer and slowed when she was around ten feet away from me. She smiled at me and I lowered my rifle.

“What do you want from me,
Maddie?” I asked, sighing in frustration after I spoke. “I can’t be the person you want me to be and I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”

“I’ll change, Brett,” she whispered. “I know you’re the one for me. You’re the man I’ve been searching for all my life.”

She was talking complete bullshit and I should’ve shot her there and then. Morality stopped me from doing the deed. I knew Smith wouldn’t have so many hesitations. However much I tried to be like him, we just weren’t cut from the same cloth.

Maddie
moved closer, within a few inches from me and pushed the top of my M-16 so the barrel was pointing at the ground. She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips and she tasted of wine and sweetness. In another time and a different situation, I would have definitely fallen head over heels for her. She was somehow captivating and magnetic. I didn’t know how she had this particular hold on me. Maybe I was so mentally lost and lonely, I’d have the hots for any good looking woman.

She drew back and looked me straight in the eyes. I returned her gaze, staring into her
pale blue eyes, brilliantly illuminated by the full moon. My breathing increased rapidly and I felt like a high school kid on his first date. What the hell was I doing? I knew I was playing with fire but I couldn’t help myself.

“I want us to start a new life together, Brett,”
Maddie whispered. “We can go anywhere or do anything. I don’t care as long as we’re together.”

She’d probably used that line countless times with other poor suckers who fell for her bullshit. I was another one of those jerks who stood there and sucked it all up. The scenario seemed kind of romantic. The burning castle behind us, the snow,
the full moon – I felt like I was in some sort of cheap, trashy daytime TV movie. I knew it was wrong but I felt powerless to resist her.

“We can spend the rest of our lives together,” she murmured.
“Till death do us part.”

Her last words sent a chill down my spine and I remembered what a manipulative, psychotic freak she was. She’d chopped my friend Gera to pieces for no good reason other than he’d swapped rooms with my casual girlfriend. She’d murdered her tour manager in America, slaughtered her own band, blown
Mrs McMahon’s head off and would have killed me without a second thought when the tables were turned against her. I came to my senses and pushed her away from me.

“It just ‘
aint going to happen, Maddie. Forget it,” I spat. “It ends here and now.”

Her face crumpled almost immediately and I recognized the demonic expression of rage and betrayal that engulfed her features.
She’d pulled a similar face when we were back in the dining room during our gun totting stand-off. The look still sent a shiver down my spine, even though she was unarmed.

“I gave you another chance, Brett and you’ve rejected me again,” she seethed, her face snarling like a wild animal. “You’ve broken my heart so I’m going to destroy yours.”

I opened my mouth to reply but I didn’t manage to get the words out. Maddie reached around to the small of her back and pulled out a long bladed kitchen knife. The stainless steel blade glinted with a silvery spark in the moon light as she raised the weapon above her head. The tip of the blade was pointed directly at the center of my chest. No shoulder wounds this time – that shank was going to drive straight into my heart.

Chapter Fifty-One

Time seemed to slow down to a series of jerky movements again, like somebody was flicking through one of those moving booklets. I tried to lift the M-16 but it seemed to weigh heavy in my hands and I couldn’t raise it in time to shoot Maddie before she stabbed me. Perhaps, deep down, I wanted to die in a no nonsense way. Being stabbed and dying almost immediately was preferable to being bitten and becoming a walking fuck up, like so many other people had become.

The crack of a single gunshot caused me to flinch and duck down slightly. I felt a spattering of warm, gooey liquid splash onto my face.
Maddie jerked backwards and went down on her back onto the ground, making a deep imprint in the snow. I stared at her prone body. Blood ran from a small hole in her forehead and began to stain the snow under her head a deep shade of crimson. Her eyes remained open but the snarling sneer had evaporated from her face. 

“What the fuck…?” I gasped, briefly glancing behind me.

A shadowy figure waved at me from the roof of the golf clubhouse. It took me a few seconds to register what the hell had just happened. Two zombies steadily stumbled towards me, their moans breaking my mental trance. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to lift my rifle. I fired two shots, terminating each zombie’s existence.

“Are you going to come inside this damn clubhouse or are you going to stay out there all night, Wilde?” a voice I recognized called out.

I turned back to the clubhouse to look at Cordoba lying on the roof. She’d saved my ass yet again and I couldn’t thank her enough. I didn’t feel much like celebrating though. I felt hollow and empty as I stood watching the castle burn with Maddie’s lifeless body at my feet. Why couldn’t we just find someplace to settle without all the dramas and emotional trauma? I’d been the one who had insisted we left America for a better way of life in Britain and so far, it had been even worse than our existence back home, and I felt it was all down to me.

I was sick of the killing and constantly having to deal with being on the edge of my nerves every minute of every day. The burning castle in front of me was one way or another, another product of my misdemeanors. I glanced around the barren landscape for my alternative self but even he seemed to have abandoned me. A blast of cold air blew a gritty wave of snow into my face that shook me from my self induced daze.
I winced against the icy blast and wiped the snow and blood from my face with my sleeve.

I sighed as I took one final glance at
Maddie’s dead body lying in the snow. I felt as though I should’ve said some words from the Bible or something prophetic but my mind was blank. I’d let the sound of the harsh wind and the moans of the zombie’s do the talking for me.

I turned away from
Maddie’s corpse and the burning castle, feeling like I’d ruined more people’s lives, no matter how tainted their existence had been. Cordoba was no longer perched on the clubhouse roof as I approached the building. No doubt she was inside with the rest of the party. I felt emotionally drained as I trudged around the walkway to the fire door exit.

No zombies surrounded the hut like they had done previously and I followed the pathway to the side door
unhindered. Cordoba stood in the doorway, waving me inside.

“Come on, Brett,” she hissed. “Hurry it up before any of those damn zombies sees you.”

I brushed by her and entered the golf clubhouse, relieved the cold wind was no longer blowing right through me. Cordoba quietly closed the door behind me.

“I was waiting for you,” she said. “I saw that crazy
Maddie head out of the castle and hide in those trees. I figured she was going to try to pull some crazy stunt like that.”

“Yeah, thanks for saving me,” I muttered.

Smith, Batfish, Wingate and Jimmy were resting, slumped against the interior wall. Spot trotted around, smelling various chairs and stains on the carpet. I slipped off my backpack and leaned my rifle against the wall, after flicking on the safety.

“What happened in there?” Cordoba asked me.

I shrugged and slumped down beside the wall on the opposite side of the room to the others. I didn’t really want to talk about anything, I just wanted to sleep and be alone.

“They all died,” I mumbled. “Alex, Davie, all of them.”

Cordoba didn’t press me for more details and I appreciated her silence. I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the howling wind outside. Exhaustion took hold of my body and sleep soon engulfed me. For once, the nightmares didn’t haunt my slumber.

Chapter Fifty-Two

A shuffling sound awoke me and I squinted against the bright sunlight streaming between the boards at the windows. The others were up and around, packing or rearranging their gear and Cordoba was cleaning the weapons. I blinked myself awake and rubbed my face then winced at the pain in my nose. My shoulder was sore as hell and my back and legs ached. I hauled myself to my feet and nodded at the others.

One of the boards had fallen or been wrenched away from the window frame at the far end of the clubhouse, allowing in extra light.
I moved towards the uncovered window and glanced out at the morning landscape. The castle still burned and looked like a blackened husk amid the thick smoke spiraling into the gray sky. The building had stood for centuries but the place was now wrecked forever. Maddie’s body still lay in the snow, not far from the clubhouse. Her corpse had been ripped to bits during the night and two zombies crouched over her, feeding on her flesh. The scene made me gag and I had to stop myself from throwing up.

Smith came out of the bathroom and it was good to see him up and around and looking much better.

“Hey, kid,” he muttered, as he walked by me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m peachy,” I said, nodding.

“I hear you’ve been through the wringer since I was taken sick.”

“Something
like that,” I muttered, barging through the bathroom door.

My face was blackened by the smoke from the fire inside the castle. I washed vigorously and the cold water felt good against my skin.
I rubbed all the black soot from my face and hands and rinsed out my mouth, trying to alleviate the horrible toxic taste on my tongue.

The others were packed and ready to leave when I emerged from the bathroom. They stood in a line, gazing at me expectantly.

“Where are we headed?” I asked.

“Anywhere but here,” Batfish said. “I don’t want to hang around this place any longer than we have to.
Too many bad memories.”

I glanced out the window at the burning castle.
I knew she was thinking of Gera. “Yeah, it wasn’t the best experience I’ve ever been through.”

“We thought we’d try heading towards the city again,” Smith said. “Jimmy here knows the area and we can find someplace to shelter out of the snow.”

“Sounds good,” I said, nodding. “I could do with resting up for a few days.”

Cordoba helped me put on my backpack and we trudged outside into the snow.
The cold wind whipped across the landscape and blasted into my face. I slipped on my hood and goggles, not feeling like plodding through the snow for hours on end.

We headed in a north easterly direction, leaving the burning castle in the distance behind us. I lingered at the rear of the line, not really in the mood for conversation. Smith, Wingate and Jimmy headed the procession, stopping every once in a while to study the map and decide in which direction to go.

Batfish waited for me to draw alongside her. Spot trotted beside her, tethered on his leash. She’d made a coat for him out of an old blanket she’d found in the clubhouse. 

“You seem quiet today,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Are you?” I queried back.

“Not really,” she sighed.

“Me either,” I muttered. I didn’t want to burden Batfish with all my inner turmoil. She was still trying to cope with the loss of Gera. “I just feel a bit shitty today,” I concluded. “I guess I breathed in a lot of smoke last night.”

We both turned back at the same time and we could still see the smoke from the burning castle pluming into the air.

“At least we’re not being followed by any undead,” I said, scanning the horizon for straggling corpses.

“I never even got the chance to say goodbye to him,” Batfish sighed. Her voice cracked and I could tell she was on the verge of tears.

I kept quiet as we trudged after the others.
The hours ticked by and we must have covered miles of ground without encountering another living thing.

“According to the map, there should be a small town right up ahead,” Smith said. “We could see if there’s any place we can take a rest and get out of the cold for a while.”

“Sounds good, I’m pooped,” I said.

We followed Smith’s planned route and I could see what looked like a church spire between a
bunch of trees as we approached the town.

“What’s the name of this place?” I asked.

Smith looked at the map again and struggled to pronounce the town’s name. “Lochlibo,” he finally spluttered. “That’s not easy to say.”

I sniggered. “How far are we from Glasgow?”

“Not far, maybe four or five miles. We’ll stop for some rest and have some food then we’ll get going again in around thirty minutes.”

We walked by the town’s snow covered sign on the outskirts. As usual, the place seemed deserted and nobody except the odd zombie, strolled around the empty streets. The
gray stone buildings had a thick layer of snow over their roofs and some small stores had broken front windows. Several abandoned vehicles stood in the street, stopped at odd angles and one or two were left on the sidewalk.

“Looks like there was a major scene of chaos in this place,” I said.

A few skeletal bodies were slumped in the store doorways. The bodies had obviously been picked clean of flesh by numbers of undead. The town’s main drag was a single, narrow road, flanked by houses and empty stores on each side. The whole place seemed eerily silent and I felt as though we were being watched as we trudged along the street.