The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers (34 page)

“It’s locked,” Soames spat, shaking the ten foot high gate. “I can’t believe they closed the gate.”

I stopped and bent over with my hands on my knees, gasping for breath and silently vowing to get myself in better shape if I survived.

“We better do something and quickly,” Julia gasped in air as she spoke. “Those creatures will be here in a minute.” She glanced nervously over her shoulder.

“Let’s just climb over,” I suggested between breaths. “It’s not that difficult, surely.”

Rosenberg scrambled over the gate first, assisted by Soames who pushed and lifted the young doctor’s butt into the air. We threw our baggage over the gate to Rosenberg then Soames and I helped Julia up the gate. She struggled to climb but finally reached the top as we heard moans from the undead behind us. I turned and saw at least fifty zombies stumbling up the marina entrance road.

“Come on, we better be quick,” I said. “They’ll be on us if we don’t hurry.”

Soames held his hands together and bent slightly to give me a foothold on his palms. I didn’t hesitate and sprung myself as high onto the gate as I could with Soames’ help. I clambered up the gate and over the top, then let myself drop down onto the other side. Soames soon joined us, climbing the gate with ease.

We grabbed our bags and looked around for a suitable sea going vessel. We were in the marina car park which only held around a dozen vehicles dotted around the vacant slots. The car park stretched into a rectangular shape with the river on each side and the marina lay directly in front of us, where a few moored yacht masts moved up and down gently on the river current. The salty whiff and sea breeze blew in our faces as a few lone gulls squawked overhead.

“Let’s go and see what we can find,” Soames said.

The pursuing zombies rattled the closed gate and reached between the bars trying to grab us from a distance.

“Let’s just hope that gate keeps them out for a while,” Julia said.

We moved through the car park and passed some locked, dark buildings with no signs of life from inside.

“That used to be the yacht club,” Soames told us. “Such a shame it won’t be open anymore.”

Some larger boats were moored either side of the jetty but Soames wasn’t interested in those. “We need a smaller vessel,” he mused. “Preferably one that’s fast moving without the use of a sail.”

We followed Soames as he strode towards the marina jetty. The wind grew stronger and whipped off the small waves on the river. The tall buildings and skyscrapers of the Manhattan skyline were visible in the distance, to the east.

“This one will do,” Soames chimed, pointing to a white with navy blue flash speedboat tied up with rope on the jetty.

The boat was open topped with four seats and looked like it was built for speed crossing the Hudson in quick time with a sharp bow and a flexed windshield. We stood on the jetty with the wind blowing in our faces and watched Soames jump into the driver’s seat. One thing the jerk hadn’t realized on was how we were going to start the bastard. Expensive, high end boats were pretty much like top of the range motor vehicles, with keys and alarm systems that no “Joe Street Ass” could just jump in the thing and drive it away.

I sighed and folded my arms across my chest, giving Julia and Rosenberg a knowing glance as Soames bashed around with the controls, fruitlessly trying to spark the boat into life. Smith or Eazy probably could have flashed up the engine in less than five minutes with some manual hot wiring but none of us here on the jetty had any experience in criminal activity and for the first time since we’d split, I realized that fact made our party of leftovers extremely vulnerable. None of us knew how to operate machinery or start vehicles by bypassing keys and alarm systems. None of us, with the exception of Soames, who didn’t seem to have a clue what he was doing otherwise, could effectively fire or operate a gun of any kind.

Standing on that jetty, in the warm sun, I knew we’d made a critical mistake. Splitting from the others was a huge, gaping mother of all errors. All sound ceased as I watched Soames thrash around the interior of the boat, cussing, looking for the keys under the seats and in cupboards. I knew the keys would be locked in some safe in the marina buildings. I knew what Rosenberg and Julia’s facial expressions were without looking at them. I knew without hearing, the hordes of zombies were rattling at those marina gates. The sea breeze blew the back of my shirt up slightly and sent a shiver up my spine. What I didn’t know was how the fuck we were going to get out of here.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Smith switched on his flashlight when the daylight faded a few yards into the Holland Tunnel. No power lit the overhead lights to illuminate the way. He slowed to a steady walk still trying to ignore the pain in his side. Batfish and Eazy followed suit and slowed the pace either side of him. Smith delved his hand into his side pocket and felt for a few more of the painkilling tablets he’d rifled from Rosenberg’s bag before they left the RV. He didn’t know how many he had in his hand but shoveled them in his mouth anyway. Smith didn’t like the fact his party had lost all the medical help they had acquired in Soames and Rosenberg, but he had to go this route through the tunnel. He knew his loyalty would be rewarded on the other side.

Batfish stifled a cough. She was more scared than she’d ever been in this dark tunnel under the river that stank of carbon exhaust fumes, blood and sweat and desperation. She wanted a cigarette to calm her nerves more than anything. Her hand shook as she reached for the pack in her top pocket. She silently handed a smoke to Eazy and Smith on either side of her. Ever since Donna died she’d been a complete wreck on the inside, simply going through the motions and thankful she could be of some use as the driver. She would have stuck with Eazy and Smith no matter what they decided to do. She felt safer with them. Julia didn’t mean much to her and she hated that bastard Soames with a passion. Brett Wilde was a cute guy and in another time or place, she probably would have made a move on him. Rosenberg was sweet but he wasn’t going to last this crisis much longer and had “victim” or “future zombie” written all over him. If they could get through this last mile and a half of tunnel, they’d be okay.

Batfish had always pretended to be the tough girl growing up at High School. She looked up at the tunnel roof and thought of all the millions of gallons of water over her head. How dangerous was it to be under all that water? Her thoughts drifted back to her childhood, of her father and she wondered whatever happened to him. He served in submarines in the Navy and she only had slight recollections of him before he split with her mother when she was little. Plain old Suzy Collins had acquired the name “Batfish” after the US Navy cap she wore throughout her adolescence, one of the relics left around the house in Brynston after her father had long since gone. Her mother never much spoke about Jim Collins, her father and referred to him as the “Evil, Irish drunken sailor, who deserved all he got at the bottom of the sea.” Batfish never knew if she meant he was dead or just a submariner. Either way, Batfish always liked her nick name.

Eazy was a friend but Smith was something else. He was dangerous and smoking hot. Batfish got turned on slightly when Smith was near her. She didn’t like him at first when he’d disrespected her VW camper van way back in Brynston but when he’d stuck up for her in the compound at the airport, she’d melted for him then. She tried not to think about his muscled, scarred, naked tattooed body in that room when they all had to strip off. This wasn’t the time or the place for horny fixations. Maybe after this was all over, she and Smith would possibly have one night of lust together.

Smith flashed the beam over the stationery cars as they plodded slowly on. The light was eerie shining through the windows of abandoned cars and trucks, some with the doors flung open where the previous occupants had simply fled and raced in either direction down the tunnel. New York Yellow Cabs, trucks, station wagons, 4x4s, sports cars, regular family sedans and shiny new, top of the range cars solidly blocked the two-lane underground road as far as Smith’s torch beam shone. Some vehicles were empty and some had half eaten mangled bodies inside.

“Why were these people trying to get into the city?” Eazy whispered. “Surely you’d want to get out of heavily populated areas?”

Smith sucked on his smoke and shone the flashlight around the tunnel. “Maybe they thought it was safety in numbers, like they were going to the city for protection, lots of cops lots of places to stay. Or maybe they figured Manhattan is an island and somehow the military would cut them off from what was happening.”

“Whatever they figured, it was too damn late,” Eazy sighed.

“Shh! What was that?” Batfish hissed.

The three of them stopped walking and listened. Smith and Eazy drew their pistols. Spot whimpered in Batfish’s backpack. They stood still in silence. Smith crushed out his cigarette butt underfoot and heard a metallic clunk somewhere down the tunnel. He flicked the flashlight beam around the tunnel walls and between the vehicles.

The metallic clunk sound echoed again. Smith couldn’t tell how far away the noise was with the acoustics of the tunnel walls.

Eazy crouched and held out his pistol scanning the tunnel, trying to see any signs of movement beyond Smith’s flashlight.

Batfish crept slightly behind Smith. “What is it?”

Smith knew what it was but didn’t want to answer right away. He turned off the flashlight when he heard the moans of the undead coming from behind them in the dark tunnel. Now they stood in total blackness.

“We got two choices,” he whispered. “Either carryon and see what’s coming or go back and get fucked.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

“We won’t start that boat without the key, Soames,” I sighed in resignation.

“We can’t just give up,” Soames yelled back.

I looked over at the Manhattan skyline across the river and wondered if we were ever meant to get there. Maybe fate had dealt us one last cruel blow. So near, yet so far. Battery Park was probably less than a twenty minute boat ride away.

“Why don’t we look for some other craft to take us over there,” Rosenberg chirped. “As long as we get there, it doesn’t matter what kind of vessel we take.”

“All right,” Soames sighed, clambering out of the speed boat. “Let’s just find any old boat to take us over the water.”

We split into two groups again, with Julia and me searching on the right side of the jetty, while Soames and Rosenberg searched the left. A few minutes later, Julia and I saw a small boat with an outboard motor at the back, with keys still in the ignition. The boat was a no-frills, twenty foot fishing vessel of some kind.

“Hey, we’ve found one,” I called to Soames and Rosenberg. They trotted over the wooden jetty boards, in our direction.

The zombies rattled the gate with renewed vigor as the two doctors headed around the jetty, back into plain sight of the hungry hordes.

“That gate isn’t going to stay in place forever,” Julia muttered.

“I know,” I said. “We have to get away from this marina as soon as possible. We’re basically trapped here.”

I watched as the number of zombies rattling the gate steadily increased by the second. Sheer weight of numbers would bring the thing crashing down sooner rather than later. The scene reminded me of a movie I’d seen when the US officials finally left the embassy in Vietnam at the end of the war. I remembered the scene when the gate gave way due to the numbers of protestors hell bent on getting inside the embassy compound. This was a similar situation.

Soames looked pissed off and disappointed when he took a look at the boat that Julia and I stood next to.

“Ah, will you look at this piece of crap,” he sighed. “We’ll be lucky if this crate makes it out of the harbor.” He shook his head. “This is a flat boat,” he said like we should know what he was talking about. “A very slow and an uncomfortable ride.”

“Look Soames, we don’t have much time here,” I spat. “That entrance gate is going to come crashing down any minute.” I pointed at the gathering crowd of zombies. The ones at the front were being squashed against the metal bars.

“Okay,” Soames sighed. “Let’s try and start this piece of shit.”

He jumped into the boat and turned the ignition key. The engine coughed and spluttered, threw out a cloud of acrid black smoke and spluttered into life churning up the water slightly behind the motor.

“All right, everybody in,” Soames waved us aboard. “Denny, you untie the bows and stern.”

Rosenberg looked blank while Julia and I squeezed aboard the narrow boat. We placed our bags between our feet.

“The front and back,” Soames cried in exasperation.

Rosenberg nodded and untied the ropes around the cleats holding the boat in place to the jetty. Soames juggled with the steering wheel and control levers to keep the boat still while Rosenberg climbed onboard. It was a tight squeeze for the three of us across the bench type seat behind Soames, who sat in the driver’s seat.

I heard a metallic
“clang”
over the noise of the boat engine and looked towards the marina entrance gate. The rivets holding the gate in place to the metal posts popped off under the constant rattling from the huge crowd of undead. The gate dropped from its supports and bent backwards, leaving a gap of a few feet. Around half a dozen zombies tumbled through the gap and fell flat on their faces due to the weight of force from the numbers behind. The prone zombies were immediately trampled underfoot by the marauding crowd pouring through the gap. The gate creaked and was violently shoved open wider leaving a bigger gap for the zombies to pour through into the marina.

“Oh, shit,” I shrieked. “Get us the fuck out of here, Soames.”

The crowds of undead lurched forward across the jetty, making their way towards us. Their snarling faces and mangled bodies were driven by hunger and a need for human flesh.

Soames meddled with the control levers and the boat slowly moved away from the jetty. The zombies seemed to be moving quicker than they had before. The seething mass jostled for leading positions like some insane race to reach their prize. Many of the undead on the edges of the jetty were bumped off the platform and splashed into the green waters of the river below. Those going under the small waves sunk without resurfacing.