The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone (12 page)

Smith and I ate two cans each before piling the rest of the preserved food into a plastic carrier bag we found behind the bar. Smith put his bottle of rum in the bag and I chose an expensive looking bottle of red wine.

We moved out of the kitchen area. Smith carried the bag and held the hatchet at the ready. I held onto Spot’s leash and the barrel lamp in the other hand, switching it off when we moved through dining the area. The sun’s final rays of the day peeked over the horizon throwing dark shadows across the dining area floor.

We were nearly in complete darkness as we crossed the floor to a central staircase leading to the upper floor. I followed Smith up the wide stairway and turned on the lamp when we made out the shadowy shapes on the upper level.

The silhouettes revealed themselves as large, leather bound bulky armchairs and couches facing the tall windows so the former occupants could look out across the once scenic marina. The upper floor was a spacious lounge area, obviously for upper crust patrons to spend their not so easily earned money on the same products but at increased prices. Maybe that was me being cynical to an age that was now forgotten. Money, status, upbringing and all that shit had now reverted to basic caveman type existence.

The lounge walls and ceilings were painted white with a brown, varnished wooden floor running out to an observation deck beyond the windows. White stools surrounded circular shaped tables that were fixed around the cylindrical, vertical building supports, which disappeared into the roof. The dim lamp light projected our shadows onto the whitewashed walls, making us look like stick thin cartoon creatures.

My sodden feet squelched on the wooden deck and I shivered inside my wet clothes. Smith trod warily forward, slightly in front of me, with Spot sniffing new scents and straining at the end of his leash.

The upper deck was circular shaped with the bar and restaurant serving area situated in the center with the lounge running around the outside like Saturn’s ring. Smith followed the ring route beyond the bar and stopped outside the glass fronted marina gift shop. We studied the wares on offer inside the darkened window. Faded towels and bland souvenirs were displayed across the length of the bay window.   

“Fancy buying a plastic lobster?” I asked.

Smith snorted. “I was thinking more of decking ourselves out in some free, dry clothes.”

“Good call.”

Smith swung the hatchet blade and hit the door between the jamb and the handle. The thin metal fixing in the jamb buckled under the blow and glass door swung inward. Breaking and entering was obviously one of Smith’s former life skills.

“The shop’s open for business.” Smith gestured for me to lead the way with the barrel lamp.

I stepped through the doorway, holding the lamp in front of me like it was some kind of protective laser beam. The shop interior was decked out like you were aboard some old pirate ship, with Jolly Roger skull and crossbones flags covering the varnished wooden walls. I wondered why anything to do with the sea had to have this tacky, maritime décor. The display cabinets by the cash register held lighters and finger rings proclaiming to love the Empire Marina. I took a couple of the lighters but left the rings alone.

Racks of peaked caps and sun shades stood to the left and center of the cash register. I spotted some clothing hangers beyond the racks and trudged towards them. Smith grabbed a towel from the display and rubbed his hair.

I slipped off the cartoon gator knapsack and tore off my wet clothes. Smith threw me a towel and I dried off my naked body.

“Well, we can either dress as a camp sailor or a comedy pirate,” I said, studying the clothing on the hangers.

“I’ll take camp sailor,” Smith mumbled, stripping off his wet clothes.

“Me too.” I pulled a black and white striped top from a hanger.

“Try and choose dark clothes,” Smith said. “The zombies don’t pick up on them so easy.”

I nodded. In all the time we’d been together he hadn’t told me that little gold nugget of information before. But that was Smith. He normally let you work things out for yourself and guided you if needed.

I picked out a black top with horizontal white stripes and some black cargo pants. Smith chose similar attire and we looked like a pair of gay sailors ready to go out on the lash. We both tried on a pair of blue deck shoes to replace our walking boots and I rubbed Spot dry with the towel.

“Do you want to grab any souvenirs whilst we’re here?”

Smith raised an eyebrow before placing a string of purple colored beads around my neck.

“All yours, Wilde Man.”

I picked up a folding pocket knife from the shelves and slid it into my pocket. Not much of a weapon but it may have come in handy for close quarters combat. I picked up the cartoon gator knapsack and swapped the contents into a black, day sack with larger, more solid shoulder straps. I discarded the soaked maps and useless shot gun shells. 

We walked out of the store in our dry, clean clothes and stopped in the doorway when we heard a voice calling from the lower level.

Chapter Nineteen

“Hello?” the voice called from the bottom of the stairway.

Smith gave me a quizzical glance as we moved to the top of the staircase. He’d transferred the hatchet from his old pants to the new ones but now pulled it out of his belt and held it at the ready. Spot gave one shrill bark in response to the caller, his hackles raised on the back of his neck and he strained against the leash in Smith’s hand.

“Easy boy,” Smith cooed to the dog. “Hello,” he called back in a louder voice.

“Are you infected?” The voice was English, clipped and posh like the Queen.

“No, we’re not bit, are you?” I responded.

“Thank goodness for that,” the voice called back. “Me and my wife have been holed up here in the marina for God knows how long. Have you got any food?”

Smith and I trudged down the staircase. I shone the lamp into the guy’s face as soon as we saw him at the bottom of the staircase. He was a middle aged, overweight bald guy, wearing a pair of glasses, the lenses reflecting in the lamp light.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Smith asked the question to what I was exactly thinking.

Smith didn’t fuck about and I was sure he’d stick the hatchet blade into the guy’s skull if he thought he posed us any threat.

The guy looked timid and shuffled on his heels and I noticed he was dressed in some light blue coveralls. He held a Colt revolver in his right hand, not knowing whether to point it at as or not.

“Drop the weapon, friend,” Smith barked like a bone fide New York cop that he once was.

The fat guy complied and the hand gun clattered to the floor.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Smith demanded.

“Err…my name is Simon Bathgate,” the guy stammered. “I mean you no harm. Me and my wife have been on our boat for months now, waiting for the authorities to show up. We saw you walking across the harbor. My wife thought you were infected and sent me to investigate…”

“There are no authorities, pal,” Smith cut him short. “There isn’t anything no more.”

“Is the infection everywhere?” Bathgate asked, in a hushed voice.

“It sure is,” I said. “How many have you got in your party?”

“Just me and my wife. We rented the boat for a fishing vacation in the summer but we ran into trouble and stayed on our boat, only going to the store in town when we needed food.”

“Have you been attacked by the zombies?”

“Zombies? Is that what you call them?” Bathgate’s eyebrows rose high above the lenses of his glasses. “Yes, a few times but I managed to shoot them with the revolver. There isn’t so many of them on this side of the canal but loads on the other bank.”

“Tell me about it,” Smith grunted. “We had to swim across that damn canal and nearly drowned halfway over.”

“They keep trying to get across the water and sometimes succeed. They walk along the bottom of the canal and come onto the harbor.”

“How many weapons have you got?” Smith asked.

“Only that one, I’m afraid,” Bathgate said, pointing to the gun on the floor.

Smith walked over to the revolver, bent down and picked it up. He rolled it over in his hand then gave it back to Bathgate.

“Just keep the pointy end away from us,” he muttered.

Bathgate slid the revolver into his coverall pocket.

“Are you planning on staying here long?” he asked.

“No,” Smith snapped. “We’re going to sleep here the night and we’ll be on our way tomorrow morning. We have to be someplace.”

“Anywhere special?”

“Not for the people who are there.”

“Do you mind if my wife and I tag along?”

“Yes, I do mind and no, you and your wife can’t tag along.”

I gave Smith a glance. I didn’t know why he was being so harsh on this guy.

Bathgate nodded with a look of disappointment on his ruddy face.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it. Good luck.” Bathgate turned and headed towards the door.

I followed him. I wanted to make sure that the door was barricaded. The chair I’d placed in front of it was obviously an inadequate defense.

Bathgate took a small flashlight from his pocket and shone the beam down the corridor. I followed in his wake. He turned to me as he reached the door.

“I expect you two have seen some horrible things over the last few months but I would have thought you’d want to stick together with the remaining survivors.”

“It’s nothing personal,” I said. “We have to rescue someone who’s been abducted. Smith doesn’t want anybody else tagging along in case they get hurt.”

Bathgate nodded and disappeared through the door into the darkness outside. I closed the door and shunted a heavy wooden table in front it. I was satisfied the table blocked the door from opening inwards.

I thought about what Bathgate had said. Maybe we were better off going our separate ways. Smith and I couldn’t afford to drag our heels; we were already a long way behind the boat men.

Smith sat at one of the tables in the downstairs bar, nursing a glass of his expensive rum with the barrel lamp at his feet. Spot lay stretched out on the ground next to his stool. The lamp light illuminated Smith’s face with an eerie, orange glow and made him look twenty years older, highlighting the lines on his forehead and around his eyes. The ageing process was another factor against us. What would happen when we were too old and weak to defend ourselves? That scenario was, of course, if we lived to old age.

Smith lit a cigarette and exhaled smoke across the lamp light beam.

“Did you think I was a bit harsh on that guy?” he sighed.

“Maybe, but I see your point.” I moved to the bar counter and took down a glass from the shelf.

“We can’t afford passengers on this trip, kid.”

I nodded and walked back to Smith’s table and poured myself a generous measure of rum. I ruffled Spot’s head and sat on the stool next to Smith.

“We can’t risk slowing up and Billy Bathtub, or whatever his name is will be a burden we don’t need.”

I sniggered and sipped the rum. It tasted smooth until the after burn hit my chest.

“It’s got some kick, huh?”

I nodded and thought about the living humans we’d met since our first meeting in my pal, Pete’s trashed apartment.

“I wonder how many normal, uninfected people are left in the world, right now,” I mused.

Smith turned his head and gave me his frightening stare.

“You can’t think like that,” he growled. “You can’t think too much about the past or too far into the future. Just do the shit that needs to be done at the time.”

I nodded and took a smoke from the pack.

“We’ve done well to survive this long, kid.”

We drunk our rum and Smith poured us a refill. I went back upstairs to the store and took some beach blankets and cushions we could use to sleep on. I lay a blanket on the floor for Spot to sleep on and made up my makeshift bed next to him. Smith piled his blankets and cushions next to his stool and turned off the lamp.

We talked in the darkness; Smith kept refilling his glass and seemed to be in a reflective mood.

“So, what’s the plan for tomorrow?” I sighed, my eyelids heavy with fatigue.

“We’ll sneak out of here at first light and find a decent boat,” Smith croaked. He sounded as tired as I felt.

Spot already snored in the midst of sleep on top of his blanket. I listened to Smith’s voice ramble on, although I couldn’t make out all the words. He slurred his speech the more rum he consumed and talked about things in his former life.

Sleep wrapped its gentle hand around me and I drifted to a place where no zombies and bad things existed. I didn’t know how long I was out for but sprang immediately awake when I heard a sound. I had evolved some kind of inner danger alarm, which was booming at full volume inside my head.

Chapter Twenty

I flicked off the blanket and sat up, listening for sounds in the darkness. Moonlight shone through the windows and I saw Spot still curled up sleeping. He was normally alert but I guessed fatigue dulls the senses of even the most vigilant creature.

The little dog lifted his head off the blanket when I stood. He must have sensed the movement, even though I was silent. Smith snored with a blanket half draped over him, lying on the floor under the table.

I touched Spot’s head and hoped he’d stay calm. I didn’t want him barking and giving away our position. We weren’t sure how zombie’s senses worked and if they could see in the dark or operated by smell alone. I crouched low and moved to the corridor. My first thought was the table barrier hadn’t held the outside door. The corridor was too dark to see down and I didn’t dare go through there with no light and no weapon.

Spot trotted behind me and sniffed the air. He didn’t seem agitated or threatened and I wondered if the danger was just my subconscious imagination. We were sleeping in a strange place and had a worse day than normal. Maybe it was stress, maybe it was shock.