The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Shaved Head opened the inner door and I immediately heard the horrendous sound of something mechanical grinding through another substance. The pungent stench of blood and death wafted from the room beyond. He waved me through the doorway with a slight smirk on his face that I found unnerving.

I stepped through the doorway and was met by a scene of carnage. The slaughterhouse was still in operation. Two guys dressed in white aprons stood in front of a row of hanging pig carcasses, suspended by metal hooks on a frame, running the width of the building. Both men held grinders and were spattered with blood from head to toe. They stopped cutting and looked over at me with quizzical expressions on their faces. Huge blast fans spun behind them, cooling the air.

I turned to look at Shaved Head, unsure which direction I should be heading.

“Do you like our little meat factory?”

I didn’t answer. I stood motionless, with my hands still on the top of my head.

“Everything has a price, my friend. This damn epidemic has been the making of folk like me.” He cackled showing his disgusting, brown teeth once again.

He motioned for me to take a metallic, ascending staircase to our right. I clanked up the steps, gazing up at the upper level. A row of small rooms that resembled wooden garden sheds flanked the right side of the wall. I guessed they were previously used as offices when the slaughterhouse was fully functional back in the day.

“Go on, keep going,” Shaved Head commanded, when we reached the top of the staircase. “Keep on to the door right at the end.”

I carried on slowly, shuffling along the gridded walkway and envisaged the slaughterhouse resembled the inside of a state prison. A meaty, bald guy dressed in a black vest and green camouflage pants stepped out from one of the doors onto the walkway in front of us. His beefy arms and shoulders were plastered with large tattoos. He looked at me with an initial expression of shock which turned to surprised pleasure when he noticed Shaved Head behind me. I stopped walking as the big guy blocked the walkway. He looked me up and down with a smirk on his chubby face. 

“Who’s this, Larry?”

“Some scraggy piece of shit Will found scratchin’ around in the parking lot.”

“What are you gonna do with him?”

“Put him in the hold until we sail up river to deliver the meat.”

“You’re taking him up to New Orleans?”

“Uhuh. The Trading Dog will give us something a little extra for this good lookin’ boy’s cute ass.” Shaved Head and the tattooed guy burst into fits of laughter.

I flinched and felt disgusted when Shaved Head slapped my buttocks with his free hand.

“He’s already dressed for the occasion,” Tattoos said, pinching my striped sailor’s shirt.

“We should be sailing in a couple of hours,” Shaved Head said. “We want to get that freshly cut meat into the city as soon as possible.”

“Okay, I may take a trip up there with you guys,” Tattoos said, nodding. “I could do with a piece of ass myself.”

“See you on the jetty later,” Shaved Head concluded.

Tattoos nodded and barged by me towards the staircase. Shaved Head shoved me forward along the walkway. I stopped when I came to the front wall and guessed the closed door to my left led to the holding room. Shaved Head unbolted the door from the outside revealing a dark, windowless, airless small room that reeked of stale piss and sweat. I guessed I wasn’t the first poor fucker to be incarcerated in that stinking hole.

Shaved Head waved the hand gun between me and the doorway. “In you go,” he chimed, with that awful grimace again.

I gave him an evil glare and begrudgingly entered the revoltingly pungent room.

“There’s a bucket in the corner if you need to take a dump,” Shaved Head said, nodding into the darkness.

The door slammed shut, plunging me into total blackness. The stench was as overpowering as the feeling of despair flooding through me. We hadn’t found Batfish and I’d landed myself in an even bigger heap of trouble. I heard the bolts clank across the door and not for the first time wondered what Smith was playing at. He better have had a good reason for leaving me in that cramped, piss infested, shitty box.

Chapter Thirty

Smith watched and winced as the guy beat Brett Wilde, first with the rifle butt and then with his fist. He felt sorry for the kid but he had to make sure how the entrance system to the slaughterhouse worked. Smith had a feeling that the sentry guy wouldn’t have a key to the building. These guys operated in order of priority, the lowest of the low got sentry duty. No way would they give the idiot outside a key to the door. Smith was sure if the shit hit the fan, they’d leave the guy outside to be eaten alive.

The shit kicker came back out of the building as Smith guessed he would. The guy looked pissed off and muttered obscenities as he marched back into the parking lot. The scoped hunting rifle he carried would make a useful weapon in Smith’s one man assault of the slaughterhouse.

He peeked around the corner, watching the shit kicker light a cigarette and relax back into his solitary mode, pretending to be an NFL kicker nudging his stone around the lot. Smith leaned the assault rifle against the corner of the building and dumped the heavy tools in a pile in the tufts of long grass.

“Time to die, fucker,” Smith whispered to himself.

He waited until the shit kicker faced the river bank to the east of the parking lot. Smith slowly crept from the corner with the plastic bag between his hands. The shit kicker continued punting his stones around the lot with his back to Smith. Smith ran in a crouching position, he was big but his footfalls made no sound. He held the bag open with both hands, the two handles facing the ground.

The sentry still didn’t notice his assailant as Smith crept close up behind him. Smith quickly slipped the plastic bag over the guy’s head and pulled the handles tightly together behind his neck. The guy made a muffled sound of shock and surprise, mainly incoherent inside the confines of the bag.

Smith held the handles tightly together with his left thumb and fingers. He wrapped his right arm around the shit kicker’s arms, locking them behind his back so the guy couldn’t reach up to the bag. Smith held on and avoided the backward kicks of the suffocating sentry.

The plastic formed a tight seal around the guy’s face as his breathing became increasingly rapid. His muffled yells were drowned out by the sound of the breeze rustling amongst the trees and the running river water. The scoped hunting rifle hung, swinging at his side, trapped between Smith’s vice like grip and the guy’s shoulder.

The sentry tried to gulp in air but only inhaled a warm plastic taste, his lungs burned; he felt his face flush before everything went black.

Smith kept hold of the bag handles for a couple of minutes until he was sure the guy hadn’t just blacked out. He dragged the body around the corner and dumped it in the long grass beside the weapons stash, leaving the bag over the guy’s head.

Smith picked up the rifle and looked down the sights, aiming at one of the truck’s driver’s side windows and adjusting the scope. He wouldn’t be firing at any targets too far in the distance. He checked the chamber and the ammo. When he was satisfied, he stood the rifle next to the assault weapon, leaning against the side of the building. He checked his pocket for the box cutter knife, the tool required for the next tactic in his one man operation.

Sweat trickled down Smith’s forehead as he moved to the tree beside the grimy window. He glanced up at the dirty pane and estimated a climb of around thirty feet. No problem for an ex-marine and former unofficial street lamp climbing champion when he was a kid growing up in Brooklyn.

The branches were solid and held Smith’s weight easily as he climbed without causing a sound. The main weapon in his armory was stealth and surprise. No way would the operation be successful if he was discovered, a sitting duck in the tree.

Smith doubted whether Batfish was still around. The weird Cajun guys had said their women had also been taken. These shit kicking guys on the Navy boat were obviously traders of some sordid kind.

The window was a little trickier to reach than Smith had anticipated. The thin branches scraping across the pane weren’t thick enough to support his weight. He thought about placing his foot on the narrow ledge beneath the glass but the wooden sill was rotten and crumbling from the frame.

Smith shuffled across the branches as close to the window as possible. He held onto the trunk with his left hand and retrieved the box cutter with his right. He leaned out towards the window and rubbed away a small circle of mold with his fingers. The room inside contained two desks and chairs but was otherwise empty. The door in the center of the room was luckily closed. Smith scraped away at the crumbling putty around the top of the pane with the knife until he felt the glass loosen from the frame.

The pane jolted forward and Smith held it in place on the ledge until he wrapped his fingers around the edge of the glass. He carefully removed the pane from the ledge and wedged it between the tree’s thick foliage. Stage one of the plan successfully completed.

Smith climbed back down the tree and retrieved the assault rifle and the scoped bolt-action. He had to ensure the slings didn’t snag on the branches while he was ascending the tree. Smith took his time, carefully hauling himself from branch to branch with the rifles closely slung over each shoulder.

He reached the spot opposite the glassless window frame and leapt from the tree branches towards the open, dark gap. He clamped his hands around the bottom of the frame. The rotten wooden ledge began to crumble under his weight.

“Shit!” Smith hissed and briefly glanced down to the ground below.

A fall of thirty feet with two loaded weapons wasn’t an experience he wanted to endure.

Smith gripped the inside of the window jamb, digging his elbows into the wood. He grunted with exertion as he hauled himself through the open window and into the room beyond.

Chapter Thirty-One

Sweat poured down my face and my back as I sat on the floor of the small cell. A boat trip to New Orleans seemed a somewhat appealing option compared to my current incarceration. At least the open river would provide me with some kind of escape options. I didn’t fancy spending the rest of my life as some surviving hot shot’s bitch in the city.

“You know he’s not coming to save you, don’t you?”

I knew the voice as my own, my alternative self taunting me again from the blackness of the cell.

“I was wondering when you’d show up.”

“I’m just here to keep you company.”

“Well, I don’t need it so just fuck off, okay?”

“That’s no way to talk to your oldest buddy.”

“I’m talking to myself.” I spat out a wheezy laugh. “Maybe I’m plain nuts, anyhow. Who would spot another madman in this world of lunacy?”

“Ah, quit feeling sorry for yourself. You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“Barely,” I snorted. “I haven’t felt alive for months. I feel like some husk or shell of the person I used to be.” I rested my head on my knees. The black cloud of depression washed over me and began to sink into my brain. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. You always appear at the worst possible moments and stand there fucking gloating most of the time.”

“Well…you’re more alive than these guys.” The shadow of my other self gestured across to the other side of the cell. I could just about make out several shapes of other figures sitting on the floor with their backs to the opposite wall.

“Who are they?”

“You don’t even remember me, Brett?” The female voice sent a chill down my spine.

“Julia? Is that you?” I hissed. My skin turned to gooseflesh even though I still sweated profusely.

The last time I saw Julia was when she plummeted to her death trying to follow me leaping across building roofs in Manhattan. She hadn’t made the jump and I still had the image of her wide eyes and the sound of her final scream etched into my brain.

“Of course it’s me. Did you forget me so quickly? I would have followed you anywhere, Brett. I wanted to be with you. I thought you were going to keep us safe.”

Tears welled in my eyes and I tried to gulp away a lump in my throat.

“I’m so sorry, Julia. I tried and failed,” I sobbed.

“Too damn right you failed.” Another deeper voice boomed from the blackness. “I don’t know why I agreed to follow your silly ass to New York.”

“Eazy? What happened to you?” Smith had recounted the sad tale of Eazy’s demise but I felt I had to ask for myself.

“I got tagged and ended it all before I turned into one of those damn ugly creatures,” he spat.

“We were all counting on you, Brett and you let us down.” Another voice I recognized hit me like a hammer to the chest.

“Rosenberg…I’m sorry, man,” I stammered with tears streaming down my cheeks.

“I didn’t even make it to New York,” said another female voice from the shadows. “You left me cold and dead in a shallow grave.”

My hands shook as I fumbled in my pants pocket for the lighter. I lit the flame and took in a huge, terrified gasp of hot, stale air at the sight of the figures glaring at me in the faint orange glow.

Donna sat furthest to the left, next to Rosenberg. Eazy sat between Rosenberg and Julia with Sherman lying at their feet. All of them still bore the horrific injuries they’d suffered in death. Donna’s face was gray and showing signs of decay. The skin was starting to peel from her once pretty face, revealing skeletal bones and teeth. Rosenberg was a bloody mess caused by the explosion which had ended his life. Eazy’s brains spilled down his right shoulder from a big hole in the side of his head. Half of Julia’s face was reduced to a mass of mashed, red pulp. Her right arm was missing and a few ribs protruded from a huge, open split running the length of her torso.