The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone (34 page)

The multi pierced barman in the second club we ventured into produced a shot gun from under the counter and told us to stop asking questions and leave immediately. A slow talking man mountain of a guy wouldn’t even allow us access to the third bar we tried. The giant said we looked like a bunch of trouble makers to him.

A seemingly hopeless task lay ahead of us. Smith and I had come all this way, fighting our way through a total shit storm but now it looked as though we were going to fall at the final, impossible hurdle.

Chapter Fifty-Five

“Okay, we need to reevaluate our planning,” Smith suggested, as we slumped at a table inside a small bar.

Headlong surprisingly bought us a round of beers without complaining. I sipped the long neck bottle and waited for Smith to tell us about his new strategy.

“Headlong said that the girls don’t come out until after dark, right?”

Headlong nodded.

“So we start the search again during the evening.”

I breathed a sigh of frustration. “That will only leave us a few hours to find Batfish.”

“It doesn’t mean we sit around doing nothing,” Smith continued. “We use the time to form Plan B.”

“Which is?”

“We need to find ourselves some weapons, cash, a vehicle and secondary route out of here in case it all goes to rat shit.”

“How do we do that, buddy?” Headlong asked, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

“I had a big bag of cash on my boat before you guys took it,” Smith snapped in reply. “And we had a load of weapons with us. Those guys took the lot. There must be somewhere that the dock crew stashes all the non consumable goods that comes in from the river?”

Headlong cocked his head to one side, deep in thought.

“What do we need cash for?” I asked.

“We may need to pay for information and we may need to pay to meet the girls in question. You’ve seen what people are like here. Everything has a price and we don’t have nothing else to trade.”

Headlong glanced down at the table but jabbed a finger in Smith’s direction.

“I seen those dock guys dragging some boxes onboard that paddle steamer when I came up here once. We had to wait before we could moor up while they unloaded a yacht and I noticed those guys stowing these metal boxes on that steamer.”

“Yeah, it makes sense,” Smith said, nodding. “I doubt if Lazaru would store everything at his bar. He sends someone down to the docks every time he needs cash, guns, booze or tins of food. That’s how he keeps control of the population. The incoming girls probably get taken to their respective clubs or safe houses straight away.”

“What about that damn pig meat?” I chipped in.

“Ah, I know that gets taken to the old brewery, right by the docks. They put it in the cellars to keep it fresh then they grind it up for burgers and hot dogs or cut it onto ribs.”

“Then what happens to it?” I was curious.

Headlong shrugged. “I suppose it gets sold on to restaurant owners, burger stands and anyone else with cooking facilities, I guess.”

“No wonder everyone looks so sick here if they’ve been eating that crap,” I bleated. “Those pigs were fed dead zombies before they were slaughtered. That could possibly trigger the disease to anyone who eats that pork.”

Smith raised his hand to silence my rant. “How did your crew get paid for the cargo you delivered, Headlong?”

Headlong took a swig of his beer before he answered. “We got a green light in the city. As much booze and as many girls as we could handle, for a limited time only, of course. The better the cargo, the longer our free period lasted.”

“So how did the bar owners and girls define whether you were delivery crew or not?”

“You got given a credit note or more like a piece of orange card with a date stamped on it and signed by Buggy. That’s the dude with the orange suit that you saw in Lazaru’s office. He’s kind of his right hand man and takes care of all the deliveries coming into Orleans.”

“Who is Lazaru anyhow?” I asked. “I mean what was he before all this started?”

Headlong sniffed. “I heard he was some kind of gang leader in the city. I do know he had his own private army and he’s still got most of his guys with him. I guess that’s how he managed to clean up his patch and keep the zombies out.”

“Look, guys, we’re moving away from our objective here,” Smith interrupted. “We need to get close to that paddle steamer and get onboard.”

“Couldn’t we just rob someone?” Headlong suggested. “We could rob someone who has a few dollars and a gun.”

“We could but that sounds like a plan with ‘
fuck up
’ written all over it,” Smith sighed.  “I’ve seen what they do to people in this town who get caught stealing. Anyhow, I’ve got a better idea. They use vehicles to transport the meat from the docks to the old brewery presumably?”

“Yeah,” Headlong said.

“Good, then here’s what we’re going to do.”

Smith leaned forward across the table and told Headlong and I his proposal. I must admit, I was slightly skeptical we were going to pull it off.

We downed our remaining beer and left the bar. Headlong led the way through the narrow backstreet towards the old brewery. I tried to remember the route to get my bearings in case we had to retrace our steps. We took a right and I saw a sign telling me I was now on Toulouse Street but the buildings didn’t look any different from Bourbon Street. Becoming lost in the French Quarter seemed a fantastically easy feat to accomplish.

Spot got his drink from a puddle in the gutter then proceeded to take a piss up one of the balcony support poles. 

The walk to the old brewery took us around fifteen minutes. Not too much time wasted. I was disappointed that the old brewery wasn’t an old, colonial style building with dusty, wooden rum barrels in the windows. It was a vast, block shaped, cream colored construction, renovated into a series of modern shops, although now used for meat storage inside the lower levels.

Headlong showed us the way around the back of the building, where the transport docks were situated. A white GMC truck was parked next to a windowless, gray shack with a grubby ‘
Office
’ sign on the door. Headlong opened the door and walked inside the shack. Ten seconds later he returned with the keys to the truck.

“I know Sammy is supposed to be in charge of keeping this truck in working order,” he said, tipping us a wink. “I know Sammy is supposed to keep that office locked but he never does. And I know where Sammy keeps the truck key hidden. Nobody ever comes around here so he thinks it’s safe to leave the office unlocked.”

Headlong was ranting on like he was a right smart ass and the guy was starting to piss me off again.

“Come on, let’s just get going, can we?” I pleaded.

Headlong drove while Smith and I rode in the back out of sight. We didn’t want to be seen by anyone freely driving around in one of Sammy’s vehicles, which were ultimately Lazaru’s vehicles. He turned out of the transport dock and hung a right, back along the road outside the old brewery’s main entrance. The truck interior smelled strongly of bleach or disinfectant, which on reflection was probably better than pig carcasses.

Smith leaned into the driver’s cab between the front seats. “All right, Headlong. Don’t park too close to the dock. We don’t want Sammy to see the truck and remember, keep him talking and away from the paddle steamer for as long as possible.”

“No worries, pal.”

I flinched at the fact Headlong was now part of our crew. I didn’t know how long our new found friendship or alliance or whatever it was would last.

He bumped over the railway crossing and pulled the truck over behind the left side of some single storey buildings near the dock but out of sight of where the Navy boat was moored. Headlong left the keys in the ignition and got out the driver’s door.

“Okay, I’m gone,” he whispered. “Don’t be too long in there.” He closed the door and hobbled off towards the docks.

I tied Spot’s leash around the back of the head rest on the passenger seat and followed Smith out of the side sliding door. We looped around the side of the one storey buildings and hurried across the open ground towards the paddle steamer. We took cover in a small clump of trees, slightly to the left of where the Navy boat was secured. I saw Headlong talking to Sammy and his two friends further along the dock.

They moved from where they stood a few minutes later and Headlong led them all aboard the Navy boat. I wondered how he’d managed to persuade them all to leave their post at once. Probably with the usual Headlong bullshit no doubt.

Headlong disappeared down into the lower deck cabin and Sammy and his cronies followed.

“Come on, kid, let’s move,” Smith hissed.

We abandoned our cover and headed for the paddle steamer. The old vessel was huge, at least 250 feet long. I hoped we’d find what we were looking for in quick time. Access to the gangway was roped off with nothing more than a thin cord bound across the walkway. Smith gripped the gangway rails and vaulted over the top of the restrictive barrier. I did the same, careful not to snag my foot on the rope, an action that would undoubtedly send me head first into the gushing drink below.

We entered the steamer on the second deck but I felt sure the dock guys wouldn’t load heavy cargo on any other level. Guys in a position where their work goes unchecked nearly always go for the easy option. Smith led the way through an interior doorway. I followed him into what would have been the plush dining or cocktail area. Windows on either side of the spacious, rectangular room provided a view of the dock on the port side and the Mississippi river on the starboard side. We stood centrally inside the room and Smith was looking to our right. 

Chairs and tables were stacked on top of one another against the wall at the back of the steamer, blocking an exit to the outer deck.

Numerous metal ammunition boxes containing small packages and belts of rounds lay in front of the furniture stack. Several large, metallic black, bank cash boxes sat in the middle of the room and an array of hand guns, rifles and semi automatic weapons were laid out individually on the red patterned carpet to the right of the floor space. It was like an Aladdin’s cave for an arms dealer.        

“Keep away from those windows,” Smith warned and moved towards the pile of weapons.

I glanced to the left side of the room and saw boxes piled high with food tins slightly visible through rips in the cardboard. Kilo bags of various white powders sat stacked on a shelf to the left of the food tins. I moved slowly towards the heap of powders and glanced back at Smith. He was busy loading a magazine for a hand gun so I left him to it. I slipped one of the bags of white powder from the shelves and shoved it down the front of my pants.

“Come on, Wilde Man,” Smith hissed. “Quit fucking around and help me load some of these weapons. Best to stick with hand guns for the moment, rifles will be too difficult to carry around on foot.”

“Why do you think Lazaru stores all this gear here?” I muttered.

“It makes sense,” Smith said. “There’s probably more stuff loaded on the other decks. This way he can keep the food stocks and cash levels low to keep the people down. You’ve seen the state of them. Most of the street people look like they’re all hooked on junk. Keep the people down and hooked on dope, they’re easier to control. Feed them dribs and drabs and they stay grateful. Besides, I’ll bet you a penny to a pound of shit this fucking steamer is primed and ready to sail away at a few moments notice if the shit hits the fan. Lazaru and his goons can just sail into the sunset if the place ever gets overrun. There’s enough food, cash, dope, guns and ammo to start again someplace else.”

“He’s made his own kind of economy and we’re sitting right here in the stock exchange,” I sighed, gazing over steamer’s contents.

“Well, fuck Lazaru and his false economy,” Smith spat. “Okay, hat’s off to the guy, he’s done better than most of the poor assed fuckers we’ve met along the way by fencing off a part of the city but he’s still ruling it like some kind of gang land run place.”   

We loaded several different magazines and gathered together some spare ammunition. Smith opened one of the cash boxes and we saw it was half filled with wads of ten and twenty dollar bills. The black cash boxes were rectangular shaped, and around three feet long by a foot wide and a foot deep. The boxes were left unlocked, not too much need for anti-theft security now. I guessed they used to be the regular apparatus used when moving cash in transit from stores to banks and vice versa.  

“Put the weapons and ammo into the box,” Smith ordered.

We piled the hand guns, spare magazines and ammunition on top of the cash and closed the box.

“That’s us. Come on, let’s get out of here,” Smith whispered. He lifted the handle on the side of the box and nodded for me to do the same the other side.

The cash box was heavier than I thought it was going to be and I struggled to hoist it off the deck. I thought I was going to slip a disc or pull a muscle in my back as we struggled to maneuver the box out of the room and onto the upper deck.

We shimmied along to the gangway with the heavy container between us, Smith going backwards and me heading forwards. I looked at the roped cordon and wondered how the hell we were going to lift the damn box over the barrier, which had been spun like a spider’s web around the guard rails.

I heard voices to our left and turned my head in time to see Sammy and his crew of two emerge from the lower cabin on the Navy boat, onto the upper deck, only yards from where we stood.

Chapter Fifty-Six

Smith looked at me and nodded his head slowly forward, gesturing for us to put down the box on the gangway. I complied and we slowly lowered the cash box without a sound. I jabbed my thumb back towards the storage cabin we’d just come from, to indicate my intentions. I thought we may be able to hide out for a while until the dock crew was otherwise engaged with some other task.