The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink (22 page)

I followed him and Cordoba out of the small control room and was glad to see the back of that
claustrophobic, confined space. Johnson’s corpse lay on his back on the ground in the corridor. His eyes remained open and two dead zombies, with bullet holes in their heads lay across his body. Johnson’s throat was ripped and torn in several places and an expression of sheer terror remained frozen on his face. The whole area was a mess of blood and gore.

I stepped over the prone bodies, following Smith and Cordoba down a separate passageway.
Smith held the map in one hand and his rifle in the other, glancing down at the document every few seconds. We couldn’t afford to become lost; we’d been too long inside the building already.

We followed the route back to the bottom of the staircase then turned down another corridor, situated to the right of some service elevators.
The whitewashed passageways all looked the same and it was impossible to distinguish each direction from the other. Unless you knew the area, or had a map, you’d struggle to find a favorable route amongst the maze of passageways.

At least ten minutes ticked by as we turned left and right along seemingly endless corridors.
We eventually arrived at a set of blue colored, double swing doors with circular windows situated at head height. A cold draft gusted through the narrow gaps at the bottom of the doors and I caught the smell of gas and motor oil.

“Is this it?” I asked.

Smith nodded and tried to peer through the grimy, circular windows. “Be careful and keep your wits about you. Remember Milner said this place was crawling with undead motherfuckers.”

“Got it,” I muttered. I wouldn’t be able to relax until we were back aboard that C-17 aircraft and up in the air again.

Smith refolded the map and put it away in his jacket. “Milner, we’re at your location and we’re entering the motor pool,” he said into his headset.

“Approach with caution, Smith,” Milner’s repl
ied. “There are more of these things turning up every minute. We’ve got quite a crowd down here.”

“Great!” I sighed as Smith pushed through the double doors. “What the hell are we getting ourselves into this time?”

Chapter Thirty

Smith, Cordoba and I trod slowly and cautiously down a concrete slope on the opposite side of the double doors. The air became considerably cooler and felt as though we were outdoors. The ramp declined down a wide corridor, a stationary forklift truck stood next to some metal freight containers to our right. A tall, entranceway, covered with strips of transparent vinyl sat in the wall on the right side at the bottom of the corridor.

I heard the sounds of moans and wails from many different voices the further we approached the entryway. Our pace slowed and I felt the rising sensation of fear. We moved towards the entrance and kept close to the adjacent wall. Smith raised his hand for us to stop and peered around the frame. He moved his head to take a look through the vinyl strips then turned back with an expression of concern on his face.

“What?” I whispered, fearing the worst.

“Milner was right. There’s a shit load of them in there.”

I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. Cordoba and I took a turn at having a quick look around the entranceway. Around one hundred zombies milled around a concrete floor space, which resembled and was roughly the size of an aircraft hangar. Halogen bulbs fixed amongst the high roof shone across dozens of vehicles of all shapes and sizes, parked up in neat rows around the edges of the floor space. 

“I wonder where Milner is,” Cordoba said. “What happens if we can’t get to him?”

“Let’s find out exactly where he is,” Smith said and clicked the radio talk button. “Milner, we’re going to have some trouble reaching you without getting noticed. Where exactly are you? It’s a big old space in there.”

We waited a few seconds in silence before Milner finally answered.

“Ah, we’re in some sort of transport office up a stairwell overlooking the whole area but we’re opposite the entrance right at the far side. We found our way here using our flashlights and didn’t have much of a clue where we were headed. We can’t move now without being spotted.”

Smith slumped against the wall. “We can’t get in and they can’t get out.”

“There’s no way we can get those fuel pumps going ourselves?” Cordoba asked.

Smith sighed. “Even if we could get them going, we can’t just leave Milner and his guys in there. We’ve got to figure out some way of getting them out of there.”

I rubbed my face, feeling fatigued once again. I tried to think of some method we could use to get to Milner. “Haven’t we got enough fire power to take out those zombies in there?”

“It’s nine guys firing in opposite directions against like a hundred undead,” Smith muttered. “And we don’t know how much ammo Milner and his crew have left.”

“We don’t have enough ammo either,” Cordoba chipped in. “We used a couple of mags back there near the generator room.”

My exasperation boiled over. “We can’t just stand here for the rest of time.”

“Amen to that, kid. If you’ve got any ideas, I’m all ears,” Smith muttered.

I took a hard look around the long corridor. Wooden pallets were stacked high in a corner and more freight containers were piled next to them.
I glanced at the forklift truck and back at the containers, then at a cage type crate that I guessed was used for transferring baggage. 

“What about using that forklift?”

“For what, stacking up zombies?” Smith snorted.

“No, I mean we could use the forklift to get across the ground between us and Milner.”

“Forget it, man. The battery is probably long dead.”

“Yeah, but they have a second back up battery that they leave on charge,” I said. I remembered Pete Cousins telling me all about forklifts, some time ago. Pete was a good friend of mine back in Brynston and drove forklifts for a living.
“With any luck, the spare battery will still be useable.”

“All right, it’s worth a try I suppose,” Smith admitted. “But we’ll have to be damn quiet. Those things in there will be out here like a shot if they hear us.”

We moved back up the corridor, towards the forklift.

“I thought you and Cordoba could maybe ride in that cage,” I pointed to the baggage crate. “I could raise you up on the forks out of harm’s way.
Then we could get Milner and his crew in the cage and maybe get back to this point. It may bide us a bit of time to get away from the motor pool. We could easily lose those zombies in the corridors.”

“What makes you think you’re going to drive?” Smith sounded shocked. “You know how to handle one of these things?” Smith slapped the
yellow and black frame of the driver’s cab.

“Sure I do,” I lied.
How hard could it be? I felt I’d been a bit of a passenger on this mission and wanted to do something to get involved.

“Let’s see if we can get it going first,” Smith said, opening a flap in the back of the forklift.

“The starter key or whatever you call it is still in place,” Cordoba said, looking through the cab’s side door.

The replacement battery stood by a charging station against the wall. I unplugged the leads and wheeled the battery over to the forklift. Smith and Cordoba pulled out the old battery and
I plugged in the replacement then closed the compartment flap.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Smith asked me.

I peered through the side window at the controls. “It’s been a while but I’m sure I can figure it out.”

“Listen, Wilde. We don’t have a lot of time for fucking around here,” Smith growled. “As soon as we fire that engine up, those fucking zombies are going to come flooding out here. We need to be on the money from the start.”

I thought about it. I knew it seemed stupid but I couldn’t back out, I’d already said I could drive a forklift and didn’t want to look an idiot now saying I couldn’t. I was sure I could work out how to drive one in quick time; after all, I wasn’t taking any sort of test.

“Sure, don’t worry about me, Smith. I’m at the races,” I said, trying to sound convincing.

Smith gave me a reproachful stare as though he could see right through me. Maybe I wasn’t a very good liar. I suddenly got the feeling the whole idea was a little half assed and was doomed to failure.

“We’ll get in the cage so we’re ready,” Smith said. “Remember, you’ll have to be quick and get us up in the air on those forks. We’ll do our best to keep them from opening up the cab from above you. Don’t freak out if you hear any shooting.”

“I’ll be okay,” I said, opening the forklift cab and hauling myself inside.

The cab
was enclosed on all sides with glass panels and stunk of oil, old stale sweat and sooty dust. I waited until Smith and Cordoba clambered inside the baggage cage before I turned the ignition key.

Chapter Thirty-One

To my surprise, some lights on the control panel lit up when I turned the key. I really thought the battery would
n’t work or some other problem would prevent the forklift from starting. I turned the key hard to the right and the engine roared into life. I glanced at the control panel and saw a wheel and several levers.

“Shit! What the fuck am I doing?” I bleated.

I tried the gas pedal. The engine roared louder but the damn forklift didn’t move. I studied the control but couldn’t work out how to move the thing. Smith was yelling something at me from inside the cage but I couldn’t hear what he was saying above the engine noise. I glanced up and saw several zombies negotiating their way through the vinyl flaps across the entranceway to the motor pool and heading our way. I had to get my act together and quickly.

I tried the two levers beside the driver’s chair but they only tilted the forks or moved them up and down. At least I knew what those controls did.
A loud bang on the left side window caused me to recoil to the right of the cab. I turned and saw Smith standing by the window with an angry scowl on his face.

“Take the fucking park brake off, you numb nuts!”

I felt sheepish and all I could muster in reply was a confused shrug.

“By the fucking steering wheel,” Smith yelled, jabbing his finger against the glass and pointing to a lever
to the left of the wheel. “Hurry it up, dick head!”

I pushed the lever forward and felt the whole truck jolt. Smith clambered back into the cage but the zombies shuffled along the corridor, nearer to our position. I tried the gas pedal again with a little too much pressure. The forklift shot forward and crashed into the freight containers next to the cage. I heard Smith roaring obscenities above the engine noise. He was calling me all the names under the sun.

I silently prayed as I pulled another lever on the steering wheel column towards me. To my relief, the truck moved backwards, away from the dented freight containers. I slowly maneuvered the forklift back and forward until the forks slid beneath the cage container. Smith glared at me through the windshield and Cordoba had a worried expression on her face. I felt a little more confident now as I knew how to operate the controls and what their functions were.

I slowly raised the cage and tilted the forks towards the cab so Smith and Cordoba wouldn’t fall out and the
metal container wouldn’t slide off the steel fork blades. Smith and Cordoba took out a few of the leading zombies in our path with single shots to the head when I slowly turned the forklift on a vertical axis to the corridor and raised the cage to a safe height of around eight feet off the ground. I rolled the truck forward, heading towards the motor pool entranceway.

Smith’s voice crackled in my earpiece, informing Milner of what we were doing. I hoped this operation was going to work. If I was hauled from the cab, Smith and Cordoba would be stranded inside the elevated cage.

A long haired, male zombie, wearing a set of filthy blue coveralls banged furiously at my left side window. He snaffled at the glass panel, leaving a sliver of brown blood and what looked like saliva, level with the side of my head. His gnarled finger nails scraped over the glass surface and I heard his roars reverberate around the cab.

Smith and Cordoba continued to eliminate some of the zombies heading towards us but the number of ghouls collecting around my side windows was causing me concern. I steered close to the stacked freight crates near the motor pool entranceway and crushed a few attackers against the containers.
They dropped to the ground but I wasn’t convinced I’d totally put them out of action. Even a crawling, crippled zombie was still a lethal threat.