The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers (13 page)

“Maybe later,” I snapped. “Let’s concentrate on getting this gas first, okay?”

Kell made a face like a naughty school kid but nodded and turned back to the gas station.

I looked over the place. Pieces of engines and a small can of oil lay by the front door. The drain piping was detached from the wall and the roof missed more than a few tiles. It looked like the gas store had seen better days.

“Hello?” Smith called out. “Is anybody here?” Smith drew his Desert Eagle and Kell’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

“Does he always take this long to answer?” I asked.

Smith shook his head. It just felt wrong and if we didn’t need gas, I’d have suggested getting the fuck out of there.

“It doesn’t look much of a gas station,” Kell said. “I could use a pack of cigarettes right now. Hasn’t it got a store or something?”

“Nah, nothing like that,” Smith said. “He was yapping to me one day about how he used his truck to tow people that broke down on the Interstate, back there,” he nodded with his head. “He’d bring their cars here and fix them. He said it paid well.”

“He was a bit of a grease monkey, huh?” Kell smiled.

“Something like that.”

We sharply turned our heads at a noise from inside the garage. Something scraped, across a hard floor. Smith held his finger to his lips and trod slowly forward. He put his left hand on the front door handle. The door creaked opened as he pushed. The interior was dark and a stench of rotting meat attacked my senses. It didn’t look good but no other vehicles stood out front, indicating nobody was around except maybe the garage owner.

“Hello?” Smith yelled into the open door.

Then we heard a moan like a cow.

“Oh shit, it’s one of them,” Kell wailed.

“He does have a dog,” Smith said. “A big bastard.”

The scraping noise came again followed by an echoed clatter. Kell took two steps back. A shuffling sound approached from the darkness inside. I was just glad it wasn’t dark outside otherwise I’d have turned and run by now. Smith raised the Desert Eagle as the shuffling came nearer.

A thin, little man with wispy gray hair and a long beard, dressed all in denims, shuffled through the doorway. At first I thought he was okay but then I heard that moan again. As he stepped into the light, I saw a huge wound on his neck above a piece of skin flapping like it had been peeled away. The fronts of his denims were streaked with dry blood.

“Is it him?” I asked.

Smith nodded and leveled the Desert Eagle. “Yeah, it’s him,” he said and then blew the zombie’s brains out the back of his head.

Eazy jumped out of the driver’s seat of the camper and tried the gas pump. “Nothing, it’s dead,” he called over.

“Let’s see if we can find that generator,” Smith said, replacing his Desert Eagle.

I ran over to the VW and took the flash light from my rucksack. I didn’t fancy groping around the gloomy interior of the garage guys living quarters.

“He said he used to fix up the cars out back,” Smith muttered.

“I saw a barn type building at the back of the garage when we drove in,” I said.

“Okay, let’s give it a try. You coming too, tough guy?”

“Yeah, I’ll come along for the buzz,” Kell tried to pretend he wasn’t crapping his pants.

Smith turned and gave me a small wink. It looked and felt like Smith and I were something of an unlikely team now. I clicked on the flash light as we stepped over the dead garage owner lying in the doorway.

I flashed the beam around the pokey front room. The interior of the property was in keeping with the exterior. Huge cobwebs shrouded the corners and hung like pleated sails from the ceiling. A couple of wooden stools lay overturned on the floor next to the kind of table you see outside a cheap diner. The place stunk of a combination of body odor, engine oil, grime and rotten meat.

“Jesus, this guy didn’t exactly live like a prince, did he?” Kell said what I was thinking. He pulled back the curtains but the grime caked windows let little light through.

Smith was shining his pen torch over a small TV set in the corner of the room. He was flicking buttons and trying to turn on the set. He turned to the light switch to his left and flicked it on and off with no success.

“Power is definitely out,” he said. “We’ll have to look for that generator.”

I didn’t fancy rummaging around in the dark, grubby, stinking little hovel. “Wouldn’t it be out back, Smith?” I hoped we could skip the game of hunt the generator.

“You check the barn at the back and I’ll have a scout around in here,” Smith seemed to sense my wariness.

I pressed on through the front room followed by Kell. He had made his choice to follow me instead of Smith. Two doorways lead from the front room. Smith stood by the one to the right and the other lay straight ahead. Smith seemed keen to look around the rest of the house for some reason. I wondered if the old fart had a bit of cash tucked away somewhere that Smith knew about. I plumped for the door straight ahead and Smith disappeared through the door on the right.

The building was wider than it was deep so there wouldn’t be much space between myself and the back door. The kitchen lay beyond the front room and I was relieved to see daylight streaming through the back windows. I stepped slowly through the filthy kitchen. The refrigerator door hung open and millions of flies buzzed around excitedly.

“What the hell is that?” Kell whined behind me.

I swung around and looked where he pointed. A dark, bulky shape lay on the floor. I shone the flash light beam at the outline and nearly threw up. A dead Rottweiler dog lay on its side with the skin of its stomach ripped apart and peeled back. The dog’s half eaten guts spread over the floor. I gagged. Now I knew where the stench came from.

“That old fucker was eating his dog,” Kell wailed.

“Come on,” I said. “I need some fresh air before I puke.”

We carried on through the kitchen to the back door and I’d have had no hesitation breaking it down if it was locked. The outdoor fresh air was sweet but the stench of death was still in my nostrils. The barn was only twenty yards from the back door and I braced myself before entering.

The barn entrance consisted of two large wooden sliding doors in the middle of the wall facing us. Kell slid one back and I readied myself with the golf club. I couldn’t trust myself to hit a rush of zombies with the Beretta. No zombies or animals galloped out of the barn but I still gasped at the scene inside.

Chapter Sixteen

The barn interior was roughly the size of a football pitch and lined nose to tail with sports cars, from Porsches to Ferraris, executive models of Lexus’ and Cadillac’s and SUVs of all kinds. The vehicles gleamed like they were on a showroom forecourt and parked in neat rows.

“Look at this,” I said. “This guy had to be seriously loaded to afford all these motors.”

“He wasn’t loaded,” said a voice from behind us, “just connected.” Smith stood outside the back door with a canvas bag thrown over his shoulder.

“There must be over two million dollars worth of vehicles in there,” Kell said, oblivious to Smith’s presence. “I wouldn’t mind having one of those big Caddies.”

“What do you mean, he was connected?” I asked, turning to Smith.

Smith sighed and walked a few paces towards us. For one moment, I thought he was going to pull his gun. He had been acting a little shady since we arrived at the garage.

“Okay, if you must know, I don’t suppose it matters now anyway,” he mumbled. “The old guy was called Wes, Wesley Stokes. He was one of the best car ringers in the business. One of these babies would go missing in Downtown New York,” he pointed to the cars, “they’d bring them here and old Wes would change the VIN, number plates, security codes, the lot. The damn motor would be clean as a whistle. The company, my company would sell them on to car dealers and wise guys back in New York or New Jersey.”

“So, why are there so many here?” I asked.

Smith shook his head. “I don’t know but I did hear talk of a new used car dealership opening up in Atlantic City. Maybe they were going to transport the lot down there.”

“And your company is into lots of these kinds of deals?” I was beginning to get the picture of Smith’s so called company. Car theft, debt collecting, probably murder. The guy was so crooked he made Al Capone look like Mother Theresa.

“I never said I was a choirboy,” Smith gave that wink again.

“What’s in the bag?” I held his stare.

“Something I had to collect.”

I knew he wasn’t going to tell me. I mistakenly thought Smith and I were a team. I knew it was too good to be true. Smith had an ulterior motive for coming to this place.

“Come on, let’s find this God damn generator and get gassed up. This place stinks.”

Smith moved to a small outhouse attached to the rear of the garage. I hadn’t noticed it was there but Smith instinctively opened the creaky wooden door and pointed inside. I took a peak and saw a gleaming generator sitting in the middle of the dirt floor. I gave Smith a disgusted look; he knew exactly where the generator was but wanted Kell and I out of the way while he grabbed the old geezer’s stash of whatever was in the bag.

“Go on, start the bitch up,” Smith motioned.

Kell moved forward into the outhouse and knelt by the generator while Smith held the door open. Kell seemed to know what he was doing. He primed the fuel, turned the key and the generator spluttered into life.

The back windows lit up as the interior lights shone through and a motion sensor spotlight dinked into action above our heads over the barn doors.

“That’s the power back on,” Smith said above the roar of the generator. “Let’s get ready to go.”

Smith led the way back through the house and out the front to the gas pumps. I held my breath as we moved through the kitchen and didn’t look at the mess of the mutilated dog’s corpse. Smith nodded at Eazy who sat with his feet on the dash of the camper. Eazy jumped out the cab and jammed the gas pump nozzle into the VW tank. The pump whirred as the gas flowed through it into the camper tank.

Julia leaned against the side of the camper letting the breeze blow her hair. I gave her a smile that she returned.

“All quiet on the western front?” I quipped.

She giggled slightly. “Yes, all quiet. No bad guys out here.”

Kell stood next to us with his hands in his pockets looking pleased with himself.

“Did you find anything to put the petrol in, Kell?” Julia asked him.

“What?”

Julia looked to the heavens. “A gas can?” She said in a slow mocking voice.

“Oh, err…no, I’ll go and have another look.” He scooted off back into the house. I remembered seeing jerry cans lying by the barn.

I seized the moment. “Julia, are you and him…?” I nodded after Kell as he stepped over the dead zombie and disappeared through the front door.

She giggled again. “Good God, no we’re not an item,” she snorted and gave me a mock look of disgust. “I think he’s sweet on me but I’ve just come out of a relationship and I don’t really want to get involved with anyone, especially not with all this going on.” She motioned around with her hand.

I didn’t mean to show it, but must have looked disappointed.

“That doesn’t mean to say I won’t have any relationships ever again.” She gave me a sly sexy look with her head tilted forward, biting her bottom lip. “We should exchange numbers before we split up and you never know, we could hook up sometime.”

I felt my cheeks flush. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

The ground seemed to tremble as a rumbling, growling noise rattled across the open countryside.

“What the hell is that?” Julia asked.

“That sounds like a whole shit load of trouble,” Smith replied.

Chapter Seventeen

Around a dozen small, flat trucks and twenty high powered cruising bikes rumbled into view on the road beyond the garage, heading for the Interstate. We stood still and watched the procession approach.

“Who the hell are this lot?” Eazy asked above the noise.

The vehicles ground to a halt on the road outside the garage. A tall, lean guy, dressed in a sleeveless black vest and denim jeans jumped from the lead vehicle. He was followed by two shaven headed, thick set guys with tattoos around the side of their necks. The motor bike riders cut their engines and dismounted. More of the entourage exited their vehicles and slowly moved towards us in an approaching semi circle.

I shot Smith a nervous glance. These guys looked like they had some axe to grind. Smith sighed and looked to the ground. I knew that look of desperation.

“Hi, there,” the tall guy said. He seemed to be the leader of the mean looking band. My guess was they numbered around thirty. “What ya all doing here?” His accent was definitely from the south.

“Just gassing up,” Eazy said, still stood over the pump. “We’ll be out of here real soon.”

“Hell, don’t split on our account. We just got here and could use a little company.” He gave Julia a smile and waved at Donna and Batfish sitting in the camper.

“Look man, we don’t want no trouble,” Eazy said. “We’re on our way to the Big Apple and have had a hell of a journey so far.”

“Trouble? We don’t want no trouble,” the big guy held his arms wide as if appealing to a court. He turned and faced his sniggering comrades. “We don’t want no trouble, do we boys?”

“Hell, no,” one of the shaven headed guys agreed.

I hoped the VW gas tank would soon be full. The dials on the clunking old pump slowly churned around. I noticed the butt of a pistol grip poking from the top of the big guy’s waist band. Some of the others carried Ithaca shot guns and holstered hand guns. This band of desperados wasn’t your average survival convey.

“I’m Todd and these here are my boys,” the big guy pointed to the rest of his entourage. “Who’s this pretty lady, right here?” He looked at Julia. She didn’t answer and looked to the ground.

I felt as though I should say something, like telling Todd and his bunch of ugly bastards to back the fuck off. These guys were more dangerous than the undead.