The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers (3 page)

“Ah, fuck this,” Smith hissed and hit the gas pedal.

The lurching zombie in front of the car hit the hood with the sound of snapping twigs. He disappeared from view underneath the car. I heard a dragging, scraping sound and then felt the car jolt. I turned my head and looked out of the rear window. The zombie rolled over and over in the road like a bag of rags.

Smith hit the steering wheel with his fist. “If that ugly fuck has damaged my car, I’m going back there to kick his ass.”

“I think you just did,” I stammered.

We pulled into the hospital car park and slid into a free parking space but were immediately confronted by a bunch of armed guards, furiously waving us down.

“Didn’t you see the signs?” asked a big black guy. He looked worried and a trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face under the peak of his security hat.

“No, what fucking signs?” Smith snapped.

“They can’t let any more patients into the hospital at this time,” the guard said. “There are too many infected patients and they’re attacking people all over the place.”

“We aint patients, buddy. We’ve come to collect somebody,” Smith explained. “We’ll just be five minutes,” he said, getting out of the car.

I got out the passenger side, tightly clutching the golf club and looking in all directions for more zombies.

“Okay buddy, you got five minutes then you’re out of here,” the guard agreed and pointed us in the direction of the main doors.

Smith bent down and checked the front of the car for damage. He stood up holding a ragged, bloody bone inside a piece of cloth and made a face like it was a piece of dog shit.

“This was stuck in the grill. It doesn’t look like there’s no damage though. These things are fucking disgusting,” he said and hurled the bone across the car park.

The hospital was a large glass fronted, red brick building, standing amongst neatly trimmed lawns. We saw the pandemonium going on inside through the windows. Nurses and orderlies scuttled backwards and forwards, people crouched in pain, some of the fully infected casually moved around trying to bite anyone they could.

“This is going to be fun,” I said as we approached the glass doors.

The glass frontage must have been soundproof because when doors slid open the noise hit us like we’d walked onto the runway at JFK Airport. The waiting area was jam packed with over a hundred casualties, screaming in agony and frustration. All of them complained and yelled with a look of panic on their sweaty faces. Two security guards wrestled an infected man to the ground and tried to cuff him while he gnashed and snarled. Flustered nurses stomped up and down the waiting room and orderlies scurried between patients trying to patch them up.

“This is a bunch of crap,” Smith said.

We moved to the unoccupied enquiries desk and Smith pressed the bell. A minute or two ticked by before a thick set woman appeared from the back room and bustled behind the desk. She looked exhausted and ready to drop.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait in line with the others,” she sighed. “As you can see we’re bursting at the seams with fresh cases.”

Smith leaned forward on the desk. “Ah, yeah, we appreciate that, mam but we just want to know if one of our associates has been admitted into this fine establishment.” Smith gave her a smile that made him look like he was constipated. Politeness obviously wasn’t his strong point.

“Oh well, I’ll have to look at the register,” she sighed and her face sagged like she’d been asked to eat her own children. “The computers are down so we’ve had to revert to the old book system. We’re not supposed to give out such information but as this isn’t a great time, I’ll have a look for you. Name?”

“Err…Smith, Mr. Smith.”

“No, I…think she means the patients name,” I interjected. Smith gave me a look that told me to shut up. “The victim, no patients name is Marlon Keen,” I blurted. Smith turned back to the woman.

She thumbed down the register under K. There was a Keane but his first name was Roger.

“Sorry, no Marlon Keen.”

“What about Pete Cousins?” I asked.

The woman sighed and thumbed the list again. She shook her head and forced a smile. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

Smith sighed and gave me that look again.

“It’s possible they have been treated in reception and left if the injuries were not too serious,” the nurse chirped. “The orderlies are trying to administer first aid if the casualties are not seriously injured.”

It was a possibility but why wouldn’t they have returned to their apartment. Pete sounded scared on the phone. I was worried about what had happened to Pete and Marlon and what Smith would do if and when he found them.

“I’ll try Pete’s cell phone again,” I suggested.

“Yeah, you do that,” Smith growled.

Pete’s phone kept ringing out with no reply. I tried Marlon’s number and a patronizing voice told me it wasn’t possible to connect the call. I shrugged at Smith; I didn’t know what else to do.

“Can you think of anywhere they’d go?”

I shook my head. Where would they possibly have gone if they were injured and not at home or the hospital? Smith was getting pissed off; I could tell by the way he screwed up his face in frustration. The likely outcome would be me on the receiving end of a beating and thrown to the zombies if Smith didn’t find Pete.

“They could be at Buddy’s,” I blurted.

Smith gave me an inquisitive look.

“It’s a bar they use. They may have gone for a beer to try and ease the pain or something,” was all I could think of.

Smith sighed and turned back to the woman behind the desk. “What happens to these people when they get bit?”

The woman bent closer to Smith and kept her voice low. “They generally end up like that guy on the floor over there,” she gestured with her chin to the infected man the security guards were wrestling on the floor and now successfully cuffed.

“Generally?”

“Well, all of them I’ve seen, I’m afraid.”

A pinch faced doctor with thin wispy hair and glasses perched at the tip of his nose, breezed behind the desk next to the woman. He looked harassed and exasperated and shuffled through the register.

“Hey doc, what is this outbreak, then?” Smith asked.

The doctor sighed and didn’t look up. “It’s some kind of flu. That’s all we know at the moment. I don’t know why the infected are so aggressive towards others.” His voice was soft and nasal.

“We’ve seen these crazy bastards out there eating people. You can’t tell me that’s just good old fashioned flu?” Smith growled.

The doctor snapped the register shut and looked at Smith. “I don’t have the answers you are looking for, I’m afraid.” He stomped away into the backroom.

I gazed out through the windows and saw more infected zombies streaming across the car park towards the hospital. A couple of the brown uniformed security guards ran through the doors with their hand guns drawn.

“We can’t hold them back! There’s too many of them and they’re all headed this way,” one of the guards yelled.

People in the waiting area wailed and those capable stood to look through the glass frontage. Mass hysteria ensued as people overturned the chairs and recoiled away from the windows in a screaming state of panic. Those with injured legs or incapable of standing were knocked to the ground and trampled underfoot. The zombies pressed against the windows and banged aimlessly on the glass. Their faces pushed against the panes with lifeless eyes staring longingly at the people inside the waiting room.

One of the security guards opened fire at a rotund, balding zombie who stumbled through the doors. The creature’s skin was almost green and several fingers were missing on his left hand. High pitched screams from the crowd pierced my ears as the zombie took two bullets to the chest but kept walking.

“Shoot them in the head,” Smith yelled to the guard but his voice was drowned by the screaming bystanders.

The security guard hurriedly fired all his rounds. The empty pistol clicked as the zombie lurched to grab him with outstretched hands. The remaining security guard tried to lock the heavy, glass double doors to stop the horde of zombies streaming into the building. He was soon surrounded and brought to the ground by a crowd of infected who relentlessly tore into him with fingernails and teeth.

The wounded people in the waiting area didn’t know where to go, some ran in different directions and some became zombie food. The crowd of walking infected surged towards them like starving animals. They ripped and tore with fingers and nails at anyone with breath in their body. The hospital waiting room turned into a slaughterhouse. Blood, internal organs and body parts piled and slithered across the floor. An emergency alarm blasted from the ceiling and flashed a red warning light across the waiting room. I stood rooted to the spot in shock and fear, watching helplessly as an old man sat shrieking in his chair, unable to move. Blood spurted over his shirt collar when a female zombie with long, dark hair draped over her face, sunk her teeth into his ear. Smith grabbed me by the arm and tugged me away from the scene of carnage. The woman had disappeared from behind the desk and the security door to the backroom was closed.

“Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here,” Smith yelled above the cries of human agony.

We bundled through a set of double doors to the left of the enquiry desk and moved down a long, enclosed corridor. The alarm shrieked constantly throughout the hospital. Smith turned left when the corridor opened into a lobby with a high, glass towered ceiling and several corridors leading in all directions. Orderlies and hospital staff shouted at each another while they scurried back and forth across the lobby floor. Patients hobbled and wheeled themselves out of the wards not knowing which direction to go, their faces white with fear.

Smith led the way and dived through an open fire exit to our left. The midday sun glinted in my eyes and I recoiled at what looked a zombie. A thin, pale man, dressed in blue pajamas stood by the door with a lit cigarette in his hand.

“I thought one wouldn’t hurt, given the circumstances,” the man gestured at the cigarette and smiled weakly. “I know they kill you in the end.”

We were outside the hospital but in a recess between two separate brick buildings restricting our view.

“Which way to the parking lot?” Smith snapped.

“Keep to the building on your left and turn left at the end,” the smoking man pointed the way.

Smith nodded in appreciation. “You’re right; those things will kill you in the end.” Smith snatched the cigarette from the man’s hand and took a huge puff.

“Hey,” the man protested but Smith didn’t hear him.

We trotted around the building to the left and slowed down when we reached the corner. Smith peeked around.

“Ah, crap.” He looked to the ground. I noticed an element of desperation creeping into his manner. “Take a look.”

I peered around the corner and saw the parking lot crowded with zombies, pushing and shoving their way towards the entrance doors. Smith’s car was parked roughly twenty yards to the right of the jostling, infected horde. Smith leant with his back to the brick wall and smoked the cigarette in deep, gasping breaths.

“They’re going to be on us soon, the place is being overrun. Why did I volunteer for this job in Shitsville?” He kicked the wall with the back of his heel.

“I heard on the news this epidemic is happening everywhere,” I said.

Smith squinted into the sunlight. I knew he was forming a plan in his mind. He threw the cigarette butt on the floor and stamped it out.

“Let’s find out what the fuck is going on,” he growled.

I followed as we retraced our steps back into the chaos of the hospital.

Chapter Five

The smoking man had lit another cigarette by the time we went back into the building through the fire door. He smiled as we ran by. I thought of swiping his latest cigarette but it probably would be his last.

The people in the lobby had thinned to a few slow moving patients and a couple of staunch doctors and nurses who looked like they weren’t going to leave under any circumstance. Brave, but they were facing certain death when the sea of zombies eventually washed through the lobby. The siren still wailed monotonously overhead.

A young doctor with a thick, mop of curly black hair and glasses ran from a ward and skidded to his knees as he tried to change direction in mid flight. He was hyperventilating and looked like he had just shit his pants.

“Another one came back to life in that ward,” he pointed to where he had come from. “They’ll soon be all over us,” he stammered.

Smith grabbed him by the lapels of his white coat and pulled his face close.

“Got to get out of here,” the doctor whined.

I noticed his name tag read Jr. Dr. Rosenberg. His face was white and his eyes bulged behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He struggled to retain his breathing and pulled out an inhaler from his pocket, shoved it in his mouth and sucked in long squirts.

“Pull yourself together, doc,” Smith shook the young doctor. “What is it with these people, what is this virus? It sure as shit just isn’t the common flu bug.”

Rosenberg put the inhaler back in his pocket and whimpered. Smith raised his eyebrows like he expected an answer. I was interested to hear if the good junior doctor could give us an insight into what the hell was happening.

“We think that swine flu has somehow combined with bird flu,” he stammered.

Smith looked at me like he was listening to a fairy story. “So?”

“Contracting the flu virus is enough to kill the host but it is mutating all the time and reanimating the host once they’re clinically dead.”

“Which means?”

“These people reanimate into total instinctive creatures. I mean they are dead but alive and driven by a small part of the brain that tells them to feed. It’s hard to explain. The most obvious choice of food is other humans.” Rosenberg garbled the words without pausing for breath.

“How can you cure this virus?” Smith asked.

“That’s the problem. You can’t.” Rosenberg wailed and wildly shook his head. “We had a fax an hour ago from the surgeon general in Washington DC. It said no cure available.”