The Left Series (Book 2): Left Alone (33 page)

“Come on, boys. We got to do some business of our own.”

We walked towards the open door and even the whiskey shot couldn’t prevent the nervous, gut wrenching feeling pulsing through my body.

Chapter Fifty-Three

The doorway to the left of the bar led to a crisscrossing stairway, made from the same flowery patterned, cast iron as the front balconies and balustrades. The walls around the stairway were painted pale blue with flecks of pink plaster showing where the décor had flaked and crumbled.

“Go on up,” Headlong ordered us.

I climbed the stairway with increasing apprehension on every step. Mohawk and Dreadlocks stood either side of a door directly ahead of us when we reached the stairway summit. Mohawk wore loose fitting, denim dungarees and his upper arms, shoulders and neck were swathed in tattoos. Dreadlocks was dressed in a black t-shirt emblazoned with a Jamaican flag and combat fatigues. They both looked grim and focused, like they were ready to kill on the command of a finger snap. I noticed the butt of a big hand gun protruding from the front of Dreadlocks waistband and assumed Mohawk was similarly armed.

I gulped away fear as we moved closer towards the two menacing figures flanking the door. Headlong shuffled along behind us, breathing heavily from the exertion of climbing the stairs.

“Good day, boys,” he said cheerfully to Mohawk and Dreadlocks.

“Hand over your weapons,” Dreadlocks commanded in a deep, booming voice. “You know the routine. No loaded weapons in the office.”

“Yeah, I kind of forgot,” Headlong said, handing over the M-16 and removing the slung hunting rifle from his shoulder.

Dreadlocks took the weapons while Mohawk gave all three of us a thorough frisk down. He found the knife in Headlong’s boot and tossed it across the floor with a scowl on his face.

“Don’t try and jerk me off, asshole,” he threatened.

Headlong looked sheepish and shrugged. “Guess I forgot about that shank,” he offered, as some kind of nervous apology.

Mohawk leaned closer to Headlong so his face was only a few inches away. “You seem to be forgetting a lot of things. Maybe I’ll forget to let you out of here alive.”

Headlong emitted a nervous laugh and Dreadlocks was busy eyeballing Smith. I briefly wondered if we were all going to be killed before we even got inside the room beyond.

Mohawk rapped softly on the door and we heard a gruff, muffled voice, presumably allowing us to enter. The door was opened from the inside by a tall, thin black guy, who wore shades, a trilby hat and an immaculate, dark blue suit. He looked like one of the old, Blues singers from the 1960’s.

“Who is it, Willy?” A deep voice boomed from somewhere behind the old blues guy.

The Blues guy lowered his shades down the bridge of his nose and studied us in the doorway.

“It’s one of those river snakes, boss with a couple of military looking dudes.” His voice was hoarse and whispery.

We heard the voice inside the room exhale a deep sigh. “Show them in, Willy.”

The old Blues guy stood aside and gave us a slow wave to come inside. We entered the room and two huge sash windows, which overlooked Bourbon Street, sat in the wall opposite the door. The walls had been whitewashed some time ago and mold and water stains mottled the corners and ceiling. An overweight, shaven headed black guy dressed in a light green suit and black shirt, sat behind a desk to the right of the room. He stared intently at us as we tentatively approached. Another guy in a bright orange suit and trilby hat sat to the left of the desk. He was holding a small pistol aimed at us and stared with the same intensity as his associate.

“What can I do for you?” the guy behind the desk barked, as though our presence was an annoyance.

I guessed the big guy behind the desk was the Big Boss – The mysterious Trading Dog. He seemed to run the city with an iron fist.

“Ah…I got some more merchandise for you, Mr. Lazaru,” Headlong stammered, gesturing towards Smith and I. “If we can just agree on a price, I’ll be on my way and not take up any more of your valuable time, as I can see you’re a busy man.”

Lazaru took a quick glance down to his desk where a creased map lay at the center. His gaze returned to Headlong, then darted between myself and Smith.

“Is this some kind of sick, fucking joke?”

Headlong sort of shook his head and shrugged in confusion all in one movement.

“For one thing, I only deal with Kermit the Frog – not the rest of his Muppets. Where the hell is, what’s his name…?”

“You mean Larry.” Willy interjected, helping his boss out.

“Yeah, that’s it, fucking Larry. He’s the only one I do deals with from you bunch of river snakes.”

I’d forgotten all about Shaved Head or Larry as he was affectionately known.

“Ah, he’s dead.” Headlong pointed to Smith and I. “These guys took our boat and killed most of our guys but I managed to…”

“And the second thing,” Lazaru interrupted. “Look at these two. For a start, they’re guys and not even particularly good looking ones.”

Smith gave me a glance and a slight objectionable shrug.

“I couldn’t even sell these guys on to Cody, who runs the gay night scene. What the fuck do you think I’m going to do with these two, you stupid motherfucker?” Lazaru’s voice rose in volume, the deep growl echoing around the walls.

Headlong shook his head and his eyes dropped to the floor as though he was a scolded, sixth grade child.

“I thought maybe you could use them in some way,” he muttered. “The big guy is strong and can use weapons and the other one is kind of cute…in a boyish way.”

Willy and the guy in the orange suit tried to stifle their sniggers. Lazaru looked aghast with his wide mouth hanging open.

“You are some sick-ass motherfucker,” he hissed. “Are you some sort of pedophile, you piece of shit?”

“No, nothing like that, Mr. Lazaru,” Headlong blurted. “But I just thought some guys might find him attractive.”

“Get this cocksucker out of here before I shoot him in the face,” Lazaru roared, standing from his chair and waving an angry fist.

“Mr. Lazaru.” Smith stepped in. “Can I just explain our situation? It will take one minute of your time.”

Lazaru gave Smith a long, hard stare then nodded and sat down.

“Go on.”

“These river snakes kidnapped our friend.” Smith turned to Headlong. “We were out there simply trying to survive and this guy and his associates took our friend and we believe she’s here somewhere. They told me something about getting a good price for females. Her name is Batfish and she looks like a Goth and she has a lot of tattoos. We hoped we could find her and take us back with us, Mr. Lazaru.”

Lazaru stared at Smith and kind of wobbled his head from side to side, as though he was torn between decisions.

“We have a considerable number of girls working around the city and I don’t know them by name. Well, the parts of the city we’ve managed to keep free from the zombies. It took us months to clear an area and make it disease free, you know. It was a lot of hard work.”

“I appreciate that, Mr. Lazaru but we wouldn’t even be here if this jerk and his buddies hadn’t taken our friend against her will.”

“Hey, watch your mouth,” Headlong protested.

“Quiet!” Lazaru barked. “You’ve had your say.”

I knew Smith was trying to appeal to Lazaru’s compassionate side. I doubted the Trading Dog had much humanity but could see he was weighing up whether to allow us to move on freely or take all three of us out into the street and probably execute us.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Lazaru paced the room in a circle around the three of us. I got the impression he was weighing up our immediate futures. Willy leaned against the inside of the door, quietly humming a tune and the dude in the orange suit was grinning at us as though he was enjoying the tension in the room.

Headlong nervously shuffled his feet, probably in need of another fix. I gazed at the floor between stroking Spot’s head, inwardly praying he wasn’t going to crap on Lazaru’s rug. Smith stood rigid with his hands folded in front of his belly, occasionally glancing at the guy in the orange suit still sitting in the chair by the desk.   

“Okay,” Lazaru finally said. “I’m a fair man but I’m also a business man. I can’t let you leave with your friend for nothing, providing you find her, of course.”

I felt we were about to hear the downside to the situation, which was bound to be worse than the upside.

“I’ll give you twelve hours to find her and get back here. Two of you can leave the city with the girl but one of you stays and works dock duty or on one of the check points. Deal?”

We didn’t have much choice.

“That’s a very generous deal, Mr. Lazaru. Thank you very much.” Smith proffered his hand for Lazaru to shake but the big boss just stared him in the eye.

“The clock is ticking,” he whispered, jabbing a finger in the direction of a grandfather clock in the corner.

Smith’s eyes flicked to the clock face hands and saw it was a few minutes before midday.

“We’ve got until midnight?”

Lazaru nodded. “If you don’t come back, I’ll find you and I won’t be so generous with my offer. And don’t forget, I run all the clubs, bars, shops, restaurants, whore houses, drug dens – you name it, I run it. ALL of it. You and your cronies cause any kind of trouble; I’ll get to hear about it. I have eyes and ears on every street corner. You start any problems and I’ll come down on you like a ton of zombie shit. Understand?”

Smith nodded. “Yeah,” he croaked. “I got it.”

Willy had already opened the door behind us and was whispering with Mohawk and Dreadlocks, presumably relaying the terms of our fate.

I offered an unreturned nod to Lazaru and the guy in the orange suit before we thankfully stepped out of the stuffy room.

Headlong protested and whined like a bitch when Mohawk and Dreadlocks refused to give him his rifles back. Mohawk motioned with his head to the knife still lying on the corridor floor.

“You’ve got a weapon there, asshole,” he said.

Headlong muttered obscenities and picked up the shank. Smith and I had already started down the stairway. Headlong was out of sight and we were hurrying through the door to the bar when I called to Smith.

“We have to stay with Headlong.”

“Why?”

“He’s our insurance for getting out of this place. He’s bound to want to stay here as he’s got no place else to go.”

Smith stood in the doorway and scowled at me. “Ah, he’ll be busy getting drunk or snorting shit up his nose. We’ll find him in one of the bars later after we find Batfish. Come on, man, we’re wasting time.”

Headlong clattered down the stairs behind us, swearing and moaning under his breath.

“Hey, Headlong,” I called. “We’ll meet up later, yeah? We’ll try and find Batfish first then we can meet up and tell Lazaru you’re staying put.”

“Hell, you got to be crazy!” he wailed. “I ‘aint the one who’s staying here. You saw the way he spoke to me. I’d be as dead as a dodo within a day. We all probably will be anyhow. He’s just playing with us like a cat plays with a mouse before he kills it.”

“Shit…we assumed you’d be the one to stay here, seeing as you like it so much,” I moaned.

“Why the fuck did you assume that? I’m broke and I ‘aint even got a shooter. I’d be killed out there on the street.”

“Fuck,” I yelled and turned to Smith. “Now what the hell do we do?”

“Let’s start by finding Batfish,” he said, with a degree of calm.

“Unfortunately, we’ll have to stick together.” I grabbed Headlong by the scruff of his neck and dragged him into the bar.

“Hey, watch it, boy,” he protested.

Peaches turned from his bottles and watched us leave the bar room. We stood in the street, turning each way without a clue where to start looking.

“Okay, where do we start, Shithead?” Smith growled at Headlong.

Headlong shrugged himself away from my grip and glanced up and down the road. “There’s shit loads of girly bars along this street,” he sighed. “She could be in any one of them and the girls don’t usually even appear until after dark.”

Smith grabbed the front of Headlong’s shirt and pulled him close. “We don’t have that long, do you understand? If we don’t find her in twelve hours, Lazaru and his men will hunt us down anyway. He doesn’t really give a shit if we find her or not.”

“Okay, I hear you,” Headlong squawked.

Smith tightened his grip and Headlong made a croaking noise and his face reddened.

“Now, I could have and maybe should have wasted you a long time ago but now we’re stuck together in this shitty situation and we need your help to get us out of it. Do you comprehend, yes or no?”

Headlong nodded his head and croaked a noise that Smith must have taken as a positive answer. He released Headlong from his grasp and shoved him backward. Headlong held onto his throat and let out a series of wheezing coughs.

“You’re the only one who knows the city so where do we start?” Smith asked again.

“You nearly choked me, man.”

“We’re wasting time here,” Smith impatiently boomed.

Passersby on the street flashed us worried, inquisitive glances, wondering if they were going to witness more violence on their patch.

“There’s a lot of clubs along this street and then there’s the side streets. We’ll start from here and work our way up to Esplanade Avenue and then back towards Canal Street. But like I said before, this street covers thirteen blocks, not including the alleys and side streets.” Headlong spun around and flapped his arms in frustration.

“Let’s go,” Smith barked.

We entered the first girly bar and asked around if anyone had seen or heard of Batfish, with Smith and me reciting very bad descriptions of her. We were met with blank faces or shaken heads. People rarely spoke to us or completely ignored us.