The Left Series (Book 5): Left On The Run (29 page)

The ship I was onboard steered towards the zombie infested ship. I didn’t know whether they planned to draw alongside the vessel or dock beyond its bows. We veered so close to the other ship that I could see the hysterical expressions on the remaining Russian’s ship’s company. The zombies onboard the vessel scowled at me as we drifted by the hull.

I didn’t want to be part of this chaotic situation but I couldn’t bring myself to head back below decks. What would happen if we were trapped in the mess deck if our own ship was overrun? It would be a certain, slow death. But alternatively, I couldn’t simply stand by while Batfish, Wingate, Spot and Chandra were caught up in the mayhem.

I needed a gun, a weapon of any kind. I’d lived for the last…god only knew how long with a weapon at my side and now I felt vulnerable and naked without one. My panic and stress levels rose to maximum as we brushed by the adjacent ship and neared the jetty. Fuck the Russians and their vision of a new world, fuck this place and fuck everybody. I was going to arm myself and take out anybody who tried to stop me.

I stood for a couple of seconds, forming a crude plan in my mind as the ship veered towards the dockside. Footsteps clumped across the metal deck above me. The Russians were obviously preparing to land the ship ashore somehow.

“Fuck it,” I spat and turned back towards the door hatch behind me.

Chapter Forty-Seven

I crept back through the corridor and down the staircase towards the fire locker situated behind the steps. The communication guys seemed to be a little more animated with their garble as I slinked down the staircase. The fire locker wasn’t sealed so I pulled open the door and took out the axe. At least, I’d have some form of protection from whatever shit storm was coming our way. I decided to head back for the mess deck and warn the others. Maybe we could arm ourselves with whatever came to hand and somehow break out of the ship’s confines. Crude plan as it was, we couldn’t simply wait below decks for our fate to be hanging in the balance at the hands of the Russians. From what I’d witnessed, they really didn’t give a crap whether we lived or died.

I moved slowly back into the corridor, trying to remember my route back to the refugees mess deck. The ship’s layout looked so similar and I had a hard time remembering how to backtrack the way I’d come.

Russian voices echoed from the corridor on each side of me. I was stuck in the corridor with the furthest office door still way ahead of me. I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Should I just attack them with the axe and accept my inevitable fate or surrender?

I felt I had an obligation to the rest of the party so I decided I’d take the placid option. Two Russian sailors trudged towards me from my right with concerned expressions on their faces. One of them carried a metallic black revolver and he looked totally shocked when he saw me standing in the corridor. He stopped moving and aimed the firearm directly at my head. His colleague muttered something and shuffled up behind him.

I dropped the fire axe to the floor and held my hands above my head. My plan was foiled at the first phase.

“All right, guys no need to shoot me,” I called. “I’m just a little concerned with what’s going on out there.” I nodded to the side of the ship for emphasis, but I doubted if they understood what I meant.

The guy holding the revolver screwed up his face in anger and grunted something at me. His unarmed colleague stepped towards me with an equally menacing expression on his face and I knew I was probably ripe for a physical beating from these guys.

I sighed, accepting what was coming. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d been beat up on since the apocalypse began. I remembered reading the influential author George Orwell’s ‘
Animal Farm
’ in English classes at Brynston High School and the last few lines in that novel always stayed in my mind. He alluded to how once the farm was overrun by the enslaved animals against their evil human captors, that they were now all on an equal level. But some animals were deemed ‘
more equal than others
.’ I knew exactly where old George was coming from when he wrote that book.

“Listen, there’s a whole bunch of undead out there,” I said, trying to reason with the guy as he stomped towards me. “You’d be a whole lot better off if you were out there helping your comrades.”

The Russian sailor holding the revolver upturned his mouth in an ‘
I don’t give a fuck
’ attitude. He strolled towards me, backed up by his buddy and I braced myself, expecting a whack in the face with the pistol butt.

Two more Russian guys marched along the corridor in the opposite direction from behind me. They were dressed in long khaki coats and peaked caps, looking hassled and stressed. The sailors stopped in their tracks when they saw the other military guys approaching. They both took a backward step away from me with concerned expressions on their faces.

“There’s a whole load of trouble out there,” I muttered to the approaching new guys, who I guessed were high ranking officers. I was simply trying to avoid the inevitable beating.

The two guys in the khaki uniforms barked some orders at the sailors and the naval men muttered a response, then fled back down the corridor, the way they’d come from.

I eyed up the two men standing in front of me. They were both young with intense blue eyes, elongated faces and hooked noses.

“You shouldn’t be out here, scum,” one of them sneered in broken English.

I shook my head. “Sorry, I was looking for the bathroom and I got lost.”

“Carrying a fire axe?” the officer snorted.

They spoke in Russian between themselves, obviously discussing what to do with me. The guy on my left pointed to the firearm tucked inside a holster by his hip. His action told me they were considering my immediate execution. I glanced down at the axe in front of my feet and decided if they ushered me away, I’d go for the axe and try my luck at cutting them down before they could draw their firearms.

Another big Russian Army Officer breezed along the corridor behind the two in front of me. Maybe this guy was going to be the executioner. He strolled along with his head bent forward, his peaked cap covering his face.

The two army officers turned and acknowledged the new guy’s presence. They muttered something to him and nodded arrogantly at me. Three guys I’d have to take out with the axe. And all of them highly trained Russian military. My heart fluttered and I felt my stomach rolling over like a washing machine. I took a quick glance at the axe handle at my feet, hoping those Russian guys wouldn’t notice. Better to go out swinging than be marched out onto the upper deck and take a bullet in the back of the head, then dumped overboard into the drink. My odds weren’t good but I was still going to go for it. Would did I stand to lose?

Chapter Forty-Eight

The third Russian officer strolled towards us. I guessed the other two were waiting for him to catch up and listen to his input. This new guy was definitely going to be a difficult opponent to fell, even if I managed to hack down the first two rivals. He tilted the peak of his cap back away from his face and I recognized the steely gray eyes. I nearly burst into tears with emotion.

“Go for the axe, kid,” the big guy muttered.

The two army officers turned, startled by the big guy’s Brooklyn accent. One of them moved his hand towards the holster, housing his firearm at his hip. I scooped up the axe and took a huge swing, aiming the blunt edge at the back of the guy’s head, who stood to my left. The blow made a dull thudding noise and sent him crashing forward, face first onto the vinyl floor tiles.

The standing army officer drew the handgun from his holster and turned towards me with an expression of shock on his face. It was as though he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just witnessed. The approaching big guy delivered a hard chopping blow the army officer’s wrist. The firearm clattered to the floor and the guy yelped in pain. The big guy grabbed the army officer around the throat and slammed him against the corridor wall. The army officer stuck out his tongue and made a strange croaking noise before his eyes turned upward in their sockets and he went limp under the big guy’s grip.

I moved towards the prone officer I’d smashed over the head, just to check if he was still alive. Blood trickled through the guy’s short hair and I noticed a big cut in the back of his scalp. His eyes were shut but he was breathing heavily.

The big guy released his grip on the army officer’s throat and let him slide down the wall into a sitting position, with his head lolling to the side.

“You were the last person I expected to see,” I said, with a hint of excitement. “How the hell did you get onboard this ship and how come you’re dressed in Russian military uniform, Smith?”

“I bet you got a whole lot of questions for me, kid but we better get these two guys out of sight before anybody sees us,” Smith said, scooping up the discarded handgun from the floor.

“Is that guy you choked, dead?” I asked.

“Nah, he’s just taking a nap,” Smith sniffed. “If I’d wanted to kill him, I’d have broken his fucking neck.”

“This one is out cold as well,” I said, pointing to the officer at my feet. “I hope I didn’t crack his skull.”

“Casualties of war I’m afraid, kid,” Smith grunted as he lifted the unconscious army officer. “I saw an empty office back up the corridor. Let’s get these guys hidden away in there and we’ll hopefully be long gone by the time they wake up with one motherfucker of a headache.”

I nodded, tucked the axe under my arm and grabbed the unconscious Russian by his ankle. We dragged the two bodies up the corridor to the empty office. Smith plunked his guy down in an office chair and I pulled mine beside a desk against the far wall. From the positions we left them, nobody could see them from the office doorway. Smith closed the door as we left the small room.

I didn’t like the fact that a thin blood trail smeared across the floor, leading the way to the two unconscious guys in the office. The blood had obviously come from the Russian I’d hit over the head. I wondered if I had seriously wounded the guy and maybe even caused some kind of brain damage. I felt bad for him but desperate times called for extreme actions. It was either knock the guy out or allow myself to be recaptured and probably executed.

“Uh-oh,” Smith muttered, as he too noticed the blood smears. “Time for a quick clean up job.”

Smith opened the office door and took a pair of dark blue coveralls from a hook beside the doorframe. He tossed the coveralls onto the floor and used them to wipe up the blood smears, brushing the garment over the vinyl tiles with his foot. I kept glancing up and down the corridor with the feeling we were going to be discovered at any moment.

When Smith had completed his mopping up job, he picked up the blood stained coveralls and tossed them back into the office. He closed the door and gave me a brief nod.

“Okay, let’s get going,” he rumbled.

“Where are we heading?” I asked.

“We’re getting off this god damn ship,” he snarled, leading the way along the corridor.

“Have you seen it out there?” I asked, jabbing a thumb to the wall on the right side of us. “It’s a total train wreck or make that a ship wreck and I don’t even know where the hell we are.”

“We’re heading into Belfast,” Smith nonchalantly said.

“Belfast? As in Belfast, Ireland?” I spluttered.

“Northern Ireland to be exact,” Smith corrected me.

“What the flying heck are we doing in Belfast?” I was virtually running to keep pace with Smith’s long strides. “And how do you know that’s where we are?”

Smith sighed as he strolled forward. “When I made a break for it, I headed over the wire fence and I had all intentions of scooting away into the wilderness. But then I figured I’d head for one of the ships instead. I wanted to check out for myself what these guys were up to. The swim was tough and damn cold, I climbed up the anchor chain and got onboard without anybody noticing. I found an empty cabin, dried off and took the guy’s uniform hanging up inside there.” He pointed the way through a crossway in the corridor.

“I walked around the ship unchallenged, so I kept an eye on where you guys were being taken to. I figured it wouldn’t be long before you made a break for it and tried to do something desperate.”

“You were following me?” I gasped.

Smith shrugged. “Kind of. I thought I’d let you run around on your own awhile before I made myself known.”

“Were you really going to leave us?” I sighed.