The Left Series (Book 6): Left On An Island (40 page)

I looked out through the glass onto the outside world. The sun still shone over the square but steadily descended. I audibly groaned as I saw the roof pitch sloping steeply towards the adjacent building. It was going to be a tough ride to reach the public building in the corner of the square.

The skylight opened upwards out onto the roof. I squeezed through the gap and edged out onto the brown, concrete tiles. I gazed across the rooftops and was relieved to see the remaining buildings all had flat roofs. My route was going to be slightly easier than I originally thought.

I leant backwards and kind of shuffled my way down the slope, carefully avoiding any contact with my ass on the tiles. The restaurant roof slightly overhung the neighboring building at a height of around two feet so it didn’t cause me much of a problem to hop down on solid ground.

I continued onward across the rooftops with the baseball bat tucked under my arm and keeping away from the edges so nobody, alive or dead could spot my awkward, lumbering gait. The buildings were only separated by a two foot wall running around each of the perimeters. Normally, the obstacles wouldn’t have been a problem but my movement was restricted due to the knife wound. I didn’t think it had caused any serious ligament or muscle damage but any kind of walking or sitting was extremely painful.

I made it all the way across the square and onto the roof of the public building, taking longer than I wanted. I stood for a few moments, hunched over with my elbows resting on my knees while I waited for the pain to recede a little. I used the time to scan the flat lead covered roof, looking for a way into the building.

A couple of stainless steel air conditioning vents protruded from the roof but were too small to fit through. I gazed across to the opposite side and saw what looked like a maintenance access inside a small phone booth sized brick structure.

I hobbled over to the yellow colored access door and tried the handle.

“Please open,” I whispered.

The gods of locked doors were absent yet again. The access door didn’t budge.

I studied the door and saw it opened outwards onto the roof. It couldn’t even be battered inwards with any great ease.

“Shit.” My plan had come to a complete standstill and I had no ideas for an alternative.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

I leaned against the brick wall at the side of the maintenance access door, thoroughly pissed off and ready to collapse from fatigue. I had no way of getting down into the public building beneath me.

Pushing myself off the wall, I sighed in frustration and wiped sweat from my face. I walked slowly across the roof trying to think of my next move. Why did nothing ever go right? Why did everything suck and have to be so fucked up?

The nearest air conditioning roof vent was a circular, bauble like object. It swirled around and made an annoying whistling sound as the breeze ran through it.

“You can shut the fuck up as well,” I snorted at the vent. The noise didn’t cease.

The whistling got on my nerves so much I wielded the baseball bat and took an almighty swing at the damn vent. The air vent clanged under the blow then seemed to fold in on itself. A loud rumble engulfed the whole roof and I wondered what the hell I’d done. The roof’s surface crumbled in a rough circle where the air vent had protruded from and I stepped back away from the six foot wide hole.

“Shit,” I gasped, studying the roof damage.

The air vent fixings and the structure had obviously been old and in a bad state of repair. A paper house ready to fold up.

I waited a few moments until I was certain the subsidence had ceased and shuffled to the edge of the hole. The long, rectangular aluminum air condition duct for the interior of the building ran at an angle, a few inches below the hole down to the floor inside. The whole thing had obviously come loose and taken part of the roof with it as it crashed down onto the room on the top floor.

I crouched over the hole, looking for any movement or sign of life below. A couple of brown rats darted across an upturned desk but apart from the startled rodents, nobody else seemed to be in close proximity. I trod down into the hole and tested the fallen air conditioning duct would take my weight. It creaked as I stood on the surface but didn’t budge an inch. I edged slowly downwards, doing my best to keep my balance along the slope.

Debris from the subsiding roof and the busted air condition system lay scattered across a dark blue carpet. The room was some sort of open plan office area with lines of blank computer screens sitting on top of empty desks. Reams of discarded paperwork and open cardboard files lay on some desks, while others were completely clear.

I hopped off the fallen air condition duct when I was a couple of feet from the floor. Another twinge of pain shot through my buttock. I winced at the stinging sensation in my ass while I glanced around the office. An open glass panel door to the left led the way to the top of a staircase, with a metal frame surrounding the outer edges.

I made my way through the open plan office, heading to the staircase but careful to keep a watch out for any sign of sudden movement. I stood at the top of the wide, concrete staircase and looked down to the floor below. The area appeared to be more formal, barely decorated in neutral cream and a shade of off white. More desks stood in neat rows but looked heavier and more industrial sized than the ones on the upper floor.

I trod slowly down the steps, listening and watching for any dangers. I stood in a wide corridor lined with closed glass panel doors. The floor level was divided into sections and I noticed a few signs hanging from the ceiling, pointing the way to various departments. The nearest sign read ‘
Courts 1-5
’ and a sign indicated ‘
Holding Cells 1-7
’ further down the corridor. I realized this place must have been the town’s former federal court or Caribbean equivalent.

It suddenly hit me that I didn’t have a clue how the speaker system worked, where the operation was conducted from and how the hell it was powered. I guessed I was just going to have to look around until I found out some answers to my queries.

I cautiously checked behind each of the closed doors along the corridor, glancing through the glass panels before I entered. Most of the rooms were law offices of various kinds with nothing of much interest inside. More cardboard files, locked cabinets and empty desks filled the interiors. I did find a small flashlight with a surprisingly strong beam in one of the offices and slipped it into my pants pocket.

I reached the building’s lobby and glanced around the wide floor space. The closed up double front doors and windows were glass but blanked from the inside so nobody could see the interior from out in the square. The shuffling shapes of the undead outside the building brushed by the window, casting shadows across the ceiling and the opposite wall. An empty reception kiosk stood to the right of the door and a few fold up wooden seats and benches lined the wall to the left.

The reception kiosk door hung open and stood to the right of the strengthened plastic security screen. I padded over and took a peek inside the kiosk. The cramped interior contained an office chair and a control panel with several buttons and switches of varying colors sat between the security screen and the chair. A small microphone on top of a black colored control box stood on a small table to the right of the chair. A printed manual of some kind was pinned to the wall behind the microphone.

I shuffled my way into the kiosk and saw the fabric on the office chair was heavily blood stained. I rolled the chair aside and took a closer look at the microphone setup. The black control box had gray colored push buttons running in several rows across the surface. I pressed one of the buttons and blew into the microphone. Nothing out of the ordinary happened and my blowing wasn’t amplified from anywhere.

I snatched the manual from the wall and flicked through the pages. The text was heavily littered with correctional fluid and crossed out sections but one article did catch my attention. It gave an instruction on how to work the hurricane warning alarm to alert the town of impending danger using the outside speakers.

“Yes!” I hissed, pumping my fist. At last, something was going right. Things were starting to go my way. My heart sank as I read on.

“The hurricane warning siren will be broadcasted through the public address system situated on the outside of the building,” I read aloud. That bit was what I wanted to hear but the next piece of text was hard to take in. “The hurricane warning alarm is powered by the compressor located in the basement and is to be manually started by a trained operative.” What the hell was a trained operative and where the hell was the basement? Did you have to have a damn PhD to work this thing?

I nearly tossed the manual across the kiosk in rage but decided to keep reading on.

“The basement is located below ground level –
no shit
– and access can only be gained through Maintenance Point B, see attached diagram for directions.”

I flicked through the manual until I found an illustration of a floor plan. I traced a path from where I was with my finger until I saw Maintenance Point B, situated in a small room beyond the jail cells and marked on the diagram as ‘
correctional holding chambers
.’

No great shakes. It seemed simple enough. I’d take the manual with me and work my way back through the building to the jail cells. What could possibly go wrong?        

Chapter Seventy

I tucked the manual under my arm, still keeping the baseball bat in my hands and doubled back the way I’d come. I walked beneath the signs again and followed the indicated route to ‘
Holding Cells 1-7
’ along a dim, brick walled corridor.

The further I moved along the corridor, the louder the muttering and growling sounds became. I slowed my pace, wondering if a back door fire exit had been left open when the place was evacuated. The sounds were collective, as though more than one zombie was somewhere inside the building.

I gripped the bat as I padded forward, ready to take a swing at anything that sprang out or came at me. The corridor opened out into a larger space and was brighter, with daylight peeping through long but narrow barred windows, situated high in the far wall. I plodded further into the room and the grunting sounds grew louder. I saw more steel bars, partially covered in flaking light blue paint, on each side of the walls. I realized I was now in the holding cell area but the cubicles were far from empty. Each jail cell, I counted seven in all, contained at least one grizzled zombie. Their filthy clothing and rotten stench indicated they’d been locked in those ‘
correctional holding chambers
’ for quite some time.

I stood still, visually checking each compartment’s barred door was securely closed. When I was satisfied the inmates weren’t going to make a sudden jail break, I cautiously continued on further between the cells.

I studied the diagram once again and saw Maintenance Point B was supposed to be located across a short corridor beyond the jail cells. I followed the route, walking through an open doorway and into a small room with dull yellow paint covering the brick walls. The area stank of stagnant water and a few metal buckets with mop handles protruding from them lined the far wall. Shelving racks contained cloths and bottles of various cleaning detergents situated above the mops and buckets.

A square hatchway in the floor was surrounded by a metal handrail bolted to the wall in the right corner. A sign taped to the wall above the hatch was printed in large red lettering on a laminated piece of card and read Maintenance Point B, with a red arrow pointing downward.

“I guess this must be the place,” I muttered, edging towards the metal hatch in the corner.

A small recess containing an eye ring was positioned in the top edge of each corner on the hatch, which I could only assume was to lift the thing upright to gain access to the basement below. I put the bat and the manual down beside the handrail and crouched over the hatch, gripping each of the eye rings between my fingers. I pulled the hatch upwards and tilted it back on itself, opening up a dark, dank chasm beneath. The stench of rotten flesh and body odor rushed up at me, causing me to gag and take a step back.

I heard whispering sounds and low groans drifting up from the dark space below and my heart sank again. For some bizarre reason, there were undead down in the basement.

“Shit,” I snapped. Now what the hell was I going to be faced with?

I seriously considered aborting the whole plan there and then. I didn’t want to go down into that stinking hole on my own in the dark. I remembered the flashlight I’d found in the office and fished it out of my pocket. I switched it on and shone the light beam down into the open hatchway. The sight of a few pairs of milky white eyeballs reflecting in the light caused me to recoil a couple of steps. I edged forward again for a closer inspection.

A steel ladder plunged vertically below the hatch, down to the basement floor. At least a dozen undead clawed the ladder rungs, circling around in the beam of light I shone over them.