The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink

by Fletcher, Christian

  She muttered something but I didn’t catch what she said. Movement caught my eye; I glanced back through the shattered window and saw Milner, Smith, and the other four guys heading down the stairway.

  “You two okay in there?” Milner yelled above the diesel engine and shrieks and moans of the undead. He leaned on the wreckage of the cage and peered in through the window.

  “Yeah, we’re okay, Milner,” I cried. “You better hop onboard the roof.”

  A few zombies squeezed through the gap between the side of the snowplow and the wall next to the staircase.

  Cordoba seemed to come to her senses and studied the wrecked cage. “Wait, you guys,” she shouted to Milner. “You better try and shift that metal or it’s going to rip out the side of the cab when we try to move.”

  Milner nodded and told the rest of the guys they needed to haul the hulk of twisted metal out of the way. Amato fired a burst of rounds at the zombies edging their way closer to the staircase through the narrow gap. A few bodies dropped to the ground and out of our sight.

  “Don’t fire,” Cordoba shrieked. “You might hit the tires.”

  Amato looked sheepish and slung his M-16 over his shoulder.

  The guys on the staircase grunted as they hauled the busted cage a few feet further up the staircase. Metal creaked on concrete before the jagged stanchion moved out and away from the cab window. Cordoba looked through the empty gap where the glass had been and nodded.

  “Okay, guys. That’ll do. Jump on top but hold on tight.”

  The six guys crawled up the side of the cab one at a time and onto the roof.

  “Take it easy on the gas, Cordoba,” Milner shouted. “There ‘aint much room to spare up here.”

  “All right, hang on,” Cordoba yelled back.

  She put her foot on the gas and the snowplow lurched forward. Our cover was well and truly blown now as an increasing number of zombies surrounded the vehicle, reaching up and swatting the air with grasping hands. Cordoba slowly turned the steering wheel to get us back facing the line of immobile vehicles. We gathered a little more speed but some zombies hung on to the side mirrors and anywhere else they could grab a hand hold.

  I heard a few single gunshots ring out from the roof and a couple of zombies tumbled from the sides of the snowplow.

  “Go easy with your shooting, guys,” Cordoba yelled and thumped the roof with her fist. “Remember those tankers are full of boom boom juice.”

  The shooting continued but more sporadically.

  I glanced at Cordoba to check if she was okay but I noticed a pair of hands clawing their way inside the broken side window. I drew the M-9 and checked the handgun was ready to fire.

  “Lean forward, Cordoba,” I shouted.

  She looked at me, puzzled for a moment and then saw me aiming the Beretta behind her head. I adjusted my aim slightly above the door panel. Cordoba gave a little shriek but leaned forward against the wheel. I waited until the ghoul’s head appeared at the window as it hauled itself up the side of the vehicle.

  The zombie’s face had a kind of sad expression, if that was possible. He was a male in his former life, possibly a manager of some kind, as he wore the remains of a white shirt and formal dark blue tie that was skew-whiff around his throat. He had a huge open wound above his shirt collar around his throat, an injury which was obviously fatal. His face was full and fleshy and his remaining hair was thin on top.

  I lined up the M-9 and fired once. The zombie’s head rocked back amongst a spray of blood and he disappeared from view. Cordoba gave me a harsh stare. She probably wasn’t pleased with me for firing the handgun so close to her but realized I had to take the shot.

  Cordoba rocked back in her seat and slowed the vehicle as we drew close to the idling gas tanker. The snowplow had outpaced the majority of the undead but a few stragglers still remained, wandering around by the stationary vehicles.

  “All right, guys,” Cordoba said into her headset. “Four of you go for the gas tanker and two of you jump in the cab with us. But don’t hang around, we won’t have much time.”

  “Roger that,” Milner replied. “We’re out of here.”

  I slid across the seat, closer to Cordoba. It was going to be a tight squeeze in both cabs with six big guys to accommodate inside. One by one the guys clambered down from the snowplow roof. Kauffmann sprinted for the gas tanker cab and leapt into the driver’s seat. Amato followed and squeezed in beside him. Our passenger door clunked open and Smith and Milner bundled in beside Cordoba and I. Smith squashed into me and I rocked sideways into Cordoba. Again, I caught the scent of her.

  “Give me some room to drive, guys,” she protested.

  Milner shut the door and we rearranged ourselves, trying to get as comfortable as possible.

  “This is cozy,” Smith joked.

  I flashed him an admonishing glance.

  Cordoba moved the snowplow right and in an arc so we were positioned directly lined up in front of the gas tanker. Smith and Milner lay their rifles on a ledge along the top of the seat behind us and I did the same. Cordoba’s M-16 lay on the cab floor behind our feet.

  “You ready to roll, Kauffmann?” Milner asked, speaking into his headset.

  “Hold up, Milner,” Kauffmann shouted in reply, through the radio. “We’ve got a real fucking problem here.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “What’s up?” Milner asked through his microphone and we craned our necks to see what was going on behind us through the side mirrors.

  I saw a view of Swann and Dyson in the reflection. The gas tanker cab’s passenger door remained open. Dyson was half inside the cab but three or four zombies had hold of his legs. Swann wasn’t even inside the cab. He wrestled with another bunch of undead directly in front of the gas truck.

  “Oh, shit!” Milner spat, as he surveyed the scene unfolding in the mirrors.

  Dyson was kicking out for all he was worth and Amato attempted to club away the zombies surrounding the cab with the butt of his M-16. Swann seemed to be fighting a losing battle.

  “A whole bunch of them swarmed on us from between the trucks,” Kauffmann screamed through the radio.

  “I need to go help them,” Milner shrieked, and went to open the passenger door.

  The face of a particularly savaged female zombie at the side window stopped him from opening the door. We heard bangs and scraping nails across both side doors and at the front of the cab. Our view of what was going on behind us was now blocked by numerous, jostling undead bodies reflected in the side mirrors.

  “They’re surrounding us, Milner. You can’t go nowhere,” Smith growled, grabbing hold of Milner’s jacket at the shoulder.

  “We need to move…now!” Cordoba yelled. She glanced nervously through the open side window.

  The female zombie hissed at Milner through the window and banged her bloody fist against the glass. More zombies crawled up the snowplow blade, trying to reach the windshield.

  “We can’t stay still any longer,” Cordoba wailed. “They’re climbing up to the window.” She drew her M-9 and fired off a couple of shots at a zombie who was obviously scrabbling up her door.

  “Kauffmann, we got to get moving,” Milner screeched through the radio. “The bastards are all over us.”

  Kauffmann replied some garbled message but all we could hear was somebody screaming above his words.

  “Sit rep, Kauffmann? What the hell is going on?” Milner screeched.

  “Dyson’s bit and Swann is down.” We heard the tremor of terror in Kauffmann’s voice through the headsets.

  “Shit!” Milner smashed his fist on the dash. “We have to get rolling, Kauffmann. Are you in a position to move the truck?”

  Cordoba fired a couple more rounds out of the open window. The female zombie continued to try and smash her way through Milner’s passenger glass. Smith and I exchanged worried glances, squashed in the center of the seat.

  We heard a few more gunshots before Kauffmann finally responded. “Ye
ah, we’re good to go, Milner. We’ve lost Swann and Dyson is bit but he’s inside the cab and we’ve managed to close the side door.”

  “Let’s roll,” Milner barked.

  “I thought you were never going to say that,” Cordoba growled and banged her foot on the gas pedal.

  The snowplow wheels screeched on the concrete surface and the vehicle reeled forward. The female zombie at Milner’s window was thrown from the side of the cab with the forward motion. We heard a sickening crunching sound as zombies fell from their hand holds on the truck and were crushed beneath the snowplow wheels.

  Cordoba lined up the snowplow blade with the center of the nearest roller door.

  “Kauffmann’s following,” she stated, checking the side mirror.

  “That’s good,” Milner muttered. “I just want to get out of this fucking place.”

  He wasn’t alone in his aspirations. I was sick and tired of this damn airport terminal and it seemed like we’d been in here for hours, trying to carry out a simple operation. I was worried about the roller door as we hurtled towards it. Would the plow blade be powerful enough to dislodge the thing and burst through it? Earlier, I’d thought the steel v-shape would be enough but judging how we struggled to shift the forklift truck, I was having my doubts.

  We all remained silent inside the cab, watching the stainless steel roller door looming nearer. I glanced at Cordoba. Her face was a mask of concentration. A few zombies stepped into our path but were immediately mown down without a second thought. A spray of blood splattered in a streak across the passenger side of the windshield when a female zombie, wearing what looked like a pink nightie, shuffled her way in front of the blade and came off second best.

  “Here we go, brace yourselves,” Cordoba yelled.

  I suddenly realized that none of us wore the safety belts but it was too late to put them on now. Milner yelled and I screamed, Smith remained composed, as usual and Cordoba gritted her teeth.

  Time seemed to slow down as the snowplow blade smashed into the roller door and pierced the stainless steel slats. Pieces of twisted metal spun through the air and smacked against the windshield, cracking the glass. The whole vehicle jolted from side to side and the roller door tore away from its fixings, clattering into the snow on the ground outside. Cold wind and snow flakes blustered inside the cab through the broken window on Cordoba’s side.

  We flinched away from the gusting, cold draught. Cordoba flicked on the wiper blades as snow spattered across the cracked windshield. Chips of ice blown into the cab from the Arctic flurry felt like we were being hit by a shot blaster.

  “Jesus! I can hardly see,” Cordoba wailed.

  “Wait until we’re clear from the building and we’ll put our hoods and eye goggles back on,” Milner shouted, above the howling wind.

  We drove clear of the terminal building and Cordoba looped around so she followed the perimeter of the outside wall.

  “Did Kauffmann make it out okay?” Smith asked. “I can’t see in the mirror from here. It’s got damn snow all over it.”

  Cordoba leaned out and wiped the snow off the mirror with her hand. “Yeah, he’s clear and he’s following us. Which way are we headed, anyhow?”

  None of us could tell where we were in relation to where the C-17 aircraft was. The outside world was a blanket of white snow.

  “Keep heading around the perimeter,” Milner instructed. “We’ll come across the runway sooner or later.”

  “Can we stop and put our hoods back on?” Cordoba shouted. “Half my fucking face is frozen off.”

  “All right, stop now and I’ll go check Kauffmann is okay,” Milner said.

  “I’ll come with you,” Smith said.

  Cordoba slowed the snowplow to a stop and hit the park brake. We all donned our hoods and goggles before Milner jumped out of the cab. Smith handed him his rifle, grabbed his own M-16 and followed.

  I slid along the seat and watched the proceedings behind us in the side mirror. Streams of undead tumbled out into the snow through the busted roller door. They were still going to give chase. Milner and Smith approached the gas tanker cab but couldn’t see the mass of advancing zombies at the angle they moved. The gas tanker masked the massive hole in the wall.

  I pressed the talk button on the headset. “Smith, Milner, you got company coming your way,” I said into the microphone. “There are a shit load of zombies coming out of that door we just smashed through.”

  “Okay, roger that. We’ll be back in a minute,” Milner replied.

  “I guess I ought to be thanking you,” Cordoba said.

  I spun my head and looked at her. I couldn’t tell if she was messing with me as I couldn’t see her face covered by her hood and goggles.

  “What for?”

  “Saving my ass a couple of times back there,” she said. Her voice seemed different, more feminine and not like the rough, tough soldier she also was.

  I was glad I wore the hood as I felt my face redden. “Ah, well, thanks for coaxing me off that office roof to begin with.” I laughed nervously and flapped my hand.

  A few seconds ticked by when neither of us knew what to say. We simply sat facing each other. Maybe she didn’t see me as just another one of the guys. Maybe she had genuine feelings for me. Only time would tell.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The magic spell was broken when Smith and Milner opened the cab door and bundled back inside, squashing us all together again. In another time and another place, Cordoba and I may have prolonged the moment and reacted differently, but now we had to get our game faces back on.

  “Go, go, go,” Milner yelled. He spat the words out like machine gun fire.

  Cordoba released the park brake and pulled the snowplow forward.

  “Dyson’s in a bad way,” he blurted. “He’s got several bites to his legs and he’s definitely infected now.”

  “What are we going to do with him?” Cordoba asked.

  Milner sighed. “Only one thing we can do with him now. And that’s put him out of his misery before he turns. We all know there’s no cure for that shit and we can’t take him with us.”

  “You want me to do it?” Smith murmured. “It might be better if somebody from the outside takes care of it. You guys have been together awhile.”

  Milner shook his head. “It’s not my call. We’ll wait until we get back to the C-17. Chief Cole will have to make the decision, he runs the show.”

  Cordoba continued slowly forward, sluicing the snow aside and clearing a pathway close to the airport terminal perimeter walls. Kauffmann followed close behind in the fuel truck. I glanced in the side mirror and saw the crowd of zombies fade away into the blizzard.

  Milner tried to contact Chief Cole on the radio once again. This time the Navy Chief responded, much to my surprise.

  “Milner? Where the hell have you been?” Cole’s deep voice boomed through the headsets.

  Milner briefly recounted the sequence of events we’d endured inside the terminal, he gave an existing head count and explained the current situation.

  “The four MIA’s made it back to the aircraft,” Cole stated. “They got out the building when you guys got split.”

  “Roger that,” Milner sighed. “At least that’s one piece of good news.”

  “We’ll get the Humvee ready and some extra guys on the ground outside and prep the refueling crew,” Cole said. “Good job, guys. Keep going, you can’t be far away.”

  Cordoba had to maneuver the plow around several snow covered objects protruding from the ground. We didn’t know what the hell was buried under the snowdrifts and didn’t want to drive over the top in case the shapes turned out to be gas tanks or small vehicles or anything explosive and combustible. We were too close to completion to fuck up now.

  We rounded the terminal building corner and made out the shape of the C-17, covered in snow on the length of its body and the wings. The aircraft emerged from the snowy haze, big and gray against the icy white backdrop. The ramp hung op
en and several figures meandered around the opening. A welcome, yellow glow from the aircraft’s interior light reflected on the snow on the ground around the ramp. The Humvee slowly drove down the slope and turned facing us side on as we approached. The heavy machine gun attached to the turret on top swept the horizon in steady arcs.

  “I never thought I’d be so glad to see a military aircraft,” Smith sighed.

  Cordoba swung the snowplow alongside the C-17 then snaked the vehicle in a series of ‘S’ shapes, clearing an area for the fuel truck to park up. Kauffmann waited a few yards away, motionless in the gas tanker while she cleared the snow.

  When Cordoba was done, Kauffmann pulled the gas tanker alongside the C-17 and the refueling crew went to work, busily rolling out the thick hose and pumping the aviation fuel into the aircraft.

  Cordoba parked the snowplow next to the Humvee. We grabbed our weapons and climbed out of the cab onto the snowy runway. A brawny, hooded figure jumped out of the Humvee passenger seat and strolled through the flurry to meet us.

  “Good work, people but we’ll have to take care of Dyson,” Chief Cole barked. “We can’t afford to put everybody else’s life in jeopardy, especially not when we’re in mid-air.”

  Milner nodded. “We don’t know how long he’s got.”

  Cole called over two of the Marines standing on guard. He turned his back to us and talked quietly to the two guys. They nodded and headed towards the fuel truck.

  “I know it’s a shitty thing to do,” Cole shouted above the howling wind. “But we all know the outcome if somebody gets bit.”

  I watched as the two Marines pulled a bloodied figure from the fuel truck cab. They carried the body, who I recognized as Dyson, out onto the runway and disappeared from view into the haze. I knew what was coming but still flinched when I heard a single gunshot from somewhere in the fog. The two Marines emerged from the icy mist and their slouched body language told me they hadn’t relished their brutal task.