“We won’t make it twenty yards beyond that fence before we’re gunned down,” Wingate argued.
Smith glanced from side to side. “Keep your voice down, will you. Listen, you don’t have to come along if you’re not up to it.”
Wingate mockingly laughed. “Not up to it? Smith, I’ve been virtually wiping your stupid ass for a long while now and you know it.” She pointed an accusing finger. “What you’re talking about is practically committing suicide. These guys don’t give a crap about the great Smith.” She put on a deep voice, I guessed to try and mimic and mock her boyfriend. “They probably won’t even shout you out a warning before they open fire on your dumb ass.”
Smith shrugged with a pissed off expression on his face. “I guess we’ll find out later on.”
Wingate emitted a low shriek, causing the soldiers and other refugees in the nearby vicinity to turn and look in her direction. She spun around and stomped into her tent alongside Batfish.
“Somebody isn’t happy,” Chandra muttered.
“Ah, women,” Smith groaned, flapping his hand. “They always like to be mad at you and bust your balls for some damn reason.”
“She has a valid point though, you have to agree, Smith,” I sighed, studying the barbed barriers. “Those damn wire fences will rip us to shreds even if the guards don’t gun us down first.”
Smith turned towards me with an expression of shock on his face. “Wilde Man, I’m surprised at you. Why are you, of all people going all chicken shit on me?”
I shook my head. “I’m not going chicken shit, just being realistic. We don’t have anything in the weapons department and there’s no way we’d clear those fences without being spotted. I bet those guys on patrol are shining flashlights all over the perimeter during the night. They’d have to be completely incompetent not to notice a bunch of people running for the damn fences.”
Smith shrugged. “Okay, Wilde Man. It’s your call. I can’t force you to tag along so I guess this is going to be a parting of the ways. Right now, I’m going to get some rest so if I don’t see you again, good luck with your new life as a commie stooge.”
Smith brushed by me, bumping into my shoulder with a degree of petulance. He headed for out tent and rolled down the flap. I stood motionless and sighed in frustration, not knowing whether Smith was actually going to go ahead with his half assed breakout attempt.
“Is Smith for real?” Chandra whispered.
I shrugged. “Maybe. You never can tell for sure with Smith. He’s predictably unpredictable.”
Chandra glanced at me for a couple of seconds and nodded. He could obviously recognize my inner turmoil; it was probably etched all over my face. I didn’t want Smith to leave but I didn’t fancy meeting a grisly end, wrapped in barbed wire while the Russian military used me as target practice. Smith seemed determined enough but hopefully his escape plan was simply bravado and hogwash.
My train of thought was distracted when I noticed a skinny guy with a long nose and thinning ginger hair slowly approaching. Chandra and I both stood and watched in silence as the emaciated man tentatively stepped towards us. He stopped around ten yards from our position and squinted against the sun.
“Hello, there,” he said in a broad Scottish accent. “I couldn’t help overhearing you just now. I wasn’t snooping on you or nothing but I’m in the tent just there.” He pointed to the sagging heap of canvas a few feet behind him. “Heard your accents. You’re Americans, right?”
“Some of us are,” I replied.
“I’m from India,” Chandra quickly added.
“Well…whatever, it makes no difference. I’m from Ayr, the name’s Ally McGregor, by the way.” He moved closer and proffered his hand. I returned the shake and noticed how thin and bony his hand was. “Me and my daughter, Bonnie are the only people left from our wee village. She’s asleep in our tent right now. We were holed up in a fisherman’s hut on the coast until the Ruskies showed up a couple of weeks ago. We were living on fresh fish and boiled water from the river and we were doing okay for a time until they came ashore in their boats.” He took a brief glance at the patrolling guards behind us. He waited for them to pass before he continued and I noticed a glimmer of loathing in his eyes.
“Anyways, I heard you and your pal, the big man, talking about trying to hightail it out of here.” He spoke in a hushed tone and he frowned in seriousness. “Don’t even try it. That’s my warning to you fellows.”
“I don’t think that will seriously happen,” I said.
“I see this one wee guy, him and his girl…we’d only been here a couple of days, like.” He took a nervous glance behind him to check nobody else was in earshot.
“There weren’t so many people here back then,” McGregor continued. “This wee bloke and his girlfriend made a dash for the fence. The guy had a piece of timber to push down the wire, you know? He pushes down the wire of the first fence and sends the girl o’er the top first. The silly wee mare gets caught on the wire. The guy gets o’er the wire and heads for the second fence but the girl starts screaming and crying because she’s still caught up in the wire and can’t move, right?”
Chandra and I both nodded, acknowledging we were following the story.
“The guy could have probably made it o’er the second fence but he goes back for the girl. The Ruskies hear all the shrieking and screaming and come running from all directions. They opened up with their machine guns and cut both the young couple down in a wave of bullets. I never seen nothing like it in my life.” He shook his head and glanced to the ground as the memory of the scene obviously played through his mind.
“Sounds real bad,” I muttered.
McGregor looked up into my eyes. “The Ruskies pulled the bodies off of the fences, took them out into the water in one of those wee boats in weighted body bags and tossed the poor bastards into the drink. They said, they told us…to cover up what they did…they said the two of those poor wee people were bitten and infected so they had to be terminated.” He ran the back of his hand across his mouth to wipe away spittle. “I know for a fact that wasn’t the truth because they were staying in that tent, right where you are now.”
I turned and took a look at the heap of canvas behind me, as if by some grisly miracle the dead couple would be sitting at the entrance and nodding in agreement with McGregor. Even though the ghostly apparitions didn’t appear, a chill still ran down my spine.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I knew Ally McGregor wanted to chat for longer but I seriously didn’t have the stomach for any more tales of horror. I felt tired and emotionally drained after the traumatic events of the day. The way I saw the situation was siding with the Russians and living in their protective custody might not be as bad as we initially thought. Life wasn’t going to be spent lying on some sun kissed beach but at least we’d be fed and have a roof over our heads, with no worries about being attacked in the dead of night by ravenous ghouls.
I needed some sleep so I left McGregor and Chandra in mid conversation and bundled my way into the small tent. Smith already snored in his sleeping bag, safely unconscious in the land of nod. I rolled out the foam mattress across the floor space and crawled into my sleeping bag, ignoring the musty damp stench. My clothes stayed on. It was still too damn cold to think about going to sleep without any attire.
The muffled voices of Chandra and McGregor outside the tent soon drifted away into the ether as I felt myself sinking away into a deep sleep.
I’d been asleep for what felt like five minutes before somebody yelled in my ear.
“Wake up, motherfucker!”
I sat up, shaking the sleep from my head. The light inside the tent was dim but not totally dark, which meant it was still daytime. My alternative self sat facing me, squeezed against the inside of the tent. He was dressed all in black with a long leather trench coat. His hair was cut short around the back and sides and greased back on the top, away from his forehead. Still, that mocking grin spread over his face.
“No time for kipping, matey boy. It’s all about to kick off out there.” For some reason, he spoke with a London cockney accent.
“Why the hell are you talking like that and what the fuck are you doing dressed like that?” I asked. “You look like some kind of damn Nazi.”
My other self sniffed and didn’t look impressed. Maybe I’d managed to rile him a little for once.
“Don’t forget, arsewipe, I’m the alternative you. You could have looked and talked like this in another possible outcome of life’s wonderful opportunities,” he fired back. “You asked yourself the question ‘what if?’ a little while ago. Well, what if you’d never left London? You’d have grown up just like this.” He pointed at himself with both forefingers.
“Ah, that’s not what I meant,” I groaned, bored of my hallucination’s gibberish. I lay back down and pulled the sleeping bag over my head in an attempt to drown out any further jibes.
“I was sorry to hear about your girlfriend. Shame about her, I thought she was rather fit. A lovely little Latino chica. Better than most of the other scrag-bag scrubbers you seem to pull.”
I knew he was talking about Cordoba but I didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, I remained silent, fighting the urge to tell him to go back to hell, or whatever dark place he crawled from.
“All right, all right,” my other self called out. “Go back to sleep like a fucking baby and get butchered in your bed. See if I fucking care.”
“Shut up, you’re not real,” I croaked, unsure if he could hear me from under the sleeping bag.
“Just ask yourself this one question before you go back to snoozy woozy time. Where is your mate Smith at this moment in time?”
What was he getting at this time? What was his angle for appearing to me after an absence of at least a month?
My curiosity got the better of me. I pulled the sleeping bag off my head and lifted my head.
“What are you gibbering about now?”
He nodded to the empty space next to me. Smith wasn’t in his sleeping bag but that wasn’t anything sinister. Chandra wasn’t inside the tent either and it was still day time so Smith wouldn’t have tried to run while it was still light. Would he?
“He probably just went out for a walk or he’s fighting with Wingate or something,” I sighed. “Nothing to worry about.”
A huge explosion from somewhere outside seemed to rock the tent from side to side. I tasted and smelled cordite and then heard the chatter of semi automatic gunfire.
“What the heck was that?” I spluttered.
“Please continue,” my other self said, with a smirk on his face. “You were saying something along the lines of nothing to worry about?”
I scrambled out of my sleeping bag and tore the damn thing as I tried to pull it off my boots. I was about to poke my head out of the tent flap when another explosion that seemed closer, blew smoke inside my hovel. I rocked backwards on my haunches, tasting grit, soil, smoke and cordite all at once.
Less than a second later, Smith burst inside the tent. He was covered in blood spatters and held the machete in his right hand and a gory severed head by the hair in his left.
“What the fuck, Smith?” I wailed, recoiling against the back of the tent. “What the hell did you do this time?”
I didn’t want to look but morbid fascination got the better of me. The severed head belonged to Ally McGregor. His eyes were upturned, with only the whites of his bulging eyeballs visible and his mouth hung wide open as if forever fixed during his final scream.
“Jesus, Smith,” I croaked. “What the hell did you kill him for?”
“Casualties of war, I’m afraid, kid. Now, come on, Kid Wilde…we got to hit the road,” Smith roared.
I looked at his face and noticed a huge, bloodied groove in the top of his head and his eyes looked vacant and glazed.
“Are you okay, Smith?” I stammered. “What the heck is going on out there?”
“No time to explain now, Child…I mean, Wilde…these fucking Russians are all over the damn place. They’ve broke through the perimeter. We have to make a tactical retreat.”
“Smith, you’re not thinking straight,” I wailed. “We can’t outrun these guys.”
“Bullshit, we’re getting out of here right now. Get your gear, Marine.”
I gulped and nodded, unsure what horrors awaited us outside the tent. I tried to scramble to my feet but my boots were still caught up in the sleeping bag.
“I’m stuck, Smith,” I yelled. “I can’t stand up.”
“Don’t worry, kid, I got your six.” Smith flung McGregor’s severed head across the tent and raised the machete above his head. The point of the bloodied blade pierced the canvas roof and a wave of dirty brown water showered over us. Smith’s face screwed up in determination and he gritted his teeth as he lined up the machete blade with the sleeping bag snagged around my boots. I was worried he’d chop off one or both of my feet due to the bizarre state he was in.
“Smith, no,” I screamed. “Don’t do it, man.” I held up my hand in a vain attempt to ward off the blow.
“Don’t worry, kid,” Smith hollered. “I got it all figured out.”
Before he had time to bring the machete down on my ankles, another colossal explosion surrounded us. I briefly heard a loud rushing sound before the tent was ripped from the ground and blew somewhere behind me. Smith evaporated in a cloud of blood, guts and bone fragments. I felt the blast of the explosion hit me full in the face, flooding my head with an extreme pressure. The sensation was like being stabbed by a thousand knitting needles all at once. I closed my eyes, straining against the intense pain. My teeth were ripped from my gums and I felt a scorching sensation rushing down my throat, burning my lungs and stomach. I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t see anything, just a blinding white light. Searing agony tore through me. My eyeballs felt as though they’d melted in their sockets and heard only a long, monotonous tone ringing in my ears.
I rocked backwards, almost as though I was moving in slow motion. I landed on my back and everything went black.
Wheezing, coughing and trying to inhale to gain my breath, I sat up gasping for air. I was surrounded in darkness and everything was quiet. Yet again, the nightmare seemed frighteningly real. My breathing slowed and I cleared the phlegm from my throat.
“Geez, why do I always have to suffer these terrible dreams?” I whispered to myself.
Somebody snored gently beside me in the tent and I guessed Smith had decided against his breakout attempt. I felt inside my overcoat pocket for my flashlight, just to check Chandra and Smith were okay. I needed some piece of mind after my crazy dream.
The LED light flickered across the roof of the tent, illuminating a section of the grubby canvas in a bright circle. I twisted and shone the beam across the floor space. Chandra lay facing me sleeping peacefully, positioned along the edge of the tent.
However, we lay with a gap between us in the center of the ground. There was no extra sleeping bag or another foam roll. Smith had gone.
Chapter Forty
“Smith?” I hissed into the darkness. Unsurprisingly, I received no reply. “Damn it, Smith. Why do you always pull this crazy shit on me?”
This time the sleeping bag didn’t snag around my ankles when I wriggled out of it. I had a foolish and hopeful notion Smith was outside smoking a cigarette or had tried to make it up with Wingate and was snuggled up with her in her tent. The night remained quiet and the air was cold and fresh, when I stuck my head out of the flap opening.
“Are you out here, Smith?” I whispered.
The only sound I heard was a rasping, wheezy cough from one of the nearby tents. I crawled fully outside and stood up, shining the flashlight along the razor wire fence line. A harsh voice in a language I didn’t understand barked an order from somewhere beside the perimeter. I guessed he was telling me to shut off the flashlight but I shone the be
am across the wire for a few seconds before I cut the light. No bodies hung on the wire and there was no sign of any torn clothing or sleeping bags. Had Smith really run out on us?
I reached in my jacket and took out my smokes. The last pack I had on me. I lit one up and glanced up into the cloudless night sky. The stars were bright and I wondered if any of those planets so many miles away were enduring a similar situation to the one going on down on good ‘ole Earth. As I smoked my cigarette, I mulled over what aliens would think of our planet now. Would they believe that zombies had always roamed the Earth or would the extra terrestrials be smart enough to know the whole planet was overwhelmed by a deadly virus? Or would they really give a crap?
Red sparks briefly erupted when I flicked my cigarette butt into the wire fence. More Russian mutterings followed but I ignored whatever the guy was pissed off about. He probably thought I was aiming the lit cigarette in his direction.
Spot squinted as the beam reflected in his eyes when I shone the flashlight through the interior of our adjacent tent. The little dog stayed lying on the ground, snuggled up to Batfish. His tailed wagged when he realized it was me. I patted his head and shone the light across the tent. Wingate lay sleeping alone and there was no sign of Smith inside. I didn’t want to wake them and cause them any more worry. Smith was possibly on a reconnoiter mission, probing for weaknesses along the fence line where it was sparsely guarded. I backed out of the tent and clicked off the flashlight.
I silently pushed my way back into my own tent and saw an empty, ripped open cigarette pack lying on the floor, in the vacant space where Smith had previously been sleeping. I turned the flashlight back on and shone the beam over the cigarette pack to check if any smokes were still inside. I hadn’t noticed the pack before and wondered if Smith had dropped it on his way out.
The pack was empty and I went to kick the it to the back of the tent but the cardboard kind of flopped open and I saw something scrawling across the inside surface.
The Left Series (Book 5): Left On The Run Page 18
