The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink Read Free Page B

wearing grimy shredded clothes and impossible to distinguish if they had previously been male or female.
    Both zombies snarled and kneeled at each side of another prone body. The corpse looked like a guy wearing the shredded remains of a red and black checked work shirt and denims. His guts were torn open , internal organs and intestines slopped from the huge wound.
    One of the zombies attempted to rise to its feet. Smith fired a shot which penetrated the creature’s forehead. The force of the gunshot sent it hurtling backwards into the side of the truck bed. Smith switched his aim to the other zombie and blasted it in the face before it had time to stand. The ghoul’s head exploded into a mist of decayed blood and fragments of skull. The body toppled sideways and splattered onto the blacktop.
    I shone the flashlight around in small arcs to check no more undead lurked close by. The beam illuminated around a half dozen exterminated zombies lying around the truck. I flicked the flashlight towards the truck bed and saw the interior was piled with boxes and packing containers. I shone the light back onto the poor dude who’d recently bought it, lying by the truck. His face was ripped and chewed almost in half. The skin and flesh was a bloody pulp from the right side of his neck up to his scalp. A hunting rifle lay on the road, a few inches from his chewed fingers. The brown, wooden butt was coated in blood and small pieces of bone.
    Smith picked up the rifle, carefully avoiding touching the contaminated gore at the stock end. He drew back the bolt and peered inside the chamber.
    “No ammo. This poor guy and his woman were probably fighting for their lives and ended up using this damn thing as a club.” Smith let the rifle drop. The ineffective weapon clattered onto the road surface. 
    “You think it was them sending up the flares?” Batfish asked. Her voice was nothing more than a hoarse croak.
    “I doubt it,” Smith muttered. “These guys have been dead for at least thirty minutes. Around the time we heard that last radio message. Shine that flashlight under the truck, Wilde.”
    I did as Smith requested , crouching on my haunches and sweeping the flashlight left to right between the truck’s tires. We saw a green colored, old style walkie-talkie with an extending silver aerial lying in the vehicle’s shadow.
    “It must have been them shouting for help across the airwaves,” I sighed. “Too bad we were too late to help them.” I felt a n uncomfortable pang of guilt. Probably another symptom of survivor syndrome.
    The moans of the undead drifted out of the darkness behind us and echoed across the flat ground.
    “Nothing more we can do here,” Smith said, glancing back down the road. “We better get moving before those bastards catch us up.” He nodded in the direction of the pursuing zombies. “Maybe this fresh meat will keep them occupied for a little while and give us a chance to put some distance between us.”
    I nodded, feeling slightly relieved to leave the scene of carnage. The shuffling, scuffing sound of the undead dragging themselves over the blacktop increased in volume. I glanced to my left and saw silhouettes of lurching, swaying shapes emerging from the gloom.
    We turned from the pick-up truck and carried on down the road at a jogging speed . Although we moved faster than the zombies, I couldn’t help thinking we weren’t using a particularly safe mode of travel.      
    Smith slowed to a brisk walking pace and pointed into the distance. “That’s the Blue Angel plane up ahead, isn’t it?”
    I squinted into the darkness trying to make out the static aircraft, which marked the side road we needed to follow to gain entry into the military base. I saw a dark silhouetted shape resembling a missile at a horizontal angle.
    “Yeah, I think that’s it,” I gasped. “We’re nearly there.”
    The sight of the stationary aircraft gave me a little psychological boost. At least we were on the