The Left Series (Book 4): Left In The Cold by Christian Fletcher Page A

Ten
     
    Cordoba stared out of the front window alongside Bill. Gera stood with his back to the wall next to the glass panes and peered out into the snowy street.
    “He’s right,” he hissed. “There’s a bunch of zombies out there and they’re all heading this way.”
    “Shit, where the hell did they come from?” Smith sighed and downed his Scotch. He banged the glass down on the cabinet shelf and tugged his M-16 off his shoulder.
    I necked back my own drink but Batfish didn’t bother touching hers. We placed the glasses on the cabinet shelf and moved to the window. A shuffling crowd of around thirty undead stumbled through the snow towards the front of Bill McLeod’s house. The walking corpses looked a pitiful bunch. Skinny, almost skeletal arms reached out in front of them and their pathetic moans were slightly audible above the howl of the freezing wind. Most of them were clothed in nothing more than rags and the flesh on their faces was gray and partially rotten away. The collection of decaying ghouls had been dead for some time. The epidemic in Killnockie had obviously wiped out the entire population bar one, a long time since. 
    “I told you they’d come,” Bill reiterated. “I’ve been hiding from them for years now. If they see you, they’ll stay around for ages. They saw you at the front door and they knew you came in here. You can’t get rid of them easily. They were my neighbors when they were alive but now they’re all dead but they keep coming back. They won’t go away.”
    “Somebody shut him up,” Gera spat. “And get him out of sight of the window. He’s attracting more attention to us.”
    Wingate led Bill away from the window and stood beside us, next to the cabinet standing against the wall. Cordoba ducked out of sight by the window on the opposite side to Gera.
    “Can they get inside?” Batfish hissed.
    “They won’t try and get in here as long as they don’t see us,” Smith said quietly.
    Smith, Wingate, Batfish, Bill and I huddled in the shadows next to the cabinet in the corner of the room. The first skeletal ghoul reached the bay window and thumped its hands on the glass panes. Cordoba winced and let out a small whimper of terror. The partially rotten skull of the creature pressed against the window as though it was trying to catch our scent inside. I caught sight of two hollow eye sockets and a thin face that looked as though the gray skin had been pulled tight around the features. Two more zombies joined the first, compressing themselves against the wooden frame. Their hands slapped against the glass and their monotonous moans echoed through the room.
    Spot nudged his head out of the harness around Batfish’s waist and emitted one shrill bark at the potential intruders at the window.
    “Shh!” Batfish hissed, grabbing the dog’s jaws.
    More zombies shuffled by the window and barged the front door. Others stumbled through the garden and disappeared from view. A few more undead stood on the road outside, scuffling their feet in the snow and slowly moving backwards and forwards by the front windows.
    “They’ll be out there for ages now,” Bill whispered. “They don’t forget easily, you know.”
    Wingate gripped his shoulder tightly. “We have to keep quiet, Bill. Do you understand?”
    He nodded but looked both scared and confused.
    I heard a long moan echoing through the hallway outside the living room. The sound almost froze the blood in my veins.
    “Ah, shit! They’re through the back door,” I hissed. I moved quickly to the door and pushed it to, so I could peer through the slight crack.  
    “We have to get out of here,” Batfish wailed. “Once they’ve found a way in, they’ll be all over us.”
    “We can’t fight them off inside the house; it’s too smaller space,” Gera spat. “We need to get out in the open and put some distance between us.”
    “Maybe these ones at the front of the house will follow the rest of them around the back and