Free The Left Series (Book 1): Leftovers by Christian Fletcher

pick.”
    “I always said never rely on other people. You can never trust them. I can’t believe they just ran out on us like that.” Smith took another slug of bourbon.
    I shrugged and didn’t know what to say. Maybe they had their reasons but we probably would never see them again so to my mind, it wasn’t worth worrying about.
    Smith changed clips on his Desert Eagle. “Last one,” he sighed.
    I thought for a moment. “There’s a gun shop not far from here, near the shopping precinct.”
    “Can we get there on foot?”
    I nodded. “It’s about ten minutes.”
    “In today’s experience, I think we should keep clear of heavily populated areas,” Smith said. “We’ve been in trouble at the hospital and at that bar. Don’t you think a shopping precinct is going to be worse?”
    Smith had a point. Previously heavily populated areas were rife with undead like some of their former memories of the locations still remained. They seemed to congregate in areas frequented in their previous lives.
    “The gun shop is about a block from the shopping precinct and not in plain sight.”
    “Okay, Wilde man, it’s your call,” Smith said. “Lead the way.”
    We kept a slow jog, to outpace any zombies who might be lurking in the doorways of buildings we passed. The streets I was used to seeing bustling with shoppers and people on their way home from work were very quiet and deserted. Abandoned cars stood alone with the doors open and alarms bleeping. The occasional zombie noticed us and lurched in our direction but soon fell some way behind. I thought about using one of the discarded vehicles but the noise of their alarms seemed to attract the zombies like flies around cow shit. We could get to the gun shop quieter on foot.
    So far, so good. We reached the side street and turned right towards the gun shop. The shopping precinct was located roughly a further four hundred yards down the main road. I couldn’t remember the name of the gun store but remembered Pete was always talking about buying a revolver and we’d been inside for a look around once.
    My heart sank when we rounded the street corner. A pickup truck sat with its front half buried in the gun shop window and the back end at an odd angle on the sidewalk.
    “Oh, what now?” I muttered.
    We walked slowly to the wrecked vehicle. I peered through the side window. A man in a baseball cap and red hunting jacket sat slumped backward in the drivers’ seat. Blood spatters covered the cab and the windshield was cracked in the shape of a spider’s web. Half the right side of the drivers head was missing and the other half was a bloody mess. Smith took a look and made a gesture of a gun with his fingers and pointed to his head.
    “Looks like a suicide,” he whispered.
    We stepped away and tried the front door. Predictably, it was locked. The sign on the door read ‘Günter’s Gun Shop – Closed.’ Smith pointed to the vehicle and I hopped up onto the hood. I knocked away loose, jagged shards of the shop window glass with the golf club and winced when they tinkled on the ground. I jumped off the hood into the middle of the shop floor and crouched, listening for any movement. Smith followed me inside, his loafers crunched on the broken glass on the ground. The shop was almost in darkness. A humming sound reverberated from somewhere in the back of the store. It sounded like a generator or an air-con unit.
    The shop wasn’t big and the whole floor area only covered roughly the size of an average family living room. Shelves of boxed ammunition stood stored in glass fronted cases behind a glass covered display counter. No cash register was on display; maybe the owner had taken it with him, wherever that was. Racks of hunting rifles, BB guns and bows and arrows of all shapes and sizes hung from the wall each side of the display counter. Hunting gear and various knives hung on the back wall to the right of the display case. I noticed a narrow doorway between some