Free The Left Series (Book 3): Left On The Brink by Christian Fletcher

vision for a second. When the branch had scraped over the roof, we saw a female zombie standing no more than two yards directly in front of us. Her snarling, emaciated face was captured in the low beam headlamps. Her lower jaw drooped wide open, the skin around her white filmed eyes was mottled and parched. Tangled black hair hung around the sides of her head and she was dressed in the tatty remains of a once white nurse’s uniform. She spread her arms wide away from her body as though she was offering a welcoming embrace.
    Smith swerved left to try and avoid the female ghoul, but she was too close. The angled corner of the front fender clipped the undead ex-nurse. I heard glass breaking a fraction of a second before the body tumbled across the vehicle’s hood and crashed against the windshield. A loud cracking noise filled the interior, even above the sound of Ray Manzarek’s haunting keyboard playing on the stereo. The windshield glass fractured and huge spider-web shaped cracks obscured our view of the outside world. I heard the female zombie clatter over the roof and caught a brief glimpse of her grubby, off-white uniform as she was tossed into the long grass.
    “Shit!” Smith croaked. He hit the brakes but the car skidded on the dampness. I saw a tree trunk looming directly ahead of us and braced myself against the collision impact. The crunching and folding of metal and sounds of breaking glass reverberated around the interior. Smith and I lurched forward from the bucket seats, the safety belt dug hard into my shoulder. The front air bags engaged and puffed out in front of us like huge balloons. Dusty powder blew up my nose and down my throat. I coughed and nearly retched and wiped the powder off my face. The engine cut out and the stereo went silent.   
    I batted the air bag down and looked out of the side window, trying to gauge how close any zombies were to us. Smith wrenched on his own air bag and shoved it out of the way of the steering wheel. His face and hair were also coated in powder from the release of the airbags but he didn’t seem to be showing any discomfort. From my side window, I saw at least a dozen undead emerge from the darkness, approaching us and winding their way through the trees.
    “I hope this damn thing still drives,” Smith growled.
    Luckily, the engine restarted but didn’t sound too healthy. The music blared from the speakers too loudly. Smith rammed the gear shift into reverse. The airbags gradually deflated and I silently apologized to Jim Morrison when I hit the ‘off’ button on the stereo.
    The front of the Mustang creaked and groaned against the tree bark as Smith maneuvered the car backwards. The engine was still running but sound ed a whole lot different now than before the collision. Something rattled loudly inside the hood and steam spewed from the battered grille. Smith stamped on the brake when we were clear of the tree trunk.
    “Those military guys are going to be pissed when they see what we’ve done to their car,” I spluttered, still gagging on the chalky powder.
    “That’s the least of our worries, right now,” Smith growled, thrashing through the gears. He drew his Beretta and held the barrel while he frantically batted the broken windshield glass with the gun’s hand grip, until he’d made a hole big enough to see through.
    “Err…Smith, I don’t want to alarm you further, but there are a bunch of zombies closing in on us.”
    The gear cogs whined in refusal to engage, no matter how hard Smith wrestled with the shift stick.
    “Fucking thing!” Smith seethed through clenched teeth.
    The nearest zombie approaching my side of the car used to be female. She rasped in short little growls, as though she was scolding a disobedient puppy, while hobbling closer to my side window. She wore a torn, dark shirt and a conventional skirt. Maybe she’d been some kind of admin worker in her former life. Her long, straight dark hair hung either side of her head,