The Left Series (Book 6): Left On An Island by Christian Fletcher

held in my hands right through my own head.
    The muscles in my neck tightened as I gritted my teeth and I felt a rapid pulse in my head. I was prepared to accompany Smith in trying to take out the sniper but we were going to have to be some kind of supermen to even get inside the castle before the mission started.
    I let the tension pass and almost laughed out loud at our absurd situation. We were going to have to leap fifty feet down a cliff face, take on a whole bunch of zombies with a couple of spears, smash our way through three hundred year old gates while being undetected and eliminate an unidentified number of highly armed and talented snipers with nothing more than our limited weapons. We had more chance of winning the now defunct State Lottery.
    I leaned closer to Smith’s ear. “What the hell do we do now?” I whispered.
    Smith also physically sagged at the scene below us. His shoulders slumped and he looked as dejected as I felt. I realized he’d expected a quick, easy fix to our problem.
    “Ah, this ‘aint gonna be no walk in the park,” he sighed. “I figured it was going to be one guy holed up in that damn castle with all the front doors left wide open. This is something else.”
    “No shit,” I rasped.
    Smith rubbed the sweat from his forehead. “We’re going to have to backtrack, kid. Make our way to that village or whatever the hell it is.”
    “And do what?” I hissed.
    “Get our shit together. Get out of these damn rubber suits and see if we can find some better weapons. Maybe figure out where the hell we are.”
    I sighed. I didn’t fancy trekking much further but we didn’t have much choice. We were stuck on this fucking island. The warship couldn’t move. We couldn’t bring people ashore, we couldn’t get back. What a mess.
    I looked down on the ragged bodies of the undead, trying to break through the castle gates. They were grayed and cooked by the sun and their clothes were rotted and bleached of color. Most had dried brown blood surrounding various wounds around their bodies. I couldn’t tell if they were male or female, black or white. 
    “We sure as shit can’t stay here,” Smith confirmed.
    We backed away from the cliff, returning to the tree line on the edge of the graveyard. We surveyed the landscape in front of us.
    “We can’t head out across that grassland,” Smith said, pointing directly ahead of our position. “That route is way too exposed. Somebody on those castle battlements could see us for miles around and easily pick us off. We’ll have to head towards those trees and rocky terrain to the right.”
    I felt deflated but knew Smith was right. We couldn’t take any other direction. My throat was still dry from vomiting and I ached all over. Another long barefoot trek was the last activity I wanted to do.
    “Come on, let’s get going,” Smith sighed. “The sun will be down in around an hour and I want to be at that village before it gets dark. We don’t want to be hanging it out with no place to go when we can’t see nothing.”
    We trudged slowly along the rear of the tree line, heading towards the dense forest running around the side and the back of the rising rock formation. As we moved down the sloping ground, I studied the tall trees and thick foliage in the distance and thought the landscape looked impassable. We’d somehow have to navigate our way through the bush.
    I rubbed my hand through my hair as we walked and felt it was drenched with sweat. A cool shower and a couple of cold beers would have been glorious.
    The ground flatted out at the edge of the next forest and I looked up at the giant rock above the treetops. There was certainly no way we’d ever reach that peak without the aid of climbing gear. Smith led the way, threading his way through the trees.
    The tall trees shaded us from the dipping sun and Smith stopped walking to pull a handful of small green berries from a low hanging branch.
    “What the hell are those?” I