Deadlocked 5 (28 page)

"Don't worry." I smirked down at him and winked. "The Devil's got my back."

I charged across Vineyard as the helicopter searched the road ahead. I needed to get close to get a clear shot and I wanted to move as far from Harrison as possible to keep him safe in case I wasn't able to kill the pilot.

I made it to the edge of one of the buildings and perched myself on the
ledge as the helicopter came closer. I could see the pilot clearly as he continued to shine the spotlight on the road below. The cockpit was illuminated with green light and I realized that he was using a night vision screen to search for survivors.

I aimed and waited for him to get closer. Finally, I took the shot.

The windshield of the helicopter cracked and a white streak suddenly marred my view. I realized in horror that the windshield had deflected the bullet.

"There's my little piggy."

He pulled the helicopter up and over Vineyard. He stayed low, with the chain gun aimed directly down the bridge that I was on. There was no point in trying to hide. He was about to kill me, or so he thought.

"Time to die," he taunted me.

I'd already pulled the pin on the flash bang and now I tossed it ahead of me. I covered my eyes with my arm as I ran blindly across the bridge. The concussion from the grenade's explosion caused my ears to ring and I felt the heat as it burst into an intense white light.

"Fucker!" The pilot pulled the trigger and the
chain gun whirled to life, but I was already under him. I leapt off the edge of the building and grasped the hanging body of the sniper I'd killed earlier. I swung haphazardly as the pilot pulled the helicopter up while he tried to regain his sight.

"You fucker!" The pilot screamed. "I'll kill you for that."

He continued his ascent and I dangled beneath the chopper as it rose. I reached up for the edge and was able to claw my way up.

"Where are you? Where'd you go, you fucking piece of shit? The wolf's coming for you, little piggy. I'll just keep shooting the roof until I find you."

I scrambled to get into the back of the helicopter before he saw Harrison. If he was using night vision, it wouldn't take him long to see that there was something alive on the roof.

He pulled the trigger and I heard the
gun begin to spin. "Come on out, little piggy." He fired a few short bursts and then continued to search for me.

I slipped on the metal floor of the helicopter as it
jostled around. The pilot was wearing a set of earphones over his helmet that prevented him from hearing me as I staggered around behind him.

I pulled out my Glock and walked up
to him just as he saw Harrison's body on the screen. He laughed and then spoke into the microphone that curled out in front of his lips from the side of his helmet. "There you are, little piggy."

I pulled his headphones off and said, "Oink, oink, mother fucker." My voice carried through the microphone and everyone in range heard as I fired three shots into his chest before he had a chance to pull the trigger and kill Harrison. 

The pilot didn't die immediately, but he released the trigger of the gun as the helicopter began to spin. He tried to get control, but we started to plummet. An alarm began to chime and a flashing red light illuminated his display.

I fell and started to slide out the door but was able to grab onto the rope that the sniper was hanging from. It was attached to a loop on the floor and I held onto it with all the strength I could muster as the helicopter violently spun towards the ground.

We collided with one of Vineyard's roofs and the impact took my breath away. Dirt and chunks of brick smashed into my face and a searing pain stung my side. The blades chopped at the roof and I heard them snap off and fling through the air as the alarm continued to screech. I tried to gasp for breath, but none came. I moved my right hand and started to search for the source of pain in my side, fearing that I'd been impaled, but found nothing.

I glanced to the front of the cockpit, hoping to see the pilot's corpse splattered or otherwise destroyed. Instead, I saw him still in his seat, breathing.

"I don't think so, you piece of shit." I pushed myself up and started to crawl across the wreckage. I drew my Glock and kissed the barrel as I pulled myself to the front of the chopper. The pain in my side intensified when I moved and I reached down to clench it again. This time I could feel what was wrong. One of my ribs had broken and was pushing out through my skin. I could feel it under my shirt and winced, but tried to ignore it.

The pilot was gasping for breath, but he wasn't moving. His hands were limp at his side and he wasn't trying to escape. He was mine to do with as I pleased, and I wanted nothing more than to put a bullet between his eyes.

I finally managed to get beside him and I started to laugh as I pointed the gun at his head. He was wearing a helmet and the visor on it had fallen down in the crash, obstructing my view of his eyes. I tapped the gun against the black shield and smiled at him.

I flipped up his visor. I wanted him to see me when I killed him.

I wasn't prepared for what I saw, and the pilot's face caused me to fall back and drop my gun. My entire world crashed down on me as I stared at him. Everything I knew had been a lie. Whatever my father had told me about my past wasn't true, the proof was gasping for air in the seat of this demolished helicopter.

Sitting before me, staring back at me with blood seeping from his nose and mouth, was a man that
could’ve been my twin.

Jerald Scott slammed his fist down on the table. He looked around for something to break and settled on a cup of coffee that he flung across the room. It shattered against the wall, leaving behind a splash of coffee that dripped down as the other people in the room cowered from his rage.

He was an old man, in his mid-sixties, but age had not tempered his anger. "You lost an entire town? Please, explain how that's possible. I'd really like to hear how you plan on convincing me not to put a bullet in your worthless head."

Victor stood unflinching as he faced off with Scott. "The helicopter we left behind was supposed to circle the area and wait for reinforcements. Unfortunately, he took it upon himself to try and scare the people out of hiding."

"And that, you dickless wonder, is why you should've left two choppers behind." Scott pressed two fingers into Victor's face. "That way we wouldn't have to worry about these worthless cunts getting away."

"Sir, we have reason to believe they were prepared for our assault."

"And how the fuck would they have known that?"

Victor pulled a small data drive from his pocket and then walked to one of the computers that lined the side of the room. "Sir, we were able to retrieve the hard drive from the downed chopper. In it we found video of the entire event. We've isolated a few pictures that you need to see."

"This had better be good." Jerald put his hands behind his back and walked to the computer as Victor pulled up the pictures.

The first was of a black man standing beside a red haired girl that was holding a sniper rifle. "These are members of Reagan's old group, the ones we thought had been wiped out." Victor looked at Jerald and shook his head. "Clearly, they're still alive, and they're back in the area."

Jerald nodded and said, "Interesting. Still doesn't explain why you couldn't kill them with a fleet of attack choppers and twelve trucks full of zombies."

Victor clicked to the next picture. It was of a girl with red hair in a white jumpsuit crouching on a bridge. "This is one of the escaped Dawns from Facility 23. We tried to locate her body, but the people of the town must've taken it with them when they fled. They were able to kill off the zombies that we left there and escape."

"That's interesting, Victor, but it still doesn't explain how…"

"Hold on," said Victor as he raised a finger. He clicked to the next picture and then backed away as he crossed his arms smugly. "And there you have it."

Jerald stared at the Asian man standing on a bridge, throwing a flash grenade towards the camera. "Look what we have here," said Jerald as he studied the picture. "Looks like our little lost experiment has finally come home."

TO BE CONTINUED…

Part one of a new series of Deadlocked comes to a close on a cliffhanger! Ben Watanabe is revealed as an experiment while the rest of the characters are struggling to survive after being decimated at Vineyard.

Book Six of this new series (by the way, sorry to have kept the fact that this was a new series a secret for so long) is going to pick up right where part five left off and will give Hero a starring role. The High Rollers will begin to fight back, and you'll learn what happened to Billy and Laura, two of the characters from the original series that didn't make it into part five.

Speaking of characters that didn't make it into this book: poor Reagan. Don't worry, his story won't go untold. Eventually I want to explain what happened to him in an episode of the Deadlocked - Broken Pieces series, so keep an eye out for that one.
(Note – As it turned out, Reagan’s story was too integral to the Deadlocked story, and it will be revealed in book 7.)

The characters from the original series are very important to me, which is why it might've been a surprise that they were absent from the fi
rst half of this book. I was ecstatic when I got to write the scene where Hero shows back up. I'd been waiting to write that since the minute I decided to do this book! The reason I took such a long time to introduce some of the original characters is because I wanted to give Ben and Cobra (Celeste) a chance to earn your interest. They are the main characters of this book, and it was important that the reader identifies with them. That's why both of their initial chapters are extremely long. I hoped to pull the reader into their world so that when their first chapter was over, you felt inextricably tied to them.

This was easier with Ben, especially when I decided use the puppy, Stubs, to mimic what would happen later in the book. The entire first scene with Ben is meant to foreshadow what comes later. The dogs represent the wolves (the men working for Jerald Scott) and Stubs is the thing Ben never expected to care for, which is what Harrison becomes by the end of the book. In that early scene, Ben risks his life to save Stubs while the dogs and a zombie are attacking him - that same situation plays out at the end with Harrison.

Ben's storyline is pivotal to the new series, both because of the themes his story represents as well as the actual story itself. I wanted the theme of this new series to be how society and our community are important aspects of our lives. Ben starts as someone who doesn't care for society at all and the book ends with him risking his life to save people he never would've cared about just days earlier.

Also, Ben and Harrison share my favorite exchanges in the entire book. The discussion about shooting stars and Annie's guardian angel is probably my favorite conversation that I've ever written. It might come off as egotistical to say this, but it felt poignant to me. Those characters, in that moment, became transparent, as if they bore their soul for us to peer into, and I've never enjoyed writing more than I did when they were on that rooftop, staring at the stars.

Celeste's story was much more difficult. While Ben's theme is the importance of community, Celeste's is about the dangers of conformity and the loss of innocence. Her story is so drastically different from the rest of the series that I imagine some readers were confused when they got to chapter two. It probably seemed as if it had been plucked from a different book entirely.

The most important part of Celeste's story is her relationship with Hailey, and I anguished over doing my best not to cheapen that. While there was a sex scene, I hope by the end of this book it was apparent that the relationship between the two of them was integral to the plot, and that they weren't used as just an excuse to have a sex scene in the book. I wanted this to be the defining love story of the series, and I needed Hailey's death to be crushing. She represents innocence lost, as Cobra explains in the calf murder scene, and when she is gone, Cobra is forced to become a new person. Hailey's death is the loss of childlike innocence, and it is the major tragedy of this book. The fact that they had never loved someone else, and that their sexual experience was approached with such naïve exploration, was meant to strengthen their connection. Their love was unfettered by societal restraints, and just as Cobra begins to wonder if their bond is acceptable in the grander world, she loses Hailey forever. That is crushing. It's almost as if society itself (and the wolves that linger) couldn't let their love survive.

The other tragedy, in my opinion, is the death of Stitch. That character will definitely return in future Broken Pieces stories (as with Reagan, this changed – expect to learn more about Stitch in Deadlocked 7), because there's a lot to tell about her past and why she knows so much about the Body Factories.

The Deadlocked series has done more for me than I could've ever fathomed it would. Fans of these books have literally changed my life, and my only desire is to write books that you love reading. I want this series, and any other books I write, to entertain and challenge you in ways you weren't expecting, and I hope that I accomplished that with Deadlocked 5.