Deadlocked 6 (27 page)

The fire on the rag in my left hand was getting out of control. The flames licked my flesh as I held it out by my fingertips.

"What the fuck are you waiting for?" asked Hero.

"For them to show their ugly faces," I said and continued to wait.

"Well, fucking stop it," said Hero. The zombie was too close for him to wait any longer. He fired just as I lit the
fuse on the acetone peroxide bomb.

I saw the soldiers in the distance, and they saw me. I threw the blue bottle as far as I could and then let the flaming rag drop just as they started shooting. There was only a few seconds of gunfire before the explosion deafened us.

Hero's bomb worked perfectly, and the entire facility quaked from the blast. The vibration caused the blood on the ceiling to rain down on us. If there were any zombies still near us, they were certainly coming our way now.

Hero led the way as William and I followed behind. He was an expert shot, but neither of us had many bullets left. I staggered as I tried to walk through the pile of bodies and the wet flesh squished between my toes.

"I'm out," said Hero as his pistol clicked uselessly. He had to scream as loud as possible for us to hear him over the ringing in our ears.

A one armed zombie rushed at Hero from a nearby hallway. He caught the creature by the neck and used its momentum to slam its head into the wall. The crack of the zombie's skull sounded like a firework. It fell limply to the floor.

"I'll take point." I moved forward and Hero moved back as we exchanged positions with William between us.

"Keep moving forward," said William. "We have to go through that cloud."

I looked ahead and saw an odd yellow mist in the air. "What is that?"

"The pheromones. They must not have turned off the gas. We're going to be covered in it."

That meant we still hadn't moved into the area that the zombies were most attracted to. All I could hope for was that they'd killed each other already.

The pile of bodies got thicker the further we went, and I could feel liquid all the way up to my knees as I sloshed along. Intestines clung to my legs as I walked, and it felt like I was pushing through a thick swamp. It was a terrifying journey, made worse by the movement I glimpsed in the mounds around me. Some of them were still alive and twitching. Eyes blinked, fingers twitched, and jaws snapped from within the mass of meat. If hell looked any different from this, then the Devil was doing a bad job.

One of the zombies gasped as I passed by it. The woman's face was at waist level and I put my pistol into her mouth as she tried to snap at me. I pulled the trigger and her brains splattered out ahead of us.

"How much further?" I asked as I waded forward.

"Not far," said William.

I took another shot at a creature nearby, and then another when a face appeared in the pool below. "Why is it getting deeper? I thought we were headed for the surface."

"The rear entrance goes out into a mine shaft. It's all underground," said William as he clutched the bag of bombs.

The cloud of pheromones surrounded us, and it had
a metallic odor to it. If a robot got body odor, this is what it would've smelled like. The yellow mist was sticky, and thick. It made it hard to breath and I tried to cover my mouth with my gown.

"There," said William as he pointed ahead. "We made it!"

There was a massive, circular door ahead of us that was nearly the same size as the hallway itself. "Thank fucking God," I said and moved as fast as I could. "Please tell me that opens outward."

William chuckled and said, "Yes it does, don't worry."

I felt something brush past my leg and I jumped to the side. The pile of blood and bodies was too high to see anything, but there was something moving down there.

"What's wrong?" asked William just before he started to scream. "Something's got me! There's something down there!"

Hero grabbed the lithe man's waist and lifted him into the air. A hand was pulling at William's leg and was revealed above the muck for a second before dropping back down again. Hero held William aloft as I dropped down to try and find the zombie.

"It's got my leg," said Hero as he tried to move.

I grabbed at the corpse and got my arm around its neck. Its arms were wrapped tightly around Hero's leg, and it was trying to bite him when I got my pistol pressed up against its temple. I fired the last bullet in the gun, and the creature went limp.

"Holy fuck," I said as I got back up. "That was too damn close. Let's get out of here. I'm sick of this place."

"Agreed," said Hero as he set William back down.

We climbed over the final mound of corpses and got to the rear exit. William slid ahead of me, over the back of a face down zombie, and flipped open a keypad. He punched in a long code and a green light on the door started to flash. The mechanism crunched and a wheel started to spin as the metal whined. It jammed, and my heart leapt into my throat as I thought we'd be trapped here forever. Then the wheel spun harder, cracking through something that had been resisting the movement and the door hissed open.

Blood poured out with enough force that I had to steady myself to keep from being pulled out with it. Body parts slid out of the door and William was the first to leave.

"Holy shit," I said in relief. "We did it. We're going to make it out of here after all."

William was standing in the mineshaft, and he looked terrified. He raised his hands and set them on the back of his head.

"What are you doing?" I asked, but understood before he had the chance to answer.

One of Jerald's men was waiting for us on the other side of the door.

NADIR

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Laura Conrad

I was in the second vehicle of the caravan when Arthur fell off the side of Zack's truck. He'd been in the field of zombies, running at us as we made our escape, and failed to grab onto his uncle's truck as the caravan passed.

Zack should've kept driving, but I knew he wouldn't. Arthur was his nephew, and he wouldn't leave him behind. Zack hit the brakes and put his arm out of his window to wave us on. I did the same, motioning for the trucks behind me to leave without us, but the entire caravan came to a halt. Bodies started to bang against my truck as the horde reached us. I put the truck in park as I slid across the vinyl seat. Arthur was closer to my cab than Zack's, so I opened the passenger door and screamed out to him, "Hurry up and get in!"

Annie ran to the rear of Zack's truck. She was deftly maneuvering over the roof of the trailer, wielding a pistol with her hunting rifle bouncing on her back by its strap. She made me nervous as she glided along the edge of the trailer, seemingly oblivious to the danger as she fired again and again. When she ran out of bullets, she put the gun into a pouch on the front of her sweater and then pulled out a new one, never missing a single shot. Every bullet found its target, but there were more zombies than she could contend with. The horde was approaching, and Arthur would never make it to me in time.

A zombie slammed into the driver's side door and I saw his fingers clawing at the glass. "Come on!" I shouted down to Arthur again as he struggled to stand. "You've got to move."

I took a pistol out of the glove compartment and kicked the passenger side door open wider. As I did, I heard gunfire to my right, near the back of the caravan. The other trucks had stopped as well, and were now being forced to fight back. Stopping had put us all in danger, but I couldn't be angry with Zack. I understood why he did it.

Zack leaned out of his passenger side door, and tried his best to kill any creatures that threatened his nephew. Arthur crawled towards me, but the fall had wounded him. He struggled to move as the undead horde closed in.

"Think of your son, Arthur." I shot at the zombies that were getting close to him. "Think of David and get your ass in this fucking truck!"

He pushed himself off the ground and screamed in agony as his knee bent to the side. The lower half of his leg jerked to the left as his body leaned right. I heard the horrific pop of his lower femur separating from the joint. He collapsed again, and I jumped out of the truck to save him.

"Mom, no!" said Annie from above. "God damn it! God damn it, Mom!"

The horde was everywhere. They overwhelmed me before I got to my son-in-law. My back hit the ground as one of the creatures surged over me. I got my arm against the man's neck when we landed, and was able to push him up high enough to take a shot. I put the gun in his right eye and pulled the trigger. He went limp immediately as the fountain of black blood spewed into the air above us.

The trucks behind us started to move, and I was happy they did. I could hear the rumble of their engines as they pulled off to the side and I expected them to move to safety. Instead, Billy led the caravan to our right, and cut off the advance of the horde. He smashed through a group of the creatures and their bodies crackled beneath his tires.

I pushed the creature off of me and saw Billy leaning out of the window of his truck, firing a pistol at any creature he could see. The caravan boxed us in, and proceeded to murder any of the zombies that were caught inside with us.

"Move it, darling," said Billy when I waved to him. "We're not out of this yet."

"Go to the town," yelled Arthur. "Dusty and I cleared it. We killed the guys that were trying to trap you."

Billy gave us a thumbs up and started shooting again.

I crawled to Arthur and put my arm around his neck. "How is it? How do you feel?"

"Peachy," he said through clenched teeth. "You shouldn't have stopped for me."

"Yeah, I know. Now let's get you into the truck."

I hauled him up and he was able to hop on his left leg while his right dangled uselessly behind. We got to the side of the truck and he braced himself as I climbed in first. Then I grabbed onto one of his hands with both of mine and together we were able to get him up into the seat. He gasped in agony as he pulled his right leg in and I watched as it flopped awkwardly over the edge of the seat.

The caravan started moving again, with Billy leading the charge. Zack started
advancing slowly, and I followed behind him, until the caravan passed us and we took up our spots at the end of the line. The entire time we could hear the crunch of zombies under the chain wrapped tires of our trucks.

Arthur gasped as he forced his leg into a natural position. I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into the seat. "Sit back and relax. Try not to think about it."

"Oh sure, that's what I'll do."

I chuckled and then whistled as I shook my head. "You sure lucked out this time, kid."

"Obviously." He gripped his right thigh as if that might stem the pain.

I glanced at the rearview mirror on the side of my truck and saw the massive orange flames that roared beneath the growing black cloud. The fire quickly consumed the grassland, and the inferno was growing worse by the second. Luckily, Arthur had cleared a path for us to escape, otherwise we would've been caught between a field of fire and zombies and a town full of soldiers that wanted us dead.

"How many soldiers did you take out?" I asked.

He grit his teeth and tried to ignore the pain. "Six. They had two guys on an ATV that set the fire and four sharp shooters in town."

"Only six?" I asked, surprised.

"Yeah."

"Are you sure you got them all?" I asked.

"Pretty sure. Why?"

"They only had six guys?"

I watched as the trucks ahead of ours bounced over something in our path. They jerked upward and the rattle of their frames set me on edge as I looked at Arthur's oddly bent leg. "Brace yourself. I think we're about to go over a big bump."

We hit the raised earth and the cab jostled up, then down, sending us smashing into the ceiling. Arthur cried out in pain, but we'd finally made it to the road, which I hoped meant smooth sailing from here on out.

Billy led the caravan into the center of town and then everyone with a weapon got out to set up a defense against the horde. We'd driven well past them by that point, but it wouldn't take them long to reach us. I saw Billy as I drove down the main thoroughfare and he waved at me to stop. He was limping badly. I knew that his back was hurting him and that he was ignoring the pain.

I rolled down the window as the truck stopped. "What's the plan?"

He smirked and shrugged. "I was going to ask you the same thing."

The Rollers were already setting up a defensive barrier on the road with the partitions that we usually kept on the side of the trucks. Each of the metal sheets could be dislodged to use as an emergency barrier, and this was certainly an emergency.

"Looks like you've got things in order already," I said and smiled.

"Sorry, darling," he said. "Just doing what I had to."

The two of us had grown old together, and I loved him like a brother. Despite our differences, he was family. I winked at him and said, "I trust you, kid. I'll get down there to help in a minute."