Deadlocked 6 (6 page)

She grimaced, but did as told. She was bashful, and I turned around as she disrobed. "We need to look for any black spots on your neck, armpits, or groin."

"I don't see anything."

I didn't look at her as I pointed out into the two-foot deep stream. "Go ahead and wash off, then I'll check you out."

She complained as she waded into the stream. I waited as she washed herself off, and then finally turned to look at her when she said she was done.

Celeste was young and beautiful. She was athletic, and her abdominal muscles were well defined as she tensed and quivered in the freezing water. Her body was flawless, like one of the women that adorned the magazines from the Red Days. I couldn't help but envy her young, taut stomach. I'm not old, just barely twenty-five, but the birth of my son had ravaged my body. That was one of the things they never warn you about before having a child: It wreaks havoc on your body.

I was still thin, and in good shape, but there were stretch marks on my side, and on my breasts, from when I ballooned up during pregnancy. Celeste's body was unmarred by such blemishes, and I kind of despised her for it. I've never been the type of girl that wallows in catty condemnation of other, pretty girls, but I'd be lying if I said such petty thoughts never enter my head. Hell, any woman who claims they don't think awful thoughts about a younger, prettier girl is a liar.

"Can I have the blanket?" asked Celeste as she shivered.

"Oh yeah, sorry, here." I handed it over to her.

She wrapped herself up in the tan blanket and knelt down so the thin fabric covered as much of her body as possible. "I didn't see any black spots anywhere." Her lips had taken on a blue hue and she was shaking as she spoke.

"Dry off and warm up a little," I said. "Then I'll check you out to make sure you're clean. Sorry, I know this is uncomfortable, but we need to make sure you're not infected before we take you back to camp. We've got a lot of families there, and can't risk exposure."

"Don't worry, I understand." She focused on my wedding ring and asked, "Do you have a family?"

I looked at my mother's ring, which she'd given to me on my wedding day. "Yes."

"A husband?"

"Yeah," I said less enthusiastically.

"Any children?"

"I have a six year old boy named David."

"Is he with his Dad?" she asked.

It was a sore subject, and not one I wanted to talk about. "No, he's staying with his grandmother."

"I used to dream about getting married," she said while still looking at my ring. "They would show us videos at the Facility of girls in wedding dresses, and extravagant parties on the Surface. They said we would all meet the men of our dreams once we graduated, and that we would get married."

I snickered. "It's not all it's cracked up to be."

She nodded and said, "I know that now."

There was something about the way she responded that broke my heart. My snide remark was meant as a comment on my own failed marriage, but her heartbreak was fresh and innocent. It was like seeing a child learn that all the fairytales they loved were lies, all at once. I towered above her as she huddled with the blanket over her shoulders, and felt suddenly empathetic towards her for the first time.

"It's not all bad."

"What's not?" she asked.

"The Surface. I know you've had a couple rough days, and I'm not going to lie and say that everything's going to be great here on out
, but I can promise that there're better days ahead."

"I can't stop thinking about Hailey." When she spoke, it sounded like a confession. I longed to ease her pain.

"I know," I said as I sat on the rocks beside her and put my arm on her shoulder. "I've lost important people in my life too. We all have."

"I can't imagine how a person can ever get over something like this." Her words were nearly a whisper, as if barely more than a thought in her head.

I stroked her hair. "It'll feel like that for awhile. The best thing to do is think about one great moment you had with Hailey, and focus on it."

"Is that what you do?" she asked. "Who did you lose?"

"I've lost a lot of people," I said. "The first one was my father. He died when I was very young, right when the apocalypse started. He saved us from those creatures."

"What did you used to think about to make you happy?" asked Celeste.

"When I was young, I used to think about him working in the garage, singing to music." I smiled as I recalled that distant memory. "Then, when I was older, I started to remember a different picture of him that made me even happier. It was right before he died. He'd come home to get us, and had been hurt pretty bad on the trip. His head was all bandaged up, his arm was in a sling, and even his hands were bleeding. He'd fought all day to get home, and then we got into a truck and drove out to my school. We were in the truck, with my dad on my right, with my sister beside me in the middle, and Mom was driving through a field. We were bouncing over these big hills and he was laughing and smiling as we went."

I pretended to cough as the memory of that day threatened to make me cry. "I never thought about it until I got older and had a kid of my own, but that moment has become my favorite memory of him. It's the one I think about when times are tough."

"Why?" asked Celeste.

"Because, even though he was in pain, and every time that truck bounced it must've hurt him like hell, he still smiled and laughed to keep my sister and me happy. I don't know if he was just that happy to see us, or if he was hiding his pain to keep us from being scared, but either way, that's my favorite memory of him." I squeezed Celeste's shoulder and pulled her closer to me. "What about you? What's your favorite memory of Hailey?"

"That's easy," she said.

"Okay, tell me. Or is it personal?"

"No, it's not personal." Celeste brought her knees up to her chest and tucked the blanket under her butt to get more comfortable before settling back up against me. "You saw how pretty her hair was, right?"

"Yes, she had gorgeous red hair," I said, a bit envious. My sister had similarly pretty hair that always put my brown locks to shame.

"Well, we lived in the Facility our whole lives, and her hair was pretty down there too, but it was nothing compared to what it looked like in the sun. My favorite image of her, the one that'll stay with me forever, is when she first walked out into the sunshine. It was when the sun was setting, and everything was lit up with an orange hue, and her hair looked like it was blazing. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

She started to cry again, and I nestled her head on my chest as I wrapped my arms around her. Her shoulders quaked as she sobbed and I didn't try to shush her.

We'd arrived here at midday, but had been here long enough that the sun had started heading towards the mountains. It glinted off the stream in blinding flashes that nearly masked my vision of Hero, running nude in our direction.

"What the fuck?" I let Celeste go and stood up to see what was going on.

Hero had his clothes tucked under his arm and his hands cupping his genitals as he trudged across the rocky terrain. It would've been a comical sight if not for how out of character it was.

"Get to the truck!" He screamed out, but I didn't understand him at first.

"The truck?"

"Get to the truck!"

"What's wrong?" I asked as I helped Celeste up.

He pointed north.

The stream's incessant hum had masked the sound of what was approaching. Off in the distance, amid the puffs of clouds that dotted the blue sky, were a series of black dots in a single line.

"They're coming," said Hero as he struggled to get his pants back on.

"Who is?" asked Celeste as she stood up to look.

I pulled my pistol and loaded a fresh magazine as I said, "The helicopters."

Levon Kline

I pulled my pants on as quickly as I could, but modesty was the furthest thing from my mind at the time. I'd been further up the stream, minding my own business, washing myself off, when I saw the helicopters in the distance. They were flying low to avoid being seen, but they had to ascend over a foothill and revealed themselves. They were headed our way, and that wasn't a fucking coincidence.

Kim had already loaded her pistol and was pulling Celeste along behind her as she headed for the trucks. The young girl that I'd rescued from a military base was desperately trying to pull on a set of clothes as Kim grasped at her.

"We can't drive," I said as I followed behind. "We'll have to hide under one of them."

Kim stopped and glanced around.  She had a determined look on her face, one that I was all too familiar with. We'd been partners for a few years before I was assigned her sister, Annie, and I'd become familiar with her mannerisms. This particular look, where she squinted before scanning the area and then bit at the left corner of her upper lip, meant that she was about to disagree with me and expected me to accept her opinion. I rarely argued, because she was rarely wrong.

"No," she said with her typical, curt assuredness. "We need to be able to escape. They're not coming here by accident."

"What're you thinking?" I asked.

"
We won't be able to make it out of here on foot." She moved toward the truck and I walked backwards as I followed, keeping an eye on the approaching squadron of helicopters. Kim had a unique way of being able to talk through her thought process, which allowed everyone around her to better understand why she was making certain decisions. "There aren't enough places to hide until you get up in the tree line, and that's a good mile away. If they're after us, then they'll be looking for the trucks. When they see them, they're likely to just start shooting, so we can't hide anywhere near them."

"Babe, you'd better hurry up and figure something out," I said. "They're not far behind us. Where the fuck are we going to go?" I put a bullet in the chamber and then ejected the magazine to add another, giving me nine shots before I'd have to reload.

"Your truck is blocking mine, so we'll need to use yours as an escape vehicle if we need it. We can drive it back up to the highway." She pointed to the left of the mound of burned trucks that we'd abandoned here in the past. My truck, the one with the trailer filled with writhing corpses, was on the road that led back up to the highway.

"Get to the point," I said as we walked around the front of my truck. "Where are we going to hide?" We were swiftly running out of time.

"We need to get on the other side of that." She pointed at a small hill about twenty yards away, in the opposite direction of the approaching squadron. "It can give us cover if they start firing on the trucks, and they'd have to double back to take shots at us if they see us after passing over."

"Unless they've got snipers in there, which I bet they do," I said.

"You got a better plan?" she asked as if annoyed that I spoke out against her idea. There was a time when she was easier to deal with, back before a zombie attacked her son. Nowadays, she was impossible to debate with once she decided on a course of action. It was better to just go along with her than to argue.

"No, darling. Calm down and get your ass over that hill." I was moving barefoot on the craggy earth, and I saw that Celeste was suffering the same. She was stumbling through the weeds and rocks, yelping as she clomped down on the unforgiving terrain. "Come here," I said as I knelt at her side and scooped her up. She was light as a doll, and flopped over my shoulder. Her hands slapped against my bare back and she writhed in protest.

"I can run. I can handle myself," said Celeste as she continued to hit my back.

"Damn it, fine." I put her down and grimaced as I shook my head in disappointment. "How come every girl I meet these days is a headstrong, do-it-yourself, take-no-prisoners type? Where the fuck did the princesses go?"

"They got eaten," said Kim. "Now shut up and get your ass over here, both of you."

The earth was hot on my belly as I lay between Celeste and Kim on the far side of the hill.  The sound of the helicopters' approach rose above the gentle sloshing of the stream as we hid in the weeds, anxiously spying on the squadron.

"This is bad," said Kim.

"What?" I asked. We had to speak louder as the squadron approached.

"They never fly during the day."

She was right. In the twenty years since the apocalypse, I'd never seen the military performing any tasks during daylight. They were very cautious about keeping their activities, and even their existence, a secret. The Rollers often had to convince other survivors that there was any military presence at all in the area.

"They're pissed," I said.

"They must think we have their pilot."

Harrison's friend, Ben, brought down one of the helicopters the night before, and the pilot had survived. We took him prisoner when we evacuated, and were eager to get a chance to find out more about him as well as anything else we could learn about the military presence near DIA. In all our time patrolling the area, this was the first time we'd ever captured any of them alive.