Deadlocked 8 (15 page)

“Seriously?” she asked with obvious
jealousy.

I nodded and said, “Yep. You have to eat well
up there so that your immune system is stronger. Down here it
doesn’t matter so much. They keep everything down here sterile all
the time. That’s why the food’s so bland.”

“Wow,” said Elise as she handed me my plate
of food. The steak had already been cut into bite-sized pieces so
that they didn’t have to give me a knife, and the sweet potatoes
had been diced and drizzled with butter and brown sugar. “I can’t
wait to get out of here and make it to the surface.”

“I know what you mean.”

I stabbed my fork into the meat.

Annie Conrad

I can’t explain what it was about that scream
that had unsettled me so much, but I was more scared than I had
been in months. Perhaps it was because I’d been holed away in the
rehab center for so long, or perhaps I unconsciously picked up on
the hell that was about to descend upon us. That woman, whoever she
was, had seen or felt something that inspired the most
gut-wrenching cry of terror that I’d heard in years.

My palm was sweating as I gripped the pistol
at my side. I kept my finger over the trigger guard and stayed
stone-still, waiting for another sound to stir me to action. Ben
and Harrison were nearby, and they’d each stopped as well, their
concern plastered on their frozen faces.

Finally, Harrison spoke up, “I think we need
to get inside.”

“Good idea,” said Ben as he picked up a
satchel of supplies that Harrison had taken out of the Jeep.

Stubs was smarter than the rest of us, and
was already at the stoop. He pushed his nose at the door, which we
hadn’t closed all the way, until it opened for him. He rushed
inside, and I could hear the click of his nails on the kitchen tile
as he set about exploring the new space.

“Should we move the Jeep?” asked Ben.

“No,” I said as I continued to stare out at
our silent surroundings. “We shouldn’t risk something hearing the
engine.”

Ben nodded in agreement as he walked past me
to go back into the house. I lingered there, next to the overgrown
bushes that lined the small porch beside the front door, where
former owners had rested in rattan chairs that had since been
tossed about and shattered by decades of storms. The chairs’
crippled, twisted wood now looked demonic, with the patterned
cushions split to reveal stuffing that had been plundered by birds
for their nests.

It was easy to look at a neighborhood like
this and feel transported to the Red Days, but upon further
inspection you always found evidence of the withering rot of time.
As with most manmade things these days, these homes looked better
from a distance. Long lost were the days where a happy couple might
sit on this porch, in those rattan chairs, and share lemonade as
they watched their children play.

No children played on these streets anymore.
Only the dead. Only ghosts.

“Annie,” said Ben from the door. He beckoned
me to him. “Come on. Help me cover the windows.”

I imagined what it might be like to be a
young couple in the Red Days, walking into their first home and
planning the décor; debating where the couch should go or what
curtains might best compliment the rug. The Greens had never known
such comforts. To them, a new home meant the start of an arduous
task of securing windows and doors, and setting traps to catch or
kill any number of invaders.

I went inside, but a tarrying depression came
with me. I don’t have many memories of the Red Days, and the ones
that stuck seem to be glued down by blood. I don’t long for those
days because of memories, like most of the Reds who pine for that
long-lost age, but I’m haunted by them just the same. The knowledge
that we should’ve been better off, that my life could’ve been so
much easier had I only been born a generation or two earlier, was
something that bit at me all the time. Being in a place like this,
a neighborhood in a middle-class suburb, was a taunting reminder of
how unlucky I’d been.

I tried to imagine my parents walking into
their house for the first time. I had fleeting memories of that
two-story home in Georgia, but couldn’t be certain what was real
and what was fantasy. I remembered the garage that was connected to
the kitchen, and how Kim and our father had been working on a
dollhouse there. And I remembered the back door, and how cold the
handle would get in the summer when we had the air conditioning
blasting. There’s no rhyme or reason as to what memories a child
retains, except when they’re cemented by tragedy; like how hearing
my father’s cries of pain on that dock had never left my
nightmares.

“We’ve got a problem,” said Ben as he stood
by the large window that looked out onto the cul-de-sac. “We’ve got
a big fucking problem.”

“What?” I asked as I joined him. We were on
the couch, perched on our knees as we stared past the curtains.
Stubs jumped up between us and stood as high as his short frame
would allow, bringing his nose just high enough to crest the
cushion.

A horde had followed us here, and were
massing at the end of our street. There was no telling how many
were still hidden behind the corner houses, but the crowd wasn’t
sparse, and a quick count revealed at least fifty of the fresh dead
had made their way onto our lonely suburban road.

“They look like Poppers,” said Harrison as he
stood behind us.

“They’re fresh, that’s for sure,” said Ben.
Some of the walking corpses had wounds that didn’t look more than a
few days old, with flesh that still hung from them, blackened but
not yet withered.

“Raiders,” I said with certainty. “Look at
how they’re dressed; most of them in camo gear. Some of them even
have their packs strapped on their backs. I bet some Greys snuck up
on a caravan out here.”

“You think they heard the car?” asked
Harrison.

“It’s a safe bet,” said Ben as he closed the
curtains so that only a small gap was left for us to spy through.
“Problem for us is going to be how long they stick around here.
Fuck.” He sighed as he looked around and weighed our options. “We
could try and wait them out, or we could take off out the back. But
if we leave, we’re going to lose the supplies we’ve got in the
Jeep.”

“And if we stay…” Harrison laughed at how
ridiculous that option was and motioned out at the street. “Right?
I mean, if we stay we’ve got to deal with that. We haven’t even
secured this fucking place yet.”

“They won’t find us in here,” said Ben. “We
can go upstairs and wait them out. Since they’re fresh, there’s a
good chance they’ll keep moving for a while. As long as we don’t
give them a reason to go ape shit, they won’t start trying to break
the doors down.”

I spotted something skirting through the
crowd, hidden by the shuffling legs of the horde as the group moved
down the street. I leaned forward, closed one eye and squinted with
the other so that I could see through the small gap between the
thick curtains. “What in the hell?”

“What’s wrong?” asked Harrison.

I didn’t answer immediately because I wasn’t
sure that what’d I’d seen was even possible. Creatures were moving
within the horde, near the ground, but I wasn’t certain what the
shapes were until they pierced the dead veil with their snouts.

The horde wasn’t populated by just the
rotting corpses of human victims, there were animals in their
ranks. I might’ve entertained the possibility that this was a horde
of Poppers, and that living animals had overcome their fear of the
dead to wander among them since it was well known that Poppers had
no interest in consuming anything but humans, as opposed to the
Greys who would eat anything that breathed, but these dogs were
clearly dead as well. One of the mangy creatures at the head of the
horde was a tall breed, with sleek black hair that was matted with
blood from a gash on its side large enough that I could see it even
from this distance. The dog was sniffing at the air, and then
halted and stared in the direction of our quaint little
hideout.

“They’ve got dogs,” I said.

“Dogs?” asked Harrison and Ben in unison.

“They’ve got zombie dogs out there,” I said
as I gazed in terror at what was occurring only a few houses away
from us on this squat little street. “They’re coming. They can
smell us.”

Ben opened the curtain a bit wider so that he
could see, and my warning was confirmed. More shapes emerged from
the horde, slithering between those shambling legs like shadows
given form. A pack of undead dogs were traveling with the horde,
and it was clear that they’d caught our scent. The creatures rushed
ahead of their lumbering counterparts, but the horde was inspired
to quicken their pace as well.

Ben cursed and looked at me with the first
hint of panic I’d ever seen him display. He glanced at the other
side of the house, and I knew he was debating whether or not we
should try to flee. He was going through a mental checklist of
options, just like I was, and I think we arrived at the same
conclusion at nearly the same time.

“Upstairs,” I said before he had the chance.
“We can get on the roof if we have to.”

“Agreed,” said Ben as he knelt to scoop up
Stubs as well as the only bag of supplies that we’d brought in with
us. I’d inspected each bag, and knew that the one Ben had brought
in was lacking food and water. It also wasn’t his normal,
well-designed survival gear, and I’m certain he was angry with
himself for not bringing that bag in first. Instead, we were going
to have to make do with a few axes, clothes, tape, rope, and nails.
This was the bag that was meant to help fortify any abode we stayed
in, and Harrison had grabbed it out of the car first because we
expected to spend the next couple hours hard at work securing this
home.

Harrison went up first, and I stopped to
allow Ben up after. Ben did the same, and motioned for me to go
before him. Just as I did, we heard the first thump of a dog
slamming into our home. It didn’t bark, or even growl, but the
sound of its nails scratching on the door was unmistakable. I got
to the top of the stairs and followed Harrison into the master
bedroom. Ben lumbered up behind, the long gym bag filled with
supplies thudding on his back as he came with Stubs whimpering in
his arms.

More of the dogs reached the house, and they
launched themselves at the door, thudding uselessly against it. The
scratching intensified, and then I heard the sound of teeth gnawing
at wood. The creatures were biting anything they could get their
maws on, and were ripping at it. Next came the crunch of metal as a
hound began to rip a gutter away from the house, causing the noise
to intensify and echo even in our room.

“Move the bed over,” said Ben and we did as
he requested. The posts squealed on the wood floor as we pushed the
bed into place in front of the door, adding a small amount of
protection. Unfortunately, this bed seemed lighter than it
should’ve been, and I wondered if it was a prop of some sort like
the television downstairs.

“Think that’ll keep them out?” asked
Harrison.

“It might,” said Ben. “I’ve seen my fair
share of zombies piled up outside a locked door, but these ones
might still be strong enough to break it down. Doesn’t really
matter.”

“Why the hell not?” asked Harrison.

I knew the answer, and said it before Ben,
“Because we can’t stay here.”

“Exactly,” said Ben. “Even if they’re not
able to break the door down, they’re damn sure going to outlive us
out there. We don’t have any food and water.”

“What if they’re Poppers? They’ve got to be.
If they’ve got dogs with them, then they’re not Greys,” said
Harrison. “The whole group of them will be dead within a week.”

“When was the last time you saw Greys with
dogs?” asked Ben.

“And those dogs were zombies too,” I said.
“I’ve never seen that before. That’s not good.”

“Are you sure about that?” asked
Harrison.

We ran out of time to argue about it. The
horde caught up with the dogs, and we heard them start to break the
windows on the first floor. The horde wasn’t as quiet as the pups,
and their incessant moans of hunger filled the house, adding
another reason that staying here was a bad option. Not only did we
have nothing to eat or drink, but staying here to wait and see if
this horde was filled with Poppers meant that we’d be subjected to
their endless cries, which would keep us from getting any
sleep.

Ben looked over at the attached bathroom and
then at the window.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“We could take the bathroom door off and use
it to make a bridge across the roofs,” said Ben. “The houses here
are pretty close together.”

“You don’t think they’ll see us doing that?”
asked Harrison.

Ben had set Stubs on the ground, and the
puppy heard something that grabbed his attention. His head cocked
to the side and he stared under the bed that we’d pushed against
the door. He started to growl and Harrison hushed him. Then I heard
something sniffing as the door to the bedroom rattled. Stubs barked
in response, agitated by the undead dog that was sniffing us
out.

Harrison scooped Stubs up and the dog
continued to bark as he squirmed.

The horde thundered up the stairs, causing
the entire house to vibrate with their ascent. The crowd was
pushing past one another, desperate for a meal, and I could hear
them screaming as they came. They were trampling one another, and
the sound of their nails scratching at the walls grated at my
nerves. When they hit the door, they crushed the dog that had
sniffed us out, eliciting the first yelp from the creature that
we’d heard since it arrived. The door buffeted, causing the bed
posts to squeak on the floor.