Deadlocked 8 (16 page)

Ben got down and pressed his back against the
side of the bed while bracing himself with his feet planted on the
opposite wall. Harrison and I helped keep the bed in place, but Ben
wasn’t having trouble doing it alone and said, “Get the door down.
I’ve got this.”

Harrison set Stubs on top of the bed and then
opened the bag that Ben had brought in. Stubs stood defiantly in
the center of the bed and offered an occasional bark at the horde
that was trying to get in.

Harrison handed me a screwdriver and I got to
work on the door, swiftly getting the long, brass-colored screws
out of the hinges. I tucked the tip of my shoe under the door to
help steady it as I got midway through the job. Harrison helped
hold the door as I got the last couple screws out and then we
carried it over to the window that looked out at the neighbor’s
house.

Harrison was closest to the window and he
grimaced back at me. “There’s no ledge or nothing out here on our
side.”

“Can we lay the door down on the windowsill?”
I asked.

“I doubt it’s going to fit,” said
Harrison.

“There should be axes in the bag,” said Ben.
“Use them to cut the door to fit.”

I opened the window and started to pry off
the screen as Harrison went back to the bag to get an axe. Ben was
still on the floor, acting as a brace to keep the bed wedged
against the door. Harrison came back with the axe and we used its
handle to measure the width of the window sill. The sill was only a
few inches smaller than the width of the door. Harrison set about
hacking out one of the corners of the bathroom’s door. It didn’t
take long, although the noise had incited the horde, causing them
to smash into the bedroom door even harder than before.

Harrison and I hefted the makeshift bridge
and slid it diagonally through the window. We did our best to hold
onto it, but by the time it was halfway out we knew there was a
problem with our plan. Holding onto the door had become too
precarious as it teetered out, and Harrison had only cut out the
corner, meaning we wouldn’t be able to flatten it out until it was
nearly pushed all the way through.

I tugged the door back a few inches so that
the majority was on our side, and then said, “Harry, cut the door
some more. Cut it about another foot up.”

He must’ve realized the same thing I had
because he didn’t argue with me. He started whacking at the door
again and had nearly cut away a large enough portion when we heard
a disquieting crack. I saw the split emerge in the wood, spreading
out from the wedge he’d taken up through the middle, threatening to
split the door.

“Oh fuck,” said Harrison. He proceeded to
curse over and over.

“What?” asked Ben. “What happened?”

“The door’s about to split in two,” said
Harrison before cursing some more.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We can still make
it.”

“There’s rope in the bag,” said Ben, but he
winced in the middle of the sentence as the bed lurched suddenly
forward, forcing him to press harder against the wall. He was still
holding strong, but the strain was taking a toll on him. “Use it to
tie the door together.”

Harrison hurried to retrieve the nylon rope
and then brought it back to loop around the door. He tied several
knots and then glanced at me with a weary sigh. “I hope this
works.”

We pushed the door out diagonally and were
then able to flatten it thanks to the larger cut that Harrison had
made on the side. This allowed better leverage as we both got on
our knees to pull our side of the door down as we continued to push
it out, like a plank of a pirate ship. “I’m losing my grip,” I said
through clenched teeth as the door was left with barely a half-foot
from being entirely pushed out of the house.

Harrison had hold of the rope’s slack as he
peeked over the edge and said, “I think it made it. I think we’re
good.”

We tried to cautiously let the door fall, but
the edge slipped out of my grasp and the other end fell fast to the
neighbor’s roof, which was about two feet lower than the bottom of
our windowsill.

“We did it,” said Harrison in disbelief. Then
he laughed as he said again, “We did it!”

“We’re not out yet,” said Ben. “Harry, get
Stubs and take him with you. You’re going first.”

Harrison looked puzzled, and then tremulous
as he glanced out the window and back at Ben. He bit his lip and
grumbled before saying, “Ben, I know you love that dog, but…”

“He’s going with,” said Ben,
uncompromising.

Stubs was still barking at the door, and I
understood Harrison’s concern. The last thing we needed to bring
with us was a walking alarm that would alert the horde to our
location.

“He’s going to give us away,” said Harrison.
“I know you like that fucking dog, but be realistic, Ben. We
can’t…”

“This isn’t up for debate,” said Ben.

“Like hell it’s not,” said Harrison. “If we
leave the dog in here, then he’ll keep barking, and the horde will
keep trying to get at him. It’ll give us some time to get the fuck
out of here.”

“No chance,” said Ben. “If he stays, I stay.
End of story.”

I picked Stubs up off the bed and tried to
calm him. He was incensed by the horde outside the door, and
continued to growl. I hushed him as I headed for the window.

“What are you doing?” asked Harrison.

“I’m going first,” I said. “And I’m taking
Stubs. Hold the door down for me.”

Harry didn’t argue. He cursed some more, but
he was always doing that. He gripped the bottom of the door that
was laying on our sill and said, “Be careful, Red.”

We were only one story high, but the fall
would’ve been deadly. Our attempt to build a bridge had attracted
some of the horde to the rocky space between these two houses, and
they shuffled about below, watching as I dared to crawl out onto
the door. The sight of a new victim sent them into a fury, and they
caterwauled below as I inched my way outside. I was hunched halfway
out the window, my left leg curled up as my right stretched down
back to the bedroom floor. The creaking door threatened to split in
two and I watched the crack as it stretched a bit longer.

“This isn’t gonna work,” said Harrison from
below me. He could hear the whine of the splitting door.

I held Stubs in my right arm, my hand cupping
his underside as his legs draped. My left hand was gripping the
bottom of the window that we’d opened as I dared to put my full
weight onto the unsure bridge.

The crack immediately spread the second I
relied on the door to support my full weight. It was too late to go
back now, and I forced myself to take a step out across the
splintering wood. The rope kept the bridge together, but my weight
was causing the other side to slide down the neighbor’s roof until
the edge of the door fell into the feeble gutter that was weighted
with two decades worth of pine needles and leaves. The gutter
groaned and pulled away, causing the door to shift and fall. I
bounded the last few feet and slammed on my side atop the
neighbor’s roof, with Stubs held out safely above me. The slick
roof was angled, and I began to slide off, just as the gutter
pulled away from the wall. My foot pressed against the door as it
fell too, and I pushed myself back up just as the makeshift bridge
fell away.

Harrison cried out a curse as he tried to
hold the door steady, but it fell from his grasp and bashed into
the group below, causing them to bellow even louder.

I’d made it safely across, but Harrison and
Ben were still stuck on the other side.

Annie Conrad

I could hear Ben asking, “Is she okay?”

“She’s okay,” said Harrison as he looked at
me from the window of the house I’d escaped. “She made it.”

But what now?

I rolled over so that I could sit up, and
placed Stubs on my lap. I stared in at Harrison, who looked
helpless and afraid, and I tried to think of how best to handle the
situation. No good solution offered itself.

“We’re fucked,” said Harrison as he looked
down at the ground below.

“I can try to break into this house to see if
I can find anything useful,” I said. “Maybe we can build another
bridge.”

The screams of the horde got louder and I
could see from my vantage as they pierced the door that stood
between them and my friends. When incensed by the promise of food,
zombies will batter themselves into bloody stumps to break down a
door. Whereas a living person might require an axe or other weapon
to break into a room, the horde were happy to do the work with
their shattered fists. A bloody hand forced its way through the
hole, and then an arm came quickly after, as if I were witnessing
the birth of a demon pushing its way out of the walls.

Harrison got the axe and leapt onto the bed
to start hacking at the intruder. The zombie didn’t retract its
arm, even after Harrison’s first chop left it dangling half
severed. Blood splattered the old man’s face as he took another
swing, lopping off an arm that fell to the bed followed by a fount
of black, syrupy fluid.

It wouldn’t be long before the horde got to
them, and I knew I had to act fast if I was going to help save
them. “Throw me the keys,” I screamed, but neither of them could
hear me over the roar of the creatures at their door. I yelled out
again, and this time got their attention.

“What?” asked Harrison as he came to the
window.

“Throw me the keys to the Jeep.”

“Why?” asked the befuddled old man.

“Just throw me the damn keys.”

He turned to Ben and said, “She wants the
keys to the Jeep.” Then he looked back at me and said, “Ben wants
to know what you’re gonna do.”

We had to scream at each other over the cries
of the zombies below. “I can break into this house, and then sneak
back over to the Jeep. If I start it up, I can draw some of them
out of your house. Then maybe you and Ben can fight your way
out.”

Harrison relayed my plan to Ben, and then
looked back out at me as he shook his head. “Ben says that’s nuts,
and I agree. We can find some other way out.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “Either give me the keys
or I’m going to try and hotwire it. If I have to do that, then I’m
dead for sure. Give me the fucking keys.”

Again, he relayed my message to Ben, and then
went over to collect the keys. He returned to the window and was
about to toss the keys over when he paused and said, “You’d best be
careful, Red.”

“Always am,” I said just before he tossed the
keys across the short gap between the houses. I caught them and
shoved them into my pocket before settling on what to do next. I
watched as Harrison returned to his gory task of hacking at the
intruders coming in through their broken door, and I knew I had
little time to waste.

I scampered over the zenith of the home,
using my left hand to balance myself as I ascended the crest and
searched for a window that I could break into. Unfortunately, this
house was a copy of the one I’d just fled, and there were no
windows that were easily accessible from the roof.

However, the next house over had been damaged
by a fallen tree, and I could see into a portion of the attic. If I
could make it across, then I could slip in through the gap and make
my way inside. My other option was to simply jump down to the
ground below. I was only a single story high, and could certainly
handle the leap, but the zombies that had massed outside of the
house where Ben and Harrison were trapped had noticed my escape.
Several of them had watched me cross the gap, and they were trying
to find a way to get up to me. Zombies aren’t smart enough to see
someone on a roof and deduce that they needed to go inside to climb
stairs, but they will wander the exterior of a house blindly. If I
made noise by dropping down, there was a good chance I’d be swarmed
in seconds.

I looked down at Stubs as he sat in my arms
and said, “This isn’t going to be easy, little guy.” I unzipped my
sweatshirt and tucked the pup inside. He was pressed between my
undershirt and the sweatshirt, but it wasn’t a tight enough fit to
ensure he would stay there. I would have to keep my arm under him,
and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hold on after leaping the gap.

I backed up while keeping my eyes on my
desired landing spot. “You can do this.” I tried to assure myself.
“You’ve got this.”

I could hear the zombies shuffling through
the gravel on the side of the house, making their way over to the
gap between this house and the next. It was now or never.

I ran the short distance down the sloped
roof, gaining more speed than I’d intended, and then propelled
myself across the gap with one arm flailing and the other wrapped
under Stubs.

When I landed, the force caused my knees to
buckle and I crunched up before falling over. My knees bashed into
my chest, crushing poor Stubs in the process. I rolled to the
right, and was lucky enough to land in a dented portion of the
partially collapsed roof. The tree branch that had done the damage
was still stuck here, and I tried to grip it to keep from falling.
The roof gave way, as if it had been waiting for provocation to
collapse for years now, and the rotted wood crumbled as Stubs and I
fell through.

I’m not certain what happened next, although
I have plenty of aches and pains to tell the story for me. This
house had sustained significant damage from the fallen tree limb,
and years of rain and snow had eaten away at the wood. My lunge to
the roof had been all the building needed to finally give in, and I
fell through the attic as well, landing in a heap on the floor of
what had once been a little girl’s bedroom.

Dust and fragments of the ceiling fell down
on top of me as I groaned in agony. Fading daylight shone in
through the hole above like a beam from a dying flashlight,
offering an insignificant view of my surroundings as I coughed and
sputtered. The fall had stolen my breath, and my lungs were
struggling to pull in air.