Deadlocked 8 (27 page)

Ben understood burying Harrison was pointless
and too time consuming, so he decided to build a quick pyre in the
parking lot of a nearby gas station. He gathered flammable material
from the gutted building, breaking off what dry wood he could find
and gathering old magazines, paper, and rags. We shared few words
during the grim task, and I think Ben appreciated my silence.

I stood guard, and we both understood that
the gunshot earlier would inevitably attract attention. I had a
good vantage point out across the plains that hugged the foothills
of the Rocky Mountains, and I wasn’t worried about being caught by
surprise. There was a strip mall on the other side of the road, but
the ditch between would hamper any horde that emerged from there,
giving us plenty of time to escape. In the opposite direction
stretched a barren field, the dirt hard-packed and thirsty, bearing
no life other than bushes that the wind hadn’t quite uprooted to
turn into tumbleweeds. Thorny branches shuddered when the wind
gusted, and dust flowed across the landscape in a way that reminded
me of waves cresting and crashing on a beach in the movies that
Hero used to watch. There were no waves or beaches out here; only
dead plants and dry earth.

From beyond the ditch, past the bloody corpse
of our lost companion, I saw a man emerge from the burned out
carcass of a building that had once been a store. He was emaciated
and nearly nude, although his leathery grey skin might’ve been
mistaken for a coat. He had long, stringy hair that fell down over
a face that looked as if it had been raked by a hundred claws. His
left eye was missing, the socket long ago dried out, and his lips
had receded to allow his yellow teeth and blackened gums to show
prominently.

“We’ve got company,” I said to Ben as I
watched the Grey through the binoculars.

“How many?”

“Looks like just one.”

He stood and I offered him the binoculars as
he said, “When there’s one…”

He was right. The zombies moved in packs more
often than not, and it was rare to be beset upon by a loner. These
monsters were compelled by the same things, and when one got
excited others usually responded in kind.

“He’s a long way off,” I said.

Ben assumed I wanted to practice with a
sniper and said, “We shouldn’t shoot him. If he gets too close,
I’ll take him out with a blade.”

My shoulder was in no shape to bear the brunt
of a rifle’s kick, but Ben didn’t know that I’d reignited the old
injury when I fell through the roof the night before. I was
convinced that I could weather the pain, and that it wouldn’t
affect me, but I certainly wasn’t going to risk inflaming my
already tender shoulder by taking practice shots with a sniper
rifle.

“Help me get Harry over here,” said Ben as he
walked towards the corpse of our friend that was lying across the
road from us.

I went with him, and kept an eye on the Grey
that was shambling across the parking lot towards us. Just as Ben
had feared, our visitor wasn’t alone. More of the inevitable horde
had started to reveal themselves from the wreckage of the strip
mall. They must’ve been in the neighborhood that sat behind the
mall, and had headed our way after hearing Ben’s gunshot. Luckily,
it didn’t seem there were any Poppers among them. This was one of
the many hordes of Greys that the Rollers had spent the past couple
decades murdering. Yet, despite the thousands of Greys we’d
slaughtered, there always seemed to be more.

“Looks like a horde of Greys,” I said as we
got over to Harrison.

Ben glanced up, over the ditch, and saw the
wall of dead flesh that had focused on us. “Let’s hurry,” he said
with a telling lack of concern. Between the two of us, we’d lived
through just about everything the apocalypse could throw at a
person. Despite how terrifying the sight of a horde coming at us
might’ve been to most people, we knew we still had several minutes
before they even got to the ditch.

Despite how confident we both were in our
ability to finish the task and survive, free of danger, this was
still uncharacteristic for Ben. We’d gotten to know each other
fairly well during our time recovering after the attack at the
church. He’d told me about his life before meeting the Rollers, as
well as the strategies he’d employed to survive alone for so long.
He insisted that the one rule a survivor should never break was
simple: Don’t take unnecessary risks.

Taking time to build a pyre for Harrison as a
horde bore down on us was as good an example of taking an
unnecessary risk as I could imagine.

I glanced back at the dusty plains behind us.
Winter’s grip seemed to all but disappear in the light of day, and
there was no trace of moisture, let alone snow, anywhere near. The
frost that we’d awoken to had melted and evaporated, giving the dry
dirt barely a kiss.

Ben had built the pyre on the concrete lot
beside the gas station, a good distance from the plains, but the
wind could easily carry an ember out into the tinderbox of dry
weeds. If a flash fire spread out across this area as we continued
south, a potential avenue of escape would be lost to us.

Ben stood by Harrison’s head, his legs
stretched with the river of blood flowing between. Harrison was
face down, but I could see a portion of his shattered skull laying
awkwardly away from his cheek, still connected by flesh. It looked
as if he’d fallen from the sky and landed here face first, smashing
and dying on impact. The bullet had torn through him, ending his
pain and silencing him except for the
thwump
of his body as
he slapped down. Now his corpse was left to rot, yet still too
fresh to entice the fat flies that thrived in the Green world.

“Grab his legs,” said Ben as he gripped the
wrists of his dead friend.

This was a bad idea, and I wanted to say
something, but I hesitated.

“Can you grab his legs?” asked Ben as he
lifted his side, pulling Harrison’s face away from the pavement
with a sickening, wet noise. The cavity in the man’s face produced
a gush of liquid as his head hung low.

“Ben…” I stood on the other end of his dead
friend, but didn’t bend to lift his legs.

Ben glanced over his shoulder at the Greys
whose moans we could hear now as they inched ever closer. “Don’t
worry about them. We’ve got time.”

“We shouldn’t be doing this.”

Everything about this was wrong. We were
putting ourselves at risk for no good reason. I’d seen corpses that
had been shot in the head still manage to become reanimated because
their brain was intact just enough for them to function. I’d
watched as massive swathes of this dry countryside burned away
after a single spark had ignited what had seemed like an
insignificant flame. I’d tried to start my fair share of vehicles
that had no good reason to die, only to discover them uselessly
clicking away as a mechanism within failed to do its job.

“Fine,” said Ben with as much anger as his
weariness allowed him to muster. “I’ll do it myself.” He started to
drag Harrison’s body, leaving a streak of red on the grey
pavement.

“Ben, stop.” I grabbed his arm as he turned
to pass by me.

“What?” He let go of Harrison’s hand and
turned on me. His eyes were red and wet, and weariness defined his
features. “What is it?”

I ached for him, and I knew where his rage
stemmed from. As he stood there glaring at me, I knew exactly how
he felt. I walked closer and put my arms around him to pull him
into an embrace. He didn’t fight back, and instead put his arm
around my back to hold me closer.

“He wouldn’t want us risking our lives like
this,” I said as I kept a watchful eye on the horde creeping slowly
closer.

“He deserved better than this,” said Ben, his
voice strained by sorrow.

“You’re right,” I said as I held him. “But he
wouldn’t want this either.”

Ben backed away from my embrace and looked
down at the body in the road. “I can’t just leave him here like
this.”

“That’s not him anymore, Ben.”

“I know that.” I could see his expression
shift between anguish, frustration, and helplessness. “I know, but
he…” Ben took his hand away from mine and wiped it across his face
in a downward motion, pulling at his cheeks and cleaning away
tears. “Back in Juniper he made me help him burn the bodies. He
said it was to honor them. You know? As best we could. I just want
to…”

“This isn’t how to do it,” I said as I put my
hand on the side of his cheek to force him to look at me instead of
at the body at our feet. “This isn’t what he’d want.”

“He was…” Ben tried to look down again, but I
held his face so that he had to look at me instead. He closed his
eyes and said, “He was the only friend I ever had.”

“No, you’re wrong.” I kissed his forehead.
“You’re wrong.” I took his hand and led him away, back towards the
Jeep.

The horde was falling into the ditch as we
got into the Jeep. I took the driver’s seat and waited as Ben got
in beside me. I started the Jeep and drove slowly, with Harrison’s
corpse to my right. Ben looked down at his friend, and then gazed
into the side mirror as we drove away, leaving the dead behind
us.

* * *

We weren’t far from Harrison’s water tower
when we decided to camp. We’d learned our lesson the night before,
and weren’t going to risk waiting too late to find a good spot. Our
decision to avoid the normal routes through the area had caused our
trip to take far longer than it would normally. Had we stuck to the
trade routes that the Rollers had cleared and maintained over the
years, this trip would’ve taken less than a day. But we knew that
Jerald and his men would be watching those routes, and we didn’t
want to risk being caught.

I stuck to the outskirts of the bones of Red
day civilization, preferring to keep as much open land in view as
possible to avoid getting lost in another labyrinth of suburban
streets. When the sun fell behind the mountains, we were already
driving up to a lonely farmhouse that we would make our home for
the night.

Ben and I explored the house, clearing each
room methodically as we went. The quaint farmhouse was a time
capsule, subject only to the dust and cobwebs of age. I deduced
that the former owners had been old, probably grandparents, and had
kept their home impeccably clean. The dishes were dulled by a thick
layer of dust as they sat in the dryer rack beside the sink,
exactly as they had been the day the apocalypse decimated the
world.

I picked up a white coffee cup from the rack
and looked at the delicate flower inlay on the side. The waning
sunlight came in through the window over the sink to make the
silver details sparkle. I could almost imagine this cup sitting
atop a dainty white plate, steaming from the coffee or tea within,
comforting an old woman on a chilly winter eve as she sat in the
rocking chair beside the fire in the living room.

Ben startled me when he said, “Let’s check
the stable and the garage.”

I set the cup back down, and it rattled as it
spun and settled on the counter.

“The bag we lost last night had most of our
tools. Hopefully we can find some here.” Ben was focused on the job
of securing the home, and his former depression seemed a distant
memory. He apparently saw something concerning in my demeanor as he
stopped and asked, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said as I glanced around the
kitchen. “It’s just that,” I smiled and shrugged as I tried to
explain, “I always dreamed of having a place like this. A little
farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. If I’d been alive in the
Red days, this is the sort of place I’d want to end up in when I
was old. Out here with someone I loved, just watching the sun come
up over the fields in the morning, and snuggling up by the fire at
night.”

Ben glanced around and nodded as he said,
“Sounds like a good life.”

“What about you? If you’d been alive back
before the world went to shit, where would you want to live?”

“I never really gave it much thought,” he
said as he put his gun in his holster. “I guess I never planned to
live long enough to worry about it.”

“Do you think we’ve got a shot at being old
and happy?”

He shrugged and said, “We’ve made it this
far. We’re doing better than most.” Then he waved me towards the
back door. “Come on, let’s go check out the stable.”

I followed him as he went out the back door
and down the porch to head out to the nearby stable. The wooden
porch had been warped by weather, and had lost whatever color it
once had, leaving it grey and splintery. There was a bench for two
beside the back door, and the metal arms had rusted years earlier.
The yard between the house and the stable had once been grassy, but
was now mostly dirt and stones. Round step stones drew a path from
the backdoor to the remnants of a wire fence that had been warped
by storms and was nearly hidden beneath snakes of dead vines.

Ben followed the stones to the fence’s gate,
and then struggled to push it open. He had to take out his knife to
cut away the dead vines and pull the gate free. We walked down the
slight incline that led to the long, enclosed stable. A wooden
fence stretched out behind the stable, covering an impressive space
that was meant for horses to wander, but it looked as if a flood
had come through here at some point over the past decades, causing
debris to press against the fence and warp the posts. The house on
the hill behind us hadn’t been damaged this way, which was lucky
for us.

The stable door was locked, and we’d lost the
tool Ben had used before to break into the last house. This time, a
swift kick gained us entry.

Ben went into the inky darkness first, and
flicked on his flashlight to look around. It was a basic structure,
meant for nothing other than as a home for the horses. To our left
were shutters and gates to allow easy access for the animals, and
the pens were on our right. Ben lifted one of the shutters and used
a rod to prop it open, bringing in enough light that we didn’t need
to waste the flashlight’s batteries.