Deadlocked 8 (29 page)

She laughed as she sat atop me. “Who says I’m
the one getting taken advantage of?” she asked before sliding her
hands up under my shirt.

We tore off our clothes as if they were on
fire, and spent the next few hours exploring each other in a
variety of ways. It was as if both of us considered this a
challenge to prove our fortitude over the other, and every time it
seemed that we were winding down we would begin again. Eventually
we made our way to the bedroom, and spent plenty of time there,
squirming beneath the sheets and enjoying each other in every way
we could imagine.

Our skin was sticky with sweat when I peeled
myself away, panting and exhausted, and laid down beside her. She
was similarly tired, and was still breathing heavy when she asked,
“You all used up?”

I laughed and then nodded. “I think so.”

She put her fist in the air and said, “I
win.”

“What? You could go again?”

Annie smirked and said, “Sure.”

“Seriously?” I asked, astonished. I was
certain that she was at least as tired as I was.

“It’s okay if you can’t handle me.” She
enjoyed taunting me.

“We’ll see about that.” I mounted her again,
not even bothering to clean off what I’d left on her stomach
moments earlier. She squealed and pushed at my sweaty chest, but I
dove back over her and started all over again in our game of
endurance.

It was after that round of love-making that
we were both finally convinced it was time to concede. Annie was
the one that noticed the dim light coming in through the window,
and said, “It’s morning.”

I glanced out the window and gave a laugh
that turned to a sigh. “Wow. I guess we’d better try and get some
sleep.”

She stood, her nude body glistening with
sweat, and wiped herself with the edge of an extra blanket that
we’d thrown to the floor long ago. Then she crawled back onto the
bed and leaned down close to me, her head propped up on both of her
hands, a wide smile on her face. “Thank you,” she said before
kissing my forehead. “That was beyond incredible. Maybe next time
you can keep up with me.”

I chuckled and shook my head as she crawled
back under the sheets and pressed her nude body up against me. We
fell asleep that way, both of us exhausted and drained.

I woke up once during our sleep, and the
bright sunshine was pouring in from the window, warming me as Annie
still laid with her head on my chest. Her red hair took on a golden
hue, enlivened by the sunlight. I kissed the top of her head, and
stroked the small of her back with my fingertips. She groaned and
squirmed, and then snuggled closer to me. I thought that I would
stay awake, but I didn’t want to get out of bed just yet. I was
enjoying her too much, and I closed my eyes as the warmth of the
sun and her skin lulled me back to sleep.

Somehow or another, we’d managed to find
heaven together here in the midst of hell.

Annie Conrad

I felt like shit when I finally woke up. My
stomach was turning in ten different directions, and the marathon
sex I’d been all too eager to enjoy the night before had left me
sore from the waist down.

“Hungry?” asked Ben, sounding far more
chipper than seemed fair.

I mumbled a sort of response, “Huh?”

“Are you hungry?”

Food was the last thing I needed. I rubbed my
eyes and looked at him as he stood in the doorway, fully dressed
and looking well rested. “No. Thirsty.” My one word sentences would
have to suffice.

“I’ll get you some water.”

I wanted to ask for an aspirin too, but he
was gone before I had the chance. We had some pain killers tucked
away in the Jeep somewhere, and there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to
get my hands on them at that moment.

The sheets felt sticky, and I peeled them off
of me with a grimace. The room spun, and I decided that I’d have to
deal with the gross sheets for a little while longer. I heard Ben’s
feet thumping on the stairs as he came back up and I pulled the
crusty sheet back over my breasts, feeling shy again now that my
alcohol-inspired inhibition had faded. He knocked before coming in,
which I found sweetly gallant.

“Here you go,” he said as he handed me a
bottle of water. Then he held out his other hand and said, “I
thought you could use some aspirin.”

“Oh my god,” I said as I accepted them like
the gift they were. “You’re a life saver.”

“I’ve got some breakfast, or lunch,
downstairs if you feel like eating anything.”

“No promises,” I said before popping the
aspirin and swigging the water before the bitter taste of the old
pills hit me.

Ben left me alone, and I wallowed in my
misery for what felt like hours, but was probably not more than
twenty minutes. I finally forced myself out of bed, my head
thudding as if my brain had decided to break its way out with a
sledgehammer, and started to search the room for my clothes. That’s
when I remembered that I’d taken them off downstairs, and I
suddenly faced the embarrassing task of wandering the house in
search of them.

I reached out to grab a blanket to wrap
myself with and found fresh clothes folded and set on the corner of
the bed, yet another perfect gift from Ben. I let out an audible
sigh of appreciation like a little girl catching sight of a puppy.
He’d also placed a bucket on the floor, filled with an inch of
water and a sponge for me to clean off with.

Ben was waiting downstairs for me, relaxing
on the couch reading a book as a hot cup of tea steamed on the
table beside him. He heard me coming and set the book down. “How
you feeling?”

“Sore and sick.”

“I know the feeling. I was pretty green when
I got up too. Feel up to eating something?”

I grimaced and shook my head as I made my way
over to the couch. “Not just yet. Give me an hour, or ten.”

He snickered and then dog-eared his book. “We
should probably get out on the road soon.”

“I’m ready whenever, as long as you
drive.”

“Deal. I already packed everything up. We’re
good to go whenever you’re ready.”

I looked around at our little temporary home
with a sense of loss. “I’m going to miss this place. I don’t think
I’ve ever felt that way about one of the places I camped at
before.”

“I marked the location on Billy’s map. It’s
always good to know where the safe spots are at.”

I got up off the couch and knocked over the
bottle of champagne we’d emptied the night before. I picked it up
and showed it to Ben with a wry grin. “This did a number on
us.”

He agreed with a smile and a raised brow. “I
put the whiskey in the Jeep. Want me to save that bottle too?”

“No, that’s silly,” I said as I walked to the
kitchen and opened the top of the recycle box. It was ludicrous to
worry about cleaning up after ourselves by tossing the bottle in
the right bin, but I knew how meticulously clean Andrea had kept
her house, and it felt like I was honoring her by not leaving the
bottle laying on the floor. The bin was half-full already, and I
smiled when I saw an empty box of devil’s food cookies in the mess.
I dropped the bottle of champagne in and looked around at the
kitchen one last time, appreciating its quaint perfection. I turned
back to Ben and said, “Let’s head out.”

We’d wasted the majority of the day already,
but Harrison’s water tower wasn’t far. The trip was almost
uneventful, except for a pack of stray Greys that had blocked our
path at one point. Ben had avoided an altercation by driving the
Jeep through a park, causing us to jostle and laugh as the vehicle
bounced over the numerous hills.

“That’s got to be it,” said Ben as he leaned
forward and pointed out to the right.

I’d been looking at the map in my lap,
keeping us on the right path, and I glanced up to see the
ballooning steel structure that rose above the neighborhood. We
weren’t far from Hanger, but I’d never known that anyone lived
here. It seemed foolish that people would’ve stayed here instead of
going to the settlement that wasn’t more than an hour’s walk
away.

We navigated the roads that led us to the
tower, but we stopped long before reaching it. The streets were
littered with Grey corpses, their wounds fresh enough that their
black, wet blood still twinkled in the light.

Heavy tire treads had smeared the blood
across the pavement of the street, and Ben pulled to the side.
“This is bad,” he said as he checked his pistol.

I agreed, but tried to be positive, “Maybe
Harry’s friends did this.”

“Doubt it.”

“What do you think happened?”

He looked out at the tracks on the road, and
the body of the Grey that had been split in half by whatever
vehicle had run him over. The Grey’s upper half had managed to
crawl away several yards before finally giving up. Despite rumors,
there were other ways to kill a Grey than simply smashing up their
brains. While they often survived horrific injuries, they still
needed their body to be somewhat intact to carry on. However, it
could take weeks for them to finally die, and I could see the
eyelids of the creature in the road twitching as it struggled to
look at us.

Ben studied the scene, and then rolled down
his window. He turned off the Jeep so that we could hear what was
going on outside, but it was nearly silent. The only persistent
noise was the shallow, wet breathing of the creature that had been
split in half on the road.

“Stay here,” said Ben as he got out of the
Jeep. I was angry for a moment because I assumed he was treating me
different now that we’d slept together, as if that gave him
permission to suddenly turn into my stalwart guardian. However, I
calmed down quickly and understood that he just wanted to have
someone in the Jeep, ready to start it, should anything unforeseen
happen. I watched as he walked over to the Grey that was gasping
for air on the pavement.

He took out a make-shift weapon that the
Rollers sometimes carried for silencing Greys. It was a piece of
rebar that had one end sharpened and the other wrapped in tape to
provide a handle. It was a simple but effective tool that helped
prevent the Rollers from losing handy weapons inside of a Grey’s
head. We called them ‘Bleeders’ after a weapon that Arthur fancied,
and they were cheap and easy enough to make that losing one wasn’t
a big deal.

Ben plunged the sharpened point of the rebar
tool into the Grey, causing its head to slap down and its mouth to
gape as black fluid oozed out over its broken teeth. With a quick
pull, the rebar was free, and Ben cleaned it off on a kitchen towel
that he’d taken from Wes and Andrea’s home. The spiraling groove in
the rebar helped to make it easier to pull the weapon out of a
Grey’s head, and if it got stuck the bearer could simply turn it
like a screw to get it out, but the drawback was that those same
grooves could often get blood stuck in them, and the owner would go
around for days not knowing what stunk.

Once the breather was silenced, we listened
to the sounds of the neighborhood and quickly understood that we
were being hunted. The homes near the water tower were clicking and
tapping, and the crunch of debris beneath stumbling feet revealed
our predators. The Greys don’t often moan and cry as much as their
Popper counterparts, but when they catch sight of food they will do
their best to give a guttural yell. As of yet, I hadn’t heard that
tell-tale sound, but just the clamor of clumsy hunters. The Greys
had probably been attracted here when the vehicles that left their
bloody tracks on the road showed up, and then tried to chase them
through the neighborhood until they lost interest. Now they were
doubling back, having heard us headed out to the same spot they’d
just left.

“No more than a day old,” said Ben as he came
over to his side of the Jeep and spoke to me through the open
window. “Looks like at least two or three vehicles came through
here and then headed back out that way.” He pointed the bleeder out
in the direction that the Grey on the road had been faced when it
crawled away from its lower half.

“Military?”

He nodded and said, “Yeah, by the looks of
it. Wide tires, deep treads. Heavy enough to split that Grey clear
in two. I’d guess a troop transport vehicle.”

“Should we still head up to the tower?”

Ben opened the door and got in as he said,
“Might as well. I doubt they’re coming back. We’ll have to hurry
before the horde they stirred up makes its way out to us.”

He started the Jeep and we turned onto the
dirt path that wound through a thicket of dead trees and up the
hill that the tower sat upon. We parked beneath, but it was already
evident that this was a lost cause.

The ground at the base of the tower was
dented and torn by the wheels of several vehicles that had parked
here. I glanced up at the curved sides of the massive tower and saw
streaks of glinting steel on the otherwise dull metal. I pointed up
at them and said, “Bullets. Looks like they were shooting up at the
tower.”

“But trying not to hit it directly,” said
Ben, taking note of how there were only a scant few actual bullet
holes in the underside of the structure but plenty of the gouges
along the edges. “Warning shots.”

“So they knew someone was hiding up there,” I
said as we walked over to the ladder that was attached to one of
the seven outer posts. The rungs were dented, and caked with mud,
denoting extensive use. The people that had lived here had gone up
and down these stairs a thousand times, causing the metal to warp
from the overuse.

“Here, look,” said Ben as he walked past the
ladder and towards the center spire that started fat, then thinned
on the way up before spanning out again, like the gesticulated
shape of a woman. There was a door on the bottom, hewn from the
steel that had obviously not been a part of the original design.
The edges were sharp, and instead of a handle there was just a rope
pulled through a hole and knotted on both ends to prevent it from
being tugged all the way out. The hinges looked stolen from a
home’s door and pounded into the side here.