Deadlocked 8 (31 page)

We got back out to the main street, and
discovered that the horde in the town was larger than we’d
expected. There weren’t enough of them to block our way, and I
managed to drive around the majority of them. Annie got her pistol
ready, and was prepared to roll down her window and start shooting
if she needed to. Luckily the horde thinned once we got further up
the street, and when we were certain that the route was clear,
Annie put her gun away and got out Billy’s map.

“We can’t take the long way back.” She placed
her finger on the map in the general area where she thought we
were. “We’re going to have to either get on the trade route or go
through Denver.”

I didn’t like either of those options. “I
thought Denver was infested.”

“It is,” she said as she mapped a course we
could take. “But the highway’s still in good shape. Well, not
good
shape, but I think we could still make it. That would
be the fastest way.”

“Yeah, unless we ran headfirst into a
horde.”

“The trade route’s going to be just as risky.
The last time we were on it, Jerald had put spike strips all over
it to herd us into that town where the church was. He knew where we
were, and where we used to camp, and he was working with some of
the traders. Chances are he knows that route already.”

“So we’re going to Denver then,” I said, my
concern apparent. “How can we be sure we’re not going to lead them
right to the camp? What if there’s a drone watching us right
now?”

“Already thought of that,” said Annie. “We’re
going to drive past the rehab center, and into some cover, then
we’ll push the Jeep down a hill before hiking back through the
woods.”

“Annie, there’s no way we’re going to do this
before dusk.”

She leaned forward to look out at the sun. It
was making a rapid descent towards the mountains. We still had at
least an hour before it made it to the edge of the range, and that
would still leave us with an hour or more before it got dark, but
that could easily put us in the middle of Denver, surrounded by
Greys at nightfall.

“We can make it,” she said, determined.

“No, Annie, we can’t.”

“We can try.” Her anger brought a sharp edge
to her words.

“We haven’t exactly been lucky on this trip
so far,” I said.

“You got lucky,” she said, and I appreciated
the wry grin her comment brought to her lips.

I conceded with a laugh. “Yeah, well, you got
me there.”

“I know this is risky,” she said. “And I
wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think it was important.”
Annie turned in her seat so that she was facing me, pulling her leg
up as she did. “If they’ve got drones out there, and they sent all
those men out to round up a group of heroin addicts, then they’re
desperate to find the Rollers. Before, they barely ever even poked
their heads out of their holes, and now all of the sudden they’re
sending out squads. We’ve got to get back to Mom and warn her.”

I’d caught something in what she said that
gave me pause. “Heroin addicts?”

She looked away, avoiding the subject by
saying, “You know what I mean.”

It didn’t take me long to figure out what she
was hiding, but I didn’t want to ask for any more information. I
was content letting her keep that secret. It was better to leave
that shooting star alone.

She guided me through the area, using Billy’s
map to determine which routes would be the clearest. His map wasn’t
perfect, but it was still more reliable than anything I’d
encountered in the past. It was rare that any survivor knew much
more about the area that surrounded them than what they could walk
to in a day. The way that Billy and the Rollers had mapped out the
area with such detail, keeping track of which roads were useless,
which were still intact, and where the raiders liked to camp,
probably kept us out of trouble more times than not.

We reached what had been a major highway in
the Red days that carved a path north to south through the state. I
stopped on the side of the road before the curved on-ramp, and
looked out behind us at the sun that was just about to touch the
tops of the white-capped mountains. The wind was billowing snow
from the peaks, making it look like fog was rolling down to the
foothills. We were miles away from the mountains now, in the
flatlands of the state, and once we rode up onto the highway we
would be visible to anyone that bothered to look for us. I knew
this was dangerous, and so did Annie.

“I know,” said Annie without me even having
to say anything. “If you don’t want to go, I can do it by
myself.”

“Annie, you know I’m not going to let you do
this alone.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the
mountains to the west, and at the sun that was about to disappear
behind them. “We’re not going to make it before it gets dark,” she
admitted with palpable sadness.

“We can try,” I said, mimicking what she’d
said to me earlier. I reached across the center console to take her
hand, and then drove up onto the highway.

Denver was about sixty miles south of where
we were, and more than ninety miles from the rehab center. The
roads weren’t in good enough condition to allow us to go as fast as
the Jeep could, but I still tried to go as fast as possible.
Without maintenance, several parts of the highway had cracked and
shifted, and some of the overpasses had crumbled over the decades,
forcing us to get off and then back on again after passing the
destruction. We were just reaching the outskirts of Denver when the
orange blaze of sunset started to fade.

“Last chance to back out of this,” said
Annie.

“I’m in it for the long run, beautiful,” I
said while keeping my eye on the road. That’s when I spotted
something far ahead. It started as just the reflection of the
sunset on the road ahead, too small to be a mirage, and there was a
dark shape beside it. I pointed ahead and asked, “Do you see that
thing on the road? What is that?”

We were approaching a lazily rising hill, and
the object on the road was near the crest. Annie got out her
binoculars and stared ahead until she was able to see it clearly
despite the way the Jeep bounced on the cracked pavement. “It’s a
body. Still bleeding.”

The reflection I’d seen was the setting sun’s
light glancing off the pool of blood.

“Zombie?”

“Looks like it,” said Annie as she lowered
the binoculars. We were getting close enough that she didn’t need
them anymore.

“Maybe some raiders tried driving through
here ahead of us,” I said, trying to ignore the more likely
possibility that the military had been headed in the same direction
we were. Annie didn’t offer a response, and I knew she was worrying
about the same thing I was.

It was impossible to ignore the truth when we
reached the top of the hill. Stretched out before us, for as far as
we could see, was an ever-increasing massacre. The road ahead was
littered with corpses, all of them torn apart by bullets, their
limbs ripped away and laying behind them. There was so much blood
that it had started to roll away from the road and fill the ditches
at the bottom of the hill, and the road looked like a deep scar in
the otherwise brown landscape. But the worst thing was the way the
massacre still quivered. The creatures weren’t all dead, and they
pulled their ruined bodies through the blood, reaching out to us as
their milky eyes stared and their mouths drooped.

Annie encapsulated my feelings with two
words, “Oh fuck.”

I slowed to a stop so that we could consider
how to proceed. “We can make it through,” I said, although my lack
of confidence showed through. “Whoever went through here did the
hard work for us.”

“It was the military,” said Annie. “It had to
be.”

I agreed, but didn’t confirm as much. “We can
drive through this.”

“It’s not these I’m worried about, but what
we’re going to find over the next hill.” The slaughter ahead of us
stretched down the hill, and then up another. We had no way of
knowing what lay beyond. “They must’ve made a shit load of noise to
attract this many Greys. This is just the backend of it. There’s no
doubt that somewhere ahead we’re going to run into the stragglers
that couldn’t keep up with the caravan. Ben, if we drive through
this then I guarantee we’re going headfirst into a massive horde.
We’re not even in the downtown part of the city yet.”

“What about taking one of the highways that
goes around the city?” I knew there were other routes that, while
far from safe, might be better than the one we were on.

“To the east we’d be headed right towards the
airport where the military’s at,” said Annie. “To the west there’s
the trader’s route, but that’s where Jerald had set up the traps
before. Even if we went that way, we’d lose time trying to clear
the road.”

“So we either try to sneak by the military or
charge straight through hell.”

“Or we take the slow way home and find
somewhere to camp for the night,” said Annie. “That’d be the smart
and safest thing to do.”

“Are we being smart and safe?” I asked with a
smirk. “I thought we gave up on that already.”

Annie wasn’t as amused as I’d hoped. She was
deep in thought, glancing down at the map and biting her lip as she
tried to figure out the best plan. “It’s too risky.”

“I’ll do whatever you think, Annie.”

“I don’t know what to do.” Her exasperation
tortured her, and she looked like she was on the verge of tears. “I
know I should play it safe, but the thought of just sitting here
while my friends and family are in danger…” She shook her head and
reached up to grab at her hair. “I can’t do that. I can’t. If the
military is headed out their way… If they know where the camp’s at…
Ben, what should we do? What can we do? What if we get there and
it’s true, and we watch as the Rollers are loaded up in trucks?
What the hell are we supposed to do?”

“Whatever we can,” I said, trying my best to
offer whatever support I could. “I’m with you, Annie, no matter
what.”

“You’re with me even if I say that I want to
drive through Denver? Even if I say I want to drive headfirst into
what could be the biggest horde either of us have ever seen?” She
asked as if she didn’t believe me.

I answered succinctly and without a pause,
“Yes.”

“Then you’re a lot dumber than I gave you
credit for.”

“Does that mean we’re driving straight
ahead?”

Annie looked at me, and then out at the road
ahead before responding, “If you’re willing to be an idiot
alongside me, then fuck it. Let’s do this.”

Annie Conrad

The Jeep bounced over the bodies of the
massacred horde. Their brittle bones snapped as their pitiful moans
filled the air. They held up their hands, sprouting like buds of
growth in spring from the black and bloody road, and Ben drove as
fast as the terrain would allow.

We crested the hill, and saw our difficult
future spread out before us, the wrecked skyscrapers of Denver
standing as a warning that the worst was yet to come. We were
leaving the comparably sparsely populated suburbs and entering an
area where, in the Red world, space had been at a premium. This was
where homes were pressed against each other, barely a foot between,
and the taller the building could be made, the more money the
developer could earn.

The doomed settlement that had been known as
Fort Denver was located in the bones of this city, where the
buildings towered high above, providing a sense of security to
those that made their home here. The lower levels were gutted, and
battlements put in place to protect the citizens. Refugees from all
over the state learned of the burgeoning community, and had flocked
here to live in the safety promised by the people that were
guarding the area.

Fort Denver rose to prominence after Reagan
had died, and after the military in this area seemed to disappear.
I’d still been young then, and don’t remember much about Fort
Denver other than the discomfort I felt when staring up at those
buildings. When the Greys arrived, they didn’t come crawling over
the hills and descend upon the settlements, they came from within.
A new disease swept the large settlements, wiping out the majority
of the Reds that had survived the apocalypse. It had been the
Rollers’ preference for mobility that had saved us, and it took a
while before anyone else was willing to attempt to build a new
settlement. Word among the traders was that the Grey virus only
appeared in communities that had planted their roots somewhere, and
that was how the nomadic lifestyle that dominated many of the Green
days had been born.

People like Beach and Bonnie had eventually
decided it would be worth the risk to try and build new
settlements, and that was the genesis of places like Juniper,
Vineyard, and Hanger. To everyone’s surprise, the Grey virus never
appeared within their ranks, and they flourished. The Rollers and
The Department worked to clear the area, and to maintain trade
routes, turning this area into one of the safest anywhere in the
neighboring states.

However, we all knew to stay away from
Denver. Those skyscrapers were monuments to the tragedy of Fort
Denver; gravestones that marred our horizon, always warning us of
how quickly our lives could fall apart, just like the poor souls in
those towers, trapped as the virus raged around them.

And now we were headed straight for them.

I’d taken one of the M-16s from our supply in
the back, and placed a box of ammunition between my feet. We had
three pipe bombs, six smoke grenades, and a box full of what Abe
called ‘Screamers’ that were a type of firework that blazed bright
red and emitted an ear-piercing wail that would draw zombies to
them. I had a feeling we’d need all of it if we were going to make
it through to the south side of the city.