Deadlocked 8 (32 page)

Around us, the carcasses of the old world
encroached. They were burned out edifices of brick and stone, their
windows long ago shattered, black scars rising up their sides from
fires that had withered them, and they were pressed up against the
highway. In the suburbs, the buildings were set back from the
highway, allowing a sense of safety by revealing so much space.
Within the city limits it felt like we were charging into an open
maw, with buildings for teeth, and the demon was slowly closing us
in. To make it worse, the highway had been packed with vehicles at
the onset of the apocalypse, and it still was even two decades
later. The residents of Fort Denver had cleared a two-lane space on
the west side of the highway, but the rest of the vehicles were
still resting where they’d been for so many years, packed nearly
bumper to bumper and decorated with the blood, bones, and decay of
this new world. And to make matters even worse, the section of road
we were currently driving through was lower than the rest of the
city, with walls of cement on either side, like an emptied,
man-made river bed that wound through the city.

I dropped one of Abe’s screamers out of the
window, and then a smoke bomb shortly after. My hope was that the
Greys would be attracted to the firework, and that the wall of
smoke would mask us as they flooded the road. It was a dangerous
ploy, because if we had to turn around we could be swarmed, but Ben
and I were already in deep shit as it was, and we needed any
advantage we could get.

The carnage we’d seen earlier lessened, with
only ten or twenty bodies lying splattered in our path instead of
the hundreds we’d plowed over before, but now we were finding the
ones that hadn’t been shot down by the military. These Greys had
wandered to the highway from the city after hearing the commotion,
and we were their new target.

Ahead of us was an overpass that drew an arch
over the highway, with a fence to protect pedestrians from falling
onto the road. The fence had been bent forward and was buffeting
from the crowd that had gathered. A thick horde of Greys had massed
above, their fingers protruding from the fence as they gnawed at
the wire.

“Annie,” said Ben, and he didn’t need to say
anything else. We both knew that fence was about to fail.

“Go faster,” I said, hoping that we could
make it under before the Horde rained down on us.

Ben had already been driving fast through the
carnage, but he stepped on the gas and sent us speeding through the
ambush we’d set ourselves up for. Unfortunately, we’d already run
out of luck.

The fence bowed out, and then snapped free of
its rusted anchors, sending a tidal wave of dead flesh down over us
just as we reached the bridge. Their bodies slammed into the Jeep’s
hood and roof, denting it and cracking the windshield as their
stench blew in through the vents. Their black blood smeared the
windshield as they clawed and bit at us. The Jeep did an admirable
job of continuing forward for several yards, but the mound of flesh
was too much to overcome. The tires squealed, spinning through a
swamp of flesh and faces, sending jets of decay shooting out behind
us. The sunset was muted by the glut of death that had washed over
us. Every window was blocked by the snarling faces of the victims
of the virus that had ruined the Earth.

Ben tried to go in reverse, and the Jeep
jerked back a few feet before getting caught again. He put it in
drive, and tried to carve a new path through the horde, but we
moved forward less than we’d retreated as the zombies crushed in
around us.

He tried to say something, but the cacophony
around us drowned him out. All I could hear were the pained howls
of the dead, and the sound of their fingers clawing at the Jeep.
The hard-top roof had become concaved from the impact of a body,
and the evidence of that death was leaking down the windshield and
dripping through a gap to plop onto our dash.

A grim thought came to me, ‘This is it. This
is how I die.’

“Fuck that.” My curse was lost in the din of
screaming creatures. I was determined not to be eaten alive, like
my father before me. If anything, I was going to go out like
Kim.

I got one of the pipe bombs out of the bag at
my feet. The black fuse was long and looped, designed to give the
user time to light it and flee, but we wouldn’t need that. There
was nowhere to run.

The creatures at Ben’s window were pounding
so hard that I could feel the vehicle jostle from their strength.
Ben was leaning in my direction, aware that the horde was trying
their best to break in, and he was still trying to force the Jeep
to carve a path in the swarm around us. He didn’t see the bomb and
the lighter in my hand, and I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. It might
be better for him to never know that death was at hand until it was
already over.

We’d tried, but in the end, we would just be
two more casualties of a heartless world.

I held the fuse near the metal cap of the
pipe bomb, and held the lighter just a few inches from detonation.
No sense prolonging the inevitable.

I lit it.

As the creatures pounded on the side of the
Jeep, their howls silencing everything else, I flicked the
lighter’s wheel and sparked the flame that would end us. The fuse
ignited, burning in two directions before it split in two. The
slack fell in my lap while the other end burned down, sparking its
way to obliteration.

Ben’s window didn’t crack or give any other
warning before it suddenly shattered. Miniscule fragments of glass
fell in on him, littering his lap and the seat, as the horde’s arms
reached in to grab him. Their faces lunged forward, biting and
screeching, and he responded with gunfire. His pistol’s blast
deafened me as I watched one of the creatures jerk backward, a
chunk of its skull now blown out. The zombie fell away, leaving an
open space where light shined in on us. Despite the hundreds of
creatures that had surrounded us, a brief window of light had
broken through.

The fuse neared the end of its journey, and
without a second thought I flung the bomb out of the window. Time
seemed to crawl as I watched that long cylinder spin its way
through the tiny gap in the horde. I didn’t see it land before the
horde swelled to block my view.

I never heard the bomb explode. Instead, the
blast deafened me completely, and I was plunged into a silent world
of wreckage and horror. The blast tore apart the creatures on Ben’s
side, and shattered the rear side window as well. The entire
vehicle shifted, sitting only on the two wheels on my side for a
moment before falling back down again. Fluid covered me, though I
wasn’t sure from what, and the concussion had dazed me. Something
had fallen into my lap, and I looked down at it in wonderment
inspired by my addled brain.

A human face stared up at me. The severed
head of a Grey had landed on me. Both of its eyes were missing,
somehow a victim of the blast, and the gooey sockets looked like
they were crying blood as I lifted the withered head and then let
it drop between my legs. I was soaked with blood that had spewed
into the Jeep from the victims outside, spraying across the
interior along with chunks of flesh and bone.

The excess fuse was still sparking at my
feet, beside the other bombs, and I snatched it away before it had
a chance to light anything else. I tossed it out of the broken
window beside Ben.

There was no sound, not even a ringing. The
world was silent as I started to piece together what had happened.
I looked at Ben, but he was slumped down, only held aloft by his
seat belt. Fresh, bright red blood wet the side of his face, and I
knew it had to be his. No Grey has blood like that.

I screamed his name, but I didn’t know if my
voice produced any sound. The horde had been decimated by the
blast, but there were still plenty of them on my side of the Jeep,
relentlessly pounding and clawing to get in. I was trying to see
how badly Ben was injured when my window shattered. I didn’t even
realize it until the creatures were grasping at my hair. They
pulled me back, and forced me to look up. That’s when I saw that
the Jeep was moving.

The blast had pushed the Jeep out of whatever
it had been stuck in, and Ben’s foot was still on the accelerator
even though he was unconscious. We weren’t going fast, but if we
could just get out from under the bridge I knew we had a shot at
surviving.

I wasn’t hampered by a seat belt, but the
creatures pulling at my hair were dragging me backward. My pistol
was lost, probably dropped after the blast, and I struggled to
think of a way to escape the clutches of the zombies that were
walking alongside the Jeep, determined to eat me.

I pulled the knife from my belt and reached
back to grip a large chunk of my hair. It took three slices to cut
myself free, and all those fuckers got was a handful of greasy red
hair to remember me by.

Ben was over the center console, and I pushed
him back as I leaned over to slam my foot on the gas pedal that his
foot was just barely touching. The Jeep’s wheels ground through a
mess of flesh and bones, but we catapulted forward. Unfortunately,
at the same moment that I thought we might be free, grey smoke
started to pour in through the vents. It stank of burning plastic,
and choked me as it filled the cab.

The smoke blinded me, but I did my best to
steer us straight. I didn’t do a good job, and after only a minute
of driving we smashed into something. I tried to turn the wheel,
but it didn’t do any good, and the smoke was getting too thick to
breathe.

I had no choice but to abandon the Jeep. I
took what weapons I could find, including the M-16 and the bag that
contained the screamers that Abe had made for us. The Jeep had run
into the cars that lined my side of the highway, and the once grey
smoke had turned dark black as it billowed up from under the
hood.

The former silence was now buzzing with a
distant ring, but I still couldn’t hear myself as I tried to scream
Ben’s name. I ran around the back of the Jeep and took a moment to
look out at the horde we’d escaped. There were still plenty of them
moving, and they were headed our way.

I opened Ben’s door, and was greeted with a
plume of smoke. Heat hit me as I leaned in, and I knew there was a
fire in the engine. Before long this Jeep would be immolated, and
Ben with it if I didn’t get him out.

I was planning on dragging him out, but I
felt his hand touch my side. I looked down at his face and saw him
smiling up at me. I screamed at him, although my words were lost to
both of us. The side of his face was cut in several places, and his
red blood was mixing with the black goo that had smeared him when
the zombies exploded beside us.

He didn’t seem to comprehend our dire
situation, so I slapped the cheek that wasn’t already bleeding. I
grabbed his collar and pulled at him, finally getting him to move
on his own. To his credit, he still had his rifle as he stumbled
out of the Jeep. Orange flames began to lick up from the front of
the vehicle, coloring the smoke with their intensity. Ben was still
in a daze, and I grabbed his arm to pull him out onto the road,
away from the fire as the horde behind us gave chase.

Most of our ammunition and all of our
supplies were about to be lost. All I had left was the bag of
screamers, which gave me an idea. I stopped Ben, and forced him to
look at me as I held up a finger.

“Wait here,” I said slowly, although I was
certain he was at least as deaf as I was.

He did as I asked, and I think his senses
were coming back. He focused on the horde coming our way, and
pointed his rifle out at them, but was smart enough to conserve
bullets.

I ran back over to the Jeep, which was
quickly catching fire, and then started to toss screamers onto the
hood. I threw a liberal amount of them out, but saved the bag and a
handful more of the useful fireworks. I watched as they started to
ignite, and could even hear their shrill cries, although they only
came to me as distant hums.

We would use the cover of the thick smoke to
escape, and hope that the screamers did their job by attracting the
zombies to the Jeep instead of us. That still left us wounded, low
on ammunition, and stranded in the center of a zombie infested
city, but at least we were alive.

Ben and I staggered away from the flames,
walking down the highway in search of an escape that didn’t seem
likely. We were a couple hundred yards away when the flames in the
Jeep finally ignited the pipe bombs I’d left in it. The blast shook
the road, and we both looked back to see that the horde had been
destroyed by my desperate trap.

However, neither of us felt any sense of
safety.

Ben Watanabe

Annie and I limped along the highway, beaten
and dazed, until we reached an exit ramp. I’d been deafened by the
blast from Annie’s bomb, and the entire left side of my head burned
and ached, as if I were standing beside a fire.

The ringing I could hear was getting louder,
but only in my right ear. If I gained back any hearing at all after
sitting so close to a blast like that, I’d consider myself lucky.
My blood dripped down to the pavement, leaving a trail that I knew
the Greys would eventually sniff out. I rested my arm up over my
head, and pressed my sleeve against my numerous wounds.

Annie was soaked in blood, but none of it was
her own. The liquid that dripped away from her was the black,
viscous blood of the Greys that had exploded into the side of the
Jeep. But there was something about her that didn’t look right. She
was walking ahead of me, clearing a corner, when I finally realized
that a large chunk of her hair was missing.

She was communicating through hand signals
with me, and I wasn’t sure if she’d been similarly deafened or was
just doing it for my benefit. I hoped that she could hear,
otherwise we were in even more danger than I’d already expected.
Listening for the groans of the dead was one of the best ways to
detect them. Relying only on sight was a sure way of getting
ambushed.