Deadlocked 8 (44 page)

I laughed and said, “I knew you’d hate…”

“I love it. I love it, Annie. I love
everything about it, and about you. I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Mom,” I said with a laugh as
she continued to hold me tight. Then she started to kiss me all
over, unabashed and jubilant. “Let me go get something to patch up
your hip.”

“Oh fuck that,” she said with a beaming grin.
“It’s just a bullet. I’ve had worse. You stay right here with me. I
don’t want to ever let you go.”

The storm finally caught up with me, and the
snow drifted down around us. Mom looked up as a flake fell down and
hit her nose. “I told you it was going to snow again.”

I laughed and nuzzled up to her. Then I
kissed her cheek and said, “I love you, Mom.”

She wanted me to sit there with her forever,
but eventually I forced her to let me up. I had to keep an eye out
for the military in case they doubled back, and I also went to
search their vehicles for anything useful. After that, I brought
the Range Rover to pick Mom up, and we drove back the way I’d come,
knowing that the other Rollers would soon be here.

After a few minutes of driving, Mom asked me
to pull over. She said that the jostling vehicle was hurting her
hip, and that she wanted a minute to relax. She was in the back
seat, and when we stopped I joined her there. We held hands while
we talked. It was something that we used to do when I was little,
and I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

It was the first time in ages that we’d been
alone together, and we had a lot to talk about. I told her about
Harrison and Stubs, and then about my night with Ben. She pressed
for details, but I refused, and she settled for knowing that he and
I cared for one another.

Then I asked about her illness, which she’d
been secretive about with me before, and she admitted the struggle
she’d been fighting for so long. We cried together, and held one
another as the snow fell around us, creeping up the side of the
windows of the Range Rover.

By the time the Rollers arrived, the wet snow
had nearly covered all the windows, clinging to the glass and
leaving us only a few inches to stare through. Truth be told, I
would’ve happily stayed there with Mom all night, just talking, and
laughing, and crying our way through the things that needed to be
said.

Our lives are often peppered with memories
that we reflect back on and cherish, although we’re ignorant of
their importance at the time. This was the first time that I’d been
conscious of how I was having one of the best times of my life, and
I savored every second of it.

Billy Hendrix

“There’s more coming,” I screamed out to
Abe.

“Gotcha covered, bud,” he said as we moved
through the hallways of the facility beneath the airport. When I’d
told him my plan to come here alone while the other Rollers focused
on protecting the rehab center and New Vineyard, he flat out
refused to let me go out by myself. I tried to pull rank, and
ordered him to stay at the rehab center, but he’s even more
stubborn than I am.

We’d taken a car back here, bringing only the
ammunition we could carry. Annie had said that Hero might be here
somewhere, and I would do anything to get him back to Jill. After
seeing his son born, there was nothing that was more important to
me than getting him there to see him too.

I’d swallowed a fair number of the
pain-killers I’d been hiding from Jill and Clyde, and was ready to
do whatever was necessary to save my oldest living friend. My back
brace was buckled as tight as I could get it, but I still felt the
numbed ache thumping behind me, like someone was tapping at me with
a baseball bat, seconds away from delivering a crippling blow.

“This is a suicide mission,” I’d said to Abe.
“You’re a fucking idiot for coming.”

His reply had been short and simple,
“Yep.”

Neither of us had ever expected to find the
outer portion of the facility deserted. That had been enough of a
surprise, but the revelation that the hidden area beneath the
airport was infested with zombies was a shock that I hadn’t been
ready for.

We went in, undeterred by certain death. We
both knew this wasn’t a trip we were likely to come back from.

“Where are they all coming from?” I asked as
I shot the zombies that were flooding the hall behind us.

“Fuck if I know,” said Abe. He’d brought
along a bag of screamers that he was tossing behind us as we went,
drawing the attention away from us as we searched the labyrinthine
corridors.

“Do you know where you’re going?” I
asked.

“Hell no. Whoever built this place was fucked
in the head. I don’t know which way is up anymore, man.”

We opened a door that led into what looked
like a daycare. Abe shut the door behind us and then glanced around
before asking, “There were kids here?”

“I guess so,” I said as I looked at the toys
that littered the floor. “They must’ve had families here.”

“I never knew that,” said Abe.

Neither had I, and the revelation stilled me.
I kicked at one of the balls on the floor, and it rolled across the
floor before bumping into a plastic slide that was attached to a
miniature house. This was a day care for little children, no older
than nine or ten.

Abe spoke with a melancholy tone, “I thought
this place was just full of soldiers.”

“Me too,” I said, and felt foolish for
thinking it. “Even soldiers have families. Wives. Kids.”

“Fuck,” said Abe, and I knew exactly what he
was thinking, because the same thing weighed on me as well. He
voiced what I was feeling, “Makes you think twice about putting
bullets in the soldiers.”

“Or dropping a bomb down on them,” I said.
How many of the places that the Rollers had bombed over the years
had housed daycares like this. My stomach turned as I considered
that possibility.

How would I react if someone hurt Jill’s
baby? If someone dropped a bomb that ended up killing a child that
I loved? Suddenly, the arguments that Laura had made over the years
about ending our fight against the military bore new weight.

A door on the opposite side of the room burst
open, and we shined the lights on our guns at the intruders. A man
in a white lab coat came in and yelped when he saw me.

“Freeze!” I yelled.

The man already had his hands over his head,
and he whimpered as he fell to his knees. A woman’s voice yelled
out from the hallway that the man had appeared from, just out of my
view. “Back off or I’ll blow a hole through the doctor,” said the
woman that was hidden from us.

“What the fuck do I care?” asked Abe.

There was a pause, and then the woman asked,
“Who are you?”

“Who are you?” I asked, frustrated by the
question.

“Are you the Sons of Reagan?” asked the man
on his knees with my light shining in his eyes. “The
terrorists?”

“Sons of Reagan?” I asked, amused. “Is that
what you call us?”

“You’re Hero’s friends?” asked the woman
excitedly.

“You know Hero?” I asked.

“Yes!” She revealed herself by stepping
forward, still wary of a trick. She was lithe and beautiful, with
blonde hair and bright blue eyes.

“Goddamn,” said Abe. “Hero sure can pick
them.”

“He’s here,” said the girl. “Down below. We
were going to try and find him.” She walked into the room, followed
by a seemingly endless parade of girls just as pretty as she
was.

“What?” asked Abe, amused. “Are you serious?”
He pushed at my shoulder and chuckled. “Only Hero man.”

“Only Hero what?” I asked, uncertain what he
found so funny.

“Only Hero would have a parade of hot ass
girls risking their lives to try and break him out of here.”

I couldn’t help but laugh in agreement.

The blonde girl was deadly serious when she
asked, “Are you going to stand around and make jokes or are you
going to help us?”

She was a fiery girl, but she couldn’t have
been older than twenty. I came to a quick decision. “No. I’ll take
the doctor and go looking for Hero. Abe, you’re going to get these
girls out of here.”

“Whoa, not a chance, pal.”

“This isn’t a debate,” I said. “Hero wouldn’t
want us dragging a parade of teenagers down there to save him. I’ll
go.”

“We can’t go back that way,” said Abe. “Those
things were all over the place.”

“There’s another way out,” said the doctor.
“I’ll show you if you take me with you.”

“I need you to show me how to get to Hero,” I
said.

“I can, but you don’t need me to go down
there with you,” he said, his desperation evident.

I agreed, and he led us back the way the
girls had come from, through a different route that he insisted
would get us out safely. I asked about the daycare, and he
explained that this level was where the families lived. He said
that they’d lived down here for years, cramped into these small
rooms, and that some of the children had never even seen the
surface. It reminded me of the short time the Rollers had spent at
the rehab center, and how much we hated it there. For the first
time I considered that, despite how hard life was on the surface,
the people stuck down here had it even worse. I couldn’t imagine
trading the open air for an underground prison just for the sake of
safety.

The doctor led us to an elevator that wasn’t
operational. “We can take the stairs up, but you’re going to have
to go down to the bottom, and then across the Dawn’s level, through
the Administrator’s cubes. You’ll know you’re on the right path if
there are security doors on the right with cranks instead of
handles. Just keep going straight, and you’ll get to the stairs
that will take you to the bottom floor.”

“You should take the doctor with you,” said
Abe, and the man quickly pleaded with us not to do that.

I shook my head and said, “No, you need him
to help get these girls out. They’re more important.”

“Last chance to reconsider,” said Abe.

“Not on your life buddy,” I slapped him on
the shoulder. “You get these girls out of here. I’ll get our
boy.”

“How’s your back?” asked Abe.

It was getting worse every second. “I’m fine.
Don’t worry about me.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, for crying out loud. Get out of here
already.”

The blonde girl with the rifle came over to
me as the rest of them followed Abe up the stairs. “Get Hero out of
here,” she said. “I owe him a lot.”

“Same here,” I said before heading down.

My brace was tied as tight as I could get it,
causing me to move stiffly as I went down the stairs. I could feel
the ache turning back into pain, and knew that it wouldn’t be long
before I was once again struggling to move. “Come on, let’s keep
going,” I said to myself. “You can do this.”

I got to what the doctor had called the
Dawn’s level, and saw the doors that he’d mentioned. They had
circular handles that looked like they belonged on a submarine. One
of the doors was open, and I was shocked by how thick it was. They
seemed designed to withstand a bomb if needed, which might very
well have been the case.

The trip through this area was longer than
I’d expected, and I was forced to pause as the pain in my back
intensified. I glanced to the side and saw an office chair, which I
happily sat down in. “This’ll work,” I said as I moved the chair
out of the cubicle and into the hall. I proceeded to push my way
across the floor, but the squeaking wheels earned me some attention
I’d been hoping to avoid.

Greys emerged from a nearby room, growling
and moaning as they came. I couldn’t see them clearly as they
pushed their way through the cubicles, tearing down the partitions
in a desperate attempt to reach me. I fired when I could, but
focused on pushing myself along. More and more of the creatures
began to appear, as if they’d been wandering this floor in a daze
until the squeak of my wheels alerted them to my presence. For the
last few yards of my trip, I fired frequent bursts at the horde
that was chasing after me until I slammed into the wall. I opened
the door and then pivoted so that I fell into it. I slammed the
door shut behind me.

“Another fucking staircase,” I said as I
stared down the flight of concrete steps. I took them one by one,
slow and steady, grimacing after each one. “Think of Hero. Think of
that baby.”

I was crying out in pain by the time I got to
the bottom. Sweat was pouring down my brow, and I thought it was
because of exertion, but then I set my hand against the concrete
wall and found that it was blisteringly hot.

“What the hell?” I asked as I opened the door
to the lowest level. A hall stretched out beyond, and it was cooler
than the staircase had been. The floor looked abandoned. I passed
by a pair of restrooms and then looked in at an office to the
right.

“Hello?” I got no reply.

I walked further and found what looked like
an examination room. There was a bed with a variety of machines
beside it and a contraption above that had several long tubes
hanging from it. There was no one in the room, so I left and headed
down the only other direction I could.

“Hero?” I yelled out his name as I approached
the open door.

He called back, “Billy?”

“Hero!” I couldn’t believe it. I shouted out
in joy when I saw him at the end of the hall. He was standing
inside of a circular passage, his arm propped against the wall to
hold himself up.

“Billy, how in the hell?” he asked as he
staggered forward. He was limping almost as bad as I was, and he
looked awful. He was in a white gown, and his usually mocha skin
had taken on an almost greenish hue. He was thinner than I’d ever
seen him, and his face looked gaunt, but there was no doubt that
this was him.

“Did you really think I’d leave you here to
rot?”