Deadlocked

by A. R. Wise

  I watched out of the corner of my eye as Laura got the truck into the salvage yard. As soon as she was in I put the gun down and ran toward the entrance. The thugs turned to the right to hit me, but their flat tire made it hard for the truck to respond, otherwise they would have certainly run me down. Instead, they clipped me as I dove away. The edge of their truck crashed into my hip and spun me in the air before I collided with the gravel driveway.

  Their truck jumped the curb and plummeted into William's fence. The front end broke through a portion of it and left their truck balanced on a cracked post. The zombie horde surged over the truck as the two thugs tried to get out. The screams of the driver were horrific, and the other man, the one Laura shot in the leg, fell out of the truck and looked at me as he crawled my way. I was looking in his eyes when the zombies overtook him. He wailed as they bit into his flesh.

  I aimed the gun at Jay's head and took the shot. I couldn’t watch another person get eaten alive, even if they deserved it. No one should die that way.

  CHAPTER EIGHT – A FATHER’S RESPONSIBILITY

  My gunshot alerted the zombies to my presence and they turned their attention to me. I tried to shoot them, but the gun was out of bullets. I'd made it all this way and was going to die right at the end.

  A zombie ran at me and skid on his knees when he hit the gravel. His arms reached out and his mouth gaped wide in anticipation of my flesh.

  An oar swished through the air above my head and caught the zombie in the face. The monster’s head flipped through the air behind it and I heard Billy scream in triumph.

  “Woo hoo!”

  “Didja see that one, Dave?” asked William. “Told ya he was a natural.”

  That morning, if someone asked me if it was possible to knock a person's head off with an oar, I would've laughed at the thought. By that afternoon I would have been proven wrong as I watched a zombie’s head fly through the blue, cloudless sky and bounce off the top of the thug’s truck. William gathered me up in his arms and pulled me to my feet. “Can you walk?”

  “I think so.”

  Billy closed the gate after knocking down a few more zombies. He was a lot stronger than his father or me and had no trouble sliding the massive gate shut.

  “Billy, come on. Everyone get on the boat," said William.

  Laura and the girls had grabbed as many bags as they could and dragged them down to The Casper. The dock stretched out into the water about thirty feet, which would give us a good place to defend ourselves against the coming horde if we had to. Kim put on the My Little Pony backpack filled with medical supplies and pulled a bag full of canned fruit along the dock behind her. Annie was too small to help out much, but she proudly hoisted a bag with two loaves of bread in it. She turned to smile at me and then dropped the loaves to wave.

  I waved back and she blew me a kiss. She picked the loaves back up and ran to catch up with her sister. Laura looked over her shoulder to see where I was. She cried out in panic for me to watch out as she tossed her bags into the boat.

  I looked back up the hill and saw what she was yelling about. Four zombies had crawled through the break in the fence that the thugs made when they crashed their truck.

  “Get to the boat,” William said as he let me go.

  William and his son stood defiantly before the approaching zombies. Billy looked like he was facing down a major league pitcher as he stood there, holding his oar an inch over his shoulder in a stance he must have practiced a thousand times. William picked up a short piece of rebar and looked like an officer carrying a baton, ready to face off against a riot.

  The zombies rushed down the hill. They moaned and growled with hunger and were met with swift strikes by the father and son team. I moved forward to help, but William chastised me.

  “Get on the fucking boat you dumbass,” he said.

  I wordlessly complied and limped down the dock. I heard William speak to his son and realized he'd been yelling at him, not me.

  “I said get on the God damned boat, Billy.”

  “Me? What the…” Billy stammered as he fought along side his dad.

  “Get your ass on that boat.”

  “What about you?” asked Billy.

  “I’ll be there in a minute. You get that boat started and get these people out of here.”

  “God damn it, Dad. You’d better make it onto that fucking boat.”

  They bashed in the zombies' skulls as they yelled at each other. I struggled to get down the dock and Billy ran up behind me to help.

  “I love you,” said William.

  As Billy grabbed my arm and wrapped it over his shoulder I saw that he was crying. At that moment I understood what was happening. William wasn’t getting on the boat.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  Billy shook his head and growled when he answered, “Trying to be a hero. The boat has to be running to move. We're sitting ducks if I can't get the engine started.”

  I looked back as we got onto the boat and saw William had positioned himself at the base of the dock. At the top of the hill, the fence shook as more zombies climbed through the hole left by the thug’s truck. Five, six, seven, then ten, then fifteen zombies crawled through. William stood stoically at the base of the dock, his rebar held high, ready to do everything he could to make sure his son survived.

  Billy ran to the cabin at the front of the boat and tried to get the engine to turn over. He yelled at the machine and kicked at it as he struggled to get it going.

  I tried to push the boat away from the dock, but I didn’t have the strength. Laura ran over to help, but we couldn't get the vessel to budge.

  “The boat’s too damn heavy to push off without the motor going,” said Billy as he watched from inside the boat's cabin. “That’s why Dad’s up there.”

  We looked up at William. He was losing the fight. The only question was how quick he would die.

  I felt the crushing weight of responsibility bear down on me. I saw William protecting his son, his family, and I knew what I had to do.

  Laura, Kim, and Annie stood in the center of the boat. I knelt down and pulled Annie close. Her tiny hands wrapped around my neck and I ran my fingers through her curly red hair. Then I reached out for Kim, who sobbed in fear. I pulled her cheek next to mine and kissed her over and over. I promised everything would be okay.

  I stood up and reached out to hold Laura’s hand. She was crying, as was I, and we gazed into each other’s eyes. I ran my thumb over the wedding band on her finger and leaned in to kiss her. When I pulled away, she gave me a smile so sweet and perfect that it put the one she gave me on our wedding day to shame.

  “I’ve got this,” I said to her.

  “Dave, no,” she said as I let go of her hand. She grabbed on tighter and tried to pull me to her side. “There's got to be another way. Don’t go.”

  I smiled at her and said, “Trust me.”

  She finally let go and I looked around for anything I could use to defend myself. There was an eight-inch fisherman’s knife lying on the floor that the Williams must have used for killing fish that got trapped in their net. I grabbed it and stepped up, out of the boat, and back onto the dock.

  Billy looked over his shoulder and saw what I was doing. He understood and nodded his thanks my way. I pointed the knife in his direction and said, “Get them out of here.”

  Kim then realized what was happening and she screamed out for me, “Daddy, no!”

  I could hear William's gasps as the zombies tore at his flesh. I could hear him dying the way that Barry had died. The way I would die.

  “I love you,” I said to all of them.

  I stumbled down the dock. My right leg had been crushed by the truck accident on the driveway earlier, but I ignored it and continued on. My left arm had been broken by Billy’s oar, but I slipped it out of the sling and dealt with the pain. My head was bleeding from when the boat had struck me in the Everland River, but I looked past the blood that ran into my eyes. I was all
that stood between a horde of zombies and the three loves of my life. Pain no longer mattered.

  The first zombie nearly fell by himself as he ran along the slippery dock. All I had to do was push him to the side and he fell into the murky bay to sink to the bottom. The second was stronger, but I slammed my shoulder into him before he caught me. I pushed him up and off his feet. I thrust him to my left and he fell off the dock, but he managed to grab hold of the sling that dangled at my side. He pulled me down to my knees and tried to either pull himself up or pull me down with him.

  I chopped at his wrist, but he wouldn’t let go and I didn’t have time to saw through bone. I ducked my head and wormed my way out of the sling, releasing the zombie to fall into the water and disappear beneath the waves to join his friend.

  The next one caught me in a compromised, bent position. It bit into my back and I screamed out, not in pain but in anger. I rose up with all the strength my legs could manage and slid the blade up past my head, catching the zombie in the throat. The force of my strike combined with my upward movement caused the blade to all but sever the zombie’s head. He went flying backward through the air and landed on the dock with his head flopped to the side.

  Two more zombies were already there to replace him. I looked back to see if the boat had left. It was still pressed up against the dock. I had to buy them more time.

  I kicked the next zombie’s knee and knocked it to the ground at my feet. It grabbed onto my leg, but I didn’t have time to worry as the next zombie was already attacking. I swiped through the air as it reached out for me and caught it on the fingers, slicing off the tips. I felt the creature at my feet gnaw into the flesh of my calf. I cried out, but not in pain. I wouldn’t let the girls hear my pain. I needed to focus on the one that was still standing; the one that could still threaten my family.

  It lunged at me and I grabbed onto its neck. I twirled to the side as I fell and tried to force it off the deck as it went with me. It worked, but when I fell I was at the mercy of the zombie eating my leg. It lurched forward and pulled itself over me. I stabbed the knife down, but it deflected off the zombie's skull and into my leg. I growled with anger and pulled the blade back out to strike again.

  Another zombie tried to run past me, toward the boat, but I dropped the knife and reached out to grab its leg. I pulled it down and back toward me. It turned as if shocked I was there. It must not have realized a living person was right at hand, and it quickly turned its attention to me.

  I grabbed its head as it squirmed toward me. It seethed in starving anger and I spit in its face. Then I screamed at it with every ounce of fury I could manage as the zombie at my side bit into my waist. My voice was a battle cry that echoed over the water of Hailey’s Bay. No zombie on this dock would ever mistake me for dead and try to run past. No zombie would make it past me while I still drew a breath. I screamed so that my girls might live as the coming horde swept over me.

  The last sound I heard, over the growls of the zombies that were biting into me, was the motor of The Casper sputter to life.

  The last thing I saw before my world turned black was my family sail away to safety.

  The last thing I knew before I died was that I had won.

  The End of David's Story

  Laura's story continues in Deadlocked 2

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  My main character's dead, but that doesn't mean the story ends here. The Deadlocked series is going to get into the head of a few different characters and show things from their unique point of view.

  Part two will be Laura's story and will start right where part one ended. It focuses on her struggle to both protect and nurture her girls while dealing with David's death. It is far, far more intense than part one and many people (especially women) have told me that it is better than part one.

  By the way, whatever happened to those cops on that pontoon boat? I guess you'll have to wait to find out.

  I never imagined myself writing a series of stories about zombies. The zombie apocalypse has become a tired setting for books, games, and film. It seemed like every story that could be told about the undead had been written into the grave (puns are fun!) Yet that was exactly what drew me to the motif. I wanted to see if I could put together a story that challenged the norms while staying true to the expectations people have of a story about zombies. In creating Deadlocked, I went through a series of steps before I started writing.

  Step One: It's not really about zombies. Any zombie story worth a grain of salt is about more than just the shambling corpses. In Deadlocked, or at least in this first part of the series, we are introduced to a man that just found out he might be dying. David starts off worrying about the very real threat of cancer. This ties in to what I have always thought zombies stood for in any good story they were featured in: our own death. Their rotting faces are a constant reminder of our own impending death. Having them as the antagonist (or the weapon of the antagonist) reminds us that we're all going to die. That's just plain creepy, and it's a big reason why zombie stories are so successful.

  In Deadlocked, there are zombies, but what I was really trying to expand upon was David's fear, and ultimate acceptance, of his own death. It didn't have to be zombies that killed him - you could easily take the scenes of people being eaten alive by zombies and replace them with scenes of David watching someone die from cancer and you would still get the point of what was going through his head. Imagine this was a completely different story, one that focused on a man dealing with terminal cancer. Imagine him standing at the bedside of a friend dying of the same disease and then reading David lament that it was the worst way he could ever imagine dying. David's death was the true antagonist of this story, and getting his family on the boat at the end was analogous to a man getting his family financially and emotionally stable before he passed on. The final sentence of every chapter even focused on either David's impending death or his desire to save his family. I tried to make sure this story would be better the second time it was read, when you already know what is going to happen and you can appreciate the foreshadowing.

  Step Two: Make it real. I am more interested in stories that feature characters that react to the world around them in a real, honest way. How many times have you gotten fed up with a horror film when the teenage meat puppet does something stupid? I tried to imagine what it would be like if a zombie apocalypse really did happen. The first thought that came to mind was that no one would think it was REALLY a zombie attack.

  First off, the zombies wouldn't be decayed to start out, unless they're rising up from the grave. There would be no immediate visual clue that they were any different from anyone else. In this story, the zombies are created by a bioterrorist attack, so the corpses are fresh. I think David's reaction, and his never jumping to the conclusion that the maniacs are zombies until he is told, is a very true to life one. Sure, we as the readers understand they're zombies, but would you really know that if this happened to you at work tomorrow? Not likely.

  Second, if corpses started showing up around your town with massive bite marks on them that experts said was from an animal, would you immediately assume it was a werewolf? You might if you were reading a werewolf book, and you might even chastise the characters for not realizing what was happening sooner, but I'd bet if it really happened you wouldn't jump to the correct outlandish theory for who, or what, was responsible.

  Step Three: I wanted to surprise you. Since there are so many zombie stories already out there, I wanted to write one that made you feel as if you had no idea where this one was going. That's why things started off with a bus full of children getting eaten. I felt like that was a vicious way to kick things off, and it laid the groundwork for setting the reader on edge. I was hoping to make you feel that if a bus full of kids weren't safe, who was? Admittedly, I didn't have the guts to describe the bus murders in detail. I wouldn't want to read something like that, and I sure as hell don't want to write it.

  I tried to pepper the story with beli
evable, but sudden changes that would keep the reader on edge. Did you expect a boat to smack David in the head in Everland River after he got away from that zombie at the bottom? Hell, I barely expected that to happen when I wrote it! I wanted David's journey home to be a slew of unexpected, but believable circumstances that kept you wondering what could possibly go wrong next.

  In Conclusion: I hope you enjoyed the first part of Deadlocked, and I hope you return for Laura's story. Also, I would love to hear your thoughts on the novella, good or bad. I cherish discussing intricacies of storytelling and am constantly fascinated with other people's thoughts on my work. You can contact me at aaron@arwisebooks.com. Please don't hesitate to write!

  If you enjoyed Deadlocked, please write a review for it on the site that you purchased it from. Any feedback is good feedback!

  * * *

  Finally, if you enjoyed this book, please take a look at my other series, Vampire's Prey. I wanted to delve into the world of vampires with the intent of creating a main female character that girls could look up to. I was sick and tired of reading about female protagonists in vampire novels that are dependent upon men. It's a trope in that genre that truly bugs me.

  Vampire's Prey is all about Arece Delray, a former vampire thrall that refuses to be a victim. She was marked by the vampire, Lazarus, but she escaped and now travels the world with her father and sister in a desperate attempt to elude her attacker, who now hunts them. The first book in the series, Prey No More, is about the family finding themselves in a town called Eve's Prairie that has a big secret of its own. Arece will come to learn that she is not there by accident, and that Lazarus is there with her. She won't leave the town before having to confront him, as well as what he did to her.