Deadlocked 3

by A. R. Wise

  "We don't have time for this," said Mark in a hushed, angry tone. He gestured to the plastic flap doorway that separated us from the deli. Through the grimy plastic we could see a figure shuffling about. The zombies were headed our way.

  I relented and turned my attention back on the padlock. My hands were sweating and my heart raced as I aimed at the lock. If I missed, or if this didn't work, we would be at the mercy of the horde. The sound of the gunshot would draw them all in and we would be trapped. We wouldn't last long before suffering the same fate as Chuck. I inched closer until the barrel of the gun was only a foot away from the lock. I had to be careful about a ricochet, but I also couldn't afford to miss. Our survival depended on my aim.

  I took the shot and the chain jolted upward as the lock spun around from the blast. Was it broken? Had I done it? I grabbed the lock and tried to pull it free.

  It was still intact.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT

  The padlock had been damaged by my shot, but it didn't break. A chunk of metal was torn from the arm of the lock, and part of the chain had been hit, but we were still trapped.

  "Did you miss?" asked Levon.

  "No. I hit it. It just didn't work." I pulled madly at the chain as the roar of the creatures in the front of the store grew more intense.

  "Here they come," said Mark as he faced off with the plastic doorway.

  "Take this." Levon handed me the bat. "Go help Mark. I'll get this." He got down on the floor and put his right foot through the loop. Then he grabbed the chain in both hands and started to pull one side while pushing the other with his foot.

  I headed for the doorway and stood to the side of it. Mark sat a few feet in front of the threshold and nodded at me as if agreeing on a plan he thought I was in on.

  The plastic strips parted and a short, fat zombie came through. I hit the girl on the back of the head as she moved in and she fell to the floor in front of Mark's chair. He reacted swiftly, slicing down and through a portion of the dead girl's head. Fetid brain matter blobbed out of the gash like a broken jar of jelly and the horrid smell filled the room instantly.

  I didn't have time to wretch as a second creature trampled through the plastic barrier. I tried to hit him in the same way as the girl before, but this one didn't fall. His head jolted down from the force of my strike and he stumbled a little, but he stayed upright. It glared at me and looked as if it would attack, but then it slumped to the ground and fell to the side.

  "What the hell did you do?" asked Mark.

  "I don't know. I guess I scrambled its brain or something."

  "Keep it up, slugger." Mark looked over his shoulder at his brother and asked, "How's it coming?"

  Levon grunted as he struggled with the chain. "Not well. This fucking thing is tough." As soon as he finished the sentence we heard a ping of metal and the grind of the chain as it fell free from its grasp on the door. Levon laughed with relief. "Nevermind. It ain't as tough as this Hero!" He made a muscle and kissed it.

  He pulled the rest of the chain out and wrapped it around his hand to use as a weapon. Then he lifted the door and the setting sun flooded into the room, temporarily blinding me as my eyes adjusted.

  "Watch out," said Mark.

  I heard something moving through the plastic strips, but all I could see was an orange glow. I swung blindly and felt the bat thud against flesh.

  "Nice one." Mark seemed happy with my blind, lefty-batting skills. "Come on, let's roll."

  I got used to the light and saw the twins headed down a ramp from the back of the shop to the alley below. Levon checked the corners, which I was happy to see him do, and then signaled that the coast was clear. I followed behind and then pulled the door down.

  "Where we headed?" asked Levon.

  "Straight up MLK." I pointed north, away from the chaos of 13th Avenue. "All the way to the docks."

  "That's a long trip," said Mark.

  "Should we try to hotwire a car?" I asked.

  "Sure, if you know how. There's a van over there." Levon pointed at a white delivery van parked in the alley nearby.

  "I don't know how," I said. "I thought you might."

  Levon cast a glance that immediately shamed me. "What? Cause I'm black?"

  I wanted to pretend that wasn't the case, but it was. "Well, yeah, pretty much." My frank admission earned a laugh from the twins. Our friendship, as young as it was, had moved well past accusations of racism.

  "Guess we'd better start moving," said Mark.

  We went down the alley and were careful to peek around the corner before moving onto the street. The zombies that caught Chuck at the side entrance had gone into the store and left the dead cop on the sidewalk. I stared at his shredded carcass for a moment.

  His ripped clothes swam in a pool of bright red blood. Two streams broke from the pool, one through a crease in the sidewalk and the other down the hill toward us. I watched the trickle glide closer, snaking its way across the concrete as if trying to reach out to me. There was a macabre beauty to the sight of it.

  "Come on." Levon pulled at the back of my shirt.

  "Are you sure this is safe?" asked Mark. "Aren't there going to be military fuckers out this way?"

  "No," I said and started to walk with them up the street. "Reagan sent them all out west, chasing after…" It occurred to me that we'd just met the guy that Reagan had sent the military off on a wild goose chase for. "Well, chasing after him I think." I pointed back at Chuck's corpse.

  "What was his deal?" asked Levon. "What was he talking about in there? About you being an assassin and shit."

  "I don't know, but he said something about getting to Laura and the kids at the dock. We need to hurry up and get down there. They might be in trouble."

  "Is that your wife?" asked Levon.

  "No. I just met her and her kids yesterday. Her husband saved my life and died doing it. I owe them. I owe them a lot."

  "Well, I don't know what the hell he was talking about, but it sure seemed like he knew a lot about what was going on here," said Mark.

  I agreed. "We met some other cops out in the Bay. They were fuckers just like that guy. I don't know what's up with them, but it’s not good, whatever it is."

  "Here, hold onto this for me," I said and handed Mark my bat. "Let me put on this earpiece. I want to make sure Reagan's people are as far away as possible." I put in the earpiece I'd stolen from Williams. "You put this one in. It's the one the cop had. Don't hit the button on it, just listen to see if they say anything." I let Mark keep my bat while we ran and he looked bizarrely comfortable with a katana in one hand and a Louisville Slugger in the other.

  We made it back to the area that had been cleared by Alpha squad earlier in the day. It was a relief to get away from the unsecured part of the city, but we found ourselves confronted with another graveyard. Black crates were stacked, three high, for several blocks.

  "There they are," said Levon. "The fucking caskets."

  "No shit?" said Mark. "Are those all full of bodies?"

  "Yes," I said. "I saw them packing a bunch over that way." I pointed west, toward Arkland Park. "There are three bodies in each one."

  "Jesus Christ." Mark shivered at the sight.

  As we moved further north, the stacks of caskets started to spread out into the street. We eventually had to move between them in a thin row that Mark's chair had trouble fitting through. The towers of black coffins were high above our heads and the knowledge that each one held three corpses set my nerves far beyond the edge.

  "Does anyone else see that?" asked Mark.

  "What?"

  "Some of these coffins," his voice trembled, "are moving."

  "Don't fucking say that," said Levon as he pushed his brother a little faster.

  "I'm serious."

  Then I heard it. One of the black containers beside me rattled. "He's right," I said. "Go, go, go." I pushed at Levon's back.

  "I'm trying," he said, but the wheels on Mark's chair scra
ped along either side of the coffins beside us. He had to carefully maneuver the chair straight or it would get stuck.

  Our voices enticed the dead things that surrounded us. More of the coffins began to shudder. I heard the monsters inside begin to moan in lust of our fresh meat.

  "This is straight up fucked!" said Levon and I couldn't have agreed more.

  "Just keep going," I said. "I can see the end up there. Keep moving."

  That's when the yelling started. It was muted and came from inside one of the coffins nearby, but the sound was more vicious than the others we'd heard. I saw a coffin at the top of one of the towers, about ten feet ahead of us, start to jostle more than the rest. It almost seemed to hop and started to slide off the one beneath it.

  If it fell, we'd be trapped. The gaps between the coffins to our right and left weren't wide enough to fit through and if the way forward was blocked we would have to back out. That wasn't something I wanted to try.

  "Get a move on," I pleaded.

  "I'm trying."

  I watched the casket slide over to the side and teeter off the edge of the one beneath. There was no way we could make it through before the top container fell.

  "We're going to have to go back," I said.

  "We can make it." Levon was determined, but I could see he was wrong.

  "Don't be an idiot. That casket's about the fall over."

  "And what's going to happen if we go back?" he asked "I want out of this shit, now."

  "You're going to get us crushed."

  The black casket fell and slid to a stop against the other tower to our left, causing the second tower to teeter. The clamp that held the top closed popped off and a portion of the lid bent open. An arch formed ahead, with the broken crate looming on top and forming a makeshift tunnel beneath that was just large enough to fit Mark's chair through. I thought it was a terrible idea to keep going, but there wasn't any turning back now. Levon had already started to push his brother through.

  A slopping gush of liquid poured out of the open edge of the tipped crate and flowed down over Mark's chair as they passed under. The zombie inside was incensed by our presence and pounded against his coffin, causing more putrid syrup to drip out.

  The smell was impossible to breath. I've never experienced anything quite like it. As the stench of the yellow, foaming goo hit my nose it seemed to steal all my breath away. It was such a horrid odor that we began to wretch. My stomach rolled with spasms as I passed on my knees beneath the arch. The box bounced above my head and I heard something break.

  Then the crate fell. Its corner scraped along the side of coffin to my left and I scrambled to move forward, but there wasn't enough space to crawl and I had to lie down. Levon and Mark had made it through, but I was seconds away from being crushed.

  Plastic scraped against plastic as the coffin fell another inch. The creature inside howled in frustration as its fingers explored the edge of the lid and stuck out of the exposed corner. I was on my belly and the coffin's corner pressed against my spine. It hadn't fallen against me completely and was still supported by the stacks on either side, but the jostling monster threatened to knock the archway down completely. I clawed at the pavement beneath me in a desperate attempt to get myself out.

  Levon grabbed my hands and pulled me through. My belly scraped against the concrete and I was covered in the yellow puss that had escaped the coffin, but I was alive.

  "I'm so sorry," said Levon. "I thought we'd make it."

  "It's okay. Let's just get down to the docks." We started to move up the street. I tried to wipe away the decayed ooze that clung to my clothes and said, "At least the worst is behind us."

  I was wrong.

  CHAPTER TWELVE - MY HERO

  "We need to be quiet up here," I said as we neared the corner of 23rd and MLK. That was where I'd crashed my dirt bike and incited the rush of zombies that broke down the containment barrier. I knew they'd sent Alpha Squad here to clean up the mess, but that team had been called away to investigate the police officers on the west side of the city that Reagan had lied about.

  "I don't see anything." Mark scanned the area ahead.

  "Do you think we should go a different way?" asked Levon.

  "No. The road goes right down to the entrance of the industrial park. The dock's in there, and I know that the gate on MLK is busted down. If we go around we might end up having to just come right back to this entrance. I don't want to waste any more time. If the girls are in trouble, well…"

  "What?" asked Levon after my pause. I was hesitant to explain it to them, but they deserved to know everything.

  "If they're in trouble then it's my fault. I'm the one that dragged them here. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if something happened to those little girls."

  "Well then, let's go save them." He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and slapped my chest with his other hand. "Don't worry, bro, you've got a Hero with you!"

  Mark groaned in response to his brother's bravado. "Let's stop sitting around then." He flipped on the power to his chair and used the joystick to move forward. Levon rushed to catch up and then flicked the power back off.

  "Don't waste the battery."

  "Fine," said Mark. "Then let's get going. We're losing daylight."

  I ran ahead and motioned for them to wait as I checked the corner of 23rd Avenue. The fence had collapsed, bent over from the surge of bodies earlier. It curled over the edge of the concrete barrier and the dirt bike I'd left here was now trapped beneath it. Strips of cloth and flesh hung off the barbed wire and several motionless bodies were pressed against the barrier inside. The buzz of flies was intense, almost like an engine was roaring around me. I'm sure the smell was sickening, but it couldn't have been worse than the stains on my shirt from the casket drippings.

  I stared at the bodies for a long while, waiting for one to shift, but they stayed still. There were streaks of blood leading away from the fence to the center of the intersection where they then disappeared. I guessed that Alpha Squad had set up a graveyard loading area here, but there was no sight of them now.

  Levon whispered to me from behind. He feverishly pointed north, up MLK, while trying to stay as quiet as possible. I looked to see what he was so upset about and saw the shuffling shadow on a man cast against a building to my right. Somewhere up the street was a zombie.

  I quietly moved across 23rd Avenue and against the opposite corner, beside the ice cream shop I'd escaped through earlier. From there I could see where the shadow originated, and a whole lot more.

  The sides of Martin Luther King Boulevard were filled with zombies. There were at least twenty of them and they wandered aimlessly, bumping into one another and growling as they waited for any sign of living meat to entice them. Most were moving along the sidewalks, staring into the windows of the buildings. However, even if we ran down the middle of the street, they would close in on us quickly. We would have to find a different way to the docks.

  Levon pushed Mark in a hurry to get over to me. I didn't understand his sudden, reckless charge and scowled at him in fear his movement would alert the horde. He responded by pointing at the earpiece I'd given him.

  "What's the deal?" I asked in a perturbed hush.

  "The fucking cops," he said and pointed at his ear again. "One of them, named Trev, is headed to the dock. There's another one called Frank. He says he's got the girls."

  "What?"

  "They think other cops are going to meet them there," said Levon. "Trev is headed to pick up one of the girls. We've got to go. Now!"

  "The road's loaded with zombies," I said. "We're going to have to go around."

  "We go around and those girls are good as dead."

  "We're going to have to fight our way down to them." I checked the corner again and saw the enormity of our task. "I don't think we can make it."

  "Bullshit," said Levon. He grabbed the scruff of my shirt and jostled me. I looked directly into his eyes as he said, "We didn't come all this way to
give up. Those girls need us, and we're going to save them or die trying."

  I looked down at Mark to see if the same determination burned in his eyes. He held his sword in one hand and offered me the bat with the other. He smirked and said, "Time to beat the shit out of some mother fucking zombies, Billy."

  The twins were ready for war. Levon wrapped the chain around his fist and punched it into his other hand while his brother cleaned his blade on the side of his jeans. Despite his handicap, I had no doubt Mark was more than capable of taking out a slew of zombies. I imagined us charging down the hill, Levon and I in the lead with Mark's motorized chair picking up the slack. It would be a desperate attempt, but it was our only chance. Unless...

  I thought about the smoke detector I'd used as a diversion a few hours ago. I had an idea.

  "How fast can that chair move?"

  "Faster than you, I'd bet," said Mark. He flipped the switch on his handle that started it and the chair's electric motor kicked to life.

  "And how loud can those speakers get?"

  "Pretty damn loud. Why?"

  "I've got an idea, guys. It's nuts, but not as bad as trying to charge headfirst into a horde of zombies."

  "What?" asked Levon.

  "Levon, what if you carried your brother on your back and we sent the chair down the hill first, with the music blaring. That might distract the zombies and get them to chase the chair. Then we can run behind and take out the bastards one by one. If the music's loud enough, they won't hear us coming."

  "If the cops are down there, won't the cops hear us?"

  I shrugged. "Maybe, but this is the best plan I've got."

  "That plan sucks," said Mark. "I'm not trashing my chair."

  "You won't have to. If it works then we can pick up your chair down the hill somewhere. I was in this store earlier and there was some tape in the office. I'll go grab it and we can tape the stick forward on the chair to keep it moving."

  "Won't work. This chair tips over backward if no one's sitting in it," said Mark. "Unless you can find something to weigh it down."