Deadlocked 8

by A. R. Wise

  The basement had a concrete floor and little else to define it other than a few support beams that anchored the ceiling. A water heater stood sentry beside a series of pipes that rose and disappeared in holes above. A stream of rusty discoloration seeped out from beneath the water heater, and flowed down to a nearby drain, marking the path the water had taken after the bottom of the tank had finally corroded and burst.

  “Feels like a tomb,” I said as I stood on the bottom step and shined my flashlight around, erasing the inky black corners. The walls were made of plastic, puffed out like clouds by the pink insulation behind, and contoured by the bolts that were drilled into the concrete behind. “Or a padded cell.”

  “Maybe we should make Harry sleep down here, and we’ll stay upstairs,” said Ben as a joke.

  My heart fluttered like a teenager with a crush at the implication that I might spend time alone with Ben. This was the first moment I’d ever realized that I had a burgeoning attraction to him. When Zack had asked me if I was hoping to go on this scouting mission with Ben because I was interested in him, I was struck by how ludicrous the accusation was. I hadn’t even considered such a thing, but his question had made me curious, and over the past couple weeks I’d been thinking of it frequently. I’d even become annoyed when I learned that Harrison would be coming with us, although I was placated by the knowledge that we’d be dropping him off at the water tower. That’s when I would finally get the chance to be alone with Ben, although I didn’t know what I planned to do at that point. I wasn’t the type of girl to throw myself on a man, and I wasn’t even sure if what I felt for Ben was real or if it was simply a fleeting thing.

  “Let’s go upstairs. It’s clear down here,” said Ben as he motioned past me while I lingered on the bottom step.

  We went up and inspected the two bedrooms and bathroom on the top floor. There was an attic, but it had barely enough room to store a box or two, and certainly not enough space for us to sleep in.

  The master bedroom had a sizeable bed, dresser, and more plastic plants that had only served to collect dust for the past couple decades. The second room was designed for a child, with brown and green walls and a band of teddy bear silhouettes just under the white molding. We searched the closets, and even under the beds, being overly cautious because we’d both ventured out into the world enough to know that we needed to be.

  “Everything looks good,” said Ben as we headed back to the stairs. “What do you think?”

  “I’d still rather be in a farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere, but this’ll have to do.”

  “It’s our first house together,” said Ben as he nudged me. “We can get our dream house one of these days.”

  He headed down the stairs, and I followed behind. I obsessed over what he’d said. Was that his way of flirting? I became frustrated with myself, annoyed that I was allowing such insignificant and petty things to cloud my mind during such an important mission. We were headed out here to spy on Jerald’s army, and the last thing I needed was to be distracted.

  We went back out front and found Harrison sitting on the hood of the Jeep, enjoying the crisp air as the setting sun turned the sky a fiery orange. Stubs was in his lap, and they were sharing a strip of salted beef.

  “How’s it look in there? Are we good to go?”

  “Looks fine.” Ben went to the back of the Jeep to retrieve our gear.

  I was about to say something, but just as I opened my mouth we heard a shrill scream from somewhere within the neighborhood. It was human, but nothing like what I’ve ever heard before. The Greys rarely scream, and even when they do, it comes out as a loud moan. This was clearly coming from a living person, but it was a caterwaul that seemed almost animalistic. Her wild yell faded, as if her voice wasn’t strong enough to carry the fervor any longer.

  After a moment of silence, Harrison looked at us and said, “What the fuck was that?”

  Even the birds stopped their chatter. Now the neighborhood was hauntingly quiet. The wind rustling through the pines was the only sound, but we all kept listening, waiting to hear what would try to kill us next.

  PART TWO – Locked In

  6 – Going to Be Here Awhile

  Levon Kline

  “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world.” I forced a smile as I said it, although I imagine my gaze carried a sterner sentiment.

  Beatrice offered a thin-lipped grin. She looked haggard, thin and old, with stringy grey hair that had spent most of its life hiding beneath wigs but was now on display, short as a twenty-year-old model’s pixie cut but thinning from age, adding to her sickly appearance. Without makeup, her wrinkles were on full display, and it seemed as if she’d aged fifty years in just the few months we’d known each other.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, feigning concern.

  I was on a hospital bed with tubes connected to ports that had been drilled in the side of my body. Wires crisscrossed me, rising from their padded anchors to machines that hovered at my bedside. Those same machines chattered and beeped as a reminder that I was still alive. Some fluids poured into me through the thick tubes while other fluids escaped, and none of it was my doing. My once mocha skin had turned ashy, as if all it took to be turned into a white man was a few months out of the sun in a hospital bed. I felt like a living experiment, as if Dr. Frankenstein might walk through my door any minute and throw a switch that would send lightning coursing through me in an attempt to reanimate this dead tissue.

  I wasn’t restrained. It was hardly necessary to do so anymore. My strength had faded months ago. It was a struggle just to raise my hand, but I managed anyhow, and I answered Bea’s question with a middle finger.

  “Be nice,” she said as she pulled a chair over to my bed. Its metal legs squeaked on the tile, and the sound grated on my nerves. “I’m not the one you should be mad at.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m mad at all sorts of people.” I itched at my side, where a welt had appeared the night before. I wasn’t sure what was causing them, but one of the doctors here assured me it was nothing to worry about, although I had no reason to trust him.

  Beatrice sat down as if she were a relative here to visit. She crossed her legs and demurely draped her hands over her knees as she inspected the room. “Are they treating you well?”

  “What’s this about?” I asked, weary of her pleasantries. “Why’d they send you in here?”

  “I asked to check in on you.” She was annoyed by my curtness. “Same as before.”

  I let my head sink into the pillow and muttered, “Bullshit.”

  “Why are you being like this? I’ve come to check in on you as often as they’ll let me. I’m the only one in this entire facility that has even an inkling of sympathy for you.” She held out her fingers as if about to pinch the air, showing me just how little the people here cared about me, as if I needed a reminder.

  “And why’s that? Why do you give a shit?”

  “Because, despite my better judgment, I’ve become a bit fond of you.” She again held up her nearly pinched fingers and added, “Just a teensy bit.”

  I didn’t have anything to offer. Part of me wanted to belittle her, but I was also woefully lonely in this place, and I didn’t want to drive her off. I despised Bea, and everything that The Electorate had done, but a few weeks of solitude is enough to make a person long for any sort of personal interaction with another human being, no matter who they are.

  “They told me you’ve been…” she paused and searched for the proper word. “Difficult.”

  “Every time they come in here, it’s to stick me with needles or something like that. Are they really wondering why I’m not cordial?”

  “They’re just trying to help,” said Bea.

  “Yeah right, obviously.” I set my right hand against one of the three tubes that were stuck to my side. The ports had been implanted shortly after my arrival, after I’d been knocked unconscious with some cocktail of drugs that left my mind spinning for da
ys. The thick tubes were reinforced with a spiral wire that ran the length of them, and they were connected to a machine beside me that funneled a variety of liquids into me. Sometimes the fluids were clear, and other times they were a pinkish hue, and I could feel the liquid going in and out of me like I was some sort of fish tank filtration system. Doctors and nurses visited frequently, always wrapped in several layers of protective suits and masks, and would spin me or adjust the myriad of tubes and wires attached to me. The tubes on my side required the doctor to spin a lock at the base before detaching, and the putrid stench that followed always caused me to gag. Despite my attempts to communicate with the doctors and nurses, they rarely said a word. Even as I screamed at them to tell me what the hell smelled so bad, they kept tight-lipped and hardly even looked in my direction.

  “It’s the truth,” she said as she inspected her nails. She used one nail to push at the cuticle of another, as if giving herself a long overdue manicure with the only tools available to her. “You’re more important to them than you know.”

  “And why’s that?”

  She looked up at the camera in the corner of the white room, above the television that was constantly showing pictures of how the world had rejuvenated itself in the wake of the apocalypse. Bea shook her head and said, “I should probably keep quiet.”

  I groaned and then said, “I don’t give a fuck, Bea. I’m too tired to try and fight with you to tell me. If you don’t want to, then don’t.”

  Beatrice coughed, but not because she needed to. It was the sort of polite noise a person makes when they’re taken aback by the rudeness of another, but at a loss for how to respond. “Well, I guess you still haven’t figured out who your friends are in this whole mess.”

  I laughed, or at the very least I made a guttural noise meant to be laughter that was more similar to a phlegmy snore. My nose had been plugged up for weeks, and the drainage had given me a sore throat and terrible congestion that made my chest feel heavy. The noises escaping my lungs were often as much a surprise to myself as it was to anyone around me.

  “You’re no friend of mine,” I said and thought of Jill, Billy, Laura, Annie, and…

  Kim.

  Every time I thought of her, it hurt my very soul. As melodramatic as that might be to say, it was the truth. I ached every time her smile snuck its way into my imagination.

  “If it weren’t for me, then you’d already be dead.”

  I snickered when I asked, “And you expect me to be grateful for that?”

  “You’d rather be dead? You’d rather give up? What happened to the tough man I met at the cabin. The one that acted like he could take the whole world on if he had the chance.”

  “He got real fucking sick, and he feels like a piece of shit in a toilet that should’ve been flushed months ago.”

  “Pleasant imagery.” Bea wrinkled her nose.

  “Nothing pleasant about it.”

  “Well, you should know that your stock has risen as of late.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked. “And what am I up to on Wall Street now, governor?” I mocked her accent.

  She ignored my taunting and continued, “They need you alive because something bad happened back at the transfer facility.”

  She earned my curiosity. “Bad? Like what sort of bad?”

  “There was a second entrance to the facility, down deep, and it got opened.”

  “In the mineshaft,” I said. “We got out that way. That’s where I got bit.”

  “And when you opened that door, blood got out. It seeped down into the mine.”

  I paused as I considered what she was saying.

  She stared at me, wordless, and just raised her brow, knowing that the enormity of the situation wasn’t lost on me. Finally, she said, “It got out.”

  “Your new apocalypse,” I said. “The Tempest Strain.”

  “That’s right, although we never meant for it to be released. None of this has gone the way we’d hoped.”

  “Why’s that? Because you got stuck in it too?” I asked, amused by her predicament.

  Her agitation was apparent as she leaned forward and glowered. “You’ve got a wife out there, right? And friends? You’ve got people out there that are about to get swallowed up by this, and the way you deal with it is to lay here and be glib?”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I rattled the tubes stuck to the ports on my side. “I’m not going anywhere. Believe me, if I could, I’d happily get off this bed and go out there and strangle every mother fucking one of you that was responsible for this. I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

  “And if I could, I’d help you do it.”

  “Don’t be so quick to help, Bea.” I winked at her. “Your neck would be the first I’d reach for.”

  “Stop playing the brute,” she said. “Be smart about this. We need each other, Levon. If you’re going to save your family, you’re going to need my help.”

  “I don’t need shit from you.”

  She bristled, and her brow furrowed as she glared at me, like a wicked witch trying to put the shattered pieces of her plan back together again. She was a warty nose and green skin away from a children’s movie. “Stop it. Stop being a fool. I’m trying to help you.”

  “And how exactly are you trying to help?”

  “There’s a lot more going on here than you know. The release of the Tempest Strain has changed everything. Jerald is being forced to work with me now. The Electorate knows what happened out here, and they were more prepared for it than Jerald knew. They’ve already demolished most of his air force, and he knows they can crush him too if they want. The members of The Electorate that he’s already captured and the Dawns here are his only bargaining chips. He’s desperate to survive, and there’s only two ways for him to do it. Either he uses you to find a cure, or he gets The Electorate to take him and his men in if he promises not to hurt my friends and me, as well as our Dawns.”

  “Good for you,” I said as I closed my weary eyes.

  “That’s why it’s not too late for you to save your friends, Hero.” She used my nickname with dramatic flair.

  “And how would I do that?”

  “We need you to tell us where the people you were traveling with might’ve gone,” said Beatrice.

  I was astounded that she actually thought I might tell her. “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Listen to me, Levon.” She leaned forward and set her hand on top of mine. I pulled away, but she left her hand on the edge of my bed. “The people here are trying to use you to create the cure, but it’s not working.” She tried to whisper, but it sounded more like a hiss, “I never counted on them having one of these damn contraptions here.” Beatrice gripped one of the tubes that was attached to my side.

  “Let them use you,” I said. “You’re already immune to the Tempest Strain. Why can’t they hook you up to a machine like this and pump you full of whatever the hell they’re flooding me with?”

  “I’m not immune,” said Beatrice with foreboding calm. She said it again, this time with even more regret, “I’m not immune to what’s coming. None of us are.”

  I was bewildered, and just uttered a weak, “What?”

  “We thought we had the cure, but we were wrong. When they designed the Tempest Strain, they had to encourage mutation so that it could cross species, but that also meant there was a chance it would become immune to whatever cures had been designed. Apparently, it did.”

  “And you want me to tell you where my friends are because they might have a cure?” I asked, thoroughly amused by how the tables had turned on this bitch.

  “It’s all because of Courtland,” said Beatrice as she settled back into her chair, like a snake slithering back into a coil. “We’ve had a hundred brilliant men and women trying to redo what he was able to do, but every time they think they have the answer, it all falls apart.”

  “The dude on that island,” I said as I remembered the sniveling fuck. “He tried to tell me something about Kim before I smash
ed his head in.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Something about her being a carrier.” Despite how long ago it had been, the image of that man’s bleeding face would never leave me. I murdered him, and even though I won’t say that I regret it, the act has never been far from my subconscious. It lingers, and shows up in my nightmares sometimes, always with him muttering, ‘She’s a carrier’ before I smash his head in.

  “We have to find someone that Courtland experimented on,” said Beatrice. “The fate of the entire human race might depend on it.”

  “Then you can blame Jerald when you’re on your deathbed, because Kim’s dead, and it’s his fault. She was the one that your scientist buddy had been working on.”

  “But she had a child, right?” asked Bea.

  I scowled and said, “Leave that boy alone.”

  “No,” she said as if there could never be another answer. “We need him, and we need Ben Watanabe.”

  “Ben? Why do you need him?”

  “Because he might be a carrier too, just like Kim’s son. We’re not certain, but it’s possible. You see, the man Ben thinks is his father was working with Courtland. He trained Ben to survive the apocalypse, and to murder some of the people in The Electorate.”

  “No shit?” I asked, intrigued.

  “But we’re not certain if the Ben you met is the original, or if he’s a clone.”

  “Like the one in the helicopter,” I said, remembering when we pulled Ben and his twin out of the wrecked vehicle. It was one of the many mysteries about what happened that I hadn’t put together yet. “Why did you have clones of him?”

  “Because he was one of the early versions of the Dawns.”

  “Like Celeste,” I said, and I noticed how the name made Beatrice wince.

  “She’s one of the more recent versions,” she said with an odd bitterness in her tone. “After the real Ben showed up at the facility in Georgia, our scientists there were able to do tests on him. They weren’t aware of who he really was, but they quickly found out he was immune to the disease that Courtland had cooked up. Unfortunately, they didn’t have time to keep many notes before they were killed. We know they injected another child at the facility with the cure they created from Ben’s blood, but we think she was probably killed.”