Deadlocked 8

by A. R. Wise

  “Oh, don’t worry, it’s not for you.” He turned back to the nude figure on the bed. He sighed and said, “Look at him, Levon. He’s perfect.”

  I recognized the man on the bed, but knew it couldn’t be the same person. “Is that Ben?”

  “Yes, well, sort of,” said Covington. “He’s a clone, just as I was once. The evolution of mankind here before us.” He held his arms out in grand fashion. There was madness in him that he couldn’t hide, and it seeped into every word. “It’s no wonder we have to die.” Then he turned to face me. “Did you come to kill me, Levon?”

  “Beatrice sent me,” I said with a nod. “She wants me to kill you.”

  “Of course she does,” said Covington, nodding as if in appreciation. “She couldn’t help but build her golem and send it out, filled with hatred, driven by spite. All for not.”

  He stabbed the metal tool deep into the clone’s throat, causing the body to jerk as blood funneled out through the cylinder to splash on the pure white floor. He knelt, and pet the nude man as he whispered, “There, there, my boy. It’s all over.”

  “Why did you do that?” I asked.

  “I’d rather him die like this, unconscious from the drugs I gave him. Painless. Quick. I don’t want him to burn.”

  “Why would he burn?”

  “We’re all going to burn, Levon. It’s only a matter of time now.” I didn’t know what he meant, and he didn’t give me a chance to ask before saying, “Now come do me the honor of murdering me. I won’t stop you. Her golem can murder me, but I’ve already won.”

  Covington moved aside as the pool of blood grew between us. He walked to the end of the clone’s bed, and I stayed at the room’s entrance. The metal tube jutting from the clone’s throat was still spewing blood, like a spigot stuck into a barrel of wine.

  “You’re insane,” I said as he stayed on his island of white, the sea of blood quickly spreading around him.

  “Do you think a dying God would let his murderers walk free?” he asked, and the blood was nearly touching his feet as it spread. “I might die, Levon. You might very well kill me today, but I won’t go quietly. Right now, the truth of what happened is waiting to be told. Everything I knew about the start of the apocalypse, and the way The Electorate unleashed it, is waiting to be discovered. They think they can rewrite history by snuffing me out, but they’re wrong. As soon as this facility is destroyed, the truth will come out. It doesn’t matter if you kill me, I’m already dead. So do her bidding, golem.” He stretched out his arms and said, “Martyr me.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t come here to kill you.”

  This intrigued him, and he cocked his head to the side when he asked, “Then why are you here?”

  “Because if I’m going to die, I’m damn well going to do it on my own terms. I’ve spent the better part of my life trying to kill you mother fuckers. I learned to build bombs, and I was taught to shoot, and I ambushed caravans. I fought and fought, but when I look back on my best days, on my happiest moments, none of them have anything to do with revenge. The moments that I remember, or at least the ones I want to remember, they’re all about kindness and love. They’re about being with my family and friends, laughing and crying with them. And if I can’t be with them, then I’m going to spend my last minutes on earth being the type of person that would make them proud. I didn’t come here to kill you, Covington. I came to forgive you.”

  36 – A Memory to Cherish

  Annie Conrad

  I was driving south as fast as I could, desperate to get to New Vineyard before nightfall. The grey promise of a storm followed me, and the faint snowflakes started to grow thicker each second. I had to warn Mom and the others about the new virus, and that Jerald was actively searching for us. We had to hide away in fear of the drones that searched from the sky above. There was no other choice. If we wanted to survive, we would have to hide until it was safe to retreat and leave this area for good.

  Billy had given me a map that showed the way to New Vineyard, and I had it splayed out across the center console, its corner dipping in Ben’s blood on the seat beside me. There had been no time to clean the seat, and I didn’t want to switch vehicles. This Range Rover had brought us safely to the rehab center, and I was confident it would get me to New Vineyard, despite the gashes in the hood from the bear’s attack. However, the blood was a constant reminder of how badly Ben had been hurt.

  I ached for him, desperate to know he was okay. I’d developed strong feelings for him in such a short time. I thought of how happy my mom would be for me when she learned of my relationship with Ben. She frequently talked about how much she wanted me to meet someone special, and I was eager to let her know that I had.

  The map led me off the highway, and onto a different route that headed towards the mountains. It was here that I spied the wreck far ahead. The majority of the road was filled with cars and trucks that had been pushed off to the side, allowing only a two-lane passage. Far ahead I could see what looked like a roadblock, and I feared that raiders had set a trap here. A bus was parked at an angle, its front end smashed into a vehicle on the side of the road. A group of people were gathered in front of it, one of them in what looked like a plastic, yellow suit, and I slowed to a stop so that I didn’t charge into a bad situation.

  I got out and opened the back door to get a pair of binoculars. I decided to reach for the sniper rifle that Billy had given me back at the rehab center instead. I knew the scope was just as powerful as the binoculars, and I was eager to see how my shoulder felt while holding the weapon. I’d been worried about the injury I’d reignited when I fell through the roof with Stubs. I walked to the front of the Range Rover and steadied myself as I raised the rifle and peered through the sight.

  A man was standing there with a pistol pointed down at a woman’s head. She looked up, and pressed her head to the barrel, and my heart seized.

  My grip tightened, and my lungs turned to stone. Every muscle in my body tensed as I saw my mother with a gun to her head.

  I remembered the helicopter pilot at Vineyard, and how my shot missed him just before his guns blazed and the bullets tore through the people on that bridge. A vision of the carnage flashed through my mind, reminding me of my failure. The butt of the rifle was pressed to my injured shoulder as I stood at least 300 yards from my target. My arms wavered, and I was certain this shot was impossible. Even if I were laying down, with the gun propped up on a bipod, this would still be a tough shot as the storm’s cold wind licked at my back.

  I adjusted my angle, and accounted for the wind. I held my breath and steadied myself. Then I took my shot.

  The man fell, and my mother was still alive. But this wasn’t over yet.

  I aimed again, and took a second shot, felling another of the men surrounding my mother. The casing seemed to spin away from the rifle in slow motion when I ejected it and aimed at another bastard. And again, I hit my target.

  They just now reacted, terrified and uncertain, jolted by the attack. I had to make sure none of them took a shot at my mother, so I kept firing as I walked forward. They ran to cover behind the bus, leaving my mother kneeling on the pavement. I saw her move, but she didn’t get up. Instead, she was dragging herself to the side of the road, leaving a trail of blood behind her. It enraged me to know that they’d hurt her, and I started to fire off even more shots.

  The soldiers knew where I was now, and were firing back at me, but I wasn’t afraid. Their aim couldn’t contend with mine, and every time they fired I caught sight of where they were hiding. One after another, I picked them off, each shot jamming the rifle’s butt into my tortured shoulder. A soldier climbed up into the mounted gun on one of the Humvees, and started firing at me, but the moment I saw the flash I was able to drop him. I saw his body slump down into the vehicle as the gun fell silent.

  “Come on!” I screamed out as I threw an empty cartridge to the ground and replaced it. I jogged forward, and then stopped to see if any of them dared to
poke their heads out. Instead, I saw their Humvees reversing and driving away.

  I didn’t trust their retreat. I ran to the side of the road where I got up onto a truck to get a better view. I climbed over the cab, and then onto the trailer, giving me a good view of the Humvees in the distance. As I’d feared, they weren’t fully retreating. They were just trying to get distance to regroup.

  “All right, you sons of bitches, let’s do this.” I moved to the end of the trailer and laid down, settling in for a good fight.

  I saw a muzzle flash just as a bullet thudded into the trailer beneath me, and I knew they were trying to snipe back at me. Fools.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” I asked as I took careful aim. I’d been doing this long enough to know that the sniper aiming at me was recalibrating his shot after missing, and would have a far better chance of hitting me now.

  Luckily, I don’t need to miss a shot to make the second.

  His head jerked back as a mist of blood puffed out behind him. I ejected the casing and looked for another victim. They weren’t deterred, and more shots whizzed through the air near me, but I was better than all of them. I would happily do this until every last one of them were lying dead in the road. After five more kills, they finally retreated. I caught another as he was trying to get into his Humvee, and his body slumped out of the driver’s side door.

  The soldiers retreated, and I watched until certain they weren’t planning on turning back to try again. When they were far off, I climbed down from the truck and ran to my mother’s side.

  “Annie,” she cried out to me. “Be careful!”

  “They’re gone,” I said as I ran up to her. “It’s okay. What happened? Are you shot?”

  “You’re bleeding,” she said to me as she saw my side.

  I looked down at the bite marks on my left thigh, and said, “I’m fine. Were you shot?” Her left hip was also injured, but her wound was far more grievous than mine. Blood sopped her pants, and she winced as she turned to let me see.

  “Clyde gave me some bandages. They’re back in my car. Stay here and I’ll get them.”

  “Annie, wait,” she said as she clung to my arm. “Come here. Come here.” She pulled at me, and her voice was cracking from what I thought was pain.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said as I tried to pull free of her grip. “We’ll fix you up. There should be some Rollers headed this way any minute. You’re going to be fine.”

  “Annie, please hug me. Just stay here with me. I can’t believe it’s really you.” I thought she was hysterical, and to a certain extent she was, but it wasn’t fear or pain that caused her to grasp at me, it was joy. “Just let me hold you.”

  I knelt down beside her, and let her pull me close. She started to cry as I promised her that it would be okay. And then her quiet cry turned to sobs, and her shoulders quaked as she just continued to hold me tighter and tighter.

  “I can’t believe it’s you,” she said as she ran her hands through my hair. “My beautiful Annie. My beautiful girl. Look at you.” She released me enough to allow a little space between us so that we could see each other. My eyes had filled with tears as well, brought on by empathy as my mother wept. “What happened to your hair?” she asked as she flicked my short locks.

  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.

  37 – Another Shitty Plan

  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 gl
anced 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?”