Deadlocked 4 Read online

  The vehicle shuddered as Clyde floored it. The acceleration pushed Billy back into the hard plastic seat and he felt the engine's power rumble through the truck. He yelped in boyish glee as they drove into the horde on their way to either certain death or an epic escape.

  The first zombie that hit the front of the truck exploded on impact. All three of the men in the car screamed in disgusted appreciation of the sight as the zombie burst into liquid. Bones and pieces of flesh slid across the windshield amid a flood of puss and black blood. Billy could almost smell the putrid odor despite the fact that their vehicle was air locked.

  There was no solace from the waves of gore as the vehicle barreled through the horde. Fluid splashed against the windshield as if they were driving a submarine through a sewage pipe. Bones, teeth, eyeballs, and other randomly identifiable pieces of human beings slid across the windshield as they continued to move forward.

  "That's the nastiest shit ever!" Levon laughed at the sight and turned to see if Billy was getting the same amount of immature glee out of the display.

  "I can't see the road at all," said Clyde as he tried to flip on the windshield wipers. The wipers did an admirable job at first, but soon the mass of thick, gloppy flesh was too much for even the industrial blades to wipe away.

  "Just keep driving."

  "What if we run into a building?"

  "What about this?" asked Levon as he pointed at the radar. It gave them a decent approximation of where the street was. Unfortunately, the swelling mass of red dots hid most of the geography as the radar tried to decipher their surroundings.

  "This was a bad idea." Clyde hated the plan, but he still kept his foot pressed down firmly on the gas pedal.

  "23rd Avenue is a straight shot up to Becken Street. Then the train yard is right after that. There's a fence around it, and some other shacks, but I bet we can get through this before then."

  "What happens if we don't?" asked Clyde.

  Billy shrugged and was about to say something when the vehicle bounced over a large object of some sort. His body flew into the air and his head smashed into the roof before he fell back down on his side. They all yelled in pain and frustration after the impact, but were thankful that they were still moving forward."

  "What was that?" asked Levon as he rubbed the top of his head.

  "We ran over something." Clyde was the only one buckled in and he seemed to get a little too much pleasure at seeing his captors bounce around inside the truck. He looked at the radar and saw that the red dots representing the horde had begun to lessen.

  The jolt from driving over whatever they hit had jostled some of the body parts that kept the wipers from working. The blades groaned beneath the weight of what was left, but they finally started to work again. The streaks of blood and puss that were left behind made it hard to see what was ahead of them as the vehicle continued to move forward at top speed.

  Billy realized that the grinding sound beneath them wasn't coming from the wheels moving across a paved street anymore. He climbed over the divider that separated his seat from the covered truck bed behind and tried to see out of the rear window. He crawled through the area of the truck meant for a gurney and approached the back.

  He couldn't see much, but he immediately realized where they were.

  "Stop!" He tried to warn them.

  "What?" Clyde asked in confusion.

  "We just drove through the train yard's fence! Stop before we…" Billy started to climb back over the divider when he saw Hailey Bay stretched out in front of their truck.

  The vehicle careened off the edge of the yard and flew through the air as they all screamed out in terror. They were airborne for six horrifying seconds before they hit the water. Billy was thrown forward and smashed into the back of Levon's seat before crumpling to the floor. Their four-ton vehicle started its rapid descent to the bottom of Hailey Bay.

  * * *

  Gwen followed the chain from Kim's neck to the wall. She explored the metal loop that was planted in the cement and tried to figure out how to get it out. She dug her fingernail at the cement in hopes of chipping away at it, but it was a useless attempt.

  "I'm scared," said Kim.

  "I know, sweetie, but I'm going to get you out of here." She tried to twist the metal circle in hopes of unscrewing it, but that was impossible.

  "Can you see?"

  She didn't want to answer truthfully. "I don't know. I'll be okay. Let's just worry about you for now."

  "Is Toby going to be okay?"

  Again, she didn’t want to answer truthfully. "He's going to be fine. He's just sick right now, but he's going to be fine." She wrapped the chain around her arm and placed her feet against the cement wall as she tried to pull the latch free. She'd tried the same with hers before, without any luck, but she tried harder now.

  Gwen had been hopeful the police officers that kidnapped her and her son were telling the truth when they said they could cure Toby. She endured their attacks in hopes of winning her son's freedom. Now, after hearing them talk about how they planned on using the children as guinea pigs, she knew she had to save them.

  She put her mouth against the cold metal loop set in the cement. She bit down on it and her teeth were tortured by the sensation. Gwen tried to turn the loop with her mouth, and the pain was agonizing as her teeth threatened to shatter from the attempt.

  Then the door at the top of the stairs opened.

  Gwen scrambled to move Kim into the corner behind her. She couldn't see anything with her tortured eyes except the faintest glow of a lantern's light as someone descended the stairs.

  "Kimmy," said Trev as he came down. "Time for your bath."

  "Leave her alone," said Gwen.

  "Didn't you already learn your lesson, bitch?"

  "I won't let you take her."

  "I guess you didn't. Maybe we'll have to move up to the advanced course."

  Gwen tried to discern what he was doing as she blindly backed up to push Kim into the corner where she could protect her. "Why would you want to hurt a kid? What sort of monsters are you people?"

  "I don't want to hurt her." She could tell by his voice that Trev had moved to stand near Toby's cage. "That's the last thing I want."

  "You're going to infect her."

  "That's not me, sweatheart. Courtland's the one running the experiments. I'm just here to clean her up and feed her dinner."

  "Bullshit."

  "I'm not here to argue with you." Trev rattled Toby's cage and the boy whimpered. Then, as Gwen continued to shield Kim, Toby's whimper turned into a cry. The cage rattled more as his cry grew louder.

  "What are you doing?"

  "I told you, I'm moving you up to the advanced course in Don't Fuck With Me 101."

  Toby cried out as the cage rattled more. "Mommy, help."

  "You'd better not move around so much, kid," said Trev. "The more you move, the more of that shit falls down on you."

  "Don't hurt him!"

  Toby squealed as the powder snuck into his nostrils. "Mommy!"

  "Leave him alone."

  "Then back up and let me take her upstairs for her bath."

  "Don't let him take me," said Kim pathetically.

  "Are we graduating to 102?" asked Trev as the cage rattled again.

  "Stop it," said Gwen. "Please just stop."

  "Then back off and give me the girl before I take a piss on your son and make that powder start to really burn."

  "You're a monster."

  He chuckled. "You don't know the half of it."

  "Don't let him take me."

  "What are you going to do with her?" asked Gwen.

  "I told you, I'm just giving her a bath. We're going to have some dinner, and then she's going to play in the tub for a bit. No big deal."

  "Don't let him take me."

  "Do you promise?" asked Gwen as Kim gripped her leg and cried.

  "Scout's honor."

  "Don't let him take me. I don't want to go."

&nbs
p; Gwen turned around and knelt down to hold Kim's face in her hands. "It'll be okay, honey."

  "No. I don't want to go. Don't let him take me."

  Gwen was mortified that she couldn't do a better job of protecting Kim. "You'll be okay, honey."

  Trev walked over and Gwen heard a jangle of keys as he unlocked Kim's chain. Then she felt the chain's slack tighten and Kim was pulled away from the wall. The little girl struggled to resist, but it was hopeless. He dragged her across the cement as Gwen held the girl's wildly grasping hands.

  Trev took Kim and Gwen heard the girl choke as he pulled the chain. He laughed and then slapped the girl a few times. The sound of his palm hitting her bare skin was heart wrenching.

  "Thanks, Gwen."

  "Fuck you."

  "I know you won't start screaming. Right? Because you know that if you do, I'll come back down here and piss on your son until that powder eats him alive. Everyone else is trying to sleep, and I'll be the first one to get down here if you start screaming. You're going to sit down here and shut the fuck up and - You know what? As a thank you, I won't rape you when the others show up with the condoms." He started to walk up the stairs and forced Kim to move ahead of him. "Besides, you're not really my type." His boots clopped against the wooden stairs as he walked up.

  "You're a little too old for my taste." He cackled and closed the door.

  Gwen collapsed in sobs at what she knew was about to happen to that poor little girl. She apologized to Kim again and again as she cried in despair.

  * * *

  "Ben, this is Annie," said Joel as he helped the little girl with the curly red hair up into one of the beds. "She's going to stay with us for a little while."

  The Asian boy stared at Joel and didn't say a word.

  "Come on, Ben. You know I won't let the same thing happen to you that happened to Rachel."

  Ben crossed his arms and moved back until he sat at the head of his bed with his back pressed against the wall. He looked away from them and pulled his knees up against his chest. He was the oldest of the test subjects, but he'd demonstrated a remarkable resilience to the virus. They'd found him in a gutter outside of the city, surrounded by the corpses of zombies he'd killed. By all rights, he should've caught the disease, but his immune system had been able to fight it. That's why they brought him here, despite the fact that he was thirteen, a full three years older than any of the subjects in Courtland's experiments.

  So far, he was the only patient of the twenty they'd been experimenting on that had lived.

  "Fine," said Joel. "You can be nasty to me, but do me a favor and be nice to little Annie." He ruffled her curly red hair. "Little Orphan Annie." He smirked at his own joke and then headed back to the office where Barry was still pouring over the reports.

  "I don't know where we went wrong," said Barry when Joel walked in. "Our data is identical to what we were able to pull off of Courtland's computer. We should be getting the same results, but we're not. I'm starting to think he made it all up and falsified these reports to send us off in the wrong direction."

  "I've got an idea," said Joel as he closed the door.

  Barry set his pen down and looked up at his assistant. "What is it? I'm open to anything at this point."

  "What if we took the blood sample they took from the Captain and mixed it with the virus instead of the Seventy-Seven?"

  "And do what with it?"

  "If we can pull his antibodies out, and then mix them with Courtland's version of the Seventy-Seven…" he shrugged. "It's worth a shot. What do we have to lose? We're assuming that Ben's antibodies should work, but they haven't. Let's move on and see if this new sample acts differently."

  "And what would we do with it after that?"

  Joel pointed out at their new patient. "Inject it into her and see what happens."

  "I thought they said her mother pumped her full of the Seventy-Seven already."

  "She did, but they're not going to give us the green light to transfer her anyway. Why not give this a shot and see what happens?"

  Barry shrugged, picked up his pen, and started leafing through his reports again. "Fine. Go ahead and give it a try. I'm out of ideas."

  * * *

  Laura woke up but didn't open her eyes. She'd been dreaming, but the phantom drifted away and she desperately tried to recall what she was losing. David was in her dream, and she wanted to fall back asleep to be with him again. She tried to remember what they'd been doing, and what he was wearing. She tried to remember what he looked like and then the reality of his death sank back into her mind. He was gone, and all she had left were memories that got harder and harder to recall with each passing day.

  Where were her daughters?

  "Kim?" she tried to say, but the name came out in a gurgle as she realized there was something in her throat. She opened her eyes, but the viscous fluid that had collected over them blurred the world. She struggled to move and felt restraints holding her down.

  "She's awake," said a stranger's voice nearby.

  Laura blinked until the world made sense again. She was in a white room, with medical equipment around her, and there were two men standing on either side of her bed. They had surgical masks on and wore blue gloves that overlapped the sleeves of their white gowns.

  "Not for long," said the other man. He was fat but his voice was higher than you'd expect to come from such a burly man. She glanced over at him in fear as her surroundings started to make sense. She remembered her time on the dock and seeing Billy, but her memories were a jumble of drug-hazed, possibly imagined moments. "She's full of anesthetic."

  "Let's get that tube out of her throat and see if she knows where her boyfriend was headed," said a third man that she couldn't see. The third man's voice was deeper, and more commanding. She tried to sit up to look at him, but her body refused to respond to the attempt.

  One of the surgeons put his hand on her chin and pulled her mouth open. He looked into her eyes and said, "This is going to be uncomfortable." Then he started to pull the plastic tube out of her throat. It felt like it snaked through her entire body as he pulled it free and the edge scraped against her esophagus until it was finally jerked free. She sputtered and coughed as the desire to vomit became overwhelming. She wretched, but no fluid escaped other than spittle and phlegm.

  "Laura," said the man she couldn't see. "Can you understand me?"

  She continued to cough as the sensation of the plastic tube's exit tickled her throat. "Yes." She did her best to speak.

  "I know this is all a bit confusing, but you need to calm down and answer a couple of questions for me."

  "Where's Kim? Where's Annie?"

  "We'll get to that in a minute."

  "Where're my daughters you fucking piece of shit?"

  "Calm down, Laura. We'll get to that in a minute."

  "Get to it now. Where're my girls?"

  "Annie's safe. She's here, but we need help finding Kim."

  Laura struggled to pull free of the wires, tubes, and restraints that held her down. The surgeons beside her tried to keep her from moving, but she continued to fight until one of them barked an order to the other about an injection. She watched as he pressed a syringe into the plastic IV tube that poked out of her arm. A warm sensation plunged into her and quickly overcame her body. Her brain soothed, and pain escaped again as the drug took over. She laid her head on the pillow and stared at the ceiling tiles above.

  "Laura," said the disembodied voice at the end of her bed. "We need to know where Billy went. Where was he headed? Where did the police take your daughter?"

  "I don't know."

  "What was the last thing you remember? Do you remember shooting the cop?"

  She thought that was a dream. Had she really killed a man in front of Kim? She shook her head in hopes that it never happened.

  "Do you remember shooting him?"

  Laura remembered Kim putting her hands over her eyes and shrieking as the shotgun blasted. The splatter of blood and
brains had ricocheted off the wall and painted them with gore. She remembered the way Kim hyperventilated after her mother murdered a man in front of her.

  Laura started to cry as she thought about the look in her daughter's eyes. "What did I do?"

  "We need your help, Laura. We need help finding Kim and the police officers that took her."

  How would a five-year-old react to seeing something like that? Laura wondered if her daughter would ever recover from the trauma of seeing that man die. "What did I do?"

  She was terrified that Kim would never be the same again. Her sweet, innocent little baby was already a victim.

  * * *

  Kim kept her head below the surface as long as she had breath. There was just enough water for her to be submerged in the dirty, porcelain tub that Trev had filled with buckets of water since the plumbing had been shut off long ago. She kept her eyes closed under the water and the way it drowned out the sound of Trev's voice was a blessing. She wished she could stay under forever.

  His hand reached in and touched her chest. His finger traced its way down her stomach and onto her leg as he tried to worm his way between her clenched legs. She squirmed to the side as her lungs ached from holding her breath too long. She would finally have to emerge, though she was terrified of what waited for her.

  Trev's hands reached back in and groped at her waist as she finally sat up to take a breath.

  "There you are," he said as she wiped the water away from her eyes. "I thought you turned into a fish down there." He laughed and continued to move his hands up and down her legs. "I thought you were scared of the water." He expected an answer, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of a conversation. "You sure seem fine with it now."

  He reached out and touched the massive black bruise that discolored her right shoulder. It was tender to the touch and she recoiled from him as he inspected it.

  "That's a nasty bruise there. Did something hit you?"