Deadlocked (5 page)

I pulled into my driveway and hurried to get inside the house. I got to the front door and instinctually tried to unlock it with William’s keys. Then I remembered my own keys were lying at the botigaetom of Everland River.

“Fuck." I tried the door and found it locked. I moved to the large window of our front room, but it was shut as well. Laura had done a good job getting everything locked up tight.

“Laura,” I called up to the attic. “Honey, it’s me. Let me in.”

No answer.

I grabbed a rock and threw it at the small attic window. It bounced off the house’s siding and fell to the ground. I tried again with a similar result and then yelled her name a few more times.

“David?” I heard her say from the back of the house. “Help! Help!”

My heart seized when I heard her cries. I ran around the back of the house to see what was wrong. I opened the gate and saw the back door had been broken down.

“Laura?”

“David,” she called down to me from the roof. I looked up and saw that she and my two daughters were hiding up there. “Look out!”

That’s when I saw the zombies in my house. Two of them roamed around and they'd heard my shouts. They charged out of the house, burst through the wrecked door,
and
raced into the backyard at full speed.

I didn’t have much time to react. I was able to deflect the first attack by pushing the zombie to the side where it fell face first into the dirt, but the second one caught me and grabbed onto the jacket William had given me. We fell to the ground and I wrestled with the zombie to keep its teeth away.

I recognized the creature. It was my neighbor, Alfred, from across the alley. His skin was grey and his eyes had a milky color, but other than that he looked pretty much the same. I held him by the throat and pushed him away from me, but he was heavy and had fallen on top of me when we hit the ground.

I heard my wife and children scream as they watched. I couldn’t help but think of Barry getting eaten alive back in the city. The last thing I wanted was to let them see the same thing happen to me. Well, to be honest, the last thing I wanted was to get eaten alive, but having my family watch was a close second.

Laura hung from the roof and let
herself
fall. She hit the ground hard and yelped in pain as her knees buckled. She rolled to the side and grabbed a shovel I'd left out last weekend while digging up a new garden. She always used to yell at me when I left the tools out of the shed. She said I was letting them rust and that leaving them out made us look like white trash. I bet she was happy about my laziness now. I know I was.

She smashed Alfred on the side of the head and he went limp long enough for me to push him off. She moved in for the kill and launched a series of vicious attacks on his smashed face.

“Laura, stop."

“No. You have to destroy their brains,” she said as she drove t crhe shovel into Al’s face.

“No, stop. There’s another one.” The other zombie, Alfred’s wife, had gotten back up from where I'd thrown her down. She growled at us and charged.

This time I kicked her knee. It was a move I never understood why more action movies didn’t feature. If you ever get into a street brawl and have the chance to take out your opponent’s knee, do it. They fall right to the ground, just as I'd always suspected. Or at least zombies do.

Kate fell forward and Laura was quick to strike. She drove the shovel into the back of Kate’s neck. She struck three more times until we were convinced the creature would stay down.

Then we looked up at the roof where our daughters, Kim and Annie, were huddled together.

“Our psychiatrist bills are going to be outrageous,” I said.

Laura dropped the shovel and rushed to embrace me. “What happened to you?” she asked. “Are you hurt bad?”

“I’m alive. That’s all that matters.”

“I’m so happy you’re here. I was so worried.”

“We’re going to be fine.” I pulled away from her embrace and kissed her. “I love you, Laura. I would die before I let anything happen to you.”

CHAPTER SIX – SCHOOL VANDALISM

Laura told me she'd been getting the girls ready to move into the attic when our neighbors attacked. They must have died in their house and then went out their back door to eat the first people they saw, which happened to be my family. Laura and the girls were chased into one of the upstairs bedrooms where they retreated to the roof. They'd been up there ever since.

I told her what happened to me and about the plan to go back to the salvage yard and escape on the shrimp boat. We gathered together what little supplies we could find and loaded them into the truck. Laura agreed to drive since my arm was hurt and my head was a mess. As I look back on our escape, I have to wonder why we didn't think to bring any weapons along. We were in such a hurry to leave that the thought of having to fight off attackers didn't register. I guess killing things isn't something you usually prepare for on a trip out with the family.

“Are we going to Chuck’s?”

“No. The grocery stores are a death trap. I passed a few on the way here and they were being mobbed.”

“Then where are we supposed to get the stuff we need?” she asked, and I had no ideas. This was a problem I'd resigned to deal with later, and now that later had si arrived I was at a loss.

“What about my school?” asked our oldest daughter,
Kim.
This was her first year of Kindergarten at Orchard Park Elementary. “They have lots of food there.”

I thought about it for a second and then gave my wife a bemused glance. “That’s actually a really good idea.”

“Good job, Kim,” said Laura. Kim smiled as I kissed the top of her head.

We set off to the school, which was only a few blocks away, and I felt confident with our plan. I'd made it to my girls, and we were going to be safe. Despite my worst fears, we were going to make it out of this alive.

 
Laura used alleys to avoid traffic and then we drove the truck onto Orchard Park’s soccer field and sped along. Our daughters laughed and jostled up and down as we plowed across the grass.

We pulled up to the back of the school and I got out to check a few of the doors. They were locked. I had Laura get out of the truck and then turned it around so the bed faced a set of double doors. I said sorry to William before I slammed on the gas and raced in reverse. The first hit barely shook the doors, but the second strike did the job just fine. The truck’s rear end was bashed to hell, but I didn’t think William would mind too much.

“Where’s the cafeteria?” I asked. I didn’t know the layout of the school at all. I'd only been there once, but Laura volunteered frequently so she was able to lead us around.

“The girls and I will start getting food,” she said. “You go to the nurse’s office and get some things that we’ll need from there.”

I hadn’t thought of that, once again proving my family was a lot smarter than me. She pointed me in the right direction and I found the nurse's office near the front of the school. The door was locked, but it was easy enough to kick in. I grabbed a My Little Pony backpack from the lost and found and started to fill it with bandages, gauze, and rubbing alcohol. I went back to find my family once the bag was full.

We focused on canned food and other things that we knew would last. My daughter was the first person to think of raiding the school and the cafeteria was well stocked. Even after multiple trips, the cafeteria was still loaded with food.

I checked the time. We only had fifteen minutes to get back to the dock before William and his son left us behind. “This'll be our last trip. We’ve got to get back to the salvage yard.”

“Okay,” said Laura. “Come on girls.”

The four of us dragged the last of our plunder down the hall to the waiting truck. It was already filled from our previous trips, which together with this haul would be enough to feed us for several weeks if needed.

We were almost to the door when I saw someone picking through what we had already scavenged. I dropped my bag and motioned for the girls to stay back. I moved to the door as quiet as I could to "0"see what was happening.

There were two men, one standing in the back of our truck and one beside it. To my relief, I saw they weren’t zombies. I opened the door and startled them.

“That’s our stuff,” I said. I'd been through so much already that I didn’t consider this might be a dangerous situation. The man in the back of the truck pulled a gun on me.

“Not no more, mother fucker,” said the young man with the shaved head as he pointed the revolver at me. My decision not to search for a weapon at our house suddenly vexed me.

I put my hands up. “Calm down, man. There’s tons of food in here. Plenty for everyone.”

“Good then,” said the second, chubbier man that stood on the side of William’s truck. “There’ll be plenty more for you when we take this load.”

“Give me the keys,” said the one standing in the truck bed. He kept the gun pointed at my head as he walked to the back of the truck.

“Come on, man,” I said. “You’ve already got a truck.” I motioned towards the truck parked beside ours.

“Yeah, we’re taking your's now too,” said the one with the gun. “Now give us your keys.”

“I don’t have them. The cops I came here with have them. Want me to go get them?”

“Fuck you,” said the chubby one. “I watched you and that bitch drive through the field. You ain’t got
no
cops in there, you fucking liar.”

The one with the gun hopped off the back of the truck and stared me down as he approached. I tried to block the doorway to give Laura and the girls a chance to escape. I didn’t think the two men had seen them in there and I hoped they'd moved into one of the classrooms to hide.

“Why you trying to get cute with me?” asked the skinny one. He got up next to me and pressed the barrel of the gun against my forehead.

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Take the truck. Take our stuff. We don’t want any trouble.” William had said if we didn’t make it back by 2:00 that he would come back tomorrow. I didn’t want to risk getting myself, or anyone in my
family,
shot just to protect the first haul from this well stocked school.

“Too late, bro,” said the one with the gun. “Now I’m gonna shoot you for the hell of it.”

“Can I tell you something before you shoot me?” I was sick of getting fucked with today. I've always been a docile guy. I could count the number of times I'd been in a fight before that day on one hand, or to be honest, on one finger. But this goon hadn’t just threatened my safety; he threatened the safety of the people I loved most.

“You can tell me where the fucking keys are, you dumb mother fucker.” He pressed the barrel harder against my forehead and I stumbled back a step.

“I got bit,” I said. “That’s what happened to my arm. I got bit by a zombie and now I’m infected.”

“What the fuck?” asked the one with the gun. “You trying to convince me to shoot your head off or what, bro?”

“No, you don’t want to shoot me,” I said as calmly as I could. I'd been a salesman for twenty years and the first rule of sales is confidence in your product. My product was a lie about my own infection and how the virus spread. I needed to sell this better than anything I'd ever sold in my life. “That’s how the virus is spread.”

“What the fuck you talking about?” asked the chubby one.

“When you shoot someone, you vaporize their blood.” I did my best to relay everything as if it was common knowledge. It was a sales technique in which you give information in a way that sounds like you assumed the person being sold already knew it. It makes the buyer feel smart and in control of the conversation even though they're being sold.

“The bullet’s force causes tiny particles of blood to go into the air. I’m sure you’ve seen stuff about it on one of those crime scene investigation shows. The forensics shows. You know what I’m talking about? I think they call it blood clouds, or blood vapor, or something like that.”

“Fuck you man,” said the one with the gun.

“No, Jay, I’ve heard of that shit. I think he might be right,” said the chubby one.

“If you shoot one of these zombies, you’ll end up getting blood vapor in your eyes. That’s all it takes. It was on the news, just like an hour ago. This virus is
super
contagious. If even a tiny bit of the blood vapor gets in you, you’ll turn into one of them.” I saw the man with the gun glance up at the bloody gauze wrapped around my head.

When he looked up I took the opportunity to grab his wrist with my right hand and move the gun away from my head. He pulled the trigger, but the bullet struck the ceiling of the hallway behind me and I had enough time to kick his knee. He fell down and I pulled his arm up to my mouth.

“Drop it or I’ll bite you!” I bit into his arm hard enough to hurt but not enough to break the skin. My left ear rang from the gun blast and my heart pounded as I struggled to hold onto him.

Jay squealed in terror. He dropped the gun and pulled away from me with all his strength. I was far too weak to hold on and had to let him go. He skittered across the pavement toward his fat friend.