Deadlocked 7 (20 page)

Ben looked at Billy and Laura for approval, and then went back to the disconnected pipe. He pulled the pieces together and then rotated the white connector until a metal latch in the pipe was forced open. Then the pipe jerked out of Ben’s hands as the air flow pulled it tightly into place.

The cell door
s clanged as they came unlocked, one by one, as the oxygen was pulled into the cells. Laura opened the first cell but the door was still partially jammed because of the lack of air within. She tugged and the door emitted a high pitched whistle as air flowed in. It finally swung open just as a Grey wandered into the room, attracted by the noise.

They rushed to get into the cell as Laura held the cell door open. Ben tried to usher her in, but she cursed at him and forced him in first. Billy went in after Harrison and stumbled over the corpses on the floor. The pug in Harrison’s grip started to bark, which it hadn’t done at all until now.

“Shut it, Stubs!” Harrison covered the dog’s mouth, but it wormed its mouth away from his palm and continued to yip.

Ben got in and Laura followed soon after. The cell smelled like an old, unplugged freezer, not laden with rot but rather stale and oddly medical. Laura pulled the door shut before the zombies outside could get to them and the latch clicked tight.

Soon, the room outside of the cells filled with zombies that had come into the church to flee the fire. They filled the room, slamming their hands against the glass cells in frustration.

Harrison laughed and whooped. He grabbed Ben’s arm and shook it and then started to kiss the pug right on his slimy lips. “Would you look at this? Can you believe it? We find our way into a church, and look what God provided for us! You want to argue with me about how the big man’s up there looking out for us?” He kissed his finger tips and then pointed up. “Thanks fellow. I owe you one.”

Billy felt something move near his ankle. Then there was a gasp just as Billy looked at his feet. The zombies in the cell were waking up.

Ben saw them too, and he started to stomp at the writhing bodies.

“What the hell?” asked Laura as she noticed what was happening. “They’re alive!”

“Crush them,” said Ben. “They’re woozy or something. Crush their heads before they gain any strength.”

They each started mashing the creatures below them, squishing their soft skulls and causing the black liquid within to spill out. Eyeballs, teeth, brains, and fragments of skulls filled the floor as the zombies in the cell beside them began to rise as well.

“Oh this is gross,” said Laura.

“Hey Harry,” said Ben. “Can you do me a favor and tell this God that’s supposedly looking after us that he can kiss my fucking ass.”

Harrison looked for more creatures to mash and then nodded as he said, “Yeah, God, for real. That was a dick move.”

This Is Some Rescue

Chapter Sixteen – Old Names

Two years after the apocalypse

At a campsite in north Colorado, Reagan meets with Jules again after not seeing him for several months.

Jules was a short man, but Reagan hadn’t met many soldiers that he would say was tougher. It was common in the service to meet someone who was short in stature, but compensated by constantly acting tougher than anyone else in the room. Jules earned every bit of his Napoleon complex, but his bite matched his bark.

Jules and The Department
had been an invaluable ally to Reagan ever since they met a year and a half earlier. What started as a contentious encounter had turned into a close relationship. Jules and Reagan had a common interest to bring the fight to the people responsible for the start of the apocalypse, and they were both former military, which helped them understand each other better than most. Over the past year, they had set about investigating a large section of the Rocky Mountains, meticulously scouting suspicious areas and unearthing evidence of several abandoned bases, as well as some that were still housing soldiers.

During the past year, Jules had put together a strong group, but he was very particular about who he allowed to travel with
him. He’d asked Reagan to join, and even offered to split command of the group, but that wasn’t something Reagan had any interest in doing.

“Change your mind yet?” asked Jules as Reagan sat at the picnic table.

“About what?” It had been a few months since Reagan had seen Jules, and wasn’t sure what had prompted the visit.

“About ditching your crew and joining The Department.” Jules tugged at his mustache, like some villain in an old western.

“We’ve been over that,” said Reagan. “I’ve got a family here.”

“Oh yeah?” asked Jules as he looked past Reagan at the trucks parked
on the hill. “Are you sleeping with that woman you’ve been carting around?”

“Laura?” asked Reagan, and then he laughed at how ridiculous the question was. “No. She’s twenty times too good for me.”

“Oh come on,” said Jules. “I bet you could still get it up if you wanted to.”

Reagan looked off at the men from The Department that were standing guard, protecting their leader during the meeting. “As much as I’d love to sit here and talk about my ability to get an erection all a
fternoon, I’m going to venture a guess that’s not why you made the trip up here.”

“No,” said Jules as if he’d been trying to push off the subject that he’d come to discuss. “There’s something you need to see.”
He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it before sliding it across the table.

It was a travel log, detailing which commanders were being sent to what station.

“We found it in a helicopter that crashed near Denver,” said Jules. “I thought you should see it.”

“Why?” asked Reagan. “Am I missing something?” He squinted and read the list again.

“Second row,” said Jules. “Near the bottom. See it?”

General Richard Covington.

Reagan read the name three times, certain that he was reading it wrong. “That’s impossible. How old is this?”

“It’s recent. They’re using a new date, if you can believe it.
They’re dating everything from the day the apocalypse started. Fucking bastards.”

“This must be wrong, or someone else has the same name,” said Reagan. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe he survived.”

“Impossible,” said Reagan. “I shoved a piece of glass through his throat and left him for dead. There was no one else in that facility when I got out. This has to be wrong.”

“Just one way to find out,” said Jules.

“How?”

He leaned over the table and pointed at the name of the base that Covington was stationed at. “I can show you where this is at. We didn’t just find this in that helicopter. We got a breakdown of the bases too, and their location. We didn’t get them all, but we got enough.”

“Have you hit any of them yet?” asked Reagan.

Jules shook his head. “Nope. Out of respect, I came here first. I figured that if we went charging in, they might evacuate all the bases like they did back when we ran into each other. I didn’t want you to lose the chance to figure out if this prick is still alive.”

“Thanks,” said Reagan. “I owe you one.”
His thoughts dwelled on the name, and when he spoke he sounded disinterested in Jules.

“Want me to come with? Or I could loan you a few of my guys.”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll bring some of the Rollers.”

“Rollers?” asked Jules, unfamiliar with the term.

“Yeah, Hero started calling us the High Rollers because we’ve been converting those tankers into mobile homes. The name just kind of stuck.”

“You really like that kid, don’t you?” asked Jules.

“Despite my better judgment,” said Reagan as he looked over his shoulder at the young man that was clowning around with his girlfriend, Jill. “He’s a good kid.”

“Maybe,” said Jules. “But they’re not soldiers. None of these guys are. If they were, they’d be with me. Come on, Reagan, let me send some of my guys out with you.”

“No,” said Reagan. “I trust my crew.”

“All right,” said Jules. “Suit yourself, but you need to move on this quickly.” He tapped his finger on the stolen list. “Because we’re not waiting around any longer. We’re going to start hitting these targets three days from now. Your friend is headed out to a town up in the mountains, near where Boulder used to be.”

“I thought that area burned down,” said Reagan.

“Me too, but these moles like to crawl around underground. I’d bet the fires didn’t touch them.”

“Thanks for this, Jules,” said Reagan. “This means a lot to me. I won’t forget this.”

“Just keep giving me first pick of the new recruits and we’ll call it even.”

“Deal.”

Reagan continued to stare at the name, unsure what emotion to settle on.

General Richard Covington.

*   *   *

Celeste is back in a room in the facility beneath Denver International Airport.

“Good morning, Cobra,” said the voice Celeste despised. It was her own, beckoning her out of bed from the screen on the other side of the room.

“Go fuck yourself, Mommy.”

“Cobra, I’m not who you think I am.”

She stayed on her bed, facing away from the screen. This wasn’t her room, but it looked exactly
like her old one. The mirror in the ready room was still intact, now reinforced, but all the rooms looked the same. She had no way of knowing where she lived now.

“I don’t care who you are.”

“I’m trying to help you,” said the digital representation of herself on the computer screen that took up most of the wall opposite the bed.

“Then open my door and get out of my way.”

“You know I can’t do that,” said the avatar.

“Then I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“You have to eat something.”

“No I don’t,” said Celeste. “I don’t have to do anything you tell me, ever again.”

“Cobra…”

“Stop calling me that,” said Celeste. “That’s not my name any more.”

“Of course it is. Your name is Cobra Dawn, and you’re an important member of our society. You’re going to be a leader of our people, and we need to make sure that you take care of yourself. We need you, Cobra.”

“Keep calling me that,” said Celeste. “See what happens. I’ll break every God damn screen you’ve got in this place. You can gas me up and move me to a new room every night for all I care. I’ll get up and bash in that fucking screen every morning until you run out of rooms to stick me in.”

“You’re being difficult.”

“You’re God damn fucking right I am,” said Celeste.

The avatar was quiet for a moment, then said, “We only want what’s best for you. You have to understand that, Cobra.”

Celest
e sat up and turned so that she faced the screen. She dropped her legs over the side of the bed and then stood up. The automatic bed’s pneumatic hinges hissed as it disappeared back into the wall. “I warned you.”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Cobra,” said her avatar. The representation on the screen bore the same wounds that Celeste did, a bandaged shoulder, head, and
thigh, a black eye and a cut lip, bruised neck and clawed waist. Celeste’s mirror image was a ravaged girl, but the avatar hadn’t earned those scars.

Celeste punched the screen and the colors warped from the impact.

“Don’t do this, Cobra.”

Celeste punched again, but then backed up.”

“Thank you. There’s no need to…”

Celeste didn’t back away in retreat, but rather to get the space needed to run and kick the screen. She did, and the glass wavered from the strike, but didn’t crack. When she looked back at her avatar
she saw that there was a sliver of distorted color on the screen. It was a minor victory that was more than enough to inspire another strike. She ran and kicked the screen again just as the gas started to hiss into the room.

“Every fucking room!” Celeste screamed and kicked again. “I’ll do this to every room you put me in. Do you get it?”

She felt the dizzying effect of the gas just as the false wall slid to the side to reveal a soldier. Celeste rushed at the man, but the potent gas had already taken hold, causing her world to spin. The soldier caught her, but she managed to get her left hand over his shoulder.

She held
her breath and silently counted how long it took before the gas affected her. Her fingers grazed the tube that connected the soldier’s mask to his backpack. She would remember how it felt in her hands as the oxygen flowed into his mask. She would memorize how fragile it felt and if it was pliable. Seven seconds after she first smelled the sweet aroma of the noxious gas they used on her, she couldn’t count any more.

Seven second
s.

She would have seven seconds.

Next time she would try to practice getting both arms up when the soldier grabbed her. If there was one thing that Celeste excelled at, it was practice. Her entire life she’d been training.