Dead Highways (Book 3): Discord (11 page)

During the storm, when we had nothing but time to kill, Ted had taught me how to tie a good strong knot. I had practiced for five minutes afterward. The knot was simple, yet it still took me a few tries to remember the steps. Once finished tying, I hopped on the bed and looked out at the group huddled around the upstairs window next door.

“I think we’re good!” I yelled.

Ted leaned in and said something to the others, and then turned back toward me and said, “Okay. We’re coming.”

I took a deep breath, praying I’d tied the knot correctly.

Part three was about to commence.

For two or three minutes, I sat at the window and waited. Ted was no longer at the window on the other end of the rope. No one was. I figured the six of them were standing in a circle arguing over who would go first—who would be the guinea pig. I secretly hoped they’d select Aamod.

Finally, they came to a decision, and the winner was Peaches.

I can’t say I was surprised, really, not because I thought the others chose her to go first, but because I imagined her
wanting
to go first—wanting to get out of there and over with me as fast as possible. She probably felt bad about not jumping, especially after witnessing the shit I had gone through on the roof of the shed. Still, I didn’t want her to go first. I was worried for her safety. If something were to go wrong, like the rope not being structurally strong enough to hold her weight or my knot coming untied, I’d never forgive myself.

I jumped off the bed and checked the knot one last time, sure that I had nailed it. Back at the window, I watched as across the way Peaches climbed out onto the windowsill, both hands gripping the makeshift rope, looking as though she were about to go zip-lining. She sat on the windowsill, her hands now a foot or so apart on the rope, and then said something I couldn’t make out. Behind her, Ted and Robinson, who had likely been holding her steady, backed away.

She was ready to go.

Holding onto the sheet with both hands, Peaches twisted her body around until her back was to me, and then swung her legs up on the rope and crossed her feet. The fabric stretched and sagged downward upon her putting all her weight on it, but for the moment, it held together. Thankfully, I didn’t hear any tearing, though I could feel the tension amp up below me, as the bed frame pulled tighter against the wall.

The remaining five huddled at the window behind her to watch, no doubt as curious as I was on what was going to happen. Peaches stayed still for a few seconds, suspended with her back facing the ground, and then slowly began moving down the rope. She used the hand over hand technique to propel herself forward while keeping her feet up, sliding along behind her. The infected reached up but there was a good six feet between the back of her body and their pursuing hands. No way they could grab her unless the rope slipped or gave out completely.

The farther she got down the rope and the closer to me, the more the rope dipped. The center point, right about where the fence sat separating the two yards, would probably be the weakest point of the rope. Not necessarily structurally the weakest, but it would have to sustain the most downward pressure. Recognizing the issue beforehand, Ted had wisely placed the strongest fabric we had—the comforter to the queen bed—in the center, connected on each end by thick, multi-layered towels.

I was instantly relieved when Peaches crossed the fence onto my side—the zombie free side. Now if she was to lose her grip or the rope was to tear apart, she’d have a chance at surviving the fall. Sure, it wouldn’t be pleasant falling fifteen feet or so to the wet ground. She could break an arm or leg, or become paralyzed. She could even die if she landed on her head or neck the wrong way. But I’d say death by head trauma was still superior to death by cannibalism.

I sat with my knees up on the windowsill as she approached. When she was close enough, I wrapped my arms around her chest for support, clasped my hands under her large squishy breasts, and then helped pull her the rest of the way inside the window.

Peaches collapsed onto the bed. “I made it,” she said, breathing heavy.

“You did good,” I replied, and planted a kiss on her cheek.

“Were you worried?”

“No, I knew you’d be fine,” I lied.

“Well, I was worried about you.”

I smiled. “Yeah, I’d be worried about me too.”

Naima was next to go. I guess they were doing the
ladies first
approach. Being thinner than Peaches, and perhaps a bit more frightened, Naima made it across the rope in half the time. Once she got within range, Peaches helped me pull her inside.

Naturally, Aamod followed his daughter. With each person that went, the rope seemed to be dipping farther and farther, particularly around the center point. Not drastically dipping, but it was noticeable. By inches. I prayed it was due to the fabric stretching and not a sign of something worse. The three heaviest people had yet to go.

With Aamod safely at the end of the line, it was Bowser’s turn. It took him a minute to get his bad leg up on the line, but once on he moved down the rope quickly, hand over hand. Bowser was heavy, maybe the heaviest of the group in pure pounds (not percentage of body fat), which I thought might work against him. It sure worked against the durability of the rope. But with Bowser’s significant upper body strength, he made the daring journey between the houses seem effortless. However, helping him through the window was a chore. It took Peaches and Aamod working with me to get him inside.

Not surprisingly, Ted opted to go last. He wanted to make sure everyone was all right before he took his turn. As I watched Robinson get into position on the windowsill, my nerves started to rattle. He had removed the sling from his left arm.

“How’s he gonna do this?” I asked. “With his shoulder all messed up.”

“He’ll do it cause he has no other choice,” Bowser said.

“But he can hardly extend his arm.”

“Robbie’s tougher than he looks. He’ll find a way to fight through the pain.”

I wasn’t so certain.

I checked the knot I’d tied to the bed frame one more time. It didn’t look any different than when I’d first tied it. If anything, the knot looked tighter, less likely to slip. I couldn’t say the same for Robinson.

Peaches and Bowser sat behind me at the window in silence, watching as Ted helped Robinson get his legs up on the rope. The process took longer than the four previous people combined. Robinson was about as far from athletic as you could get, and seeing him dangling from the rope made it all the more obvious. This was some acrobatic shit, something you might see a special agent stuntman do in a movie, not an out of shape real life cop.

Robinson had his right arm draped over the rope while he kept his left arm down by his side. He would never be able to do this with one arm. I knew it. Everyone knew it. As Bowser had said, Robinson would be forced to use the bad arm because he had no other choice, and in doing so, go to battle with the pain.

Ted let go of Robinson’s legs. A moment later Robinson began scooting across the rope. Instead of using the same technique everyone else had used, having their upper body to do most of the work, Robinson used his legs to propel him down the rope. He had his head cocked to the right, with the rope tucked between his right shoulder and his neck. His right arm lay propped up across the rope just to hold him up. His left arm remained down by his side.

“The fuck is he doing,” Bowser whispered. “Come on, Robbie. That ain’t gonna work.”

“That looks dangerous,” Peaches said.

I had nothing to add. Everything they said was correct. I kept my eyes on Robinson, speechless. Over and over, he’d bring his knees up, feet together, and dig his shoes into the fabric and shove his body forward. It reminded me of climbing a rope in gym class, how they teach you to use your feet to push off. Strangely, it was working. The kick and slide technique was painfully slow, but he was moving closer little by little.

“He’s doing it,” I said, speaking too soon.

Robinson was about two feet from the center point, the chain-link fence, when his feet slipped on push off. Both his legs fell from the rope, swinging down, instantly throwing his balance off. His right arm became detached from the rope and for a brief second he was free falling. He caught himself with his right hand just in time, while the three of us watching from the window collectively gasped. Definitely not a sigh of relief.

Robinson faced Ted, struggling to hang on with one hand. He tried a few times to pull his legs back up on the rope but didn’t come anywhere close. He didn’t have the core strength for such a feat. All the while, the rope buckled and bounced above his head. I thought I could hear tearing, though it might have just been the fabric stretching some more.

“Hold on, man!” Ted yelled. “Don’t panic! You’re almost there, but you need to turn around!”

Robinson finally did what we’d all been waiting for him to do. He reached up and grabbed the rope with his left hand. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined the look he was giving Ted was one of absolute misery. The aching groans escaping from his mouth as he extended his wounded shoulder were more than enough to tell how he was feeling.

Slowly, with the help of both hands, Robinson managed to turn himself around and face us at the finish line. The grimace he displayed was a mixture of pain and exhaustion. His arms trembled. His muscles were getting tired. We all waved him in, trying to give him encouragement, but the dead things below had other plans.

Robinson’s feet dangled at the fingertips of the infected, out of the reach of all but the largest and tallest of the pack. I recognized him immediately—the one-handed Bad Moses lookalike with the flannel shirt and baseball cap. He grabbed Robinson’s right foot with his only remaining hand and began tugging him down. As the rope sagged, two other zombies were able to grab on. Robinson held on for dear life, screaming in agony as his arms stretched beyond the point of normal use.

Right on cue, Ted, perched on the windowsill, shouldered his rifle and began aiming it at the infected below. Robinson squirmed too much for Ted to get a clean shot at the wrists, so he elected to shoot them in the head instead. He took out those holding onto Robinson’s foot first. The three, including redneck Luke Skywalker, released their grip and collapsed to the ground and out of sight. Ted followed that presentation by putting a bullet in the head of another three nearby for good measure.

Ted lifted the rifle and yelled, “Go!”

Wincing with each move forward, Robinson closed the short distance to the fence. Once he was safely on the other side—safe from the reaching claws of the infected—he dropped down, rolling onto his hands and knees in the wet, muddy grass. He sat there trying to catch his breath, clutching his bad shoulder, while Ted made his way across the rope overhead—the rope that had done its job without a hitch.

After Robinson’s ordeal, Ted wasted no time getting across the fence line. He shimmied down the rope like a Boy Scout and then swung his feet off and dropped down in front of Robinson. The five of us upstairs grabbed our bags and headed downstairs to meet them.

Back outside, we made a circle around Robinson, who was still sitting in a puddle gathering himself. He took his sling out of his bag and secured his left arm back into it. Then Bowser and Ted helped him to his feet.

“Shit,” Robinson whispered, the anguish beginning to fade from his face. “I told you, didn’t I? What did I say? You should have left me.”

All of us smiled, happy we made it out alive. The infected six feet away from us, clawing at the fence, weren’t so happy. To my surprise, Robinson had something for them. A parting gift.

He pulled out his nine-millimeter and emptied the full magazine into the crowd of undead. None dropped. No headshots. But that wasn’t the point. Robinson just needed to shoot something. He needed to get it out. And I understood.

When the slide locked back, Robinson lowered the gun, went to his knees and started belly laughing.

Ted smiled. “You gonna reload or what?”

“Yeah,” Robinson replied. He slipped a fresh magazine into his gun and snapped it back into its holster. “Okay, I’m good now. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

We hopped the fence at the back of the yard, passed through a short overgrown wooded area, and then crossed between two houses to reach the street behind Hollygrove. We walked southwest, single file, keeping to the sidewalk. Bowser’s bad knee still prevented us from going very fast. The cut on my own knee stung a little, but the bleeding had stopped, and it didn’t hamper my movement much.

“Keep your eyes open,” Ted said, leading the way.

Like we were gonna walk with our eyes closed. Of course he meant keep on the lookout for infected, but it was one of those things that didn’t really need to be said anymore. Looking out for infected had become as regular a part of our lives as breathing. I hadn’t seen a single dead soul after leaving the house on Hollygrove. I wondered how long the thousands gathered there would stick around now that we were gone. How long until they’d get back to the interstate—get moving west again.

In front of me, Aamod walked with his head down, shotgun swaying out in front of him. With the rainclouds all but gone, the hot afternoon sun beat down on us overhead. It actually felt hotter now than before the shower.

“How far away is your mother in law’s house?” Ted asked.

Robinson mumbled to himself for a moment and then answered. “Not sure exactly. It’s basically straight west of here. Maybe ten or twelve miles if I had to guess.”

“Okay. Definitely gonna need a vehicle then.”

On the move again, we came to an intersection, looked both ways, and then crossed to the other side. The neighborhood seemed much like it had when we’d first arrived hours ago. Desolate. Empty. No zombies walking solo. Had there been any stragglers, they’d likely made their way over to the large block party on Hollygrove Street.

On the corner of the intersection was a mustard-colored building. The sign out front read
Welcome to Mel’s Food Store.
If the door didn’t have bars on it, I might have went inside to see if they had anything left. Despite having eaten a snack earlier before waiting out the thunderstorm, my stomach wasn’t satisfied. It gurgled constantly. Perhaps I should have taken Ted’s advice and packed the granola after all.

We passed house after house, but few had cars parked out front. The cars we did see were all too small to fit all seven of us, unless somebody was willing to ride in the trunk.

“That’s where Ben went to school,” Robinson said, pointing to an elementary school coming up on the left side of the street. “Second grade.”

We passed through a second intersection and continued down another block. The street ended shortly thereafter, leaving us with a decision to make.

“Left or right?” Bowser asked.

“Hold on a minute.” Ted checked the doors on a black truck parked on the curb of a nearby house. Both doors were locked. “Stay here,” he said, and then strolled up the driveway and disappeared around the back of the house.

On the other corner of the street was a large two-story complex with a sign out front that identified it as the
New Orleans Job Corps Center.
A fenced-in parking lot for the staff and job trainees sat directly across from the building. Beyond the parking lot, off in the distance, was the six-lane highway we’d snuck under.

“That’s Airline,” Robinson said to me.

“What?”

“The highway.”

He must have seen me staring at it. “Yeah, I can tell.”

I could tell, all right. The highway looked exactly the same as it did earlier—cars sitting bumper to bumper, deserted, tens of thousands of infected slowly maneuvering between them, all going the same direction.

“It leads to the airport,” Robinson went on. “Probably why it’s called Airline Highway, huh? I traveled down it many a time when I used to come visit.”

“I doubt all of
them
are going to the airport,” Peaches interjected, referring to the migrating corpses.

Robinson shook his head. “No, they’re going somewhere else.”

“Where?” I asked, fully aware he didn’t really know the answer to my question.

“Does it matter,” Robinson replied, shrugging. “Can’t be anywhere important. They’re dead.”

“Mostly,” I said. “They’re certainly not alive.”

Ted returned a minute later with the keys to the black truck in hand. “Got ‘em,” he said, flipping the keys up in the air and catching them. “We got lucky for a change. The backdoor was unlocked. How ‘bout that.”

“How did you find the keys so fast?” I asked.

“Most people are creatures of habit.” Ted unlocked the driver’s side door to the truck. “They put their keys someplace where they won’t forget. Someplace visible. And the most obvious place is usually the easiest to remember. These bad boys were right on the coffee table next to the TV remote.”

The truck could seat six comfortably, three in the front seat and three in the back. Since there was seven of us that meant I’d have to sit on Bowser’s lap.

Just kidding.

Bowser would have made a great black Santa though, with his bushy beard and jolly spirit. Not sure if he could shake his belly like a bowl full of jelly. Robinson had him beat there.

Since Ted was driving, and not Robinson or Aamod, I offered to sit in the truck bed. Peaches decided to join me. Being a country girl from Kentucky, she’d probably lived half her life in the back of a pickup truck—maybe even done the nasty in one, just hopefully not for money.

We headed a few blocks north and then turned west. Avoiding any major highways, the twenty-minute trip took us through a series of neighborhoods, some with homes significantly more valuable than those found in Dixon. Occasionally an abandoned car would block the road forward, but Ted always found a way past, either by turning around and going a block farther north or south, or by simply driving over sidewalks and through yards. Whatever it took.

Peaches and I sat in the bed with our backs against the cabin, chatting and enjoying the fresh air. She had to keep pushing her orangish-blonde hair out of her face in order to talk to me, as the wind whipped it around. Ted was nice enough not to make any quick turns or sudden stops, and when he had to go off road temporarily, it was actually sort of fun bouncing around back there without restraints. It felt freeing. We held on only to each other.

I counted maybe three or four dozen infected on the ten-mile drive, all going the same direction as us, but all loose from the herd traveling the interstates or highways. They walked along sidewalks or appeared between houses, sometimes noticing us as we roared by, sometimes not. Ted ran over one that suddenly lurched in front of us, splattering its guts against the front grill. I felt the thump of the tires as we rolled over him and continued on like we’d just hit a possum or something. We drove around a number of other people lying dead in the road—their bloody insides plastered to the concrete like road kill. I wondered if they were zombie victims of a hit and run too, or if they were killed and eaten by the undead. It was impossible to tell just in passing. All I knew was that they weren’t getting up. They were down for the count.

Ted eased off the accelerator and for five minutes seemed to make a slow circle of a neighborhood, followed by a zig-zag up and down each block. Robinson was probably trying to remember where the house was. The homes down this way certainly weren’t as big and nice as those a few miles east, but they were still of higher quality than the house we’d spent hours trapped inside.

Finally, Ted pulled the truck into a driveway and killed the engine. Everyone got out.

“This it?” I asked, hopping out of the truck bed.

Robinson nodded. “This is it.” He pointed to a red minivan in the driveway parked behind an old Cadillac that reminded me of my grandma’s cherished Buick. “That’s Trissa’s van.”

“What was with all the circling around? You get lost?”

“No,” Ted replied. “I just wanted to scout out the neighborhood. See if there was anything unusual.”

“It looked pretty clear,” Peaches said.

“Yeah, and this neighborhood sits nicely between Airline and I-10, so not many infected to worry about. The airport is directly west of here.”

Speaking of air travel, something happened next that left us all staring up in astonishment at the sky. We heard the swooshing sound of the blades cutting through the air first, and then a second later it appeared over the trees, hovering low. The chopper was medium-sized and egg-shaped, painted blue and white with some sort of swirling red emblem on the side. We peered upward, shielding our eyes from the blinding sun, our mouths open in silent surprise. Before we could even try to get its attention, try to signal it somehow, the helicopter was gone and out of sight, out of our lives, flying northeast.

“I’ll be back,” Ted said.

He jumped into the truck, swiveled backwards out of the driveway in a hurry, and sped away.

I’ll be back?

Hmm…where had I heard that line before?