Deadlocked 2 (5 page)

"Then it's already started," he said.

The engine roared again and this time it stayed alive. I heard a man's voice shout in triumph and glanced over to see The Casper at the end of the dock. Billy, dressed in a baseball jersey and pinstripe pants, waved from the side.

"He wants me to go with him," I said.

"You can go, but you're dead if you don't."

"Mommy," said Kim from the boat. She stood beside Billy and waved for me to join them.

"I should go," I said.

"Where's Annie?" he asked. "Do you want me to keep her?"

"No," I said quickly and with a tinge of anger. "She'll go with us."

"Okay," he said as I stood up to leave him.

"I love you, David. I really do." I walked away.

"Sure. I guess." He looked down at his feet and I saw the creatures were eating him too.

"I would stay if I could."

He shrugged. "I'll be here if you change your mind. Here in the hurt and cold."

Billy pulled me onto the boat with a sudden jerk that stunned me. I looked at him in surprise as he shook my shoulders. "You're okay."

Why was he yelling at me?

"Look at me, Laura."

I was. Why was he shaking me?

"Are you with me? Wake up. You've got to stay awake."

"I'm stuck." I was on the boat, and the sky was filled with smoke that blotted out the stars I loved so much. My dream ended, but the lingering effect confused me as Billy struggled to keep me awake.

"Stuck where?" he asked. "What are you talking about?" He feverishly tried to keep me awake while he bandaged my side.

"In the hurt and cold." I started to sob as the dream slipped away. Reality set in with crushing depression. "I left him in it."

"You're hallucinating, Laura," said Billy. "You've got to stay with me. Okay? You've got to stay awake, for your girls. Think of your girls."

Annie touched my cheek and I grabbed her hand to press it against me as I wept. I tilted my head to look at the cabin where Kim was trapped. She stared at me with tear filled eyes and I tried to comfort her. "It'll be okay, honey. I'll be fine."

"Stay awake," said Kim. "Don't leave me."

"I won't, baby. I'll stay out of the cold. I'll stay out for you guys." I kissed Annie's little hand and lost consciousness again.

CHAPTER SIX - TWO LOST SOULS

The sound of a hammer woke me.

When I opened my eyes there was a roof over my head. It was cathedral and wooden, with long support beams that stretched along the underside like a rib cage. There were metal pipes stored in the rafters along with an old, rusty sign for gasoline. I could feel the floor beneath me bobbing in the waves.

I was in The Casper and we had backed into a wooden building that housed a dock. "Hello?" I said, but my voice was weak.

The hammering stopped and I craned my neck to look behind me. The edge of the boat blocked my view, but I saw the tops of windows that had been boarded up. They got a lot of work done while I was asleep. Kim's voice mumbled something in the distance and Billy answered her before the pounding hammer started again.

"Hello?" I was able to call out louder this time.

"It's your mom," said Billy in excitement. "Go check on her."

"Mom?" asked Kim as she ran to the boat.

"Mommy," said Annie just before I heard the thud of her falling on her butt.

I forced myself up so that I could see them. The pain in my body had turned from a searing, pulsing sensation to one of aching resistance. My muscles seized up on me whenever I tried to move, but I managed to get up anyhow. Kim jumped into the boat with me and started to kiss my cheek as she wrapped her arms around my neck. Annie started to cry as she pulled at a rope tied to her waist.

"Sorry, sorry." Billy stuck a few nails between his teeth and ran to untie Annie. "There ya go," he said as he freed her. "I had to tie her up, to keep her from the edge. Didn't want her falling in or anything. I didn't think we needed anymore baby fishing today."

Annie crawled into the boat with her sister to kiss me. "Hi girls," I said. "What are you guys doing?"

Billy held up his hammer and said, "Securing the fort. We got some wood from the yard and we're locking the place up tight. We're just about done, so I guess you're getting up just in time to not be any help."

"I don't think I would've been much help anyways."

"Yeah, how ya feeling?"

"Like I almost died in a bomb and a shark tried to eat me," I said.

"Not too bad then?"

Kim excitedly told me everything, "We went into the dump and got the wood. And I helped carry it back."

"She's been a big help," said Billy.

"There're thousands of wrecked cars and trucks and stuff out there. Like, seriously tons of them. And we saw a dead guy, but he was really dead, not the walking kind of dead. It was so gross. His eyes were open and he was staring out at us like," she used her fingers to pry open her eyes and drooped her mouth open in a ghastly yawn. "He had a bullet hole right in the middle of his head. Annie wanted to hold his hand."

"But we stopped her," said Billy to ensure me he wasn't the worst babysitter in history. "They found it before I did, but when I saw it, I grabbed them. It was Terrence, the guy that owns the yard."

"Sounds like you guys had quite the adventure while I was asleep. How long was I out anyway?"

"All day." Billy glanced at his watch. "About eight hours. We tried to wake you up for a while, but you were out of it."

"I still feel so tired." I yawned.

"Annie slept with you pretty much the whole time," said Billy.

"She's sick," said Kim with sudden declaration.

"Yeah, she's been acting a little bit under the weather," said Billy.

"Oh no." I put my hand on her head, which was warm, but not frighteningly so. "Do you feel sick, honey?"

She wavered her hand and said, "Kinda."

"I can pick up some baby aspirin at the pharmacy when I go."

"Oh yeah, I forgot that you were leaving," I said.

"I've got a list of things to get." Billy pulled a piece of ripped notebook paper out of his back pocket and started to read through it. "Antibiotics, bandages, antiseptic cream, alcohol, tampons," he pointed at me and gave me a thumbs up as he continued, "crutches, pain killers, cherry flavored bubblegum."

"That's for me," said Kim.

Billy wrote another item on the list, "and baby aspirin. I'll also try to grab as much food and water as I can."

"How does it look out there?" I asked.

"Dead." He rethought his description, "Quiet. No one's around. We're on the north side, in the industrial park. Not many neighborhoods up here."

"Why's there a pharmacy?"

"It's on the edge of the Baylor Projects," said Billy.

I cringed. "That's a pretty bad neighborhood to go running around in, isn't it?"

Billy laughed at the thought. "No such thing as a good neighborhood here anymore, Laura."

"I guess that's true. Are you sure this is a good idea? If they're bombing the bridges then they must be trying to contain the outbreak here. It doesn't seem like a great idea to go charging into that mess."

"I thought of that, and my best guess is they're hoping the zombies will head south, down the peninsula, and they'll have a line of tanks and stuff waiting for them there."

"I hope you're right," I said.

"You and me both." He searched our canvas bags for one that didn't have a hole in it from the cop's shotgun blast.

"How long are you going to be gone?"

"I'll make a run up to the pharmacy and back, shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes. After that I'll head out to find Mom." He flicked the light switch on and off to no effect. "No electricity, and I can't get the boat's console turned on again either. The engine works fine, but the electricity's shot. We found a CD player with some batteries in it. My dad's got a bunch of discs in the front of the boat, but I wouldn't play anything too loud. Just in case."

"Is there a radio on it?"

Billy brought the cd player over to me. "Yep. No local information though, big shock there. I have no clue why they won't talk about what's going on here. It's all news from New York."

"We were listening to Daddy's favorite," said Kim as she reached out to press play. She skipped to the fourth song, and when it started I knew what it was before the first second passed.

"Wish You Were Here."

"See," said Kim with a triumphant smile.

Billy stared down at us with a smirk and a sigh. "The girls said your husband was a big Floyd fan."

"Yeah," I said.

"My Dad was too. Has a bunch of their albums up there along with some other old-timer stuff. Your girls made me listen to that song ten times at least. I wanted them to listen to some good old heavy metal, but they weren't interested."

"He loved this one." I watched the CD spin beneath the clear plastic top. I had a hundred memories of David in our garage, working on the car with this song blaring loud enough to hear through the whole neighborhood. He would sing so loud that we could hear him inside the house, and whenever the girls heard the music they would run to join him. They loved to sing and dance. This song was one of the few Annie had learned the words to.

"Two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl," sang my two girls along with the music. Annie always laughed after that line, and her sweet giggle made me happy. They started to dance in the boat and I pretended we were home, in the garage, with David behind me.

Annie started to cough and stopped dancing. Kim patted her on the back, but she hacked until she had to bend over. "I don't feel so good," she said and sat down with me again.

"Aw, poor Annie," said Kim.

I turned the song off and set the player to my right. "Come snuggle up with me." I pulled Annie to my side and cuddled her against me. "You're like a little hot water bottle. You can help warm me up."

"Oh yeah," said Billy. "That reminds me, I'll try to find some clothes." He got his shopping list out and jotted another thing down.

"Don't forget the pain killers," I said. "I really, really want those."

Billy shouldered a handful of bags and checked his pocket for the keys. "Here you go, Kim," he said as he handed my daughter the keys to the boat. "I taught her how to get the boat started, just in case. I boarded up everything pretty tight, but if one of those things shows up then you can just get the boat started and head out to the middle of the channel. The fuckers can't swim. They just sink to the bottom and walk around from what I've seen."

"Do they drown?"

"No," said Billy as he pulled the barricade board off the door. "They were walking up on shore when we met David. Dad and I had to keep an eye out for them back at our yard."

I tensed and scooted to the edge of the boat to look into the water. "How deep is it here?"

Billy laughed at my concern. "Way ahead of you. That's one of the reasons I wanted to come here. The yard is raised. The whole north side is, actually. They extended the land mass here, built it up on garbage, and it drops off a good twenty feet at the edge. You shouldn't get any water zombos popping up on you here."

He was about to leave when I stopped him. "Hey, Billy, be careful. Okay? We need you."

He saluted me with a smile and then grabbed the bat we'd brought along as a weapon. "You and me against the world, babe. Batter up."

CHAPTER SEVEN - FLESH EATER

Annie was asleep when Billy came back. I woke her up just long enough to give her a mouthful of the bubblegum flavored liquid aspirin. Billy had grabbed several different varieties of children's medicine, as well as other bottles of OTC supplies. All of his bags were filled and he said the pharmacy had been left alone, except for the condom section, which was ransacked.

"There's no one out there," he said as he unloaded his haul. "It's creepy, actually. I'm used to the industrial area being quiet, but the city is like that too. I have no clue where everyone went."

"I found a couple stations that are still up and working on the radio," I said. "They were talking about the infection and how they'd stopped it with some certain sort of antibiotic. I made Kim write down the name of it somewhere."

"Doripenem," she struggled with the pronunciation and then handed the note to Billy. He looked at it and then stuffed the page into his back pocket.

"I just grabbed some of the regular stuff. Amoxi-whatever," said Billy.

"On your way back, stop in and see if they have any of that Dori stuff. Just in case."

"Okay, will do," he said. "Was it a local station?"

"No. It was one from New York. We couldn't find anything local at all. Which was weird."

"I know. It's bizarre." Billy as he tossed me a pack of tampons. "I'm not really schooled on this stuff, so I just got one of each." He threw me boxes of various tampon sizes along with several brands of pads. "And I got a brace for Kim's back."

"What happened to your back?" I asked. She hadn't mentioned anything about being hurt since the bridge incident.

"You didn't show her?" asked Billy.

"No. She's hurt a lot worse than me," said Kim. "She doesn't need to worry about me too."

"Show me your back."

Kim turned and raised her shirt to reveal a massive, purple bruise that ran from the bottom right to the top left of her back. I gasped and reached out to hold her hand.

"I'm okay," she said, but she didn't mean it. She cringed as she pulled her shirt back down.

"Oh my God, Kimmy. What happened?"

"Something hit me it the boat, after the bomb," she said.

"That's why she couldn't walk there for a bit," said Billy. "Sorry, I should have told you about that. She didn't let it bug her though. Did you, kid?"

Kim shook her head and gave a proud, "Nope."

I wanted to burst into tears. She had to be in so much pain, but she didn't show it because she didn't want me to worry about her. "Honey bear, I'm so sorry."

"She's a tough kid. Takes after someone else I know." Billy emptied the rest of the bags and sorted through it all. He placed several bottles of rubbing alcohol onto a nearby bench along with a handful of bandages. He'd found everything on his list, including a set of pink nurse smocks that I gladly slipped into.

"Here's some pain killers, and I grabbed some Amoxicillin. I'm not sure if that's right or not, but I figured we should get some sort of antibiotic into you, just in case."

"Oxycontin?" I asked as I looked at the bottle of painkillers. "I'm surprised you were able to find this. I would've thought they'd get stolen right away."

"Nope. Whoever got there before me just wanted the rubbers."

The Oxycontin was in a large, white bottle that only had a label meant for the pharmacist. I didn't see any dosage information on it. "Any clue how many I should take?"

"I'd start small. I had to take those for a baseball injury once, and they knocked me out. Do like, half a pill at first, and go up from there."

I broke one in half between my nails and swallowed the bitter little thing with a swig of a sports drink. The pill scratched its way down my throat as if trying to claw its way back up.

"I'll keep searching through the stations for anything local. Are you leaving now?" I asked after taking a few more drinks to wash out the taste of the painkiller.

He tightened the brace around Kim's waist and strapped the Velcro. "Yeah, pretty soon. I won't be gone more than a few hours. You gonna be okay?"

I shrugged and ran my hand through Annie's curly hair. "We have to be."

Billy waved as he raised the bar off the door and left. Kim replaced the wooden plank to keep the door shut and then walked stiffly back to the boat. I heard a small motor kick to life outside and then Billy raced off on a mountain bike he must have found on his first trip. "We'll be okay, Mommy," she said. "There's no one out there."

I flipped the radio on and scanned the stations. "It's so strange that everyone's gone, and there's no local news. I can't figure that out."

I stopped on the channel from New York that we'd been listening to before. They were interviewing a doctor who talked about the infection. It was a bad signal, but we were able to make out most of what they said.

"Do we know where it started?" asked the interviewer.

"The attacks on the 5th were the first time anyone reported symptoms," said the doctor. "All across the world, major cities reported these attacks, and it was in the food that was sent to schools in those areas."

I glanced at the bags of food we'd stolen from Kim's school.

"Just in the big cities?" asked the interviewer.

"From what we've seen, yes. Although, as you know, a lot of people that work in the city live in the suburbs. That's probably why the attacks were focused there. To spread the infection as fast as possible."

"And I know the school my daughter goes to gets their food from the district," said the interviewer.

"Yes, exactly. We've seen reports of poisoned food supplies in neighboring areas."

I grabbed one of our pilfered bags and looked at the shipping label. It had been delivered to someplace in the city.

"What are the first signs of infection?" asked the interviewer.

"If bitten, or if the bacteria moves directly into the bloodstream, the infection sets in quickly. It will start with a blackening of the skin and the eruption of buboes near the site of the infection. So you'll see them near lymph nodes, near the armpits or groin. In the children affected, the ones that ate the poisoned food, we saw an onset of flu-like symptoms. It starts slow as your body's immune system tries to fight it, but once the infection sets in the process speeds up. The children we saw were taken over within two days of initial contact with the bacteria."

"Taken over?" asked the Interviewer.

The doctor paused and cleared his throat. "Yes. They died, and came back."

I began to hyperventilate. "Kim, what was that antibiotic? The one that Billy was supposed to get?"

"I don't remember." She was surprised and confused by my sudden intensity. "He took the note."

"What did it start with?"

She stuttered as she tried to recall. "Dora. Dori. Something. I don't remember. Why? What's happening? What's the matter?"

I tried to get up, but my body had been beaten to the point of collapse. "Go open the door. Try to stop Billy. Try to yell out and stop him."

"Why?"

"Just do it!" I picked Annie up and raised her arm. "No, no, no," I said as I saw the black boils beginning to form under her skin. "Oh God, please no."

"What's wrong?" asked Annie as she tried to see what I was looking at.

Kim stood outside the garage and screamed Billy's name, but he was gone. I pulled myself onto the edge of the boat and grabbed the bottle of Oxicontin. I dumped several pills into my hand, put most of them in my pocket, and then tossed one into my mouth. I chewed it to get it into my system faster and the bitterness made me gag. I needed to ignore the pain if I was going to do what needed to be done.

"What's the matter?" asked Kim after she gave up calling after Billy.

I took the crutches Billy had brought and adjusted them to my height. "Your sister's sick. She needs some of that medicine they were talking about on the radio."

"The Dora antibiotic?" she asked.

"Yes."

"What about the one Billy brought? Can we give her that?"

"It can't hurt to try," I said. "Go ahead and get her to take one of those. You'll have to cut it up into small pieces and force her to swallow them."

"Why me?" asked Kim. "Where are you going?"

"Don't panic, Kim. You can do this."

"Where are you going? Are you leaving us?"

I tried to calm her. "I just need to go to that pharmacy, for the medicine."

"No!"

"Billy's not going to be back for a long time, if he even comes back at all. Annie needs that medicine."

"You're leaving me again," she started to wail. "You promised me. You promised."

"I know, Kim." I tried to grab her flailing arms. "Calm down, honey. You've got to calm down."

"You're going to die too."

"Stop it, Kim. I need you to calm down. Now! Listen to me. I want you to look after your sister, but I want you to stay away from her. Give her the pill, but after that just let her lay in the boat and you stay up here, by the bench. If she gets up, and starts to act like the bad people, I want you to climb up into the rafters and wait for me." I pointed to the beams above our heads.

"She's going to be a zombie?"

"No. I don't know. I don't think so. Please, just do as I say? I have to get to that pharmacy before it's too late."

"I don't want to lose you too."

"You have to trust me, Kim." I took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Your father and I love you and your sister more than you can possibly imagine. Everything we've done has been to protect you. I have to go get this medicine for your sister or she's going to die. Do you understand? I need you to stay here and protect her. To protect both of you."

"Are we all going to get sick?"

"I don't think so, but if we have the medicine we might be able to stop it."

"We all ate the same food," she said.

"I know, but no one else is sick yet. Just Annie. Maybe her immune system is weaker."

"Or it was the apricots."

I'd forgotten about the chocolate apricots. No one other than Annie had eaten them and everything else had been cooked, which should have killed any bacteria in it. "You're right, Kim. That's probably what it was."

"Mommy," said Kim as she grabbed my hand. "I love you. Be careful."

"I love you too, sweetie. Now bolt the door behind me and don't let anyone but Billy or me in. Okay?"

I stood outside of the garage and stared up the street that led through the industrial area. It was an uphill climb and I saw no sight of the neighborhood Billy said was there. It would be a long, painful trek up the hill and I wondered how long it would take for the painkiller to kick in.

Every step made me wince and the crutches dug into my armpits as I relied too heavily on them. My left foot was bandaged and almost useless, but I needed to stand on it if I was going to make it up the hill. I set it down as light as possible and felt the agonizing sensation of the bandages scrape against the fresh wounds. The side of the white gauze darkened with fresh blood, but I had to endure the pain.

I kept moving and a trail of blood followed me.

Helicopters hovered somewhere nearby, but I couldn't see them amongst the towering steel structures of the neighboring industrial plant. The sound of the rotors echoed through the desolate park as I moved ahead.

A deep, bass voice called out, as if through a speaker or megaphone, but the sound was too far away to discern. It seemed to be coming from the helicopters, but I couldn't be sure as the sound bounced around me.

A tall fence blocked the entrance to the Salvage Yard, but it had been broken down and pushed aside. I went into a guard shack that sat beside the gate and looked for anything that I could take with me as a weapon. I hadn't thought to grab anything back at the dock and suddenly felt very vulnerable as I stared out into the street ahead.

It was a tiny shed, with a desk and three small televisions that were part of the security system. I flicked the light switch on and off, but the power was out here as well. I fell into the swivel chair and cringed as I pulled my left foot up and crossed it over my right knee so I could inspect the shark bite.

The bandage was soaked with fresh blood from the wounds I had opened by walking. They hadn't been stitched and had only closed thanks to the pressure of the bandages. My jaunt up the hill burst them wide again. I could feel the painkiller start to take effect, and my body's recognition of pain changed to a mere awareness instead of debilitating agony.

Someone's voice cried out in a guttural blast from the Baylor Projects. I looked out the window at the abandoned ten story buildings that stretched down the street outside of the salvage yard. I could see between the buildings and into the parking lot that wound around them, but there was no movement. The doors of the projects were sealed shut and red 'X' marks were spray painted over them.

The voice moaned again, this time with animalistic intensity. It didn't call for help, or say anything intelligible. It was a primeval grunt of hunger and I sat rigid and fearful as it echoed through the streets.