Deadlocked 8 (36 page)

“It’s okay, Jill, just breathe. You’re doing
good. Keep it up.”

I said the same, “Keep it up, Jill. Let’s get
that baby out of you.”

Her increasing pain was evident in her
expression as she started to squeeze my hand tighter. “Billy, you
piss me off so bad sometimes.”

“I know,” I said with a quick laugh. “I’ll be
quiet.”

“It’s not that…” she squeezed and held her
breath as Clyde told her to stay calm. Then she continued to berate
me, “I’m in labor. Okay? So I get to say whatever the heck I want.
All right? That’s the deal.”

“Sounds good,” I said to placate her. “Rip
into me, Jill. I can take it.”

She grimaced again, and then Clyde said,
“Okay, Jill, everything’s looking good.”

“Can I push?” she asked him as she
suffered.

“Not yet,” said Clyde. “Let’s wait until the
next contraction. Then we’ll give it a go.”

I held her hand until this contraction
subsided, and then used the towel to clean her head again. “Jill,
you can call me every name in the book, darling. Go ahead and
squeeze my hand until it pops off. I’m here for you.”

“I love you, Billy,” said Jill, sounding
exhausted as she stared up at the ceiling. “You know I do, but this
has got to end. It just isn’t worth it.”

“What’s got to end?”

She turned her head to look at me, the pillow
crinkling beneath her. “Your war.”

I had no response, and just looked down.

“Listen to me, Billy. I don’t blame you for
anything that’s happened, but this war cost my baby his daddy. As
much as I love you, it should be Hero that’s holding my hand right
now and sitting here listening to me bitch at him.”

“I know,” I said without looking up at her.
“If I could switch places with him…”

“I don’t want you switching places with him.
I wish we were all here together. The world’s going to be tough
enough for this kid as it is. I don’t want him having to worry
about going off to war on top of everything else.”

Clyde was asking Adrian to get a basin, and
then told Locke to close the door. I looked back and saw that there
were Rollers in the hall, eagerly anticipating the birth of Hero’s
child.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, yes, of course, Jill. I’m right
here.”

“I know you’re right there,” she said,
mocking me. “Are you listening to me?”

“I hear ya. Believe me, if there was anything
I could do to get Hero back, I’d do it.”

“I know you would. But he’s gone, and that’s
just the way it is. I’ve got you here with me now, and I want to
keep you, you big dumb idiot.” She gripped my hand tight and shook
it. “I want to keep you, so don’t go doing stupid shit that’s going
to get you killed.”

“I’m just trying to…”

She squeezed my hand harder, and I thought it
was because she was going to argue with me some more, but when I
looked up at her I saw that she was in pain. I got closer and put
my free arm under her pillow to help support her.

“Here comes another,” she said loudly.

“All right, Jill,” said Clyde, “we’re going
to push this time. All right?”

She nodded and I encouraged her as best I
could.

Adrian and Locke helped Clyde while I sat
beside Jill, wiping her brow when needed and trying my best to be
supportive. It was a grueling process, and one that I’m not sure I
could’ve survived had the roles been reversed. Lots of women have
told me that they feel sorry for men because we never get to have
the experience of having another life growing inside of us, but
they can go right ahead and take that honor, because the thought of
squeezing a baby out of any opening my body currently has sounds
like pure torture.

Jill didn’t bother hiding her anger and pain
during the multiple contractions that followed, and the bones in my
hand felt like they were going to snap any second. I remember when
Clyde said that he could see the baby’s head, and I assumed that we
were almost done, but we were far from it.

I don’t know how long it took, or how many
contractions she went through, but Clyde finally made the decision
to cut her. Locke handed him the angled scissors, and I heard the
sickening snip of flesh being cut as Jill screamed in pain. Then,
after another round of pushing and a good amount of blood, I heard
Clyde say that he had the baby.

But there were no cries.

“Is it a boy?” asked Jill.

Clyde didn’t answer, and I couldn’t see what
he was doing past the blanket that was draped over Jill’s legs. The
new mother was wet with tears and sweat, and her hand was trembling
as I held it.

“Clyde?” she asked. The desperation in her
voice stilled my heart.

“It’s a boy,” answered Locke with no joy in
the words.

“Clyde?” asked Jill, ignoring Locke. “Clyde,
what’s wrong?”

Now I could see. Clyde was on the floor, with
what looked like a bloody, purple mass of flesh on a blanket under
him. I could see the umbilical cord lying beside him, and realized
that the mass he was hovering over was Jill’s baby. It wasn’t
moving. I could see the baby’s tiny hand up in the air, its chubby
fingers sitting perfectly still.

“Billy, what’s wrong?” asked Jill, panic
beginning to take hold.

“It’s okay,” I said weakly. ‘Please, God, be
okay,’ I said to myself, and repeated it over and over.

Clyde had a plastic balloon of some sort that
was attached to a mouthpiece, and he was trying to fit it over the
baby’s mouth. It was too large, and he tossed it aside in
frustration. The balloon hit the wall and then bounced out across
the floor to my right, leaving a trail of blood behind. Jill saw it
and knew what was happening.

“He’s not breathing,” she said, far more
familiar with what was happening than I was. “Clyde, clear the
passage. Clyde, clear his mouth!”

“He did,” said Locke.

Adrian turned away, tears in his eyes.

“Clyde!” Jill was screaming, and started to
get out of the bed. I laid down over her, pinning her down and
pleading with her to stay where she was. She struggled, but her
body was too weary to push me away. I gripped the other side of the
bed to restrain her as she cried out in agony, “No, no, no.”

Between the bouts of screaming, I could hear
Clyde counting and then huffing, counting and then huffing, and I
knew he was trying to breathe life into the child. He was pumping
his fingers against the baby’s chest, and trying everything he
could to get Hero’s only child to live.

And then, just when my heart threatened to
crack in two, I heard a tiny, precious cough, followed by the
sweetest cry I’ve ever heard.

I got off of Jill, and looked back to see
Clyde standing up with Hero’s son in his arms. The baby was crying
out, with his eyes clenched shut and his arms and legs sticking
straight up. Those chubby little fingers where grasping at the air,
and the sight caused me to burst into tears.

“Would you like to meet your son?” asked
Clyde.

“Bring him here,” said Jill, her voice like a
soft verse in a long overdue song.

Clyde brought Mark to his mother, and she
held him to her breast as tears streamed down all of our faces. I
put my hand on Clyde’s shoulder, and then pulled him in for a hug.
“You did it, man. You saved that kid’s life.”

“This is what it’s all about, brother,” said
Clyde in a whisper.

I looked down at Jill and her new baby, and
knew exactly what Clyde meant.

Annie Conrad

I drove past the exit that led to the rehab
facility, and then turned off onto a dirt road a mile past. We
hadn’t seen any drones, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Ben had been
right about the car dealership, and we found a Range Rover in new
condition. After a quick fill up, we’d thundered back out onto the
highway. It wasn’t an eventless trip, and we had a few close calls
on the road with stray Greys, but nothing close to as harrowing as
what we’d survived the day before.

We parked along the gravel road, and the cool
breeze carried the dust we kicked up over us. The weather had begun
to turn, giving winter one last chance to bite at us before spring
arrived. Luckily, the apartment we’d slept in overnight had plenty
of clothes, and both of us had taken the opportunity to clean
ourselves up. We dressed in layers because of the shift in weather
overnight, and I was happy we did. It was clear now that winter
wasn’t quite finished with us yet.

A flake of snow drifted down right in front
of my eyes, and I watched as it fell into my open palm to melt away
in an instant. “Mom’s going to have fun telling me she was
right.”

“Why’s that?” asked Ben. The left side of his
face was bandaged up with tape and gauze that we’d found at the
apartment.

“It’s snowing. Remember how she told us it
might snow again when we were headed out. She always loves pointing
out how she was right and I was wrong about something.”

“She tends to be right more often than not,”
said Ben as he retrieved our bags of loot from the back of the
Range Rover. We’d taken everything we could find of any value from
the apartment, and loaded it into gym bags to take back with
us.

“Uh-oh,” I said with a roll of my eyes and a
playful smirk. “She hasn’t cast her spell on you too, has she?”

Ben slung the bag over his shoulder as we set
off in the direction of the rehab center. “What spell would that
be?”

“I don’t know, whatever spell it is she
weaves on you men. I don’t know how she does it, but she gets you
guys to follow her around like puppy dogs.”

“She’s a good leader,” said Ben. “I see the
same qualities in you.”

I chortled and then said, “Yeah right. I
don’t have the patience to do what she does.”

“That might be, but you can learn to be
patient. I don’t think people can be taught to be leaders. That’s
just something that’s in your DNA.”

“Is that why you were so eager to get into my
pants?” I asked playfully. “To get some of this sweet DNA?”

“No, I just always heard redheads were
dynamite in the sack.”

I guffawed and then punched him in the arm.
“That’s another thing she’s going to harp on me about.”

“What, us having sex?” asked Ben. “You’re
planning on telling her about that?”

“No, I was talking about my hair.” I twirled
my shorter locks. I’d cut it all to match the length I’d been
forced to chop off in the Jeep the day before. Now my formerly
long, curly hair could almost be entirely hidden under a cap. I
couldn’t remember the last time it had been this short. “She always
used to talk about how much she loved my hair. It reminded her of
my grandma.”

“Gotcha,” said Ben. “For a second there I
thought you were going to go and blab about what we got up to at
the farmhouse.”

I shrugged and said, “I probably will,
eventually. Mom and I aren’t bashful about sharing that sort of
thing. We’ve always been pretty honest with each other about
it.”

He made a comment, but I didn’t hear it.
Instead, I stopped and listened intently to the woods around
us.

Ben saw that I was concerned and asked,
“What’s wrong?”

The path we were taking back to the rehab
center wound through a thicket of conifers that dominated the
space. This was the path that the Rollers had taken back after
leaving the trucks behind, and we’d kept it cleared through the
past three months. It had been a hiking trail once, long ago, and
had managed to avoid being overtaken by nature because of the deep
gravel that had been laid here. It had been part of a state funded
park, and the educational signposts still sat beside the trail,
although their message had long ago eroded.

“Something’s out there,” I said, although I
didn’t know what direction to look in. It wasn’t simply the crack
of a twig or the rustle of leaves that had spooked me; I’d heard
the hungry gasp and smack of lips that a dog might make while
tearing into a fresh kill.

The forest around us shuddered as if on cue,
and we were beset upon by the hounds that had been hiding in the
brush. They were coyotes, or had been before they died. The canines
had light brown fur, white in some spots, but grey skin that made
them look as if they’d pulled themselves up from a muddy pool.
Their eyes were all black, but their bared teeth gleamed a white as
pure as the snowflakes that drifted down between us.

Ben reacted before I did, and shot the first
of the pack, but there were plenty more. The creatures didn’t cower
like their living brethren, but instead charged full force, and all
at once. My experience with hounds in the past had shown me that
they attacked in a coordinated fashion, with the most daring of
them lunging in first as the others circled to wait their turn or
for the target to fall. The undead coyotes followed no such rhythm,
and attacked all at once, each of them eager for a taste of
blood.

I felt the pain before I saw the source. It
was in my left thigh, and it started with an impact that caused me
to stumble to the side. I looked down and saw that one of the
beasts had clamped onto me, its teeth buried deep in my double
layer of pants and sweats. Then the pain came, surging through me
as if with electric force as the creature shook its head to try and
tear my flesh away.

Ben was still shooting, but there were too
many and they were moving too fast to dispatch them all. I heard
him curse, but was too focused on the animal attached to my hip to
see what had happened to him.

The rifle was hanging from my shoulder by its
strap, making it impossible for me to shoot the creature beside me.
If I’d had a pistol, I could’ve used that, but our accident on the
highway had stripped me of all my weapons other than the M-16 and a
knife.

I fell to my knees, dragged down by the
tenacious beast ripping at my waist, and I saw a flash of white as
another coyote leapt for me, turning his head to the side so that
he could bite down on my throat. I pulled the trigger, and caught
the beast in the chest. The blast was powerful enough to throw the
animal off course, but not strong enough to stop its forward
momentum. The animal slammed against me, and its jaws still snapped
up at me despite its injury. I knocked it to the ground, pressed my
knee to its throat, and then started to aim at the rest of its
pack.