Deadlocked 8 (9 page)

“Let’s go upstairs. It’s clear down here,”
said Ben as he motioned past me while I lingered on the bottom
step.

We went up and inspected the two bedrooms and
bathroom on the top floor. There was an attic, but it had barely
enough room to store a box or two, and certainly not enough space
for us to sleep in.

The master bedroom had a sizeable bed,
dresser, and more plastic plants that had only served to collect
dust for the past couple decades. The second room was designed for
a child, with brown and green walls and a band of teddy bear
silhouettes just under the white molding. We searched the closets,
and even under the beds, being overly cautious because we’d both
ventured out into the world enough to know that we needed to
be.

“Everything looks good,” said Ben as we
headed back to the stairs. “What do you think?”

“I’d still rather be in a farmhouse out in
the middle of nowhere, but this’ll have to do.”

“It’s our first house together,” said Ben as
he nudged me. “We can get our dream house one of these days.”

He headed down the stairs, and I followed
behind. I obsessed over what he’d said. Was that his way of
flirting? I became frustrated with myself, annoyed that I was
allowing such insignificant and petty things to cloud my mind
during such an important mission. We were headed out here to spy on
Jerald’s army, and the last thing I needed was to be
distracted.

We went back out front and found Harrison
sitting on the hood of the Jeep, enjoying the crisp air as the
setting sun turned the sky a fiery orange. Stubs was in his lap,
and they were sharing a strip of salted beef.

“How’s it look in there? Are we good to
go?”

“Looks fine.” Ben went to the back of the
Jeep to retrieve our gear.

I was about to say something, but just as I
opened my mouth we heard a shrill scream from somewhere within the
neighborhood. It was human, but nothing like what I’ve ever heard
before. The Greys rarely scream, and even when they do, it comes
out as a loud moan. This was clearly coming from a living person,
but it was a caterwaul that seemed almost animalistic. Her wild
yell faded, as if her voice wasn’t strong enough to carry the
fervor any longer.

After a moment of silence, Harrison looked at
us and said, “What the fuck was that?”

Even the birds stopped their chatter. Now the
neighborhood was hauntingly quiet. The wind rustling through the
pines was the only sound, but we all kept listening, waiting to
hear what would try to kill us next.

Levon Kline

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in
all the world.” I forced a smile as I said it, although I imagine
my gaze carried a sterner sentiment.

Beatrice offered a thin-lipped grin. She
looked haggard, thin and old, with stringy grey hair that had spent
most of its life hiding beneath wigs but was now on display, short
as a twenty-year-old model’s pixie cut but thinning from age,
adding to her sickly appearance. Without makeup, her wrinkles were
on full display, and it seemed as if she’d aged fifty years in just
the few months we’d known each other.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, feigning
concern.

I was on a hospital bed with tubes connected
to ports that had been drilled in the side of my body. Wires
crisscrossed me, rising from their padded anchors to machines that
hovered at my bedside. Those same machines chattered and beeped as
a reminder that I was still alive. Some fluids poured into me
through the thick tubes while other fluids escaped, and none of it
was my doing. My once mocha skin had turned ashy, as if all it took
to be turned into a white man was a few months out of the sun in a
hospital bed. I felt like a living experiment, as if Dr.
Frankenstein might walk through my door any minute and throw a
switch that would send lightning coursing through me in an attempt
to reanimate this dead tissue.

I wasn’t restrained. It was hardly necessary
to do so anymore. My strength had faded months ago. It was a
struggle just to raise my hand, but I managed anyhow, and I
answered Bea’s question with a middle finger.

“Be nice,” she said as she pulled a chair
over to my bed. Its metal legs squeaked on the tile, and the sound
grated on my nerves. “I’m not the one you should be mad at.”

“Don’t worry, I’m mad at all sorts of
people.” I itched at my side, where a welt had appeared the night
before. I wasn’t sure what was causing them, but one of the doctors
here assured me it was nothing to worry about, although I had no
reason to trust him.

Beatrice sat down as if she were a relative
here to visit. She crossed her legs and demurely draped her hands
over her knees as she inspected the room. “Are they treating you
well?”

“What’s this about?” I asked, weary of her
pleasantries. “Why’d they send you in here?”

“I asked to check in on you.” She was annoyed
by my curtness. “Same as before.”

I let my head sink into the pillow and
muttered, “Bullshit.”

“Why are you being like this? I’ve come to
check in on you as often as they’ll let me. I’m the only one in
this entire facility that has even an inkling of sympathy for you.”
She held out her fingers as if about to pinch the air, showing me
just how little the people here cared about me, as if I needed a
reminder.

“And why’s that? Why do you give a shit?”

“Because, despite my better judgment, I’ve
become a bit fond of you.” She again held up her nearly pinched
fingers and added, “Just a teensy bit.”

I didn’t have anything to offer. Part of me
wanted to belittle her, but I was also woefully lonely in this
place, and I didn’t want to drive her off. I despised Bea, and
everything that The Electorate had done, but a few weeks of
solitude is enough to make a person long for any sort of personal
interaction with another human being, no matter who they are.

“They told me you’ve been…” she paused and
searched for the proper word. “Difficult.”

“Every time they come in here, it’s to stick
me with needles or something like that. Are they really wondering
why I’m not cordial?”

“They’re just trying to help,” said Bea.

“Yeah right, obviously.” I set my right hand
against one of the three tubes that were stuck to my side. The
ports had been implanted shortly after my arrival, after I’d been
knocked unconscious with some cocktail of drugs that left my mind
spinning for days. The thick tubes were reinforced with a spiral
wire that ran the length of them, and they were connected to a
machine beside me that funneled a variety of liquids into me.
Sometimes the fluids were clear, and other times they were a
pinkish hue, and I could feel the liquid going in and out of me
like I was some sort of fish tank filtration system. Doctors and
nurses visited frequently, always wrapped in several layers of
protective suits and masks, and would spin me or adjust the myriad
of tubes and wires attached to me. The tubes on my side required
the doctor to spin a lock at the base before detaching, and the
putrid stench that followed always caused me to gag. Despite my
attempts to communicate with the doctors and nurses, they rarely
said a word. Even as I screamed at them to tell me what the hell
smelled so bad, they kept tight-lipped and hardly even looked in my
direction.

“It’s the truth,” she said as she inspected
her nails. She used one nail to push at the cuticle of another, as
if giving herself a long overdue manicure with the only tools
available to her. “You’re more important to them than you
know.”

“And why’s that?”

She looked up at the camera in the corner of
the white room, above the television that was constantly showing
pictures of how the world had rejuvenated itself in the wake of the
apocalypse. Bea shook her head and said, “I should probably keep
quiet.”

I groaned and then said, “I don’t give a
fuck, Bea. I’m too tired to try and fight with you to tell me. If
you don’t want to, then don’t.”

Beatrice coughed, but not because she needed
to. It was the sort of polite noise a person makes when they’re
taken aback by the rudeness of another, but at a loss for how to
respond. “Well, I guess you still haven’t figured out who your
friends are in this whole mess.”

I laughed, or at the very least I made a
guttural noise meant to be laughter that was more similar to a
phlegmy snore. My nose had been plugged up for weeks, and the
drainage had given me a sore throat and terrible congestion that
made my chest feel heavy. The noises escaping my lungs were often
as much a surprise to myself as it was to anyone around me.

“You’re no friend of mine,” I said and
thought of Jill, Billy, Laura, Annie, and…

Kim.

Every time I thought of her, it hurt my very
soul. As melodramatic as that might be to say, it was the truth. I
ached every time her smile snuck its way into my imagination.

“If it weren’t for me, then you’d already be
dead.”

I snickered when I asked, “And you expect me
to be grateful for that?”

“You’d rather be dead? You’d rather give up?
What happened to the tough man I met at the cabin. The one that
acted like he could take the whole world on if he had the
chance.”

“He got real fucking sick, and he feels like
a piece of shit in a toilet that should’ve been flushed months
ago.”

“Pleasant imagery.” Bea wrinkled her
nose.

“Nothing pleasant about it.”

“Well, you should know that your stock has
risen as of late.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “And what am I up to on
Wall Street now, governor?” I mocked her accent.

She ignored my taunting and continued, “They
need you alive because something bad happened back at the transfer
facility.”

She earned my curiosity. “Bad? Like what sort
of bad?”

“There was a second entrance to the facility,
down deep, and it got opened.”

“In the mineshaft,” I said. “We got out that
way. That’s where I got bit.”

“And when you opened that door, blood got
out. It seeped down into the mine.”

I paused as I considered what she was
saying.

She stared at me, wordless, and just raised
her brow, knowing that the enormity of the situation wasn’t lost on
me. Finally, she said, “It got out.”

“Your new apocalypse,” I said. “The Tempest
Strain.”

“That’s right, although we never meant for it
to be released. None of this has gone the way we’d hoped.”

“Why’s that? Because you got stuck in it
too?” I asked, amused by her predicament.

Her agitation was apparent as she leaned
forward and glowered. “You’ve got a wife out there, right? And
friends? You’ve got people out there that are about to get
swallowed up by this, and the way you deal with it is to lay here
and be glib?”

“What am I supposed to do?” I rattled the
tubes stuck to the ports on my side. “I’m not going anywhere.
Believe me, if I could, I’d happily get off this bed and go out
there and strangle every mother fucking one of you that was
responsible for this. I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

“And if I could, I’d help you do it.”

“Don’t be so quick to help, Bea.” I winked at
her. “Your neck would be the first I’d reach for.”

“Stop playing the brute,” she said. “Be smart
about this. We need each other, Levon. If you’re going to save your
family, you’re going to need my help.”

“I don’t need shit from you.”

She bristled, and her brow furrowed as she
glared at me, like a wicked witch trying to put the shattered
pieces of her plan back together again. She was a warty nose and
green skin away from a children’s movie. “Stop it. Stop being a
fool. I’m trying to help you.”

“And how exactly are you trying to help?”

“There’s a lot more going on here than you
know. The release of the Tempest Strain has changed everything.
Jerald is being forced to work with me now. The Electorate knows
what happened out here, and they were more prepared for it than
Jerald knew. They’ve already demolished most of his air force, and
he knows they can crush him too if they want. The members of The
Electorate that he’s already captured and the Dawns here are his
only bargaining chips. He’s desperate to survive, and there’s only
two ways for him to do it. Either he uses you to find a cure, or he
gets The Electorate to take him and his men in if he promises not
to hurt my friends and me, as well as our Dawns.”

“Good for you,” I said as I closed my weary
eyes.

“That’s why it’s not too late for you to save
your friends, Hero.” She used my nickname with dramatic flair.

“And how would I do that?”

“We need you to tell us where the people you
were traveling with might’ve gone,” said Beatrice.

I was astounded that she actually thought I
might tell her. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Listen to me, Levon.” She leaned forward and
set her hand on top of mine. I pulled away, but she left her hand
on the edge of my bed. “The people here are trying to use you to
create the cure, but it’s not working.” She tried to whisper, but
it sounded more like a hiss, “I never counted on them having one of
these damn contraptions here.” Beatrice gripped one of the tubes
that was attached to my side.

“Let them use you,” I said. “You’re already
immune to the Tempest Strain. Why can’t they hook you up to a
machine like this and pump you full of whatever the hell they’re
flooding me with?”

“I’m not immune,” said Beatrice with
foreboding calm. She said it again, this time with even more
regret, “I’m not immune to what’s coming. None of us are.”

I was bewildered, and just uttered a weak,
“What?”

“We thought we had the cure, but we were
wrong. When they designed the Tempest Strain, they had to encourage
mutation so that it could cross species, but that also meant there
was a chance it would become immune to whatever cures had been
designed. Apparently, it did.”