Deadlocked 8 (8 page)

He was talking about the current condition of
the roads, and how we frequently had to stop to clear the way on
our trip north. The Jeep was formidable, and Ben was able to go
around most of the variety of things blocking our way, but we were
trapped behind downed trees or wrecked cars every five to ten
minutes. The Rollers hadn’t been patrolling the area for several
months now, and hadn’t been clearing the roads like they usually
did. This also wasn’t one of the former trade routes, which meant
it was cared for even less.

The pavement had long ago cracked, causing
some stretches to have shifted in varying directions, like a sheet
of ice over a lake that was slowly breaking apart. Nature was quick
to reclaim as much area as possible, and plants sprang from the
gaps, utilizing dirt that had blown across the roads and got caught
in the cracks. Only buds of growth had managed to bloom so quickly
after the wane of winter, but the stalks of last year’s plants,
wilted and brown, dotted the roads.

“To and fro,” said Harrison. “To and fro,
with nowhere worthwhile to go. That’s the way it was. None of us
knew what we had. I guess none of us ever really do, at least not
till it’s gone.”

“I can’t tell if you miss the Red days or if
you hated them,” said Ben.

“I can’t tell neither,” said Harrison with a
chuckle. “Don’t get me wrong, shit was better then. But you know,
in a way, it wasn’t. Because you’ll never know how good you’ve got
it until it’s gone. That’s the truth. How the fuck would Adam ever
know how good it was in Eden unless he got his ass booted out?”

“So you think we needed the apocalypse?”
asked Ben, half-heartedly participating in Harrison’s rambling.

“No, of course not,” said Harrison. “Just
looking for a silver lining. Now that we got our asses booted out
of Eden, we can finally appreciate how good it was.”

“I don’t remember it ever being good,” I said
as I stared out the window. “I don’t remember the Red days.”

“You’re practically a Green,” said Harrison.
“Does it make you mad to hear about the Red days? Like you got the
short end of the stick or something?”

“No,” I said, but I pondered the question.
“Not mad. Maybe jealous. I’d like to live in a world where my
biggest concerns were boyfriend problems, or what sort of
restaurant I wanted to go to, or if I was saving enough for
retirement. Those are the kind of problems I’d like to have,
instead of…” I motioned outside, at the ruined world around us.
“This.”

“Amen,” said Harrison.

We were still south of Denver by the time the
sun slid behind the mountains. There would still be a couple hours
of daylight, but we knew it was time to start searching for a place
to stay. We hadn’t made it nearly as far as I’d hoped, but it
wasn’t worth risking traveling at night. The noise from our Jeep
attracted enough attention as it was, but driving around with
headlights on at night would guarantee that our presence was
announced to any raider, soldier, or undead that wandered this
region.

Finding a suitable place to rest wasn’t hard,
although there were certain steps that needed to be followed. I had
a mental checklist of requirements: Minimum of two exits,
preferably three. A second floor or attic was preferable, as long
as they had easy access to the roof. Homes were better than
businesses, although a separation of thirty to fifty feet between
houses was necessary, a surprisingly rare thing in many parts of
this area – how people managed to live so packed together in the
Red days was a mystery to me. Basements weren’t an option, but most
had flooded long ago, leaving them rotted and unsuitable. Large
homes were never a good choice, because having more walls around
you meant you’d be burdened with endless eerie bumps and creaks in
the night that would startle you awake – it’s not hard for your
imagination to conjure up monsters in the halls when those monsters
might actually be there.

The suburbs were the worst place to get
stuck, and we were right in the middle of them when we started
searching for a place to stop. I wanted to travel to a rural area,
where we could find a ranch that would suit our needs (those
idyllic, quaint homes set out on a plain, hidden away from the
danger of the city were my favorite places to stay), but it
would’ve been too far from the job we had to do. While Harrison’s
destination wasn’t far from where we ultimately wanted to go, it
had diverted our path to the west side of Denver, where the former
suburbs of the city had flourished all the way up to the mountains,
leaving little open space that wasn’t flooded with decaying
buildings and houses that were packed together with barely a yard
to spare between them.

“Maybe we should head south,” I said as we
drove slowly through these cluttered neighborhoods. “There are some
houses that would be better than these.” I gazed in dismay at the
rows of duplicate homes, each baring such a striking resemblance to
the next that the minor difference in color or regalia did little
to add personality.

“Go back?” asked Harrison. “It already took
us too long to get out here. Do you really want to backtrack?”

“He’s right,” said Ben. “If we’re going to
stay off the highways, then it’ll be slow-going the whole way.” He
turned onto another street and said, “This is a dead end. A house
down here might be nice and quiet.”

It was a cul-de-sac, and the road led right
into a driveway that once had a decorative grassy patch in the
center, but was now home to a sizeable tree whose roots had torn up
the concrete. It was a two-story home, with a large garage and
plenty of windows that had yet to be broken. That was always a good
sign, meaning that the home’s structure hadn’t shifted and
shattered the glass or succumbed to weather that might’ve degraded
the inside.

Ben parked on the street, since the driveway
had been ruined by the pine tree that lived there now. Stubs was
excited, and started to bark, which he rarely did.

“Better get him outside,” said Ben. “Sounds
like he needs to poop.”

Harrison was about to open the door when I
stopped him.

“Wait a minute,” I said as I rolled down my
window. “Let’s listen first.” I wanted to make sure our trip
through the area hadn’t earned us a parade of greys. All we could
hear was the happy chatter of birds that were enjoying the current
hint of a coming spring. “All right, I think we’re clear.”

“Good,” said Harrison. “Let’s get this dog
outside before he starts farting it up in here.” He opened his door
and let Stubs jump down. The little dog was quick to relieve
himself on the pavement.

Ben and I decided to inspect the house, and
left Harrison outside with Stubs. The front door was decorative,
although the white paint had begun to crack and flake away and the
knocker was missing, leaving three bored holes staring back at us.
An odd contraption clung to the handle, appearing similar to a
padlock except in place of a dial there were a series of buttons
that each bore a number.

“What’s this?” I asked as I fingered the boxy
contraption.

“Lockbox,” said Ben. “This house must’ve been
up for sale. There’ll be a key inside that.”

“How do we open it?”

“You have to know the code,” said Ben as he
took a silver key out of his pocket that was affixed with a rubber
stopper near the base. “Luckily, we’ve got a key already.”

“You do?” I was confused and skeptical.

“Bump key,” he said as he fit the standard
key into the deadbolt and then took out a metal bar that he tapped
on the base of the key. “Locksmiths used to have them. They’ll get
you into just about any house. And it’ll keep you from destroying
the lock, as long as you’re not using it over and over again.” He
used his left hand to turn the key while hitting the base with the
metal rod. Within a few seconds, he’d unlocked the door, and then
opened it for me. “After you,” he said as he offered the home to me
with a sweeping gesture.

“Impressive,” I said as I admired his
skeleton key. “I’ll have to get one of those. I usually just break
in and board up the door or window from the inside.”

I clicked on my flashlight and shined it
inside, piercing the dark that hid the corners from the daylight
that snuck through the windows. It was clean within, or as clean as
a home that hasn’t been entered in twenty years can be. I sniffed,
expecting to smell the familiar odor of feces and urine that
dominated most homes, or the musky stench of an animal’s den, but
this house was free of it.

“Looks clean,” I said as I stepped inside.
The front door opened into the living room. There was a couch with
its back to my right, and a large screen television mounted to the
stone fireplace that jutted forth from the far wall. Tall, plastic
plants stood in the corners, creating a symmetry that disquieted
me, a stale precision that the Red world seemed to favor, but that
I found claustrophobic and stifling. The coffee table featured
several magazines, fanned out as if on display. “Too clean,” I said
as I stepped across the white carpet, leaving my muddy footprints
behind.

“It wasn’t being lived in,” said Ben as he
walked past me and over to the fireplace.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I watched him
approach the obscenely large flat screen television.

He pinched the edge of the television and
pulled it down. My heart leapt in fear that it was about to
collapse and shatter, creating enough noise to alert anyone nearby
of our invasion. Instead, the television wavered in his hand, as if
it were as light as a feather.

“It’s cardboard. This was a model home, or
the realtor had set it up with fake furniture to help it sell.”

I was confounded, and unaware that such a
thing had occurred in that lost age. “Realtor?”

“Yeah, the person that was in charge of
selling the place. They were called realtors.”

“How do you know about that?” I asked. “I
thought you were a kid back when the world went to hell.”

“I was.” He said as he went across the living
room and into the adjoined kitchen. He walked back behind the
granite-topped island, running his hand across its dusty length.
“On my way out to Colorado I slept in a realtor’s office one night.
I read one of their handbooks. I normally try to stay at libraries
or book stores, so I’ve got something good to read, but I’ll take
what I can get.”

“Libraries?” I asked, surprised. “Aren’t
those too big to try and stay in? I was always taught to try and
stay in smaller places that could be easily fortified.”

“Yeah, but I loved the feeling of stepping
into a place that was filled with all that knowledge. All those
books, on any subject I could think of, all at my fingertips.” He
smiled and shook his head in appreciation. “That’s paradise for
me.”

I chuckled, and it came out more derisively
than I’d intended. “I guess so. I don’t like big, dark buildings.
Too many places for things to hide.”

Ben was opening the doors in the kitchen,
revealing a pantry, the entrance to the garage, and the stairs that
led to the basement. We still had to check upstairs, but decided to
go down first, since that was usually where you would find any
zombies that happened to make their way into a home. The front and
back doors were still locked, and the windows hadn’t been broken,
giving us both the sense that the house was clear, but you can
never be too careful. I’ve been in hundreds of places that seemed
safe at first, only to discover zombies writhing about in the
basement. For some reason, when they’re not chasing people, Greys
seem to be drawn down to the lowest level possible of wherever
they’re trapped, almost as if they’re intrinsically drawn to a
grave. More likely, they simply followed the path of least
resistance when not incensed, which meant they were likely to
wander about at the bottom of a set of stairs rather than go up
them.

I was reminded of our conversation in the
car, when Harrison was equating our new world to Adam’s journey out
of Eden. No one in the Red days had to study the patterns of
movement in the average zombie’s routine, or give a wide berth when
turning a corner to avoid the grasping hands of a hidden attacker,
or learn the difference between the sweet stench of rotting flesh
and the muted odor of a Grey. These weren’t the trials Adam and Eve
dealt with in either of the paradises they lived in. This was the
new world; the new hell.

“There’s no water down here,” said Ben as he
sniffed. “It’s a bit musty, but looks clear.”

The basement had a concrete floor and little
else to define it other than a few support beams that anchored the
ceiling. A water heater stood sentry beside a series of pipes that
rose and disappeared in holes above. A stream of rusty
discoloration seeped out from beneath the water heater, and flowed
down to a nearby drain, marking the path the water had taken after
the bottom of the tank had finally corroded and burst.

“Feels like a tomb,” I said as I stood on the
bottom step and shined my flashlight around, erasing the inky black
corners. The walls were made of plastic, puffed out like clouds by
the pink insulation behind, and contoured by the bolts that were
drilled into the concrete behind. “Or a padded cell.”

“Maybe we should make Harry sleep down here,
and we’ll stay upstairs,” said Ben as a joke.

My heart fluttered like a teenager with a
crush at the implication that I might spend time alone with Ben.
This was the first moment I’d ever realized that I had a burgeoning
attraction to him. When Zack had asked me if I was hoping to go on
this scouting mission with Ben because I was interested in him, I
was struck by how ludicrous the accusation was. I hadn’t even
considered such a thing, but his question had made me curious, and
over the past couple weeks I’d been thinking of it frequently. I’d
even become annoyed when I learned that Harrison would be coming
with us, although I was placated by the knowledge that we’d be
dropping him off at the water tower. That’s when I would finally
get the chance to be alone with Ben, although I didn’t know what I
planned to do at that point. I wasn’t the type of girl to throw
myself on a man, and I wasn’t even sure if what I felt for Ben was
real or if it was simply a fleeting thing.