Deadlocked 6

by A. R. Wise

  "You remind me of a friend of mine," I said. If she wouldn't respond to my discussion about our children, then perhaps I could capitalize upon the racist remark of the solider that I'd overheard moments earlier. "She's a nurse, and has dark skin like yours."

  The woman tapped her pen against a clipboard as she continued to ignore me.

  "It must be hard being forced to deal with a racist piece of shit like that soldier."

  She murmured an answer, "You can't help how you're born. At least the first time."

  I was sure I'd heard her wrong. "What was that?"

  "Nothing," she said as if bored. "You should get some rest."

  "I would, but my hand is bothering me." I was tired of trying to connect with this woman. If she wasn’t willing to speak with me, then I'd have to try a different tactic.

  "What's wrong with it?" She set her clipboard on the metal stand beside my head and walked around the bed.

  "There's a cut on my wrist, under the strap, that feels hot. I think I got bit by a zombie in that truck." I pretended to be scared. "I think I might be infected."

  The woman walked around the end of my bed to come back to the other side, to the hand that I was looking at. I clenched my hand into a fist, and then relaxed it over and over as she approached.

  "We looked you over pretty well," said the woman. "There were no bite marks anywhere."

  "I've known a lot of people that were bit, and listened to them as they turned," I said, increasing the panic in my voice. "All of them said that the sight of the infection started to burn, and itch, and then spread. Can you please just check? It's driving me insane."

  She glowered at me, and then put on a pair of glasses that she took from her shirt pocket. "Push your wrist as far through the strap as possible. I'll look at it that way."

  "I can't," I lied. "It's too tight to move." I pushed my wrist up, against the strap to make it look like there was less room than there was.

  "I'm not unstrapping you, if that's what you're hoping for." She stood tall with her arms crossed in an admonishing pose.

  "Fine. Just loosen it a little and I'll slide my arm down."

  She stared at me, as if cognizant of my deception. Then she pulled a pistol from a holster that I hadn't realized was there. She held it awkwardly with her left hand as she reached down to the strap on my wrist with her right hand. The gun bobbed in her hand as she tried to keep it pointed at my face.

  "You stay still or I'll blow your head off. Understood?"

  I didn't know that she was carrying a gun.

  This was going to work better than expected.

  She undid the buckle on the strap and let it slide one notch looser. It was hard for her to get the buckle back in with one hand, so she brought her left hand down to anchor the strap. She kept the barrel pointed at my face, and I watched it intently while keeping slight pressure on the strap with my wrist.

  "There," she said. "How's that?"

  It had never been tight, and the loop was now large enough to easily pull my hand free of. I waited for her to look away from me, down at my wrist, to see if I'd been wounded.

  "Go ahead and push your wrist through the strap."

  I tucked my thumb into my palm, making my hand as thin as possible, and pulled it free of the strap with ease. This wasn't the first time I'd disarmed someone, and it was clear that this woman wasn't trained in firearms. She didn't even have the safety off.

  Human fingers are shockingly brittle; you don't even have to break them to cause intense pain. All you have to do is bend the tip of one finger in, against the inside of the finger, and squeeze. The agony will incapacitate someone.

  She gasped and tried to pull away, but wasn't able to get away from me before I got my finger in the trigger guard of her pistol. When she fell, she left her gun behind, and I twirled it in my palm until I was pointing it down at her. I used my thumb to unclick the safety.

  I expected her to scream, and was prepared to shoot her, but she just glared up at me. I glared back and said, "Now get up and undo my other wrist and my feet."

  "And if I don't?"

  "Then I'll shoot you and do it myself, you dumbass."

  She was terrified. Her hands were shaking and her eyes were wide as sweat began to bead on her forehead. "Okay." She capitulated without a fight and I kept my aim on her as she walked to the end of the bed.

  "What's this place for?" I asked as she loosened the straps on my ankles.

  "Just a hospital. That's all."

  "Bullshit." I pulled the hammer back on the pistol. It was a useless gesture, since all modern pistols automatically retract their hammers when fired, but the clicking noise was a great way to scare someone. She cringed at the sound and slunk back like a frightened turtle.

  "It's true. This is a medical facility. That's all."

  "We've never met before," I said as she moved to my left wrist. "So I'll forgive you for treating me like an idiot, once. So let's start over, and if you lie to me again I'm going to get off this bed, gag you, and shove that fucking needle under each of your fingernails. I don't even care if you tell me the truth. I just want to torture you. So, by all means, give me a reason to."

  "I'm not lying." Her hands were trembling so much that she had trouble releasing the last strap. "This is where we do the final transfers." She got the last strap unbuckled and I jerked my arm free. She fell backward and cowered against the corner of the wall as I swung my legs over the side of the bed.

  "What are you talking about? What does that mean?"

  She held her hands out and looked down as she shook her head. "I really can't tell you."

  "Oh goodie," I said with devilish glee. "Time to get the needles."

  "Please don't."

  "Then tell me what you're talking about. What do you mean by final transfer?"

  She looked up at me and took a few breaths before explaining. "It's how we live forever. It's part of the Noah Initiative. We've been breeding replacement bodies that have our memories slowly implanted in them. They're made to be perfect humans, and we interact with them from time to time, using a computer. We can watch them, and help guide their development. Then, once our memories are synced, we can perform a transfer."

  "Are you talking about brain transfers?" I was shocked by what I was hearing.

  "No, not exactly. It's more like uploading our memories and personalities into a new body."

  "Is that what Celeste is?"

  "Who?" she asked.

  "Celeste. The girl that was with me in the truck."

  She nodded, her hands still held out as if to stop a bullet from hitting her in the head. I'd been furiously gesticulating with my gun as I spoke to her, and the woman was terrified of me. "Yes. She's a transfer for one of the upper echelon elites. She had two transfers, but one of them was killed trying to escape the facility a few months ago, and then Cobra got loose."

  "Her name's Celeste." I stepped forward, enjoying the fear in the woman's eyes as the gun barrel got closer to her face.

  "Sorry, I'll call her whatever you want."

  "So then why did you train Celeste to fight like that?"

  "We have the children go through physical exercises to keep them fit. We focused on swimming, because it has the least impact of any other exercise, but we also wanted to make sure they had some survival skills. So we allowed them to train with weapons, just in case."

  I knelt down so that I was eye level with the woman. "Is Celeste here?"

  She nodded.

  "And the woman that is going to transfer into Celeste's body is on her way here?"

  She nodded again.

  I stared at her, wishing that she'd try to fight back. I wanted an excuse to put a bullet in her. "And the picture you're carrying, that's not your daughter. You were lying about that, weren't you? That's a picture of the girl you're going to kill so that you can live in her body."

  She stammered, "We call them our daughters."

  "Give me the picture."

  The w
oman dug into her coat and pulled a photograph from an inside pocket. It was of a young girl, probably around ten years old, with brilliant red hair and pale white skin.

  "This girl's not even black."

  "No," she said with awkward sorrow. "There aren't many black ones left. Most of us are white now."

  My scornful gaze shamed her. "That's fucking pathetic."

  The door to the room opened and the doctor walked in, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a clipboard in the other. "Well," she said, oblivious to my escape as she stared at the clipboard, "it looks like we might have just got the upper hand on these fuckers…" She looked up and saw us at the other side of the room. Her coffee cup halted its advance as she stopped just before sipping it.

  She was a pretty, middle-aged woman, with grey hair that was tied back in a ponytail and pale skin. She had icy blue eyes that grew wide when she saw me.

  I wasted no time aiming my gun at her and taking a shot. Her coffee cup exploded as the bullet passed through it and into her throat. The black woman on the floor beside me screamed out in shock and I pointed the gun back at her.

  "And you thought you'd live forever," I said as she wept. "This must be extra scary for you then."

  I'm a cold, calculating, ruthless, vindictive bitch.

  I killed her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - LOSING FAITH

  Levon Kline

  "I feel like shit," I said as the doctor stood over me with a coffee cup in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

  She laughed and nodded. She was pretty, in her late forties or early fifties, with grey hair tied back in a ponytail and shockingly beautiful blue eyes. "I don't doubt that."

  "Hey, beautiful, any chance of you undoing these straps and running off with me? We can go live in the mountains together. I'll treat you like a queen."

  She didn't seem impressed by my clumsy advance. "I don't think you're in good enough shape to go running anywhere at the moment."

  "You'd be surprised. I'm up for a lot more than running." I winked at her and she rolled her eyes.

  "You're quite the character."

  "Come on, babe. If they're just planning on killing me anyhow, let me loose and let's have some fun first. You've got to grant a dying man his last wish. I'm pretty sure that's a law somewhere."

  "Oh really?" she kept her eyes on the clipboard as she smirked. "I'm unfamiliar with that law."

  "It's true. I'm a lot of things, but a liar's not one of them. Speaking of which, I've got a twelve-inch penis. You should check it out. It's pretty awesome."

  That made her laugh and she shook her head as if embarrassed by how much she was enjoying our banter. "You're too much."

  "For some ladies." I flashed a naughty grin. "But I bet you'd do fine."

  "That's not what I meant." She was flustered, and her ears turned red as she got embarrassed. "You know, for a guy that has a fractured skull, you're awfully chipper."

  "Maybe I'm the sort of guy you'd like to get to know a little better?" I've never cheated on my wife, and had no desire to start, but I'd say just about anything to get off that bed. If they hadn't killed me yet, that meant there was a chance Kim was alive as well, and I'd do whatever was necessary to find her. "Come on, gorgeous. Get me out of these straps already." I writhed in the restraints that tied me down.

  "If it were up to me, I'd let you go."

  "Awesome! Let's get this party started," I said.

  "But it's not up to me. In fact, nothing's up to me around here anymore."

  "What? Why's that? Whose ass do I need to kick to get things back in control around here?"

  She looked at the door and then at me as if making sure there was no danger of being overheard. "If you want to know the truth, there's a pretty big group of us that want to stop trying to fight with your kind."

  "My kind?"

  "You know, the survivors." She set her pen over her ear as she spoke. "We've already accomplished our initial goal. There's no point in another genocide. Frankly, the thought of it makes me sick."

  "Me too, babe. For sure. I'm a man of peace and love, with heavy emphasis on the love." I hurried and continued talking before she could respond. I wanted to do everything I could to connect with her as I squirmed in my restraints. "We need to treat each other like human beings. All we're asking for is to be left alone."

  She sighed and looked back down at her clipboard. "I know. Unfortunately, not everyone feels that way. We're being forced to help continue experiments on your people. Apparently there's someone traveling with you that was exposed to a specific form of the virus that one of our scientists had been working on when the apocalypse started."

  "Who?" I asked.

  "There're two possibilities. The military recovered notes from the scientist's lab that talked about a girl, around six years old at the time, who was injected with the serum. We found out that she was traveling with your group, but then someone lied to us and said that your group had disappeared. Turns out there's been a fight brewing between some of our people, and you got stuck in the middle of it. Until we find the person that might have the cure, you're not going anywhere."

  I knew exactly what she was talking about, but didn't lay my cards on the table just yet. However, I dropped my lecherous advances in favor of a new plan. It had been a last ditch effort on my part to try and woo this woman into releasing me. I knew there wasn't much of a chance of that happening. Now that she'd revealed that she was weary of war, I wanted to appeal to that side of her. "And what's the other possibility?"

  She grimaced and rolled her eyes. "It's a long story."

  "I've got nothing but time." I jiggled my restraints for emphasis.

  "I don't know all the details. All I know is that there was a boy who was given the serum as well. He'd been kidnapped from one of our facilities, and from what I've heard they think he was in Vineyard yesterday."

  "And what happens if you find these people?" I asked.

  "Then we might be able to cure the disease."

  "You haven't done that already?" I asked. "I thought you guys were already immune to the virus. Wasn't that the whole point of starting the apocalypse? Isn't that why you murdered six billion people?" I'd been trying to keep my hatred a secret from her, but it was impossible to hide for long.

  She noted my angry tone and her expression changed to one of authority. She reminded me of a teacher, ready to admonish her unruly class. "Look at that screen." She nodded in the opposite direction, to my left, where a flat screen television was attached to the wall. It displayed a picture of a forest and I casually shrugged before looking back at her.

  "What about it?"

  "We keep those screens running in all of our elite facilities," she said and walked around the end of my bed. "To remind us why we had to do what we did."

  "And why was that?" I asked, finding it hard to mask my sarcasm.

  "Because human civilization had crippled the world. Did you know that in the ten years before the apocalypse, eight of those years were the warmest in recorded history?"

  "Nope." I didn't care.

  "And there were species of fish dying out because the water all across the world was getting too hot?"

  "Okay."

  She continued, undeterred by my disinterest. "And despite what the media said, we were on the brink of a world war. The Middle East crisis was escalating and if someone didn't take action, hundreds of thousands of innocent people would've been killed in a nuclear war."

  "Wow," I mocked her. "Sounds like killing a few billion people would solve everything. Good choice."

  "Look, you can dismiss what we did all you want, and I understand that. It was never an easy decision, and we've been wrestling with it ever since. That's why we keep these damn televisions running all the time with pictures of the world healing itself, to remind us that we did the right thing. None of us felt good about what we had to do, but the fact of the matter is, if we hadn't done something, the world would've changed dramatically. And I'm not talkin
g about just installing more air conditioners; I'm talking about the end of all humanity. You probably remember all that talk, back before the apocalypse, about the polar ice caps melting. Right?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, it was true. And not only were they melting, but we were within a decade of causing what's known as the underwater current to stop. Do you know what would happen if that stopped?"

  I shook my head, tired of her reasoning. "I don't know. Surfing would've sucked."

  She chuckled and nodded. "To say the least. If the underwater current had been allowed to stop, then the oceans would've stagnated. If that happened, all life on this planet would've ended. Think about that. I understand how deplorable you think we are, but you're wrong." She walked up to the bed and I saw empathy and sadness in her eyes. "We saved all life on this planet by making the hardest decision in history. We ensured the survival of the entire human race. You can hate us for it, but we saved your life."

  We looked at one another for a moment, and I knew that she thought I understood her point. I feigned sympathy as I gazed up at her and said, with all the sarcasm I could manage, "You deserve a medal."

  "Fuck you," she said as she gave up and walked away.

  "Wait," I stopped her before she could leave. I shouldn't have offended her, and tried to reconcile. "I'm sorry, it's just a bit much to take in. I'm sure you can understand. How did you feel the first time they told you about the plan? When did you find out?"

  She appeared plaintive, tired, and ready to walk out on me. She reminded me of Jill.

  "You seem like a nice girl. I just want to understand how you got mixed up in all this."

  The doctor was hesitant to speak with me, but I knew she would. I've always had a way with women. My wife says I exude empathy, but I just know how to pay attention to a person's eyes. I grew up with a drug addict mother, and recognizing her emotions became a survival technique. When she would come home, staggering and dazed, I could always recognize her soul in the way she looked at my brother and me. The sorrow in her eyes was the only thing that kept me from hating her.