Dead Highways (Book 3): Discord

by Brown, Richard

  “I don’t think you ever told me his name.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “You might have. I probably just forgot.”

  “His name is Benjamin. Or just Ben.”

  “I like this one,” I said, handing Robinson a photo. In the photo, he and his son were on a thrill ride at a theme park, going down the big drop. “You look scared.”

  “I was scared.”

  “He doesn’t look scared,” I jokingly pointed out. “Just you.”

  “Nah, he loved those rides. They always made me sick. But I went on them for him.”

  “Is that a roller coaster?”

  “Oh God no, thankfully he wasn’t tall enough to ride the roller coasters. That was just a water ride.”

  “And I thought I was a sissy.”

  “You are,” Robinson said, laughing. “We all have our things.” It was nice to see him smile and open up about his son. He flipped through some more photos and handed me one. “This right here is probably my favorite of the two of us.”

  In the photo, Robinson was standing next to his police car in full uniform. His son sat on the hood next to him, feet dangling off, smiling big and goofy and proudly holding up a police badge.

  “Was that your badge?”

  “No, that was a special badge I made just for him. I took him with me to work that day. Nothing dangerous, of course. I just drove around and explained to him what I do. Even let him play with the lights. The others at the precinct really liked him. He was so curious. He asked so many questions. At the end of the day, I told him I’d make him an honorary police officer, and I gave him that badge.” Robinson’s eyes started to fill with tears. He quickly wiped them away. “He couldn’t wait to grow up and be just like me. That’s what he said.”

  I put my arm around Robinson. “You’re such an awesome dad.”

  “Thanks, Jimmy. I did my best.” I handed the photo back and Robinson stuffed it into his bag. “Think I’ll keep this one.”

  “Just one?”

  “Okay, maybe a few more.”

  Ted entered the room, back from his seventh trip to check the stairs.

  “Still holding up?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Naima still out like a light?”

  “She’s not sleeping. Apparently she’s just not feeling well.”

  “Really? Like how not feeling well?”

  Ted shrugged. “Aamod said she started to feel lightheaded.”

  Peaches sat up on the bed, suddenly interested. “I hope it’s not from…you know.”

  “I don’t know. Aamod is keeping a close eye on her. She’s probably just dehydrated. I told him to make sure she drinks some water.”

  “We’re getting low,” Robinson said.

  “Yeah, we’ll have to replenish our supplies soon if we can get out of here.”

  “Speaking of getting out of here…any thoughts on that?”

  “One,” Ted replied. Just by the look on his freckled face, I could tell the lightbulb inside his head was flickering on, off, on. “Come see.”

  Chapter 96

  Ted led us across the hall to the master bedroom. “So there are five windows upstairs,” he explained. “One a piece in each of the other two bedrooms, one in the bathroom, and two in here. The bathroom window is too small to get through, so obviously that won’t work. That leaves four.”

  “We can’t go out the windows though,” I said, interrupting. I looked out the window on the far side of the master bedroom. Outside, hundreds of zombies covered every inch of the backyard, packed in so tight they could barely move. “Unless we can think of a way to get them to leave.”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” Ted said. “But you’re right. We can’t just hop down there and expect to last more than a few seconds. Climbing onto the roof from any of the windows seems pretty much impossible as well. I checked. But…” The second window in the room was directly behind the head of the queen size bed. Ted put a knee on the mattress and pulled open the drapes, letting more light into the room. “Look out there and tell me what you see.”

  Robinson and I went to opposite sides of the bed, peeked over the headboard and out the window. This window gave a good view of the side yard and the neighbors red brick house. Not surprisingly, the undead also had this area of the exterior fully controlled, though the next-door neighbor’s yard had yet to be infiltrated. A five-foot high chain-link fence kept the dead things out.

  At first I didn’t notice what Ted wanted us to see, I was too focused on the infected, taking a good long look at each one as if I thought I’d eventually come upon someone I knew. Then I figured it out. Between the house and the chain-link fence separating the yards was a white aluminum shed. The shed was small and square, perhaps six by six, not large enough to store any serious lawn equipment, just the basic essentials. Like the house, the zombies below had the shed surrounded, but it was taller than the tallest of them by a solid foot.

  “You want us to jump out the window onto the shed?” I asked. “Then hop over the fence into the neighbor’s yard?”

  Robinson shook his head. “That’s…”

  “Risky, I know,” Ted said. “But I think that’s our best shot. Hell, maybe our only shot at getting out of here.” Robinson and I stepped away from the window so Peaches and Bowser could get a glance at our disturbing future. “I’m certainly open to other suggestions.”

  Oh, well in that case.

  Sure.

  Other suggestions.

  No problem.

  Let me think of something.

  Hold on.

  Give me a second.

  …

  Okay, I got nothing.

  And neither did anyone else in the group. We all stared at Ted, hoping that he’d say it was all a joke—haha, so unbelievably funny—and then tell us the real plan, one that didn’t involve jumping out of a two-story window onto a metal shed with a cylindrical shell roof surrounded by zombies.

  “Sorry, can’t do it,” Bowser said, stepping away from the window. “I’ll break my damn leg. My knee is already screwed up.”

  “And my arm,” Robinson added. “I could take the sling off, but I’m not sure that’ll help me much to break the fall. My shoulder has limited range of movement, and it still hurts like hell when I lift it.”

  “Actually, only one of us needs to jump,” Ted said. “But unfortunately you will have to use both arms for my plan to work. I’m sorry.”

  Ted invited Aamod and Naima into the room and then spelled out the plan, answering all questions afterward. As he had said, the plan was risky, not only for the jumper, but for everyone following behind. Something could go horribly wrong in a New Orleans minute. But there was also a chance the plan could work. And being the only shot we had, we all eventually agreed (after much bickering) to take it. Only one thing left we needed to figure out.

  “Who’s gonna jump?” Peaches asked.

  “I got someone in mind,” Bowser said, leering in Aamod’s direction.

  Thankfully, Aamod didn’t respond to the passive aggressive comment. He leaned against the door to the hall. Naima stayed close by his side, taking short swigs from a bottle of water. She had just returned from the bathroom, where she had vomited two or three times into the tub. Her puking concerned me, though she did appear a bit fresher upon her return. I was happy to be done with the bathroom for the time being. It had to smell terrible in there, given all it had endured over the last half hour.

  “So…Bowser, Robinson, and Naima are definitely out. That leaves four of us,” Ted said. “I’d like to go. It’s my idea. I’m just not sure I can make the jump to be perfectly honest.”

  “I know I can’t,” Aamod muttered.

  And just like that, we had it narrowed down to two people. Peaches and I both took a second look out the window at the shed and the hundreds of undead lining the side of the house.

  The worst part about the plan was the shed wasn’t even directly aligned with the window. So the jump
er wouldn’t just have to jump straight down, they’d have to jump out and four or five feet to the left. And if they didn’t make it, or if they happened to slide off the roof of the shed after landing, they’d quickly be ripped apart and consumed like a Thanksgiving Day turkey. And it was only April.

  “I might be able to make it,” Peaches finally said. “So hard to tell.”

  “I think I can too,” I said, the words rolling off my tongue slow and unsteady.

  I turned toward Peaches. I could tell by the look in her eyes she was thinking the same thing I was. One of us was about to possibly jump to our deaths, and as much as we didn’t want to do it, we didn’t want the other person to do it either. We were scared for each other. Yet, we both knew it had to be one of us.

  “You want to flip a coin or something?” Robinson said.

  “Let me go,” I said, not turning my attention from Peaches. “I’m not an athlete or anything, neither of us are, but I’m younger and these skinny legs gotta be good for something, right? Might be jumping.”

  She didn’t laugh or even crack a smile at my poor attempt to ease the uncomfortable tension between us. “But I don’t want you to go.”

  “I don’t want to go either, but one of us has to go. We can’t stay up here forever.”

  “We can wait longer though, can’t we?” she asked, addressing the rest of the room. “Maybe the infected will leave eventually.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t think they’re planning on leaving anytime soon, and we need supplies now. The longer we wait, the more tired we’ll become, and then the jump will be even harder.”

  “But why you? Why shouldn’t I go? I think I can make it, Jimmy.”

  “I know you can.” We held eye contact as I reached out and took her hand. She was on the verge of tears and I’d do anything to try to ease her mind, anything to comfort her, anything not to see her cry again. “You got to drive the cart, remember? Let me do this.”

  She took a long breath, pulled me in for a hug, and then whispered in my ear, “Okay. You do it.”

  “For us,” I whispered back.

  The sad silence of the room was broken by the sudden sound of thunder.

  “We better hurry,” Ted said.

  Chapter 97

  We collected all the towels, bed sheets, blankets and comforters we could find from the bedrooms and the bathroom. We even sorted through some of the clothing on the floor and in the closets, searching for any material that might be of use. Once we had a large enough pile to work with, Ted—master of knots, shooting guns, and other survival skills—began to tie them together end to end, tossing away the pieces he didn’t think were strong enough, almost all of it clothing.

  Although we had limited time, Ted insisted on tying all the knots. He said he knew what he was doing, had some special techniques. Of course, no one argued. Last thing we wanted was for the makeshift rope to fall apart because someone tied a knot incorrectly, or just a knot that wasn’t strong enough to hold under pressure.

  “Anything we can do to help?” Robinson asked.

  “Just make sure you have all your stuff ready to go. Guns loaded and whatnot,” Ted replied. “Oh, and see if you can find something heavy we can tie onto the end of the rope.”

  Robinson and Bowser briefly looked around the master bedroom, and then went off to search the other rooms.

  I was on the bed, sitting on my knees staring out the window, keeping an eye on the sky. The clouds around us had gone almost exclusively dark. Such a good sign of things to come, I thought. Thunder roared more often, but I had yet to see lightning. So that was good.

  “I assume you have a way to get through the bars or we wouldn’t even be doing this,” I said.

  “The bars have a release latch. They’ll swing out. But the glass we’ll have to break.”

  “What?”

  “The window. We’ll have to break it and clear the glass out of the frame. You’re gonna need as much room to jump as possible. In fact, you can start on that now if you want to save us some time. Find something to shatter the glass. I think there’s a baseball bat in the other room. Be careful with it though. Don’t wanna cut yourself.”

  I passed Aamod in the hall on my way to little Ben’s room. He was waiting outside the bathroom for Naima, who was once again puking up something awful into the tub. Robinson and Bowser paid me little attention as I came into the room and grabbed the little league baseball bat resting in the corner near the closet doors. I wasn’t back to the master bedroom before the rain started to come down. And I don’t mean sprinkling down, I mean pouring down in whipping, windblown sheets.

  “Well, no point in hurrying anymore,” Ted said as I entered, baseball bat in hand. “Have to wait until the rain stops.”

  I could barely see out the window now. The backyard was masked in a thick white mist. The hundreds of undead below were a fuzzy shadow of their former greatness. Flashes of lightning cracked open the sky every so often, startling me. Following close behind the lightning was a pounding, angry thunder.

  Robinson entered the master bedroom. “We can’t find shit,” he said. Bowser stepped in behind him. “Probably need something with a handle, right? So you can tie the end of the sheet to it.”

  “That’s the idea,” Ted replied. “Just needs some weight so we can toss it into the neighbor’s yard. If it’s too light, it won’t carry.” Ted stopped tying knots for a moment, looking lost in thought. “You know, I could probably just attach it to the straps on my bag. I think I’ll just do that.”

  “Okay, “Robinson said. “Sucks about the rain.”

  “It’ll complicate things, for sure.”

  Yeah, mostly for me, I thought.

  “You about done tying?”

  “Almost.”

  Ted completed the makeshift rope five minutes later, but the torrential rain wouldn’t even begin to let up for another hour. I spent most of the time staring out the window watching the zombies below get drenched. Any small hope that the rain would drive them away left with the dark clouds. We waited another thirty minutes for the light rain to stop completely.

  Ted piled the finished rope into a corner, and then with my help, moved the bed out of the way of the window.

  “Don’t want to get glass all over the bed,” he said. “You still want to break it?”

  “I didn’t want to break it before,” I said. “I just got the bat because you told me too.”

  “These windows are old. Shouldn’t take much force to break them.”

  “How much glass do we need to remove?”

  “All of it,” Ted said.

  “What about shooting it out?” Peaches asked.

  “Aamod’s shotgun would probably work best for that. But no need to waste any ammo if we don’t have to.”

  Bowser grabbed the baseball bat. “I’ll do it.”

  I let him take the bat without a fight and said, “Hey, it’s all yours.”

  We all backed up, gave him plenty of space. Bowser raised the bat behind his head and swung it at the window, hitting a home run on the first try. Dead center. The glass shattered into a half dozen pieces. He swung it again. The big guy had a serious look on his face, but I sensed he was having fun destroying the window. Maybe he was imagining the glass was Aamod’s face. After another swing, he began poking out the smaller pieces with the head of the bat.

  “You look like you’ve done this before,” Robinson said.

  “I have.” Bowser tossed the bat on the floor. “Just kidding.”

  With the window totally gone, a strong breeze, cooled and freshened by the afternoon rain, wafted into the room from the outside.

  Ted took out his bowie knife and started prying around the edges of the window frame, picking out the remaining pieces of glass that clung to the outer edges and corners. “Can’t have any shards left sticking out. We’re gonna be putting a lot of weight on the rope and even a small piece of glass could cut through the fabric.”

  Aamod stepped into
the doorway. Naima remained in the hall, staying comfortably in her father’s shadow. She seemed embarrassed by all the trips to the bathroom. “Are we about ready to go?”

  Ted nodded. “As ready as we’re gonna be,” he replied, plucking a final piece of glass out of the window frame. “But before we get the plan rolling, we might want to think about where we’re gonna go after we get out of here. So we’re all on the same page.”

  “I had a thought on that,” Robinson said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I want to go to Trissa’s mother’s house. Ben’s grandma’s place. It’s west of here.”

  “You think your ex could be there?” Bowser asked. “Or your son?”

  “I doubt it. But I’d like to check anyway because—”

  “You never know,” I finished.

  “Right. You never know. Trissa’s car isn’t outside, so she must have gone somewhere. Last conversation I had with her, when everything was starting to go to shit, she said she might go get her mom.” Robinson shrugged. “Maybe she did.”

  I liked Robinson best when he was positive and forward-thinking, the warm, calm center of the group, and so I hated the idea of giving him more false hope. But who was I to rain on his parade; we’d already had enough rain for one day. Not like we had anywhere better to go anyway. And what if his son was there? Stranger things had happened. If nothing else, perhaps grandma’s house could provide a clue as to his son’s last whereabouts. Robinson just needed closure, in whatever form he could get it.

  “Okay, everyone got their bags?” Ted asked, sweeping the broken glass on the hardwood floor out of the way with a towel. “Let’s get this show on the road. Jimmy, you ready?”

  No.

  There’s no getting ready for what I was about to do. It’s not like shaving before work, or packing a suitcase for a summer vacation. I was about to jump to my death. Where I was going, a pair of flip-flops were the last thing I’d need.

  In other words, I was really confident I’d survive the jump.