Deadlocked 5

DEADLOCKED 5

By A. R. Wise

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Aaron Wise

Cover Art by A.R. Wise

Original photo by mouthofmaggotstock

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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PROLOGUE - STEPPING INTO A NEW WORLD

She stared at the growing pool of blood under her friend's head. The dead girl's eyes were open and there was a small hole in the center of her forehead. Paris Dawn had been shot in the head.

You idiot, said a guard that rushed into the hallway where the murder had occurred.

The other guard, the one that killed Paris, pointed his monstrous weapon, a black metal object with a handle that the guard held while his finger was curled around a trigger. She was going to attack me.

Echo Dawn began to hyperventilate as she stared at her friend's body. Paris's blonde hair was awash with brilliant red blood and her mouth opened as her jaw muscles relaxed.

She's all of ninety pounds, asshole, said the guard at the door. He carried a weapon similar to the one used to kill Paris. The men were dressed the same, in black jumpsuits with thick pads covering various spots. They had masks with grey visors that were raised and revealed their ugly faces. They were pock marked and scarred; much uglier than Echo ever imagined a man would be, something she'd fantasized about during the eighteen years she'd spent in the all-girls Facility. She could smell these men's bodies beneath their suits, and the stench turned her stomach. Before the murder she had been joking with Paris that if this is what men looked like, she didn't want to see the Surface. That was just minutes before Paris tried to reach out to the man and take his helmet off to get a better look. The man killed her for her transgression and Echo was still trembling in shock.

The weapon had erupted with a thunderous noise, which still rang in Echo's ears, just as a flash of light came from the end that he'd pointed at Paris. Echo glanced down at her friend, and then back at the hellish weapon the man had used.

He shook his head and spit on Paris. I've seen these fucking bitches go apeshit before. I ain't taking no risk, Dog.

They're supposed to get an injection, not a bullet.

I'm telling you, the cunt tried to step up on me. He pointed his gun down at her and mimed his murder for his friend. She got what she deserved.

Whatever. The second guard seemed anxious to be done with the conversation. I don't have time for this shit. Call Med and get them in here so they can salvage what they can from her. I've got to get to Base Station.

What's the rush?

You didn't hear?

The murderer shook his head as Echo continued to stare at his weapon. Hear what?

There're a bunch of Undying down by the purification intakes. We're headed out there to clear them out before they get into the Facility.

The murderer groaned in disappointment. For real? I get bitch detail for the first time and we finally get some action on the outside? That's bullshit. Last time I got to plug a Grey was when I was spying on the traders. That was months ago.

The second guard laughed and started to head off in the opposite direction. That's not my fault, brother. You've just got bad luck I guess.

Fuck you.

The second guard raised his middle finger as he ran down the stark grey corridor, his black boots clanked on the metal floor beneath him as he went. The murderer cursed and used his left hand to rub his eyes in frustration. Echo studied his weapon as it dangled at his side. He saw her gaze and was amused by her interest.

What? You like my rifle? Ain't never seen one of these before, have you?

No. Her voice was meek and squeaked out as if her throat tried to keep her silent.

You Dawns are smoking hot, but dumb as rocks. He shook his head and laughed as he stared at Echo. She didn't understand his reference to her temperature. It was quite cool in the tunnels outside of the Facility. You saw what I did to your friend, so just keep quiet and do what I say or I'll bust a round up in your grill too. Got it?

She shook her head. I don't understand.

He rolled his eyes and grumbled. Don't do nothing stupid and I won't use my rifle to shoot you in the head like I did your friend. He spoke slowly and emphasized each word as if speaking to a child.

You just have to point it at somebody and pull the trigger to kill them?

He snickered and smiled as he nodded. Yeah, pretty much.

She looked down the corridor toward the guard that had been talking to them. He was far away now, on his way to the surface.

Stay quiet while I call one of the Meds.

She nodded and said, Okay.

He released his rifle and let it hang at his side, connected to his shoulder by a long strap. He pulled a black box with an antenna off of his belt and fiddled with the knobs before an awful crackling noise escaped from it. He clicked a button, which silenced the noise, and spoke into it. As he did, Echo saw a knife in a sheath on his belt. She was familiar with knives from using them to cut food in the Facility before they were restricted. One of the Dawns had used her steak knife to kill herself. She'd plunged the knife into her throat and died, quickly and quietly.

I need a Med in service bay ten, near the Facility elevator. We've got one dead ass bitch here. One of the Dawns. Over.

He released the button and a couple seconds later a new, feminine voice came from it. Copy that. What happened? Over. He cringed at the sound of her voice, as if he hadn't expected a woman to hear his 'dead ass bitch' comment.

Echo moved to the left, pretending to avoid the growing pool of her friend's blood. She stared at the strap that held the knife in place on the murderer's belt. It had a single button that held the loop over the knife's hilt.

The murderer clicked the button on his radio before speaking. She attacked me. I did what I had to…

Echo’s movements were precise as she undid the button on the strap with one hand and jerked the knife free with the other. The guard dropped his radio and it bounced off the floor as he desperately tried to reach for his rifle. He almost spoke before she jammed the long knife into him. The blade pushed up through the lower half of his jaw and into his mouth. He staggered back and Echo lost her grip on the blade as he fell away from her.

The murderer grabbed the hilt and tried to pull the blade free, but only managed to jerk his mouth agape as the serrated edge sawed into his wound. Blood gushed out over his chin and his severed tongue flopped to the floor. He stared at it and gurgled in agony. His pained, guttural cry turned to anger as he glared at Echo while still pulling at the knife.

She knew she had to act before he reached for his rifle. Echo lunged and pushed at the knife. Her attack knocked him back and his helmet slammed against the wall. The blade plunged deeper into him and he went limp almost immediately. She backed away and watched him slump to the floor as his radio chattered.

We're sending two Meds to your position now. In the meantime, do what you can to stop the bleeding. Do you understand? Over.

Echo panted as she watched the blood of the murderer and his victim mix on the cold metal floor. She was overcome with fear, anger, and uncertainty as she stared at the dead man.

A red light flashed above her and broke the daze she'd fallen into. Flashing lights always signaled something important in the Facility where she'd lived for the past eighteen years, and she guessed that it meant something similar here. Panic seized her, but she steadied her breath and assessed the situation.

The rifle that the guard had used scared her, but she needed to take it. She also considered pulling the knife out of his neck, but he was probably much stronger than she was and he'd had trouble getting the blade out, so she decided to leave it behind. It was a gruesome task to slide the rifle strap over his corpse to steal the weapon, but she didn't have time to waste. The radio had said two people called Meds were on their way, and she either needed to kill or evade them. She preferred evasion, having found that murder was more grisly than she'd imagined.

Echo studied the terrifying weapon that the guard had used to kill Paris and was surprised at its heft. She lifted it and pointed down the hall before pulling the trigger to make sure she knew how to use it. The weapon blared as it had before and kicked back with shocking force. She lost her grip and staggered as the weapon flung out behind her, the strap swinging around her shoulder.

The rifle's explosive noise caused her ears to ring even worse this time and she pressed the palms of her hands against the sides of her head in shocked pain. She had to shake off the disorientation before the Meds showed up. Echo glanced down at Paris for the last time and apologized to her for no good reason other than as a final goodbye.

She ran in the direction the other guard went, towards what she hoped would be an exit to the surface. He'd mentioned something about clearing out the Greys, but she didn't know what that meant and any conjecture on her part would lead to wild theories since she knew nothing of the outside world or the men that populated it.

Echo drew close to a sharp turn in the hall and stopped before reaching the corner. She pressed herself against the wall and moved quietly along until she was flush with the corner and could peer around it.

Crack it, said a guard standing beside a man in a different outfit. The guard looked similar to the one Echo had killed, but the person he stood beside appeared much different. He was wearing a blue jumpsuit instead of the black armor the guards wore, and he carried a rectangular, red metal box instead of a rifle.

His clothes gave Echo a better view of what a man's body looked like. The guards wore thick, bulky equipment that made it seem like they were beastly creatures. She could see by the shape of the man in blue that men weren't much different from women when they weren't wearing armored suits. The Administrators had shown the girls in the Facility pictures of men, but none of the Dawns had ever seen one in real life.

Crack it? asked the man in blue incredulously. The fucking blade's still spinning. He motioned towards a vent on the wall that was vibrating from what Echo assumed was a fan inside.

So? asked the guard.

So? You know, there're two reasons they put these blades here, right?

No.

The man in blue snickered and shook his head as if amused by the guard's ignorance. Reason number one is to circulate air, but reason number two is so that if any fucking creatures slip into the shafts, they'll get chopped up before getting inside.

Bullshit. If that were true then they wouldn't have us running out to clear the intakes.

The man in blue set his box down and fished through it for a large tool that looked almost like a rifle but was much shorter and instead of a long barrel it had a sharp point. He pointed it at the wall and pulled the trigger, causing his weapon to come alive with noise and a vibration that Echo could feel in the wall at her back. She then understood he wasn't holding a weapon, but some sort of mechanical tool.

They just don't want the fuckers gumming up the works. You ever had to clean up a mess of body parts?

More than my fair share.

Now imagine all those nasty bits spinning around inside a unit. He spun the tool in a circle in front of the guard to prove a point. Pretty fucking nasty.

Then why didn't they put a bunch of fans inside the shaft too?

They did, said the man in blue. But if enough of the Undying get in there, they'll jam up the blades with their bits and pieces until the motor seizes up.

Then they should put up bars or gates or some shit in there so we don't have to worry about this kind of thing. I swear to God, man, when I got assigned Facility duty, I figured you guys were set up better than this.

The man in blue stared into the vent as the vibration from the spinning fan began to slow down. You know what happens when you put up a grate in a vent shaft? He didn't wait for the guard to answer before continuing. You get a shit ton of bloody bodies all piled up against it. This far underground, we can't risk having any of the shafts clog up. The gas down here will build up too quickly. Besides, this place was originally built as an airport storage area, but then got buried. That was about forty years ago. The only up-to-date floor in this whole place is down there, he pointed at the floor, where they keep the Dawns.

Fine, whatever. Just hurry up and get the fucking grate open.

Turn on the light on that thing. The man pointed at the guard's rifle and then backed away from the grate. I turned off the motor, so the blade is slowing down. Look in there and see if anything's waiting for us. The Dock said this tube's interior fans all failed, which means there could be some zombies in there, all hacked up and crawling around. I can't see shit in there. It's too dark.

The guard clicked a switch on the side of his weapon and a bright beam of light shot out from the front, just under the barrel. Echo looked at the rifle she'd stolen from the dead guard to see if it had something similar and found that it did.

See anything?

The guard did his best to gaze past the grate and down the large shaft, but he couldn't get a good view. He shrugged and said, I can't see shit.

The other man sighed and shook his head before begrudgingly stepping forward to remove the bolts that held the large metal grate in place. I'll swing it open, but you're going in first. If I hear a single fucking moan, I'm closing this thing up and turning the fan back on. He seemed gleeful while threatening to abandon the guard.

He cracked the grate and started to pull it back. When he did, his rotation caused him to stare down the hall in Echo's direction. What the fuck? he muttered when he saw her.

The guard turned to look as Echo ducked back around the corner. Her heart raced as they called out for her to show herself. They started to scream and she debated turning and running the other way, but suspected that if she did, she would just run into the Meds that had been sent to deal with Paris's body. If that happened, then she would be caught between them and the other men that had just seen her. If she had to kill someone, she wanted to kill as few people as possible.

I'm scared, she said.

There's nothing to be scared of, sweetheart, said the guard. His voice was louder than before and Echo knew, without looking, that he had moved closer to the corner where she hid.

In a moment, he would be beside her. It was now or never.

Echo got on her knees and then swung the rifle around the corner first. She braced the back end of the weapon against her shoulder, now realizing her mistake from the first time she fired it, and pulled the trigger with deadly accuracy. The rifle continuously fired as she held the trigger down and devastated the men around the corner.

The weapon's shots ripped through the shins, calves, and kneecaps of the two men in a macabre display of crimson as chunks of flesh flew through the air behind them. The guard was close enough to have taken the brunt of the attack, but the man in blue soon died as well.

After the assault, she pulled the trigger a few more times to make sure they were dead. The guard's head exploded into a mire of bone and brains and the force of her final shots caused his body to flop backward as blood poured out of him.

Echo was breathing heavy as she stepped over their bodies and did her best not to cry as her foot splashed down in the muck. She was terrified and sickened by the violence, but her entire world had been shattered in the past ten minutes and her sanity threatened to leave her completely. If only she could reach the surface, maybe then…

Freeze!

She looked up and saw another guard far down the corridor. Her weapon's cacophonous blaring must've alerted him. He wasted no time in pointing his rifle in her direction and she leapt to the right, behind the protection of the grate that the man in blue had swung open.

Put the gun down and step out where I can see you, said the guard.

She thought about getting to her knees and sneaking around the side of the grate to take him by surprise like she had the last men, but the grate between them provided him an outline of her, which would give away her subterfuge.

There were other hurried footsteps in the distance from behind her, back where she'd come from, and her heart raced as she was caught between two advancing groups. She could see the guard through the grate, walking slow and steady with his rifle pointed at her.

To her right was a fan blade, nearly the size of her, and a dark tunnel beyond. She had no other choice, and slipped past the fan as she fumbled with the switch on the side of the weapon that turned on the flashlight.

The ventilation tunnel was small and Echo had to crouch as she moved deeper in. The shaft stopped at a 'T' section and she chose to turn left just as the guard reached the opening behind her and shined his light inside. He took a shot and the gunfire reverberated through the tight corridor as Echo involuntarily screamed out in fear.

She darted through the tunnel, her rifle's flashlight beam bobbing wildly in front of her. She turned and fired the weapon toward where she feared the guard would soon be. Hopefully the random blast would prevent him from chasing her.

Her gunfire rattled her senses and the ringing in her ears changed from an obnoxious hum to a deafening roar. Her own footsteps on the metal floor were silent behind the severe ringing.

She fired again as she moved backward, and then again, continuing a series of short bursts to scare the guard into hiding. Her hearing was devastated and the ringing in her ears became so painful that she couldn't help but cry and cringe after every shot.

Then the rifle stopped working. She pulled the trigger over and over, but the tumultuous explosions had stopped. The rifle no longer worked, and she had no idea why.

Echo turned and prepared to run, desperate to stay alive, but she stopped dead in her tracks as her rifle's beam illuminated the corridor beyond. She'd been moving backward for so long that the gruesome contents of the ventilation shaft were a shock when she turned around and saw them.

There were men in there with her. The first was almost at her feet, and his tortured limbs caused her to quiver in terror. He was on his belly and pulled himself forward with what used to be his arms but were now just shattered sticks of flesh and splintered bone. His skin was devoid of pink luster and his wounds didn't bleed red, but instead seeped a sticky black fluid. He had sunken cheeks and wrinkled skin that seemed to have shrunk, revealing his yellow and black teeth in a demonic visage. His eyes were similarly exposed, bulbous and protruding from his face as he stared up at her, his mouth opening and closing as if desperate for food or water. The creature had no legs and what trailed behind him instead were strands of rotted intestine that slid through his black trail of blood like a limp tail. He snapped his jaws at her as he drew closer.

Beyond the eviscerated creature were more of the living dead, all of them with tremendous wounds that would've killed a normal man. They reached out to her as they staggered forward and clawed at the space between, as if hoping to hasten their advance any way they could.

Echo Dawn turned away