Deadlocked 5 Read Free Page B

Wyoming.
    There was a scuffling noise from outside. I slid forward and peered off the edge of the dilapidated house. The two-story home sat alongside a cleared road and I had been staying in it for four days, far longer than I usually camped. The area showed signs of frequent travel. Abandoned cars had been pushed off the road outside of this house, a sign that humans were using it to traverse the flat land of Wyoming's eastern plains. This wasn't uncommon, as many of the roads had been cleared over the past two decades, but this one was cared for. Most of the roads that crisscrossed the country had succumbed to the elements, cracking and shifting until they were nearly impossible to drive over in anything but the sturdiest of vehicles, but this one was repaired. Someone used sand to fill in the potholes and had cut down trees that were encroaching on the road to prevent their roots from breaking apart the concrete. This wasn't simply a road used for temporary passage; this was a trade route.
    The north wall of the house I was camped in had been torn off, probably by a tornado or perhaps just from termites. The façade lay in the weeds below, broken into several pieces with vegetation growing through the cracks. Most squatters would avoid a structure in this condition, but as the years went by there were fewer and fewer homes that hadn’t fallen apart in some way or another, and the roof on this one was still sound. It was late summer and cold weather wasn't an issue. The breeze from the missing wall was a luxury rather than a burden.
    I stayed on my belly as I moved to the edge overlooking the yard that sat between the house and the cleared road. The sound I'd heard could've been caused by a myriad of creatures, most of which I'd eat given the chance, but there was always the possibility it was something that would eat me too.
    I'd heard moaning from somewhere in the neighborhood a couple days ago. It was the unmistakable sound of zombies, crying out in hunger as they wandered the streets. Zombies had mutated since the start of the apocalypse. Originally the virus killed its host, then reanimated it and turned the corpse into a ravenous monster intent on devouring human flesh in a seemingly chaotic, cannibalistic fervor. Corpses that were infected early on were ravaged by the bacteria in their bodies, ballooning up with gas until their stomachs burst and they fell to the ground, useless masses of flesh that withered in the sun. The disease actually seemed to hasten their decay, and most of the zombies that were created at the outset were dead in under a week. Then the mutants arrived, and with them came the assurance that humanity's time had come to an end.
    Mutated zombies are immune to bacterial growth, and live on for years. While the original virus drove the creatures to attack only humans, the new mutated ones survived on both human and animal flesh, giving them the opportunity to feed much more readily. Now, after the virus had thrived for two decades, it was only a matter of time before it mutated further and allowed for transmission into animal corpses. Once that happened there would be no chance of survival.
    I stared out across the yard in search of what made the sound. I'd done my best to secure the home by destroying the staircase and stringing cans near the entrances to alert me to someone's approach, so I wasn't worried about my safety. However, if a pack of dogs had caught my scent and tracked me here, they would circle the home for as long as it took, waiting for me to wander out so they could attack. Easy meals were hard to come by these days.
    Man's best friend had become one of his worst enemies after the apocalypse. It took less than a month for house pets to begin roaming the streets in packs, and within the first year, dogs had overtaken massive areas. There were no more shih tzus, dachshunds, or other small breeds anymore, all of them were quickly devoured by their larger brethren. Now, the dogs that