Slow Burn: Bleed, Book 6 (14 page)

Downstairs in the living room, Dalhover took the pistol that I’d been holding, removed the magazine, checked that the chamber was clear, and handed the weapon to Steve, who was sitting in a big leather chair at one end of the coffee table. Opposite him, in a matching chair, Angie fumed and pretty much kept quiet. On the couch between them, three mute Slow Burns sat with blank expressions. One was a teenage girl. Another was in her mid-thirties. The third was a young man about my age. They were all some version of Russell, harmless and near useless.

Dalhover put the magazine on the mantle behind where Murphy, he, and I were standing. He said, “We’re going to leave. We’re not going to take your weapons or rob you of your food. If you could do me the favor of telling me if there are any houses left bordering the cove that you haven’t ransacked yet, I’d appreciate it.”

Murphy removed the magazine from the pistol he had and laid it on the mantle.

“You’re just going to leave us?” Angie snapped.

Nobody paid her any attention.

Steve said, “We’ve hit every house that borders the cove except that big one out on the point.” He pointed. We all three looked, but of course, saw nothing but plywood where the sliding glass doors used to be.

He said, “It’s that big Mediterranean house with all the statues and terraces and stuff.”

“Why not there?” Dalhover asked.

“It’s full of them.”

“Whites?” I asked.

“Yes,” Steve nodded. “Too many to worry about dealing with.”

I asked, “Are they trapped inside or do they live there?”

“I think they’re trapped inside. They don’t ever come out.”

Dalhover asked, “Besides climbing out a window, is there a door on the first floor that we can leave through?”

Steve shook his head. “No, we come and go the same way Zed came in. You guys are really just going to leave?”

Making a show of starting to go, Murphy said, “Man, let’s get out of here. I’m already tired of this shit.”

“Good, go,” Angie told us.

“Wait,” Steve said, standing half way up before Dalhover motioned for him to sit back down. “Do you guys know anything about what’s going on? You’re the first people we’ve seen in—”

“What about those assholes in that big boat?” Angie asked, reminding Steve with all the spite she could squeeze into her tone.

“We’re those assholes,” I told her. Turning to Steve, I said, “There’s a pretty good group of people out on Monk’s Island, but they don’t take kindly to folks like us, if you know what I mean. So I’d steer clear of them if I were you, Steve. Angie, you might want to go out for a visit.”

Steve ignored my jab at Angie and asked me, “Are there a lot like us?”

“No,” I said. “We haven’t met many.”

Murphy laughed. “More like none, unless you count crazy-ass Nico.”

“We’ve come across all kinds, but none that are as normal as we are,” I said.

“Is the…what about the government, the Army?” asked Steve.

I shrugged.

Steve looked at Dalhover.

He shook his head and shrugged.

“What does that mean?” asked Steve.

“We’re not aware of anything or anybody getting through this. Last I heard, New Zealand was doing okay because they quarantined early. But who knows? They might be overrun with Whites by now.”

“I’m not asking about rumors from the other side of the planet.” Steve looked at each of us. “Is it anarchy out there now? No government? No Army? No civilization? Is no one coming in to pick up the pieces?”

I passed along the information I’d heard from Gretchen and Paul on our abbreviated night in the houseboat, and then asked, “What’s the last thing you heard?”

Angie sat up in her chair and started to say something, but convinced herself to be quiet and slumped back down.

I was getting more and more convinced that she was going to become a problem for Steve. “Do you guys have a thermometer?”

“No. Why?” asked Steve.

I said, “You might want to scavenge one when you’re out. Check each other. When your temperature gets too high, you kind of lose it.”

“And turn into one of them?” Steve asked.

I cut my eyes in the direction of Angie and nodded.

Dalhover asked Steve, “When was the last time you talked to anyone?”

“Before the power went out,” he answered.

“Have you guys been here the whole time?” Dalhover asked next.

Steve nodded and pointed at the young girl on the couch. “I found her wandering when I was scavenging a couple miles from here, trying to keep hidden from the crazy ones. I figured early on that the power was going out, so I figured I’d find a place by the lake.”

“This place?” I asked.

“Yes, there was a guy here already, Manny. He was like us—what’d you call it—a Slow Burn. He took us in and we started scavenging what we could when there wasn’t any of them around.”

“What happened to Manny?” I asked. “He’s not here.”

“Shot. He was down by the shore getting water from the lake one morning when some guys came by in a ski boat. He called and waved them over. I don’t know if they couldn’t hear him over the sound of the engine or what. When they got close, they shot him, like five or six times. Like after he fell they were just being mean or something.”

“Did they come ashore after that?” I asked. “Did they find your house?”

Steve shook his head while his eyes fixed on some distant spot. He was still having trouble with Manny’s death at the hands of the guys in the boat. “No. The infected heard the shots and came running out of the trees from every direction. When the guys in the boat saw the infected coming, they shot a few more times and left. I don’t know why they shot Manny. They just shot and laughed and shot some more. I think they were just shooting because he had pale skin, and that was their idea of fun.”

Disturbing. I couldn’t help but glance down at my own white skin. I wondered if it was the guys in Jay’s bunch that did it.

“And those were the last people you saw, before us?”

“Yes.” Steve pointed at Angie and the others. “I took each of them in when I came across them.”

“How’d you know they weren’t like the Whites?” I asked. That was a point I needed to learn about. Ever since killing that girl outside the walls at Sarah Mansfield’s house, I wondered, when I killed a White, whether I was actually murdering a Slow Burn.

“They didn’t behave like the others. They seemed different. I took a chance that they were like me.”

His process seemed like guessing to me. I said, “Be careful with that, dude.”

By the time we left, we were getting along with Steve fairly well. Even Angie toned down her anger and was tolerable. We worked out a trade: Steve fed us and gave Dalhover enough food to feed the others in the boathouse for a couple of meals. In trade for that and two more days of food that would come when we fulfilled our end of the bargain, we’d give Steve an M4 from our stash, along with a thousand rounds of ammunition. Since we had a dozen weapons and thousands upon thousands of rounds back in the Humvee that Murphy and I had acquired from the dead snipers, it seemed like a reasonable trade.

After we ate, Murphy and I escorted Dalhover down to the cove, saw that he got into the boat with no problems, and said our goodbyes. He had his tasks, we had ours. Murphy and I were back on foot and headed toward the dam. We crossed between the houses, got to the road, and started to follow it away from the lake.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Late,” Murphy told me.

“Dude, you’ve got that big super-fly watch. Just tell me.”

“Two a.m.” he said.

I looked at the trees on both sides of the road. I listened. “I’m thinking it’s a two- or three-mile walk to get to the dam.”

“Or four or five,” Murphy grunted.

“Maybe. When did you turn pessimist?”

“Hanging with you,” he said, without any humor.

I pointed through the trees to our left. “That group of naked bald ones that had Rachel trapped in the cove was off that way somewhere.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“They were rowdy because they had Rachel and the others trapped in that marina.”

Murphy rolled his eyes. “It was like two days ago. I remember. I’m just saying, I don’t hear anything now. Either they’re all napping in the trees around here, or they aren’t hassling anyone right now.”

“Dude, what’s up your ass?”

Murphy didn’t say anything. He just kept walking.

After a while, I said, “I think we’ll probably make better time if we just stay on the road. What do you think?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I asked, “Are you in a bad mood about something that I don’t know about?”

Murphy ignored my comment. “If we stay on the road, it’ll be easier to see where we’re going, and it’ll be easier for Whites to see us. If we go through the woods, we’ll make more noise, and we’ll be easier to hear. There are pros and cons both ways. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Either we’ll run into Whites or we won’t. You never know where those dudes are gonna turn up, except it’ll be exactly where you don’t want them.”

I nodded. “You’re right about that.”

We walked by moonlight for several silent hours, watching the dark shadows in the trees and by the houses. We didn’t hear or see a single White. We didn’t see evidence that anything was still alive. We saw broken windows and abandoned cars. We passed ransacked houses, businesses with furnishings on the lawns, desks and chairs upside down in parking lots. Trash bins were spilled. Empty boxes tumbled with the breeze. The smell of rot floated on the wind. It felt like we were walking across the corpse of the world, and the deadness wore on me more and more every time I stepped over the bones of someone not as lucky as myself.

We reached a tall hill just south of the river with a view of Mansfield Dam’s tall face just off to our left, and a view of the river snaking off to the southeast, forming the upstream end of Lake Austin. We sat down and rested, with only another hour of darkness left to keep us hidden.

After taking a long drink from my water bottle, I said, “I wonder if, when the naked ones come through an area, they pick up all of the Whites and make them tag along.”

“Or kill them and eat them.”

“Yeah, I suppose that could be true. I wonder if that’s why some parts of town seem to be free of them or anything else.”

Murphy stood up and stretched. “So maybe instead of going out to hunt them, you need to be thinking about letting them kill each other off, like that dude said they would. Maybe you should just let them do their business without your help.”

“Is that what they did for you when they climbed all over the riverboat and—” The look on Murphy’s face told me I’d said enough.

He put his water bottle in his bag, very pointedly not saying a word to me, and started hiking down the slope. We weren’t going to cross over the dam as we’d done on the first night. Neither were we going to cross the tall 620 bridge behind the dam. That would leave us too exposed for too long. We were going down the steep mountain all the way to the old concrete bridge that stood just a few feet above the river’s surface below. We’d cross that. On the other side was the crumbled boat ramp where we’d tied our ski boat to an old piling.

We didn’t speak as we made our way down the steep slope between the trees, slipping on the loose limestone enough times to scrape our elbows and knees. Murphy even banged his head once, but kept pounding out a brisk pace as though nothing had happened.

It wasn’t until we were crossing the low bridge with our boat in sight that I said, “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“You’re bleeding on the back of your head,” I said.

Murphy reached up, touched the wound, and looked at his hand. “I know.”

“You’re probably going to need stitches.”

“I know.”

“This isn’t like you,” I said. “Stop saying ‘I know’.”

We were halfway across the bridge, as visible as we could possibly be, and Murphy turned toward me and stopped.

“I said I was sorry,” I told him.

“Sometimes you say shit and you don’t stop to think how it affects other people.”

“I’m sorry about the riverboat thing. I know you had a hard time with it.”

“I did. I need to move forward. I don’t need you blindsiding me with your snarky shit little comments just so you can be right about some stupid ass thing that nobody cares about. You got me?” Murphy turned and stomped off.

I didn’t follow; I’m not sure if I was being obstinate and getting myself ready for an argument, or whether I was concerned enough that I needed to get Murphy to talk about what was going on in that big white head of his.

After a dozen steps, Murphy spun and said, “You gonna stand there, or are you just being a dick?”

“Is that it?” I asked. “Is it me who’s being the dick here?”

Stomping again, Murphy came up to me, raised his fist, and though I saw it coming from ten steps away, I didn’t do anything to avoid it. He punched me in the face so hard that I didn’t even feel it.

When I opened my eyes, all I saw were stars, not the little ones that float in front of your eyes after you’ve been bonked in the head, but actual stars in the night sky. I was lying on my back on the bridge. As I sat up, I saw Murphy sitting on the edge of the bridge where a railing would have been on a modern bridge; I sniffled and realized that my nose was bleeding.

I touched my face and saw the blood on my hand. I spit it out of my mouth. Oddly, I wasn’t angry. In years past, I’d have been up already, punching, kicking, and cussing. That was kind of my thing, fighting for no good reason at all. I spit more blood out of my mouth, sniffled up a bit more, and stood. I was a little wobbly, but that was passing.

Murphy was a good dozen paces down the bridge, frowning at the water flowing below his feet as though the rest of the world had ceased to be a problem. When I walked up and got close, he said, “If you need to hit me back, you go ahead and do what you need to do. I won’t punch you again.”

Instead, I laughed and sat down beside him. I spit out another gob of clotting blood. “You know, you told me about a hundred times you were gonna punch me in the face. I thought you were joking.”

With sad eyes, Murphy smiled and looked at me. “That’s true. But I
was
kidding. I’m sorry ‘bout that, man.”

“What are friends for?”

“Not for that.”

I shrugged. “Maybe sometimes. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

“This shit is just hard sometimes.”

“What do you mean?”

Murphy rubbed his big hands over his face. “Everything.”

“Yeah?”

The water below our dangling feet was gurgling, and the sound seemed to have Murphy’s full attention. “Where do I start?”

“Anywhere. Mandi.” I shrugged. “You’re not past that yet.”

“That’s part of it. No, I’m not past it. I—” Murphy bit back his emotions.

I gave him a few minutes.

When he spoke again, he said, “It’s like I traded Mandi for Rachel. I know one has nothing to do with the other, but it feels like that, like I pissed God off so much about something that now he doesn’t want me to be all the way happy, just kinda part of the way there.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“No, I don’t.” Murphy exhaled a long breath, as though blowing out all the stale air trapped in his lungs might take his troubles with it. “All the killing is wearing on me.”

“The infected, you mean?” I asked.

“It doesn’t bother you?” Murphy asked.

“Sometimes. Less now than before.”

“I kinda figured you were some kind of black-hearted zombie killer and didn’t care much about them.”

“You know that’s not true,” I said.

Murphy shrugged and looked around for a bit. “It doesn’t bother me that much when we’re in the shit, you know, and they’re coming at us, and it’s us or them. But sometimes, it’s kind of a rush. I’m getting addicted to the excitement, I think.”

I nodded. I knew all about that.

“So when you drag me off to go do some crazy shit, part of me wants to say ‘fuck you’. Part of me doesn’t want any part of the killin’. ‘Cause you know, every time we head out, somebody’s gonna get killed.”

“Seems like that sometimes.” And it did.

“Part of me wants to go out and get that rush,” said Murphy. “It’s addicting. But part of me wants to go out and just kill those fuckers because I’ve got this anger ‘bout what happened and all, and I just want to kill as many of ‘em as I can.”

I was definitely with Murphy on that one.

He said, “Like that day when we were up there on the ridge testing out those suppressors, we didn’t need to stay out there and kill all of those Whites. They used to be people, just like us. But once I started shooting, I wanted to kill every single one of them. I wanted more of them to come running up the block.”

“I don’t think that’s unnatural,” I said. “Given the circumstances, I think that’s normal.”

“But that’s what you don’t get.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You don’t have a problem being a black-hearted killer. You’re different.” Murphy looked over at me, and his eyes looked sadder than when he started. “It’s like there’s some black hole in you that’s full of crazy shit, and it doesn’t matter how many dead Whites you throw in there. It’ll never be enough. So when you want to go off on a killing rampage, I think you should. It might be the only thing that ever fills all that up. It might be the only way you’re ever going to get past whatever all that anger shit is that you’re carrying around.”

Murphy’s guesses were hitting so close to home that I couldn’t come up with a smart aleck response to deflect the conversation.

“But I can’t do that,” he said. “I mean, I’ll go. I’ll watch your back. I’ll go all the way down into your black hole with you, if that’s what you want. But for me, killing those three dumb-asses behind that 7-Eleven was enough for me. I got all of my hate out of my system then. I figured that out. I told you that. But now, it’s like every time I kill a White, especially now, I know I’m not doing it to survive. I’m doing it ‘cause I hate ‘em. Every time, it’s like I’m digging my own black hole in my soul, and when it gets deep enough, I’m gonna fall in and I’m never gonna come out again.”

Murphy was done. I was left without anything to say.

Shit.

After a while, as we realized neither of us had any more to say, we got up. We walked through the trees over to the old boat ramp. We waded through the water in silence, got into the boat, untied it, and headed downriver.