Slow Burn: Bleed, Book 6 (4 page)

I wasted zero time in getting my M4 back from Rachel, irritating her significantly, as her first priority once the other three were in the boat was getting her butt planted in the seat at the helm. As each of the three caught their breaths and realized just how completely virus-white Murphy and I each were, the tension shot up rapidly.

Murphy, always great at reading fucked-up situations, had positioned himself in the bow of the boat from where he could see all of us at the same time. He had his rifle pointed down at the deck, but both hands were still on it. It was clear that it would take only a fraction of a second to bring it back to a firing position.

In the seat amidships next to Rachel, one of her buddies sat himself down, glancing alternately at me and then at Murphy, while Rachel engaged the propeller and started the boat moving toward the end of the cove. Freitag, looking like somebody had just flushed her pet goldfish, dropped onto a bench seat across the stern next to the other guy who was busying himself with suspicious sideways glances at me.

I was standing on the deck in the center of the boat, suddenly trying to decide which of the two guys we’d just rescued was a bigger threat. That’s to say that I wasn’t certain that either of them was, but I was getting a bad feeling.

Accelerating the boat, Rachel glanced at each of her friends. “You guys okay?”

Nods only. No verbal response.

Bad sign.

I shot Murphy a quick look to emphasize my suspicion. He winked. He knew. His voice boomed, “Here’s the deal, motherfuckers. Me and my boy Zed just saved your dumb asses. So if you want to keep giving us the stink eye, you can get out and swim home.”

“Murphy.” Rachel scolded.

I moved over to stand right behind Rachel’s seat, keeping my back to the water on the boat’s starboard side.

The guy in the seat on the port side looked at me, then turned to Murphy, and with no intonation at all said, “Thank you.”

Murphy acknowledged with a nod and looked at the other guy.

“Thanks.” He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands. He muttered, “We’re dead.”

A little pissed, I asked, “What?”

The guy didn’t respond.

Freitag answered for him. “He thinks you’re going to infect him.”

“Hey, dipshit.” I said to the guy, “If you haven’t gotten the fever yet, you’re not going to.”

The guy on the port side replied, “You don’t know that.”

“Oh jeez.” I rolled my eyes. “Well, if you were worried about getting infected, you should have just stayed home. Why were you even out scavenging?”

The guy on the port side told the guy in the back, “You only get it if they bite you.”

Murphy laughed out loud. “Where have you guys been, watching reruns of old zombie movies?” He looked at Rachel. “What are you doing with these hillbillies?”

The guy on the port side shot Murphy a dirty look.

Rachel, taking control, said, “Everybody stop. Just stop. I swear.” She turned to look at each of us. The boat was out into the lake by then, so precise steering was not required. “Murphy, these are my friends—Bill, Karl, and Freitag.”

With a dramatic roll of his eyes, Murphy said, “Oh yeah, we know Freitag.”

To the man sitting next to her, Rachel said, “Bill, you’re probably immune. That nurse who showed up a couple of days ago said the virus was airborne—”

Talking right over Rachel, Bill said, “You can’t trust just anybody who says they’re a nurse.”

“A nurse?” I asked.

Freitag answered. “Your red-headed boss showed up a couple of days ago.”

“Steph?” It was hard to smile with my mouth hanging agape.

Rachel said, “You know each other?”

Freitag added, “And the codger sergeant.”

“Dalhover,” I confirmed.

“And two of those girls from the riverboat.”

“Amy and Megan?”

“Yeah.”

Rachel looked at Murphy. “Those are the people you’re looking for?”

“Yeah,” Murphy answered. “They were headed for Monk’s Island.”

“That’s where we are,” she said.

“Dammit!” Bill got pissed. “Rachel, you can’t just tell anybody where we are.”

In a stern, “don’t fuck with me” mode, Rachel pointed at Murphy and told Bill, “That’s my brother. I’ll tell him whatever I want to tell him, so you’d better figure out a way to deal with it.”

Bill turned to look at the water, and after a moment he muttered, “I didn’t know it was your brother.”

“He, not
it
,” Rachel corrected. “Murphy is a person.”

Cowed, Bill sulked with his mouth shut while the occupants of the boat silently appraised one another. Nothing was said for a good long while, until Freitag voiced out loud a question she’d probably been silently asking herself since the moment she got into the boat. “What did I do in a previous life to deserve this?”

Murphy heard her and laughed.

I couldn’t help but offer up my opinion. “It’s what you did in this life, is my guess.”

Freitag, with her vicious tongue, shot back, “You’ve got no room to talk, Mr. Fuck You Canoe.”

I smiled at the memory of the moment when I told Freitag that she’d shot a hole in the canoe that I left her. It was one of the highlights of my post-apocalyptic life. I said, “As far as I’m concerned, we’re even.”

“Like I believe that.”

I reached out an empty hand. “If you’ll promise not to fuck with me anymore, I won’t fuck with you. Like I said, we’re even.”

Freitag looked at my extended hand, clearly reluctant to put her own hand into the trap that she thought it represented.

“Up to you,” I added.

Just as I was about to withdraw the offer, she stood up, wobbled a bit with the rocking of the boat, and grabbed my hand in her tiny grip. She didn’t smile. She wasn’t angry. Maybe resigned. “Even.” It was a hard thing for her to say.

“Even,” I confirmed.

She let go and sat back down.

I looked at Murphy. He was amused and disappointed. That made me wonder.

Bill asked Freitag, “What’s that about?”

“Long story,” she said.

In the wee hours of the night when we neared Monk’s Island, a row of seven school bus-shaped silhouettes floated a short distance offshore. I wondered if those were the rental houseboats that Megan mentioned back when we’d all been on the riverboat on Lake Austin, talking about coming to Lake Travis for refuge. It looked like the group staying on Monk’s Island had beaten us to it.

A ski boat motored slowly toward us from the island. I couldn’t tell how many people were inside, but rifles bristled on its silhouette.

Rachel reduced our speed.

Bill pointed a thumb at Murphy and in a defeated voice said, “They’re not going to let us come back because of them.”

Rachel shut Bill up with a harsh look.

Murphy adjusted his grip on his rifle and looked at the boat out in front of us.

If Murphy was nervous, that was all the indication I needed. I looked down at my weapon, checked the safety, and ran a hand across the magazines in my MOLLE vest, trying to recall which ones were empty. I had a system for that, but I had gotten confused during the firefight in the cove. Now I didn’t know where the empty and full magazines were.

“Murphy,” Rachel said. “It’s okay. They probably saw extra people in the boat, and they’re coming out to check on us.”

“Uh-huh.” Murphy’s tone made it clear that he didn’t accept Rachel’s assessment.

Rachel pulled the throttle back and let the boat drift to a stop in the water. She turned the engine off.

I glanced around. Bill was nervous, and judging by the way he was looking at me, it was clear that if trouble started, he was going to make a move on me. Unfortunately for Bill, just a few feet in front of me, he was at a range I could still hit with my M4. Karl still had his face in his hands. Freitag just looked bored.

The boat from the island got within twenty or thirty feet of us. It throttled down and came to a stop in the water nearby. Three armed men stood behind two seated people. A woman’s voice called across, “Rachel, who’s with you?”

The rifles pointed at us.

Rachel said to me and Murphy, “Keep your weapons down. Don’t aim at them, please. They’re just being careful.” Then, Rachel called back, “Gretchen, it’s my brother and a friend of his.”

“Really?” Gretchen’s voice carried a degree of disbelief. “Did you find everything we needed at the pharmacy?”

That seemed like an odd question.

Rachel answered, “We got everything we needed at the pharmacy.”

Tension seemed to disappear instantly on the other boat. Rifles lowered and the engine revved to bring it toward us.

Rachel looked up at me, “A code phrase.”

Bill hissed, “Don’t tell them that!”

“Bill, be quiet.”

“We can’t trust them.”

Rachel nodded her head toward Murphy. “What part of ‘he’s my brother’ don’t you get?”

Murphy grinned, “Yeah, hillbilly.”

Bill shot Murphy a dirty look. The other boat floated up beside us. The people on board saw mine and Murphy’s white skin. That made them nervous. Rachel stood up. “Gretchen.”

Gretchen, an Amazonian goddess of a woman stood up, taller than any of her men. “We saw that you were coming back with more people than you left with. That’s why we came out to meet you.”

“Of course,” Rachel answered.

Bill stood up, unable to contain his anger over the situation anymore. “They’re infected. They’re both infected.”

“Shut up, Bill.” Rachel, nearly as tall as Murphy and muscular for a woman, looked ready to make sure that he did.

Bill looked back at Rachel.

Rachel said, “Bill, I’m in charge. You know how we do things. Now stop being a stupid ass.”

Bill dropped to his seat, muttering, “They’re going to infect us all.”

The guys on the other boat were getting a little nervous with their rifles.

I called across, “We’re Slow Burns. We got the virus, but we’re okay. We got better. We’re normal.”

“Normal?” Gretchen smiled broadly. “Were you always an albino?”

“Mostly normal,” I answered.

Rachel looked at me with an expression that made it clear that she was indeed in charge and that I should let her do the talking. After that, Rachel conveyed the story about what transpired in the cove, emphasizing that Murphy was indeed her brother.

When Rachel finished her story, Gretchen thanked both Murphy and me for what we’d done. “Here’s the way it works here. I’m in charge. I’ve got some people who help me. Rachel is one of them.”

Murphy laughed out loud. “The women are taking over the world.”

Gretchen looked at him with a stern face. “Is that a problem?”

With a big grin, Murphy shook his head. “No ma’am. I’m cool with it. I’m just sayin’, is all.”

Gretchen pointed at a lone houseboat anchored a good distance from the row I’d spotted a few minutes before. “When people come back from scavenging, we quarantine them there for twenty-four hours to make sure they don’t bring the infection onto the island. When new people come, we quarantine them a little longer while we’re deciding whether to let them join us.”

I looked at Freitag. I didn’t mean to. It just kind of happened. I asked, “Are you picky about who you let in?”

Freitag scratched her nose with her middle finger while she looked at me.

I suppressed a laugh.

Gretchen said, “We’re not trying to build an exclusive country club, if that’s what you’re asking. We’ve taken in everybody who has come so far. We’re trying to do our part.”

Murphy said, “Cool.”

Gretchen looked at Murphy. “Don’t get too excited. You guys are the first—what did you call them—Slow Burns?”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“Only normal people have come so far. We’ll all talk about it. I’m not going to make any promises about whether you’ll be accepted to come onto the island.”

“We’re not contagious,” I protested.

“We’re not staying, anyway.” Murphy told them.

Rachel was taken aback. “What?”

Gretchen said, “The quarantine boat is over there, if you want to get on it.”

Bill was back on his feet and pointing at Murphy. “I’m not getting on that boat with Them. If I’m not infected already, I don’t want to get that way.”

Gretchen was clearly disappointed. “Don’t then, Bill. You can stay in a ski boat anchored over there as close as you feel comfortable. They can stay on the quarantine boat if they want to. They saved your life. I think you owe them at least that much.”

Bill muttered, “We’d ‘a got out.”

It was weird, I mean, it was really weird. I was sitting on the end of a couch in the living room of a houseboat.  Murphy sat at the other end, in an apparent talking race with Rachel, who was in a comfy-looking chair near his end of the couch. All of the windows were open and a comfortable breeze was blowing through. Better yet, the screens kept the mosquitoes outside. I felt safe and anachronistically normal.

Freitag had gone down a narrow hallway and laid claim to one of the bedrooms, probably asleep already. Some fifty yards away from our spacious houseboat, Bill and Karl were in quarantine on their ski boat, discontented and being quite verbose about it. But it was their choice. So fuck ‘em.

Through the open windows I heard a boat motor up alongside. Talking jumbled to incomprehensibility with the noise of the boat engine and splashing waves. Several pairs of footsteps clomped along the deck outside. I looked at the door that faced that deck and was not surprised when it swung open. I
was
surprised when Steph came into the living room, followed closely by Dalhover. My mouth probably fell open as I struggled for something witty to say.

Steph hurried across the living room as I stood up. She threw her arms around me and we shared a long hug. She shuddered as she buried her face against my shoulder. Any ambivalence I had about sharing what I knew about her fiancée disappeared. Better to let her think that Jeff Aubrey died at the hospital.

With red-rimmed eyes, Steph pulled away and stepped over to give Murphy a hug—less affectionate, but a hug just the same.

Dalhover slapped me on the shoulder. “You made it.”

Seeing an extra helping of sadness in his eyes, I said, “I’m glad you guys did, too.”

He leaned in close, “There are some things you need to know.”

“We saw.”

Dalhover’s face asked the silent question.

“We were almost back. We were on the mountain. We saw what happened on the boat.”

Dalhover slowly shook his head. He had more regret in his voice than I thought possible. “We did what we could.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “I know. I know.”

Dalhover looked at Murphy and turned back to me. In a just-you-and-me tone, he said, “I’d ’a thought he’d take it harder.”

Softly, I answered. “You know Murphy. He cries his tears and moves on. He loved her. I mean, he really did.”

Dalhover nodded, slapped me on the shoulder again, and stepped over to shake Murphy’s hand and pass along his condolences for Mandi.

Gretchen came in through the still open door. A wiry, tall man with John Lennon glasses followed her in, closing the door behind him. He said, “You don’t want to let the mosquitoes in.”

Seeing the questions on all of our faces, Gretchen said, “I’m here now, so I’ll have to stay the full twenty four hours. I hope you don’t mind.”

Steph nudged me in the arm and said, “She’s the boss.”

Gretchen announced, “I wanted to talk to you about this Slow Burn thing before we decide to let you guys on the island. The people there are afraid of the virus. I need to find a way to ensure them that you won’t be a danger.”

Murphy, face strangely absent his smile, answered for both of us. “You don’t need to worry about that. Me and Zed, we ain’t stayin’. We just came to make sure our friends were okay.”

Rachel was not pleased. “I don’t know what you think you’re thinking, Murphy, but we need to talk about this.”

Murphy said, “Me and Zed got some killin’ to do.”