Slow Burn (Book 2): Infected (3 page)

Murphy reached out to shake my hand.

His hand engulfed mine and I nodded.

“And I’m giving you a superhero name.”

“What?” A protest, not a question.

Murphy announced, “Null Spot.”

“What?” A question.

“That’s your superhero name. Whenever you go off thinking about doing some superhero shit, I’m gonna call you Null Spot.”

“Whatever.”

Murphy and I spent a long while talking about what we needed to do to get to his mom and sister, and what we needed to do to survive. Unfortunately, stealing an armored Humvee, if we could find one sitting around, seemed like the best idea considering all the other risks.

I said, “Murphy, I could check with Steph, if she’s still alive. There might be a Humvee over by the hospital that we could swipe.”

Murphy asked, “Who is Steph, again?”

“She’s the nurse we saw when we went to the hospital the first night. You were too delirious to remember her.”

“Is she cute?”

“I don’t think that should be your top concern anymore.”

“It’ll always be my top concern.”

I said, “No, that’s not what I mean. I think your first question should be whether a girl is going to chase you and eat you for dinner or whether she’s going to shoot you and run away. I don’t think you’ll have the luxury of picking the cute ones anymore.”

“Yeah, man, I heard that.”

“Oh, and do you know which uses less power on a phone, calling or texting?”

“Man, do I look like I work at Best Buy?”

“At the one by my house, it looks like they like to hire the white kids.”

“Mocha frost, buddy.”

I shrugged. “So you don’t know.”

“Texting.”

I asked, “Really? How do you know?”

“I’m guessing.”

“Sounds right to me.”

Murphy asked, “Wait, how do you know Steph’s number?”

“She gave it to me.”

“You’re a lot smoother than I thought, Zed.”

“I hear that a lot.”

“I doubt that. Hey, while you’re playing on your phone, why don’t you follow me downstairs and let’s see if we can raid any vending machines before we head out?”

I nodded and followed as I texted.

Me:
Steph, this is Zed. Are you there?

Steph:
OMG, you’re alive!

Me:
Yes. Hey, are there any Humvees still parked around the hospital grounds?

Steph:
Yes. Lots of Army trucks and stuff.

Me:
Great! Any soldiers out there with them?

Steph:
No. Why?

Me:
I’m going to steal one.

Steph:
Where are you?

Me:
In a building up on the north end of the campus. How are things over at the hospital? I heard a lot of gunfire from over there the other night.

Steph:
What do you know about what happened?

Me:
Nothing. I’ve been hiding in a dorm since we escaped from the gym.

Steph:
We?

Me:
Murphy and I both made it out. He’s like me, infected but normal.

Steph:
That’s great! There aren’t that many. The infected overran the hospital a few nights ago. That’s probably what you heard.

Me:
Where are you now?

Steph:
Those of us that could get away retreated into the hospital. We’ve got it sealed off from the fifth floor up.

Me:
We?

Steph:
The soldiers barred the doors on the first floor but that didn’t last long. The infected came in through the windows and we lost a lot of people. We went up to the second but couldn’t hold there. There were lots of people among us who were exposed who started to turn. We tried to hold on to the third floor by blocking the stairwells but they found their way through somehow. We thought we had the fourth but some of us were infected and started to turn and we lost it. Now we have five and up but we keep losing people as we retreat from floor to floor.

Me:
How many of you are there?

Steph:
Hard to say. 30-40 soldiers. 40-50 of us. 150 patients that we’ve mostly moved to the upper floors. But anybody who starts to show symptoms, we’re putting on five. When we get to be too many, we’ll abandon five and move up to six.

Me:
The soldiers aren’t shooting the infected?

Steph:
The soldiers want to shoot anybody who shows symptoms but the doctors won’t let them. It’s tense.

Me:
I’ll bet.

Steph:
There are ideas being discussed on what to do about the infected.

Me:
The Army has already decided. They’re shooting anyone that even appears infected.

Steph:
That seems to be the universal solution. Did that happen at the gym?

Me:
Sort of. It was a battle zone. All of the soldiers around the gym got killed when the infected broke out.

Steph:
That’s awful.

Me:
It was. Your situation doesn’t sound any better. Are there a lot of infected trying to get into the hospital?

Steph:
They’re swarming everywhere. As far as we can tell, the lower floors are full of them. Outside, we can see thousands of them on the grounds. The soldiers think they were drawn here by all of the shooting.

Me:
Thousands outside?

Steph:
Too many to count.

Me:
Do you guys have an escape plan?

Steph:
Escape? Where to?

Me:
I don’t know. I guess everyone is asking themselves that question right now.

Steph:
I don’t think anywhere is safe.

Me:
We’ve got a line on a place but who knows.

Steph:
I don’t think escape even matters anymore.

Me:
Why?

Steph:
The virus is airborne. Nearly everybody who gets exposed, catches it.

Me:
But some are immune, right? I mean completely immune.

Steph:
Yes, very few. But with the infected killing everyone who isn’t also infected, what’s immunity worth?

Me:
You sound like you’ve given up.

I waited a long time for a response after that.

Steph:
Zed, are you there?

Me:
Yes.

Steph:
The truth is, we’re losing this fight. We all know we’re going to die. It’s just a matter of time. It’s a matter of the number of floors we have to retreat to.

Me:
You’ve got lots to go, Steph. The Army could still come. There’s still hope.

Steph:
You’re obviously not keeping with what’s going on everywhere else.

Me:
I just know what people tell me. If I’m not running, I’m shooting. If I’m
not shooting, I’m hiding. What’s the situation?

Steph:
Every time we find a city or a region that says that it has the virus in hand, it seems like they collapse a few hours later. Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio are no better off than we are. Lubbock and Amarillo are a mess. Waco is holding out but we’re getting fewer and fewer contacts from there. The only city we’ve even heard about where there is no infection is Leadville.

Me:
What’s a Leadville?

Steph:
Some place way up in the mountains in Colorado.

Me:
Why are they safe?

Steph:
Remoteness? Easier to quarantine? I guess there aren’t too many ways in or out of a place like that.

Me:
You wanna run off to Leadville with me : )

Steph:
That’s sweet. But I don’t think you’re their kind of people, Zed.

Me:
Too white?

Steph:
That’s one way to put it.

Me:
Leadville pipe dreams aside, what will you do? How long can you hold out?

Steph:
Everything is working against us.

Me:
How so?

Steph:
To start with, all of the stairwells are full of infected. The elevators are useless. The infected are always there when the doors open. There’s no way for us to get out. We’re stuck. But we’re dependent on the utility system. Once electricity goes, we’ll lose water. Once the water stops flowing it’ll only be a matter of days. So, the food shortage we’re having is problematic but we’ll all be dead long before we starve. If the infected don’t get in and kill us all.

Me:
I can see why you feel hopeless.

Steph:
There is half a hope, maybe less. It’s brutal and it feels wrong but no one here can think of anything else. I feel bad thinking about it. I feel worse talking about it.

Me:
What?

Steph:
Help me with my decision, Zed. You’re a disinterested third party.

Me:
Not disinterested.

Steph:
You know what I mean.

Me:
Whatever.

Steph:
We think we can fortify the top floors and keep the infected from getting in. If we had enough food and water, we might hold out for a long time after the utilities go.

Me:
You said you didn’t have enough water…

Steph:
Let me finish.

Me:
K.

Steph:
People inside get infected. It gets chaotic when they turn symptomatic and then we lose people and we lose a floor or two. Then we have to try and reconsolidate a few floors up. We’re killing ourselves from the inside. The infected outside just exacerbate the situation.

Me:
Ok.

Steph:
One of the doctors came up with an idea.

Me:
Which is?

Steph:
He thinks that in the general population the infection rate is nearly 100%. But for us, it’s got to be way lower.

Me:
That sounds like wishful thinking to me.

Steph:
No, I don’t think so. Hear me out.

Me:
K.

Steph:
There are a lot of healthcare workers and soldiers here. We’ve all been on the front lines of this outbreak from the beginning. We’ve seen most of our friends and colleagues get infected and turn.

Me:
I’m with you so far.

Steph:
Just because we’ve all been at risk of exposure so long and we haven’t been infected yet suggests that many of us may be immune.

Me:
Or cautious.

Steph:
Yes, maybe. But Zed, there were a lot of us at first between nurses, doctors, patients, and soldiers. If only ten out of a thousand were immune and nine-hundred of those got infected while the other hundred didn’t, in the remaining pool of a hundred, the immunity rate wouldn’t be 10 in a thousand anymore, it would be the same ten, but in a group of a hundred. So, if you’re in that last group, your odds of being immune go from a nearly zero chance to ten percent.

Me:
Sure, the math works, but there are a lot of assumptions built into that. Where is this going?

Steph:
Where we’re at right now is that we all know we’re going to die. That is a certainty. We’re either going to get infected, get killed by the infected, die of thirst, or if some fortunate miracle happens, die of starvation.

Me:
Such a wonderful world we’re in now. Escape then. There’s got to be a way.

Steph:
There are too many infected below. We can’t escape.

Me:
What then?

Steph:
We have a few infected people strapped into beds in a room at the end of the hall. We’re going to hoard all of the water and food we can on the top floor and then fortify it. Then we’re going to use our infected to infect ourselves in groups of ten or twenty.

Me:
Say what?!

Steph:
A saliva swab from the mouth of an infected for each of us. That’s a very reliable transmission pathway. 100% reliable.

Me:
Not exactly sanitary.

Steph:
Exactly not sanitary. I just hope none of them has AIDS or herpes or TB.

Me:
That sounds like suicide.

Steph:
No. Some of us will be immune. This gives us a way to sort out who is and who isn’t in a controlled fashion. The ones who are immune will take the top floor and might be able to hold out with the supplies we have on hand.

Me:
Everyone is okay with this?

Steph:
No. Everyone is taking it pretty hard but if we don’t do something we all know that we’re dead. ALL OF US. This was the only idea that we had that might give some of us a chance. We are going to vote on it in a few minutes.