Slow Burn (Book 2): Infected (9 page)

When we stepped out of the bunker, the eastern sky was starting to grow gray.

The girl, Mandi, gasped and started to cry when she looked past the bloody bodies of the infected around the entrance and saw the devastation. It seemed that the final wisps of hope that had kept her alive in that bloody pit were blowing away in the wind with the ashes of her neighborhood.

Mandi was covered from head to toe in the most disgusting combination of blood and human filth that I could imagine, but Murphy didn’t hesitate to wrap a comforting arm around her.

Between her tears, Mandi said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You should have left me down there. I…I…”

“It looks worse than it is,” Murphy told her.

I shook my head, “No, no it doesn’t.”

Mandi shuddered and buried her face in Murphy’s shirt.

“Dude!” Murphy scolded me.

“Sugarcoating it doesn’t do any good, so I’ve heard,” I countered.

Murphy said, “But the whole world isn’t burned up, Zed. Just this part.”

I said, “Yeah, but you know as well as I do that everything else in Austin isn’t any better than this. It’s just different.”

Murphy glared at me.

“Sorry.” I probably shouldn’t have been so blunt about it. But I was out of energy for niceties. I was used up. I needed sleep.

My body reached a point where the adrenaline and caffeine could no longer drive it forward. I wished that the desensitization to pain that came with the virus would find its way into my aching head.

While Mandi cried herself out and Murphy held her, I sat down on the tire rim I’d used earlier that morning and watched the dead, eastern sky slowly change color.

All the busy, buzzing noise of life was gone. No cars, no jets, no bugs, and no birds. All I heard were the very gentle sounds of grainy bits of ash moving in the wind and Mandi’s occasional sobs muffled in Murphy’s shirt.

Wind, tears, and gray sky over a gray land. Sad, but simple.

Simple.

I breathed in. I breathed out.

It was my only responsibility for the moment. It was all I wanted.

Breathe.

Mandi’s voice broke the calm when she told Murphy, “I’m okay. I’m okay.” She stepped out of his arms, disturbing the ash and kicking it up in the wind. She cast her puffy eyes across the smoldering gray. “How bad is it, really? No sugarcoating.”

I didn’t respond. I stared at the horizon and tried to tune out the sound of Murphy’s voice as he gave her the highlights. His version wasn’t harsh, but he was honest.

Mandi took it better than I would have guessed, given her tears only moments before.

When Murphy finished, the sun was attempting to paint the sky in vibrant morning colors that conflicted with my mood. I turned away and asked, “How long have you been down there, Mandi?”

“What day is it?” she asked.

I answered, “Saturday, I think.”

“I came down with my dad, my mom, and my brother on Wednesday, when everything really started to go crazy,” Mandi told us.

Murphy said, “So you’ve been down there since Wednesday?”

Mandi confirmed with a nod. “Yes.”

“How many of you were there?” Murphy asked.

Mandi answered, “I don’t know, maybe ten when we got here. We lived down the street. We knew the bunker was here. Everybody knew. When we got here, we didn’t recognize most of the people. There was Mr. and Mrs. Simpkins, from a couple of houses down. There were some stoners that lived on the corner and there were some guys that looked like gangsters.”

Mandi drew deep a breath and sat down on a blackened metal something-or-other. “This big tattooed guy named Mutt was in charge.”

“Mutt?” I asked in disbelief.

“That’s what they called him. He wore a black sleeveless t-shirt and a do-rag. And he had tattoos all over his arms. And the guys with him all had tattoos and baggy gangster pants. A couple of them had guns; I’m sure they all had knives. Mutt had a face that looked like it was used to frowning. He looked mean. But he was in charge and everybody just accepted that. Maybe they were afraid of him. I was.”

I asked, “Do you think this was their gangster hideout, or hangout, or whatever?”

“I don’t know, Zed. Is it important?”

“It might be. But go ahead.”

“That first day, people kept coming down a few at a time, sometimes whole families. The bunker started to get crowded.”

Murphy asked, “Were you all down here on the third level?”

Mandi shook her head. “No, we were on all the levels.”

Then Murphy asked, “How did you all end up locked at the bottom?”

“I’ll get to that, Murphy.”

Murphy nodded and Mandi continued. “By the end of the first day, Mutt and his guys decided that we didn’t have enough food and water so they started telling people that they couldn’t come in unless they brought some with them.”

“Where is that food now?” Murphy asked.

Mandi said, “It was stored down on three. There wasn’t that much. I think it’s all gone now.”

“Oh,” said Murphy, flatly.

“On Thursday, Mutt started to send guys out to get provisions. Early in the day, they mostly came back. By the end of the day, they mostly didn’t. Fewer and fewer people showed up outside the bunker and wanted in. The bunker was crowded and the people didn’t always have food or water, but Mutt, as mean as he seemed like he was, still let them in.”

I asked, “Did you know what was going on outside?”

Mandi answered, “Yes. There were some radios. People’s phones were still working. I think in the end, that’s why Mutt still let people come in. Everybody knew how bad things were getting outside.”

Mandi paused to compose herself before she continued. “It was late Thursday night, maybe early Friday morning, I’m not sure. I’d already gone to sleep. My mom and dad and I were sleeping on the second level when the commotion woke us up. I don’t know if infected people were already in the bunker and just started to turn overnight. Maybe when they were letting people in, the infected rushed the door. I think maybe that’s what happened”

“Why?” Murphy asked.

“I’ll get to that in a minute. I don’t want to get off track or I’ll lose my place.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know how many infected were on the first level but at first that’s where they all were. Everybody ran down to three. There was screaming and shooting. It was awful. My mom, dad, and brother were way back by the far wall. We were all so scared. After a while, Mutt came in and slammed the door shut behind him. We heard the infected screaming outside, beating on the door. Mutt put the bar on the door and then one of his guys put padlocks on the bar so that it couldn’t be taken off. That’s when he told us that nobody else was coming in. The padlocks were there to ensure that the door stayed closed.”

“That’s how you got locked in?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mandi answered, “and that’s why I think the infected came in from the outside. I don’t know if Mutt would have locked the door like that if there had been infected in the bunker already. I think he thought he was doing the right thing when he locked it but he wasn’t.”

I asked, “Because somebody locked in with you was already infected?”

Mandi nodded and silent tears rolled down her cheeks again. “I don’t know how many of us were down there. It was so crowded. We only had a few flashlights. There was a battery-operated lantern that hung from the ceiling, but Mutt wouldn’t let us leave it on. Nobody wanted to be in the dark, but we knew we needed to conserve our batteries. It was late. It was dark. People were tired, so they started to lie down and go to sleep.

“I was so afraid to go to sleep, but it was pitch black which made it worst. I kept staring into the blackness, imagining that I saw shapes forming and moving and coming at me. Eventually, I dozed off.”

Murphy asked, “What happened then?”

Mandi shook her head. “I don’t know how long I slept. I woke up to an awful, horrible scream. People had flashlights turned on, but they didn’t provide much light, and they always seemed to be pointed at the wrong thing. The infected were in the room. I don’t know how many at first, two or three, maybe. Mutt was one of them.”

“Oh, no,” I said.

“There was a fight that got bigger. I
t was like a slow-motion riot. Some people got injured. Some people turned. Others struggled. People were killed. More turned. When they finally shot Mutt, nobody could find the keys to the locks. Things were out of hand by then. It was hard to know who was or wasn’t infected. I could see flashes from gunshots, and they sounded like thunder claps bouncing off of the stone walls. Flashlight beams waved around the room. It was hard to see what was going on. Everybody was screaming or yelling. It was so, so bad.”

Murphy said, “What happened to you? You’re not infected. How did you make it through?”

“Somewhere in the scuffle, with the crowd surging back and forth, I got knocked against the wall, and I blacked out. I don’t know how long I was out. I know that when I came to, the room was pitch black again, but it wasn’t silent. I heard what sounded like dogs eating and tearing at clothes and meat. I heard people snarl at each other like animals. Those were the sounds that the infected make. Somebody was laying on me and other people were laying by me, close enough to touch. They didn’t move. They didn’t breathe.”

“They were dead?” Murphy asked unnecessarily.

Mandi nodded. “I was so scared, I was afraid to move so I just laid there under the dead, dreading the moment when the infected would find me and kill me. I knew they would. I just knew it.”

“It sounds like you had a good hiding place,” I observed.

“It was never going to last. Three separate times, while I was laying there in the darkness, the infected found somebody who was still healthy. Each time was the same; cursing, scuffling, shrieking. The infected would converge on the sound and then there’d be more screaming, awful screaming, tearing clothes, and breaking bones.”

Mandi shuddered, lost control of her tears, and cried out loud.

Murphy put his arm around her again and pulled her close.

After a while, Mandi said, “I knew I was going to die a horrible death. The infected were going to find me. It was inevitable. But then I heard you guys.”

Mandi took a deep breath to collect herself. “The infected in the room went crazy when they heard you outside the door. That’s when I knew that I had a hope, not a chance, but a tiny, nearly invisible bit of hope. While they were still being noisy, I crawled out from under the corpses that had kept me hidden and I followed the wall around the room. On the way, I found a big flashlight, one of those long old metal ones that’s shaped like a baton. That was my weapon. I was determined that if any of the infected got their hands on me, then I wasn’t going to let them kill me without a fight.

“After a while, I heard most of them go back to eating wherever they’d been eating. I found my way up to the stairs and I pushed myself into a corner and I waited. I don’t know how long I waited. Eventually, all of the infected started to make those sleepy sounds they make. But I didn’t hear you guys out here anymore. I was so afraid that I’d waited too long. You don’t know how difficult it was, how afraid I was.”

More tears flowed.

I didn’t know what to say in the face of so much painful emotion. I was glad that Murphy had taken it upon himself to comfort her.

“I found a quarter in my pocket. I used that when I finally got up the nerve to tap on the door. It took so long to get a response. Do you know what it feels like when your last hope dies?” Mandi cried some more.

I wanted to answer yes. The Ogre taught me that lesson a long time ago.

“I thought…I thought…Well, it doesn’t matter. You did respond. One of you did, anyway. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Murphy said, “It was Zed who heard it. It was Zed who insisted that you were in there.”

I said, “We got you out together, Mandi. Neither one of us could have done it alone.”

I awoke looking at the bunker’s concrete ceiling. Murphy sat nearby, busying his hands with the parts of a handgun that I didn’t recognize. He glanced at me and said, “Good morning, sunshine.”

Mandi was still asleep so I spoke softly. “Good morning, Murphy.”

“I thought you were going to sleep all day,” he said.

I tainted my tone of voice with a little indignation and said, “I think I earned it. What time is it?”

“How would I know?”

“What?”

“Zed, you know my watch is still at the county jail.”

I rolled my eyes. “So it could be seven in the morning.”

“Heh, heh, heh. Don’t get your panties in a wad, man. I’m just messing with you.”

“Sorry. I could use some coffee.”

“You and me both.”

“What’s that you‘ve got there, Murphy?”

“While you guys were sleeping
, I went down to level three to root around and see what I could find, which was pretty much nothing. But I got this Ruger nine millimeter.”

“Is it a good gun?”

“As good as any, I suppose. It’ll take the same nine millimeter ammo as the Glocks.”

“Was there any ammo down there?” I asked.

“Just a few rounds, but I found a couple of empty magazines. You and I both have plenty of ammo, at least for now. We can spare some nine mill to fill the Ruger magazines. Then Mandi will have a gun to protect herself.”

“I passed out when you guys were talking last night, Murphy. What do you think of her?”

“She seemed all right to me. What are you asking?”

I scratched my head. “I don’t know. I mean, she seemed al
l right to me too. I guess I just don’t want to get backstabbed by another Mark.”

“I don’t think she’s like that, man. I have a good intuition about people. I think she’s a good one.”

I shrugged. I felt like I didn’t have any kind of intuition about people. “Sounds good. Was there any food down there?”

Murphy shook his head. “Depends on your definition of food. What’s your temperature today?”

“It’s not high enough to start thinking other people are food, if that’s what you mean. Water?”

“Nothing. That big cistern down there has holes like the ones on the other levels.”

“That’s too bad. This could have been a great place to ride this whole thing out, but with everything broken or missing...” I punctuated with a shrug.

“Maybe worse than that, Zed. Without a house on top to keep it hidden, it’s a deathtrap. It’ll probably keep the infected out. I mean, if you fixed the doors that we blew. But if anybody with a few weapons wants in, well, you saw how easy it was for us to get in here.”

I rummaged in my bag for something to eat and drink. I found two packages of donuts and a bag of peanuts. I set the peanuts and a package of miniature donuts aside for Mandi and opened the remaining donuts. She was one of us for the moment, and she needed a share of the food.

Murphy added, “I saved her something too, a package of cupcakes.”

“Cool. That’ll get her started. So what do you think? Are we still at square one? We’ve got almost no water and this is the last of our food. At the moment, we’ve got no communications, so we don’t know what’s going on anywhere, and we still need a place to stay.”

“Yeah, square one,” Murphy agreed.

“What about your sister?”

Murphy’s smile slipped off of his face. “She wasn’t at the house, but that was a thin hope
, anyway. Now with the whole neighborhood burned down, my only chance of finding her, if she’s still alive, is to get lucky and run into her. There’s no point in searching.”

I said, “Yeah, I’m really sorry about that, Murphy, but I think you’re right.”

With the pistol put together, Murphy started slipping nine millimeter rounds into a magazine.

I changed the subject. “I think Mandi is immune.”

“Maybe.”

“She’s been down there with all of those infected for days. She would have caught it if she wasn’t.”

“Sure. I don’t know anything about any of that. You’re the college boy, Zed, so whatever you think.”

“She’s immune, then. That’s goody-gumdrops for her, but also bad. I mean, you and I can walk around among the infected as long as they aren’t too hungry, but not Mandi. She’s lunch unless she stays hidden.”

“Yeah, but the uninfected won’t shoot her, like they will us.”

“Do you really think they’re all that way? It could be that those soldiers that killed Jerome were just
…I don’t know, overzealous.”

“Zed, I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re a little bit naïve about people’s intentions.”

I shook my head. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

“I think that is the problem, Zed. You want to believe that this is all going to blow over, and the ones of us who are left are going to sing ‘Kumbaya,’ and then go make babies and live happily ever after, or something.”

Yes, that is what I think!
I shrugged. Murphy’s summary of my hopes made them seem ridiculous.

“Zed, that’s not going to happen. Every time they see our white skin and our dilated eyes, they’re going to see the monsters that killed their brothers, or their mothers, or their sisters, or their sons. They’re going to see us as disease carriers. The uninfected hate us. They’re all afraid of us. They’ll kill us if they can.”

I shook my head, “No, Murphy, the longer we last, the more unlikely it is that anybody we come across will be immune. They won’t need to fear us.”

“Zed, that’s exactly the kind of suburban white-boy bullshit I’m talking about when I say you’re naïve.”

“
What?
”

“You don’t know anything about fear and hate. Fear and hate aren’t rational emotions, and they damn sure don’t depend on the existence of valid reasons. People hate because they’re afraid. People are afraid because they don’t understand. People don’t understand what we are, Zed. They don’t want to understand what we are, because they already have a belief that we’re monsters. Once people get beliefs into their heads, it’s fucking hard to change their minds, no matter how many facts come knocking on the door. As far as the world is concerned, you and I aren’t people anymore, Zed. We’re big-eyed white monsters, because we look like all the other big-eyed white monsters. White is the new black, man. How does it feel to be an oppressed minority, Zed?”

“I don’t have big eyes, Murphy.”

“Heh, heh, heh. You don’t believe me now, Zed, but you will. Give it time.”

“Mandi isn’t afraid of us,” I argued.

“Not that you know.”

“Amber –”

Murphy butted in, “…is one of the people who kicked us out of the dorm, Zed.”