Slow Burn (Book 3): Destroyer (21 page)

“So you brought all of ‘em?” I asked.

“There were more in there,” Murphy answered defensively.

“And?” I asked, very deliberately looking at the heavy toolbox causing the boat to list slightly to stern.

Murphy looked from the box to me as though I was a little slow for not figuring it out already. “We’ll just take both boats back.”

My first instinct was to say no, to argue, but then I thought, why not? The pontoon boat wasn’t fast. But we didn’t need fast. If anything, the pontoon boat might be better for scavenging than the ski boat. With its long flat deck, it was kind of the water equivalent of a pickup truck. It made sense.

I pointed over to the ski boat and said, “I think Russell and I got enough food for three or four days, maybe more.” I checked the time on my new wristwatch.

“Nice watch,” Murphy complimented me.

“It’s kind of loose.” I fished a second big gold watch out of my pocket. “Here, I got one for you, too. The guy had a whole collection of them in his closet. One for every day.”

“Man, you know what this watch is worth?” Murphy asked.

“Does it matter anymore?” I asked.

“More than my car,” Murphy told me anyway.

We’d planned to be back at Sarah’s house by midnight, but i
t was just after ten o’clock. So we went upriver to check out a second location on the south bank. We left the pontoon boat at the safe house, with plans to pick it up on the way back.

“I know I was the one who argued that Russell could be helpful in carrying stuff if we brought him along, but I think he’s too unpredictable.”

“Yeah, man,” Murphy nodded. “He’s a liability. You never know when he’s gonna sound off.”

“
Nope.”

“Man, do you see that?” Murphy asked, tension suddenly in his voice.

“What…?” I slowed the boat. I peered into the darkness and was just able to make out a geometric shape on the river, maybe a half-mile ahead. It wasn’t an immediate danger. But it was out of the ordinary, and that was reason enough for caution.

Murphy stood and pulled his rifle up to the ready.

I looked at the shadows on first the right and then the left bank with ambush on my mind. There was nothing unusual, just the trees and the water.

When we’d halved the distance, I saw that the shape was a tourist boat with two decks made to resemble a riverboat from the eighteen hundreds. It was probably seventy or eighty feet long, with lots of space on two decks for a hundred tourists to eat fajitas, drink margaritas, and enjoy the sunsets. But it looked deserted.

Pointing at the boat, I said, “It’s not drifting. It must be anchored there.”

“That’s not a bad idea, man.” Murphy was giving it some thought. “The infected can’t get to you out in the middle of the river. I mean, I guess. They can’t swim, can they?”

“Don’t know.” I’d assumed that they couldn’t, but realized that that was the purest of assumptions. I hadn’t seen one swimming, and that was all of the supporting evidence I had.

“Swing wide around it,” Murphy said. “I wouldn’t get too close yet.”

“Yet?” I asked, navigating the ski boat closer to the north shore.

“Man, it could be a great place to get away from the Whites.”

As we got a clear view of the starboard side, we saw three ski boats tied off there. I grew very wary and stopped watching the shores, focusing instead on movement on the decks.

“You think there’s anybody alive on that boat?” Murphy asked.

Shaking my head, I said, “All I know is that I don’t like this one bit.” Not waiting for a response from Murphy, I pushed the throttle forward a little. I had a bad feeling about the derelict boat.

We were passing fifty or sixty feet off of the starboard side of the boat when Murphy said, “I think it’s deserted.”

“Murphy, if we were on that boat, we’d be hiding, right? We’d be doing our best to make it look deserted, right?”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly? That sounds like agreement, but I know it’s not.”

With the tourist boat behind us, but not yet at a safe distance, Murphy leaned over and pulled the throttle all the
way back, leaving the boat to idle while the current sapped our momentum. “Either there’s nobody on the boat or there’s somebody.”

“Oh, Jesus,” I mocked. “And you call
me
professor.”

“Man, I’m just
sayin’, if there were infected, we’d have seen them moving around.”

“Probably,” I nodded.

“If it was some kind of ambush, they would have shot us already.”

“Maybe.”

“If they were hostile, they probably would have been up there on the top deck, pointing guns and acting like assholes or something. So, it’s either empty, or there are some regular people up there hiding from us because they don’t know our intentions.”

“And?” I asked, prompting Murphy for a conclusion before our boat drifted too far back down the river.

“So it’s safe for us to go on the boat.”

“Look, Sherlock,” my tone heavy with sarcasm, “I don’t think those are all the possibilities. That boat looks like nothing but risk to me. I see every possibility of getting shot or chomped, and I don’t see any upside.”

“Man, it’s cool,” Murphy reassured. “Take the boat back over beside those others. “I’m gonna check it out.”

“It’s a bad idea, Murphy.”

“Take us over there.”

Murphy stood in the bow with a rope in his hand, ready to jump over to the lower deck of the pseudo-paddleboat when we got close. Having only driven a ski boat rarely, I was cautious in my approach, not wanting to bounce the bows together with enough force to damage anything. As much as I wondered what lay hidden behind the waist-high rails on both decks of the big boat, my attention was pulled back to driving the ski boat.

“Okay. Okay,” Murphy coaxed. “Another couple of feet.”

“Don’t come any closer,” a female voice commanded out of the darkness.

Startled, I fumbled with the throttle as my eyes darted around for the source of the voice. I accidentally pushed it forward. The engine revved, and a second later the ski boat glanced off the big boat. In the collision, momentum carried Murphy over the bow and he landed roughly against the railing that went all the way around the lower deck. The ski boat drifted back out, leaving a cursing Murphy hanging on the rail with his feet dangling in the water.

“You let go of that rail!” the female voice commanded urgently.

Above, over the second deck railing, I saw the silhouettes of three heads, and more importantly, I saw the long barrel of a rifle, angling down toward Murphy.

“Hey, hey!” I shouted.

Russell was suddenly on his feet beside me.

What the hell was he doing?

“I can’t swim!” Murphy hollered to anyone who would listen.

“You should have thought about that before you jumped on our boat,” the woman replied.

“I fell!” Murphy yelled back.

“Be cool!” I hollered to the people on the boat. “Just let me come back over and get him.” I steered the slow-moving ski boat toward Murphy.

The heads appeared to be conferring.

“Look,” I said, “we thought the boat was deserted. We don’t mean any harm.”

“If you guys try to get on, I’ll shoot.”

You guys?

I looked over at Russell and calmly said, “Russell, sit down, please.” I put a hand on his shoulder and guided him into the seat beside mine. I called back up, “We’re not trying to jump on your boat.”

“Yet, there’s your boy, hanging from the rail,” the voice replied.

“His boy?” Murphy’s tone suggested that he was offended by that.

Making my voice as smooth as possible, I pleaded with her. “We don’t want to hurt you. We thought the boat was deserted. Just let me get Murphy off of the boat and we’ll go, if that’s what you want. You don’t need to be afraid of us.”

“You’re all infected,” she said. “I can see that from here.”

The ski boat’s bow bumped the hull of the riverboat next to Murphy, and he danced his legs in the air until he managed to get one into our boat.

“Yeah,” I called back up, “we are, but we’re not like the other infected.” I got a little exasperated. “Hell, that much should be obvious just because we’re talking.”

Murphy hauled himself into our boat and as soon as he was all the way in, I reversed the boat and backed away to a distance of ten feet or so.

Then, with the engine idling, I asked, “You okay, Murphy?”

“Man, I’m fine,” Murphy grinned sheepishly, “as long as Crazy Bitch don’t shoot me.”

“Be nice,” the girl said, in a normal tone of voice.

“Be nice?” I laughed. “You were gonna shoot us a second ago.”

“You’re off of our boat now,” she answered.

Murphy said, “Man, let’s get out of here.”

“Hold on a sec,” I said. I called up to the girl, “Now that we’re back on our own boat, can we talk for minute?”

“As long as you keep your distance,” was the answer.

Great. What did I want to ask? “Look, we’re staying at a place downriver and we’ll probably be coming this way to look for food and stuff. Do I need to worry about you shooting us every time we pass by?”

Conferring again. “Just don’t get too close.”

“If you don’t want me to, I won’t,” I assured them.

Then, another voice, a younger voice blurted out, “Why do you guys look infected, but act normal?”

Harsh, muffled words followed between them.

“We’re slow burns,” I answered. “We got infected but then we got better. Are you all immune? Do you know?”

“Slow burns?” Another female voice asked.

Well, that answered that question; they were all three girls.

“That’s just what they called us. We have a higher temperature than normal. Obviously we’re white. Well, except for Murphy, he prefers mocha frost. Besides that, we’re normal.”

“How many of you are there?” a girl asked.

“Don’t tell ‘em,” Murphy whispered.

“There are six of us,” I answered.

“Are they all like you?” she asked.

“No,” I answered, “the others are normal. They’re immune.”

“Immune?” There was excitement in the voice. “How do you know?”

“One’s a nurse. They were at the hospital until…until… Well. They’re with us now.”

“Until what?” the voice was suspicious.

“The hospital was overrun.” I paused and said, “Hey, my name is Zed. That’s Murphy there in the bow and this is Russell here beside me, but Russell doesn’t talk. Why don’t you at least tell me your names so I know who I’m talking to?”

The girl with the rifle stood up. “My name is Amy. This is Brittany and Megan.”

It was hard to make out their features in the darkness, but Brittany and Megan were shorter. They had higher pitched voices. I guessed they were in junior high or grade school.

“Null Spot,” Murphy scolded me in a low voice.

“Dude, chill,” I told him.

The girls had to be alone. If not, why send a woman and two young girls to defend the boat? They had to be poorly armed. Again, why send one hunting rifle against two heavily armed men?

“Are you guys okay?” I asked in a voice that showed sincere concern.

There was a hesitation, but in a voice that belied the truth, Amy answered, “We’re fine.”

“They’re not fine,” Murphy whispered, suddenly concerned.

“I know,” I told him.

“What are you saying?” Amy asked.

I answered, “We don’t think you’re fine. It’s just the three of you, right?”

Another pause and Amy answered, “No.”

“Yeah,” I answered with just enough sarcasm to let her know that I didn’t believe her. “We just scavenged some stuff from a house downriver. We’ve got some food and some bottled water. You guys can have some if you need it.”

I looked at Murphy, ready to defend my choice, but his face showed me that he agreed. He must have come to the same conclusion as me. The girls weren’t doing well.

The three conferred for a moment.

I called over, “We can pull alongside and put the stuff on the deck and pull away. We have a case of bottled water we don’t need. We saw some bodies floating in the river. It’s probably not safe to drink the river water.”

“We boil it,” Brittany answered.

“Good,” I said. “Do you have any food?”

“If you have some you don’t need,” Amy answered.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” I answered, “but we could spare a few bags. A lot of it’s canned. Do you have a can opener?”

“There’s a galley in the back of the boat. Yeah, probably.”

“Good. Can I pull alongside and put the stuff on?”

“Yes,” Amy answered, “but don’t get on the boat.”

It took a minute to maneuver the boat over. Once there, Murphy moved the case of bottled water and a few pillowcases full of groceries over to the big boat. As he finished up, I picked up one of the revolvers I found at the safe house and handed it to him. “Give ‘em that, too.”

“What?”

“They only have the one gun,” I told him. “We can get more.”

Murphy grudgingly took the revolver and laid it on the deck, along with a box of bullets.

When I pulled the boat away, one of the girls disappeared from above and reappeared on the bottom deck.

“We left you a gun and some ammo,” I called across the water. “You need more than one gun.”

“Thank you,” Amy said, with deep sincerity.

The other girls thanked us as well.

“I’m curious about how the boat thing is working out for you, but maybe we can stop back by tomorrow night. I don’t want to overstay our welcome tonight.”

“Yes,” Amy said. “You guys can stop back by tomorrow.”

“Cool,” I responded. “Oh, one quick thing. Do you know if the infected can swim? Have they been able to get to you in the boat?”

“No,” Amy answered, “they can’t get to us here. They come to the banks when they see us, but they never come out into the water.”

“Listen,” I said. “You know the movie star, Sarah Mansfield?”

Of course, all of the girls did.

Megan said, “She has a big house down the river. My dad showed it to me when we were skiing last summer.”

“Cool,” I answered. “That’s where we’re staying. I’ll make a deal with you, if you’re interested.”

“What’s that?” Amy asked, cautious again.

“We’ve got plenty of room down there. If you guys get in trouble and need to get out of here, you can come down.”

“How do we get up there?” Megan asked. “It’s way up on the cliff.”

“There’s eight or nine mansions right down on the water on that side of the river. A little ways past the last one on the left is a boathouse. Just come there.”

“How will you know we’re there?” Amy asked.

“Security cameras,” I answered.

“You said a deal,” Amy said. “What do you want from us?”

“Pretty much the same thing,” I answered. “If we get in trouble and have to bail out in a hurry, can we come here?”

Brittany was back on the top deck and the three of them deliberated for a moment. She answered, “It’ll probably be okay.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Well, Amy, Brittany, Megan, it was good to meet you guys. I think we need to get back before they get too worried about us.”

The girls thanked us across the water as I turned the boat around and headed downriver with the current.

With the tourist boat shrinking in the distance behind us, Murphy came over and stood on the deck between where Russell and I sat. “That was a good thing you did, Null Spot. It was the right thing to do.”

I smiled and nodded, hoping that he was right.