Slow Burn: Torrent
Date: 2014-07-14 13:30:50+00:00
Keywords: zombie apocalypse; Fiction; Horror
Description: Survive the Infection! Survive the Infected!Following his none-too-soon reunion with his friends at the safe house, Zed is hoping things can finally fall into a stable routine, but in post-virus Austin, things are far from stable. On a mission to raid the ammunition bunkers at Camp Mabry, Zed and Murphy spot a group of the newer, naked infected, who are exhibiting some sophisticated and disturbing new behaviors, such as scouting and hunting - for them. After a narrow escape, the two pass the home of Mr. Mays on the return trip, stirring Zed's predictable rescuer impulse. Finding Mr. Mays dead,
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Slow Burn

Torrent

Book 5

A novel
by

Bobby Adair

http://www.bobbyadair.com
http://www.facebook.com/BobbyAdairAuthor

Cover Design and Layout

Alex Saskalidis, a.k.a. 187designz

Editing & Proofreading

Cathy Moeschet

Lindsay Heuertz

Linda Tooch

Rebecca T. Dickson

eBook and Print Formatting

Kat Kramer

A special THANK YOU to these readers of the series who were kind enough to volunteer a slog through a typo-infested early draft of the work and give me their thoughts.

Jackie Bauerelen

John W Van Deusen

Julie Carrigan

Christy O'Neil

John Cummings

Previously, in Slow Burn:

Book 1 – Zero Day

Zed Zane wakes up hung over one Sunday morning and begins to fortify himself with vodka before going to his mother’s house for lunch – and to beg for rent. There, he finds his mother and a neighbor dead, and his stepfather in full-throttle, crazed cannibal mode. Zed, fighting for his life, kills his stepfather in a scuffle, during which he sustains a nasty bite wound.

He tries calling 911, but the line is perpetually busy. That’s strange, but no stranger than the way that Zed is beginning to feel. He spends the next two days unconscious with a raging fever, and awakens as what soon becomes known as a “slow burn,” a carrier of a virus that destroys higher brain function and turns people into vicious, flesh-eating monsters.

Together with Murphy, a fellow slow burn who escapes with Zed in the aftermath of a prison riot following his erroneous arrest for the murder of his parents and their neighbor, we follow Zed on his quest for shelter, resources, and a plan for living in the strange new world in which he finds himself.

Although Zed himself has not “turned” completely, as have most of the other infected, the ambiguous, not-immune-but-not-dangerous category in which he finds himself will from this point forward direct his every thought and step if he is to survive.

Book 2 – Infected

Book 2 – Infected finds Zed, Murphy, and their traveling companion, Jerome on the move again following what proves to be a brief respite in a university dormitory, in the company of some extremely, albeit justifiably, paranoid ROTC students and three coeds, one of whom befriends Zed. In the process of stealing a Humvee, Jerome is shot by soldiers and Zed and Murphy head on alone to find Murphy’s family.

With Murphy’s mother dead and his sister missing, their next stop is a house rumored to feature an underground survivalist bunker, where another surprise awaits.

Book 3 – Destroyer

Book 3 – Destroyer finds Zed saying goodbye to one friend and pressing forward with two new ones to whom we are introduced in Book 2 – Infected.  Mandi, whom Zed and Murphy rescued from the bunker, is immune to the virus. Russell, whose home the others plundered in search of food and other supplies, is also a slow burn, but lower-functioning, childlike and docile.

After seeing the carnage at the dormitory, a raging, vengeful Zed wants only to kill Mark, his nemesis and the former leader of the ROTC squad. Since Mark has disappeared, Zed unleashes his fury on untold numbers of infected in his path as he makes his way back to the hospital, in an attempt to rescue Steph, a nurse whom he befriended while seeking help for the feverish Murphy shortly after the prison riot. But the brave medical staff, holed up on the tenth floor of the hospital, and running out of provisions, has decided to take matters in hand by exposing themselves to the virus, and shooting those who “turn.” Zed is determined not to face another loss, but once again, time is running out…

Book 4 – Dead Fire

Book 4 – Dead Fire picks up following an infected attack on Sarah Mansfield’s fortified house, during which 3 people seek shelter with Zed Zane and his fellow survivors. In the confusion, however, Murphy is gunned down, and an unthinking, emotional Zed strikes out to enact revenge. Unfortunately, the shooting and commotion have only attracted more Whites. A diversion plan emerges to rid the horde of the Smart One trying to figure a way through the gates, and lead the other infected away from the compound. Momentarily safe, the survivors turn to the matter of where to bury the dead. Zed, being now the only one available who would not attract the attentions of the infected, accompanies Freitag on this morbid mission. In short order, Zed is once more embittered and hardened against trust, when he finds himself stranded. After a series of developments that prove the Whites to be more formidable foes than he ever dreamed, he finds his way back to Sarah’s house to find the compound overrun with infected and his friends mysteriously vanished without a trace, leaving Zed to rely once more solely on his wits to survive…

Chapter 1

In the pontoon boat, Murphy and I had been drifting with the slow current of the river for a few hours. We passed a row of mansions built onto a manmade peninsula just upriver from Sarah Mansfield’s mountaintop compound. That’s when we spotted our first Whites, glimmering in a sheen from a light rain in the morning’s gray light. At least forty of them squatted in a tight huddle in the short brown grass under the backyard oaks of one of the estates. Silent.

As we neared, I saw many had oozing burns flaking with blackened skin. Some had faces scorched so badly that all human features were gone. Skeletons wrapped in immolated flesh, by some vicious miracle, not yet dead.

It was difficult not to see them as the people they used to be. In that moment, it was harder still. Without the howling or attacking, chasing and killing, they were docile. Suffering with the most human misery on their faces. Tragic eyes pleading for mercy. And, in a curse perhaps worse than any other, the virus left them with the capacity to know their wretchedness and wallow in their tears. Naked on the bank, they looked like refugees waiting for the mercy of sepsis. It was growing in the pus under their scabs, soon to assist death in finishing its work and ending their torment.

No doubt they were burned as a result of my work. But in my imagination—as that gasoline vapor bomb came together—I thought only of them blowing up, disintegrating in a supersonic rush of hot gases. Even afterward, when it was clear the blast had been a dud, I hoped the resultant blaze would burn them, make them suffer. Just as they were, on the edge of the river. But while wishing the horror of fire-seared flesh on another living creature was relatively easy in the abstract, the reality felt as though something from the blackest depths of my hate had come to swallow what was left of my soul.

I turned away from the dying Whites and sat down on one of the pontoon boat’s long, padded benches. The motor wasn’t running—we were conserving fuel on our downstream journey—but Murphy was at the helm, alert. I looked ahead into the distance for a while, trying to let the gentle splashes of raindrops on the river bring me comfort. But before long, I found myself sitting up straight, watching my hands as they rested on my thighs, willing my fidgety fingers to remain still. I was thinking of my conversation with Steph earlier that morning.

***

A couple of dead grandparents, the former owners of the house to which we escaped, had built a deck at the highest point of their roof, maybe fifty feet up from the sunburned lawns. Accessible by a staircase that ran up through the center of the house, it was a square, fifteen feet on each side, beneath a roof built to protect from the sun rather than the rain. The old couple had probably taken their grandkids up there in the late afternoons to share smiles and watch the sun cast its red glow over water skiers trying to get in their last runs before dark.

But Grandma and Grandpa had turned white with the virus and slaughtered their grandkids in the living room two floors below. Murphy and I put them both down a few weeks before when we’d discovered the mansion and decided to make it a safe house for our band of survivors.

Unable to sleep in the wee hours of the morning, I’d wandered around through the dark house and eventually found my way up to the deck. Steph was up there alone, taking her turn watching for ghostly Whites that might be creeping toward us across the peninsula.

“You’re up early.”

“Yeah,” I said as I climbed the last of the creaky cedar steps to join her.

Without looking at me she said, “You were supposed to get a full night’s sleep. That’s why you weren’t given a watch assignment tonight.”

Was she scolding me? “I think I passed out for a nap on the boat this afternoon. It threw me off my sleep rhythm.”

“It’s still two hours before sunup.”

“And?”

“And maybe you should go down and try to get some sleep.”

“I’m tired of trying. You’re being motherly about this.” I smiled to let her know that I wasn’t completely serious.

Steph glared at me before turning back to look across the stretch of dried-out lawn between the river and the back of the house. “I’m responsible for keeping all of us alive. And that requires discipline, Zed.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I sat on one of the empty chairs and took in the view. The black river snaked off to the west. The sky flashed dimly with far away lightning, but only scattered clouds rimmed in silver moonlight hung in the sky above.

Steph changed her position to look up the road that led to the bridge at the end of the peninsula.

The smell of rain blown in on the breeze earlier that day was gone. The dry taste of dust and lingering smoke was back. To make conversation with a seemingly impervious Steph, I asked anyway, “Did it ever rain?”

Steph shook her head and gently snorted as if to say, “Of course not.”

“Do you mind if I sit up here with you?”

“It seems like you’ve already decided. Is everyone else still asleep?”

“Yep.”

Steph strode over to the railing that gave her the best view of the front of the house, and then without a word, walked over to me and laid her hand across my forehead.

“What?” I reached up to push her hand away, but her stern expression told me I’d better let her go about her business.

She pulled her hand back. “Last night, when I hugged you, I thought you felt hot.”

“I get that a lot.” I pasted on a grin.

“I’m serious.”

I put a hand to my face, then to my forehead. “What? I feel fine.”

“You have a fever, Zed.”

“I know.” We both knew the virus left me with a permanently elevated temperature.

“Have you had a chance to check your temperature since—?”

“Since?”

“When was the last time you checked it?”

“I’m fine.”

She was in Captain Leonard mode by then. “The last time I saw your temperature was after you got injured at Sarah Mansfield’s house. I’m guessing you haven’t touched a thermometer since?”

I shook my head.

“Do you think you should have?”

I shrugged, getting a little miffed. Sure, she was a nurse by training, but her tone didn’t sit well with me.

“I think you’re hotter than you were.”

“Maybe it’s just that you’re used to the cool air out here tonight.”

“Cool? It’s got to be at least eighty-five.”

“That’s cooler than a hundred.”

“Nobody thinks eighty-five is cool, Zed.”

I shrugged and tried to look for anything interesting out in the darkness to divert her attention.

“I have a thermometer in my bag downstairs. After my shift, we’re checking you.” Steph looked back across the grass toward the mountain and examined the near-vertical face of the white limestone cliff.

How would anybody be able to see the infected climbing down the jagged, pale-colored rock? “We need some night vision goggles.”

“You can change the subject if you want, but I’m still taking your temperature when we get back downstairs.”

“What’s the point?”

“We need to know.”

“Why do we need to know? We can’t do anything about it, can we?”

“That’s not the point, Zed.”

“Of course it is. If the virus is progressing, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to dread the morning I wake up half brain-dead. I’d rather… I’d rather just stick my head in the sand.”

Steph turned away from the cliff and came over. She looked down at me. Her stern face had softened and, for the moment, she stopped being my boss and was just green-eyed Steph, a girl with guarded emotions and a big heart.

“Please?” I said. “I don’t want to know.”

Steph reached out and laid her hand back on my cheek. Just as I started to think it was something more than another temperature check, she slipped it up to my forehead. “Zed, please understand. I have to do it for the safety—”

“Uh-huh.” I huffed as I pulled back. Her hand fell off of my face. “For the safety of the others.” I jumped up and stomped over to the railing, anger boiling. I wanted to scream. But I didn’t. I white-knuckled the railing and stared at the cold black water, wishing things were different.

Steph’s hand came to rest on my shoulder. “Please, Zed. Don’t be like that. You know how much we all care about you. Please don’t be an ass.”

I motioned my head out towards the darkness. “I…” The words got caught in my throat. I didn’t want to be out there on my own again. I’d gone through too much finding my way back last time.

Steph’s other hand found a place on my other shoulder. “Please, Zed. Please, look at me.” She turned me around. “You have to know this isn’t going to be like it was back at the dorms. You know that, right? Nobody here would ever do anything to hurt you. Or… or to push you out.”

I nodded. I knew she was right, but it felt like it was going to happen anyway.

“Let me take your temperature. Please, let me protect our friends. I know you’re not a danger to any of us right now. But I have to do more than just hope it stays that way.” She paused. “How about if I check it and I don’t tell you if it’s gone up?”

Her hands were on my face by then, and though the moment was full of emotion, there was no romance in it. I was dealing with a fear that haunted me every time I glanced at my stark white skin. Perhaps she was, as well. And as much as I feared turning into one of them, I couldn’t help but sympathize with Steph’s fear—that I’d wake up one morning as a mindless monster and she’d have to put a bullet through my heart.

Without indulging any thoughts about the awkwardness of it, I pulled her into a hug and whispered, “Okay. But I don’t want to know. I never want to know.”

After that, our silence had no room for words. I pulled away from Steph and put myself back in my chair to watch the black river’s lazy current in the reflection of the moonlight.

Cicadas pulsed their rhythm and nocturnal frogs chirped.

I thought only of my burning desire to move, to do anything kinetic. With motion—paddling, running, shooting, even toting heavy bags of costume jewelry—came a solace in which the strain of effort consumed my attention and washed away all of the blackness. To move was to live. To live… Well, living was better than not. Being a brain-dead flesh eater was some kind of hell in between.

Anything but that.

I’m not sure how long I sat there absorbed in my fears, but it startled me when Steph interrupted with a question. “Are you okay?”

I nodded out of habit. I wasn’t.

“What are you doing?”

I gave her a look that silently asked for an explanation. “Thinking.”

She looked down at my hands, which were resting on my thighs. “I mean… What are you doing?”

I followed her gaze and watched my thumbs tap out a sequence across each of my fingertips before repeating the sequence again, and again.

Fuck.

I clenched my fists tightly.

I hadn’t realized I was doing it. “Just fidgeting. I’ve always been fidgety.”

Fidgety, just like so many of those fucking white monsters.

A tear ran down her cheek.

Neither of us believed the lie.

Chapter 2

In a steady rain, the gray sameness of the morning made time flow as lethargically as the river’s current. Only the passing of trees, houses and hills gave us any sense we were moving forward with the day. Eventually we came to a wide inlet on the port side of the boat. It was something of a harbor for the marina that was to be where we left the safety of the river. The marina was part of a smallish country club at the foot of Mt. Bonnell, right where Mt. Bonnell Road cut hard east and changed names before it led past Camp Mabry on the way into central Austin.

From the country club, Camp Mabry’s munitions bunkers were only a few miles. Those bunkers were our destination.

Murphy and I paddled the boat toward the inlet, making as little noise as possible. It was no small effort to get the boat out of the current and into the mouth of the harbor. At that point, it became much easier to guide the boat, though no less difficult to move it.

Looking around for potential dangers, I saw a group of the infected huddled together against the rain in a grassy picnic area beside the docks. Just like the group I’d seen earlier, they all had burns, mostly bad, some horrendous. Not a one made any effort to look at our boat. They stared at nothing. In their rotted brains, they all knew the last days of their lives would be consumed by a single macabre task—awaiting death.

A pier that stuck prominently out into the marina was our target. Once close enough for our momentum to finish the job, I climbed up off my side of the boat and dropped my paddle on the deck. Murphy did the same.

Guessing the rain would kill my words before they drifted too far across the water, I softly asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Even in a world of bloody horrors, one could never be fully prepared for what might lie around the next corner. Murphy’s was transfixed on the burned Whites. Absently, he answered. “This is fucked up, man.”

The boat’s port side bounced against a rubber bumper attached along the edge of the dock and started to drift back out into the water.

I jumped across the gap with the rope in hand. Kneeling down on the dock near where a cleat was bolted, I looped the rope and pulled it taut. I glanced at the huddle of burned Whites to ensure they were still disinterested. Another glance up the length of the dock showed me it was empty. Using the rope, I then pulled the boat in close and wrapped the rope around and across the cleat several times. It would hold.

Stepping back onto the boat, I took up a position beside Murphy. I peeled off the T-shirt I’d gotten from one of the kids’ rooms and laid it on the bench seat. Looking down, I saw my toes hanging off the ends of my canvas tennis shoes—cut away so they’d fit my feet. I figured I could get away with wearing them among the infected. They looked enough like dirty bare feet at a glance. I intended to keep my shorts on as well. My pistol and one extra magazine were hidden in the big pockets. In two other pockets, I’d rolled up a couple of the kids’ school backpacks. We’d need those if our trip to scavenge some ammunition was to be successful.

Murphy shook his recently shaved head in disgust and looked down at me. He was more than willing to come along, but he thought my method of disguise was pointless. Without a word, he laid his rifle on the seat cushions and went to work removing his MOLLE vest. Once that was off, his shirt followed. He looked down at his pants and boots and shook his head again. He picked up his rifle to make it clear it was staying in his hands. “That’s all I’m taking off.”

“Okay.” I kept my voice as neutral as I could. The rifle was a bad idea.

He removed several magazines from his MOLLE vest and stuffed them into his pockets, then stowed the vest under the seat. He stood with his rifle in one hand and his hatchet in the other. “I know we talked about it, but I can’t leave my rifle. I’m not going out there without it.”

“The only way we’re going to fit in perfectly is to go naked. Knives are cool, but nothing else is,” I said.

“What are you saying, man?”

“I’m not going naked either. I’m not going to tell you to leave the rifle, though I think you should. We just need to be discreet.”

“Discreet.” Murphy grinned. “You crack me up, man.”

“You know what I mean.”

He nodded. “It’s not like we were gonna walk down the middle of the street looking for attention.”

“Yeah.” I looked down at my shorts and gave some serious thought to removing them and going out with just my knife. But what would I do with the school backpacks rolled up in the pockets?

“Don’t be a worry wart, Zed. You’re my lucky charm. Everything’ll be cool.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Your lucky charm?”

“Bad shit never happens when we stick together.”

Murphy’s ability to see sunshine through the thickest clouds almost made me laugh. “You did get shot in the head when we were together.”

“Ain’t nothin’. I’m fine now.”

“And I got blown up in that bunker.”

“You’re my lucky charm, not your own.” Murphy’s big grin brightened the boat. “Besides, you didn’t get blown up. You’re just a drama queen that got knocked down, is all.”

I shook my head. “Whatever.”

Together we exited the boat and walked quietly down the dock. The burned infected continued to ignore us.

At the end of the dock, we crossed over a paved boat ramp and a parking lot. Near the back of the country club’s main building and out of earshot of any infected, I said, “We should check this place out to see if there’s a kitchen. If we could score some food in bulk, that would help out the supply situation.”

“Right now?”

“No, let’s stick with the plan today.”

“I’d be cool to come back. Tomorrow?”

“I’ve got no plans.”

We skirted the building, crossed some wet grass, and came to a sloped driveway with a few inches of flowing rainwater. In front of us was a bend in Mt. Bonnell Road at the base of the mountain. A month before, that road would have been funneling the last of the morning commuters to their soul-deadening cubicles in the city. Besides Murphy and me, the only thing on the road that morning were some naked Whites, near and far, busy in their day of scavenging for something, a dog, a cat, an armadillo, anything, to eat.

I looked around, paying extra attention to the thicket of cedars across the street. Nothing was moving anywhere within a hundred yards. “If we cross the street and get into the trees, we can still follow the road, and with any luck, we’ll avoid attention,” I whispered, pointing to my right. “When we cross, I’ll keep an eye on the ones down there. You watch the ones up that way.”

Murphy gave me a nod and let me lead.

Doing my part to watch the Whites down the road to our right, I hurried across with Murphy at my side. It was clear that we caught the attention of several. They weren’t shy about staring. But they made no sounds of alarm and made no move to come after us. Perhaps Murphy and I had enough bare white skin on display to assure them we were as infected as them.

But something wasn’t right.

Murphy and I had been through enough together that I was tuned in to any tension in his body language, his breathing, even the sound of his steps. And that’s how I knew.

I shushed him with a hand gesture and crept back out to the edge of the covering trees to peek up the street. Kneeling to keep myself hidden behind some scrubby bushes, I peeked out at the Whites who’d watched us cross from up the road toward Mt. Bonnell. They were motionless, except their poses had changed from when I first saw them. They were all looking in our direction, save one who was leaning in close to a female, cupping his hands over her ear. He was whispering.

A Smart One.

Damn.

Chapter 3

With hushed urgency, I whispered to Murphy, “Follow me. As quietly as you possibly can.” I turned and ran through the trees, not along the road, but deeper into the forest.

Breathing heavily after ten minutes of dodging hanging branches, cacti, noisy shrubs and thorny vines, we came to a stop. All I heard was the heavy shush of rain falling through the cedars’ needles and the steady dripping of water onto the ground. The rain was killing our ability to hear anything at a distance. But that meant anyone following couldn’t hear us, either.

Advantage us?

Murphy wore a question on his face, but I held a finger to my lips. I put another to my ear to indicate he should listen. It was possible we had pursuers. He hefted his hatchet and slowly scanned for movement in the forest around us.

After listening, looking and hearing nothing, we traded speed for stealth and proceeded deeper into the forest, me in the lead, Murphy behind.

The roads in that part of Austin snake around the rugged terrain and along the crests of hills. Though our path took us away from the most direct route to Camp Mabry, we were bound to come across an alternative road soon enough. Once there, we’d need to be much more careful when crossing. We were showing enough naked white skin to camouflage our relative normalcy from most Whites, but something about us—our choice to wear pants or the rifle Murphy carried—had piqued the interest of a Smart One.

When we came to a six-foot privacy fence, we followed it for the length of four or five houses. We stopped at an empty lot and saw a residential street on the other side.

I whispered to Murphy, “If there aren’t any Whites in the street, we’ll head up the block in the front yards, staying close to the houses, so we have some cover.”

“We could stay in the woods.”

I looked down at my legs and arms, which were scratched and bloody. “Let’s check the street and then decide. Cool?”

Murphy glanced down at his arms, saw plenty of the same, and gave me a nod.

We crossed the empty lot and skirted a house sided in white limestone with little dead shrubs, bouquets of twigs and brown leaves that looked to have been planted that spring. With no time to develop a root system before the automatic sprinkler systems ran dry, they never had a chance.

Back down the road in the other direction, four Whites squatted on a porch, out of the rain. They were clothed—probably not a danger to us. Besides those four, the street was empty.

Off I went. Murphy followed. We kept close to the walls of the first house we passed and paused in the narrow gap between that house and the next to look up and down the street and make sure all was still safe.

We leapfrogged our way to the gap between the third and fourth house up the block and were looking back down the street behind us when Murphy thought he saw movement. Whatever it was disappeared so quickly, we couldn’t identify it. Unfortunately, I was growing confident with our stealth and discounted the apparition as a trick of the rain pouring out of a roof gutter. That was a mistake.

When we got to West 35th Street, Camp Mabry lay just across sixty feet of bare right-of-way, gravelly shoulders and two lanes of wet asphalt. We were positioned among some bushes with a view up and down the street. Both near and far, Whites loitered, enough of them to make me uncomfortable about making another crossing.

I gave Murphy a silent look of worry.

He understood and cast a glance both up and down the street before sinking back into the bushes and pulling me down with him.

“Damn those naked fuckers,” I whispered.

Murphy scooped up a handful of blackish-colored mulch from around the base of the bushes and smeared some on his arm and them some on his pants. It wasn’t enough to color him black, just enough to make some dirty spots. He looked over himself before grinning and whispering, “If we smear some of this around on ourselves, the black spots is what they’ll see from up the street. They won’t even notice we’re wearing pants.”

“It’s raining, Murphy.” My tone didn’t do much to mask my disdain for the idea. “It’ll wash off.”

Without losing a bit of his smile, Murphy said, “Don’t be retarded. It’ll take an hour or two for the rain to wash all this off of your skin. And you’d need some Tide and a long wash cycle to get it out of your pants.”

“Retarded?” I was a little offended.

“Don’t turn into a bitch on me, man.”

I rolled my eyes, scooped up a handful of the mulch and started making smears on myself.

It took only a few moments to camouflage ourselves as two dirty cannibals. When we were ready, Murphy said, “When we head out, walk beside me real close. I’m going to hold the rifle straight up and down between us so they can’t see it from either direction.”

“Good idea.”

As a matter of course, I looked around behind us. Nothing was there. Nothing was on our flanks. The apparition from the rainwater hadn’t materialized. Only the Whites up and down the road were visible.

We stepped out of the bushes together and started a comfortably paced, side-by-side walk across the street.

Of course, our movement caught the attention of every White on the road. All froze and stared. Murphy and I continued walking, doing our best to look like we belonged, which in a way we did. We were just as infected as those watching us, just not as symptomatic.

One by one, each of the Whites I saw turned away, busying themselves with staring at nothing and trying futilely to stay dry under the boughs of the oak trees.

Without incident, we made it across the street and angled our path toward a large section of chain-link fence pushed over flat, just as the wall in front of Sarah Mansfield’s house had been. We stepped carefully through the tangled mess of barbed wire that once topped the fence. We crossed a narrow band of brown grass and made it into the cedar forest on the undeveloped land inside the southern border of the base.

Together, we squatted between some trees. I looked up and down the road we’d just crossed.

“That went better than expected,” I said, just as I noticed Murphy wasn’t looking at the street we’d crossed. He was focused back down the side street we’d just snuck up. “What?”

“I think I saw something down there again.”

Through the rain, I didn’t see anything that aroused my suspicion. “We should get moving.”

“Do you know where we are?”

“Yeah.” I looked around. I was familiar enough with the road from all of the times I’d driven it on the way up to Mt. Bonnell to see my old girlfriend, Jackie. I was confident where we were. And my confidence in my ability to move unmolested among the Whites continued to grow.

“I wish we could have looked at those satellite maps that we put together back at Sarah Mansfield’s house,” Murphy said.

“Me, too. We’ll get to some place with solar power again. Based on that map that Dalhover drew of the base, if we cut straight north through these woods for a mile or so, we’ll come out pretty close to the ammo bunkers.”

“Yeah, but he said the last time he was on the base was twenty years ago.”

“Dude, they’re not going to move the ammo bunkers. You were right there when he told us Harris told him they left the bunker doors open after their last ammo run. They’re still there.” I took a glance at the thick woods behind us. “What’s up with you all of a sudden?”

Rainwater running down Murphy’s face gave it a peculiar animation that underscored his unease. “I feel like we’re being watched. I think we’re being followed.”

Of course, that flew in the face of the confidence I’d been cultivating. I looked back down the street we’d come up. “You think what you saw was something other than water running off the roof.”

Murphy nodded.

I was pretty sure Murphy was overreacting. “What are you thinking?”

Murphy shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

I huffed and looked around again. “Fine. We can go back to the boat today and try another time.”

Murphy looked down at me the way he’d look at a petulant nephew, but didn’t say anything for a long time. “No. We’ve come this far. Let’s get this done. We’re light on weapons and low on ammo. We need this stuff.”

“Are you sure?” I tried my best to get back to my neutral tone. I knew I was prone to unrealistic certainty when it came to pursuing my mistakes, and I knew that certainty carried with it a viral charisma that bulled its way over others’ doubts. I wanted to move ahead, but I was trying to apply a two-heads-are-better-than-one solution to the question at hand. “Everything we do out here is risky shit. If you’re not comfortable with moving forward, then let’s get back to the boat.”

“Any ideas how we’re going to get the stuff out of here yet?”

I patted the rolled up backpacks stuffed into my pockets. “Besides these?”

“We can’t get much in those.”

I grinned. “We’ll figure something out.”

Murphy stretched a smile over his concerns. “Just my kind of plan.”

“We may be able to get some ammunition and, with any luck, some grenades in the backpacks. But a lot of Whites are around and that Smart One we saw a little bit ago is a worry. We can’t be loading up and just walking out of here with armfuls of rifles.”

Murphy nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

“Let’s go check things out then. We’ll get what we can, and then get out of here. This’ll have to be just a mostly recon mission. Cool?”

“Cool.”

I stood up and backed deeper into the forest.

I was in the lead again as we worked our way through the trees. I realized then something had changed in the social dynamic between us. Somehow, I’d been promoted from rifle toting novice to squad leader. I still couldn’t shoot worth a shit but Murphy could, and that gave me comfort. Besides, if the situation got desperate enough that shooting became necessary, the Whites would be so close and numerous, I wouldn’t have any trouble putting my bullets into them.

Before long, we came to a curving trail through the woods and stopped. Looking up and down, I whispered, “What do you think?”

“Jogging path?”

That made sense. “You wanna take it?”

“It looks clear.” Murphy was still worried.

“It’ll be faster.”

“It’s up to you.”

I surveyed the trail again. The ground was all mud, cedar roots, and outcrops of limestone. Even without the rain falling, it would be near impossible to tell if anyone had recently passed.

“What do you think, Tonto?” Murphy asked.

“Tonto?”

“You’re looking at that trail like you’re some kind of Indian tracker.”

Ignoring the comment, I pointed to the left. “There’s a north-south road over that way.” I pointed right. “This is mostly woods over here. I think if we go that way, it might lead us up to the part of the base near where the ammo bunkers are.”

“Might?”

I shrugged. It was hard to tell where we were.

Murphy nodded in the direction of the path away from the road.

“Works for me.” I stepped out of the trees and started moving at a pace that I could quietly maintain.

After a short distance, we rounded a sharp bend to the left. The underbrush bordering the trail grew thick and the overhanging oak branches darkened it in dusky shadows. Murphy reached up from behind and tapped my shoulder. When I looked back, he made an urgent gesture toward the bushes among the tree trunks beside the trail.

It was time to scoot.

Chapter 4

Murphy hurried into the woods to our left, and I followed until we were well away from the trail. He squatted among some thick bushes and looked at the trail, pulling a finger to his lips to indicate quiet.

I didn’t need that much direction, but an immature retort could be disastrous if Murphy’s sense of danger was accurate.

I squinted between the branches and leaves but saw nothing, felt nothing but wet.

I knew my intuition for danger wasn’t as sharp as Murphy’s. All of the trouble I’d gotten myself into when he wasn’t around was proof enough. Drawing my pistol from my pocket with one hand, I gripped my kitchen knife in the other and checked the woods behind us and off to our sides. Murphy was focused on dangers that might be on the trail. So checking our flanks for sneaking infected or possible escape routes became my responsibility.

Noise from the direction of the trail got my attention and sent my heart racing. Moments later, I saw movement through the trees. Murphy crouched lower behind our concealing bushes, as did I.

A troop of Whites, maybe a dozen strong, came into view, moving on the trail, slowly, quietly, on the balls of their feet. Their heads swiveled, looking forward and back, peeking through gaps in the cedar fronds on the right and left.

Holy shit. They were hunting.

As we watched, a runner came up the trail from the other direction and stopped in front of the group’s leader. All halted. Most stood there doing nothing, staring at nothing. Some stayed alert, scrutinizing the woods.

The runner cupped her hands over the leader’s ear and whispered something brief. The leader whispered something to the runner and pointed up the trail in the direction from which the runner had come.

With a confused look on her face, the runner looked at the leader of the group.

This visibly angered the leader. His body language turned aggressive and when he was no longer able to contain his frustration, he slapped the runner hard across her face, dropping her to her knees.

The runner tried to escape, pushing herself backward on the rough ground.

The leader caught her by the shoulder, bent over and whispered again into her ear. He punctuated his message with another slap and pointed up the trail.

The girl crawled some more before standing up beyond the leader’s reach. Blood flowed from her mouth and nose. But she didn’t run off to deliver the message she’d been given.

The leader took another aggressive step toward her and raised his fist.

The girl finally seemed to understand. She turned and ran back up the trail.  The leader of the group looked around, listened, then followed the same path, taking the time to place his feet noiselessly as he moved.

Murphy and I waited.

When I felt sure the hunting party was far enough out of earshot, I whispered to Murphy, “I’d bet your balls they were looking for us.”

“Me, too.”

“Do you think that was that Smart One that saw us cross the road by the country club?”

Murphy nodded. “I don’t see who else it could be.”

“When I was naked among them, they thought I was one of them. I think that’s the only safe way to do this, to be just as naked and bald as they are.”

“And without weapons,” Murphy added. It was clear from his tone that he didn’t have any intention of being in their company without a rifle. “Why do you think they didn’t come after us on the road if the Smart One knew what we were?”

“I think they’re learning. If we have guns and if they don’t have numbers on their side, they know they shouldn’t come after us.”

“If they know what guns are, why don’t they just pick them up and kill us?”

“Being smart enough to know that a gun can kill you isn’t the same as being smart enough to use one.”

Murphy looked around a bit before he said, “I think they’re getting a big pack together to come hunt us down.”

“Uh-huh.” I hadn’t thought of that. But it made perfect sense, considering what we’d seen with the messenger girl. Something was being coordinated.

“What do you think we should do?”

“We could bail out and I could come back later in spy mode.”

“Spy mode?”

“Naked. With a knife. Alone.”

Murphy shook his head. “Being out here alone is too dangerous. You should know that better than anybody.”

“I just need to be more careful.”

“You don’t even know what that word means.”

I shrugged, looked around between the trees and listened through the sound of the rain.

“I say we see what we can see on our way back to the boat and call it a day,” Murphy said.

It was a disappointing choice, but Murphy was right. We were in danger. Weapons, ammunition, and maybe even MREs were available somewhere on the base. But without a better plan to find and get away with some of it, we weren’t likely to have a happy outcome.

“We should stay off the trail.”

I agreed on that point, as well.

Murphy pointed through the woods. “I think the boat is back that way, if we’re cutting straight through the woods.”

I’d lost my sense of direction. I looked around as though that might help me get my bearings. “Sure.”

“Lead the way.”

So I did.

Murphy followed me through the dense cedar branches as I grew more and more nervous. While stealth was necessary, it was slow. If those Smart Ones were gathering their numbers for a hunt, time was definitely against us.

The smell of wet death embraced us in a clammy hug as we neared the edge of the forest. When we finally came out, to our right stood a row of widely-spaced buildings of painted cinder block and fifty-year-old brick. Among those was a gravel road with vehicles scattered about. Human bones with all but the smallest bits of rotting flesh gnawed off lay in puddles and on the grass across the empty space. Thousands had died there.

“Can you tell where we are?” Murphy whispered, aghast at the sight of so many dead.

Deal with it later. You’ve got more immediate problems.

I tried not to look at the bones. “I don’t know where we are. You have any idea?”

“Nope. This is my first time here. But I think on the other side of those buildings is the parade ground, the one you see when you drive by on the highway.”

“Loop 1, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we must be completely turned around. I thought we were heading back toward the river.”

Murphy shrugged. His face looked aged under a burden of worry.

Directly across the clearing stood some sheds, perhaps for maintenance. Behind those, another growth of cedar forest. “I think if we cut through there, those ammo bunkers might be on the other side,” I said.

“And?”

“I think I can find my way out from there.”

Murphy looked left then right, and took a long, hard look at the distance between the sheds and us. “Are we running or walking?”

“What do you think, about a hundred yards to get us into those trees?”

“About that.”

“With Smart Ones around looking for us, I think it’s best to keep out of sight as much as possible. Are you up for the run?”

“I haven’t been this thin since I was in the Army. Don’t lose sight of me. I might just run all the way back to the river.”

“Let’s go.”

Murphy took off at a sprint across the killing field. I lit out on his heels, glancing left and right as I went. Better to see coming danger than to simply run and pray. Though I could make a pretty good case for run and pray.

Murphy stumbled on a slippery skull and nearly fell, but caught his balance and kept his feet moving. I slowed to wait. We had to stay together.

We had just crossed over a gravel road and were nearly at the maintenance sheds when a line of Whites snaked out of the trees in front of us.

Shit.

Murphy slowed to a jog. I matched his speed.

The Whites saw us. We were upright and running across a flat field. They each cast glances our way as they formed a helix and paralleled the tree line, blocking our way with fifty, then sixty and more. And they kept filing out of a gap in the trees.

We veered to our right, and moved in the same direction as the Whites. They didn’t come after us. I guessed nearly all of them were of the variety with limited intellectual capacity. To them, Murphy and I were nothing special.

Through his heavy breathing Murphy said, “I say we shoot the one in front. He’s the Smart One.”

I shook my head. “Then the rest will charge us.”

“We need to do something pretty quick or we’re fucked.”

He was right. Of that, I had no doubt.

Another helix of Whites snaked out between the buildings off to our right.

“They’re herding us, Murphy.” I came to a stop and looked back. Whites were coming out of the woods behind us. We were surrounded. And they had more bodies than we had bullets.

Chapter 5

Murphy’s eyes went wide with the adrenaline.

I was sure my eyes were just as wide as I raced through options in my mind, trying to come up with an escape plan.

All three of the helices changed direction on some silent cue and started to spiral in on us.

My panic rose under my attempts to quash it.

Murphy shouted, “Fuck this. C’mon!” With his weapon on his hip, he took off at full speed toward our original destination, the forest behind the maintenance sheds.

My feet were moving before I even had time to think.

Our sudden choice to run sent the helices into turmoil as the leaders—presumably Smart Ones—each angled directly toward us.

I had my pistol up, ready to shoot, but was determined not to use it until the last moment. Once a gun sounded, all of those Whites running around in their helices would lose all sense of order, scream like bloody hell and rush us. Gnashing teeth and tearing fingers would be the last thing I’d see.

We were on a collision course with the leader of the first helix we saw, and the trees were just fifteen or twenty feet behind him, but so were a whole line of Whites.

With just a few steps between them, Murphy ripped out a guttural wail, braced his weapon in both hands across the front of his body and charged the Smart One. The Smart One’s brain made the sudden, instinctual switch from predator to prey, and fear hit him almost as hard as Murphy did an instant later. The White never had a chance to react. Murphy bowled over him and barely slowed.

The helix fell into disarray, but only for a moment.

A wave of howls tore through the rain, a call to charge, and the disorganized jogging Whites boiled over with berserk rage and came at us.

Murphy, with better instincts for fighting than me, immediately fired his weapon at a White in front of us. As that one was falling, I popped several rounds toward the Whites between us and the trees. As for those behind, I’d outrun them or I wouldn’t.

With our path momentarily clear, Murphy crashed into the cedars with me on his heels. Branches tore painlessly at my skin.

The horde hit the trees a handful of seconds behind us, breaking branches and jamming themselves into the gaps in the foliage. The dense branches would only give so far. The Whites tripped over one another, screaming in frustration.

We got some distance on them, but ran at a careless speed.

The thicket of trees was not as wide as the clearing we’d just crossed, and before I knew it, we broke out on the other side. We were on clear, bone-strewn ground again with another helix of Whites coming around a bend off to our left and bearing down on the ruckus. We were right in their path.

To our right, I saw a rectangular section of barbed wire-topped chain-link fence surrounding two berms, with flat concrete walls at the front of each. Centered on each wall was a doorway large enough to drive through. One bunker was sealed by a heavy metal door. The door on the other bunker was slid to the side on its tracks leaving it open.

“The ammunition bunkers!” I shouted.

Murphy veered right, willing to accept any idea, any direction.

It was a foot race between us and the helix rounding the bend.

We ran, demanding every painful spasm of speed we could wrench out of our lungs and legs. Our lives depended on it, and it was going to be close.

Without breaking stride, and with the leaders of the new helix just a few dozen feet away, Murphy let go with several bursts of his rifle and four or five Whites at the front fell. Those behind tumbled over.

That bought us the time we needed. We crossed through the open gate in the chain-link fence and headed toward the open bunker.

That’s when it occurred to me. “We can’t go in there.

“Fuck that.” Murphy crossed through the threshold and turned to make an attempt at closing the door.

“We’ll be trapped in here if we shut that door.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you want me to do, but you better figure something out, professor.” Murphy ran a dozen paces inside, turned, dropped to a knee, and brought his rifle to his shoulder. He started popping off rounds as the first of the infected tried to come in behind us.

The open door was nearly ten feet wide, wide enough to drive a vehicle inside for loading and unloading. Murphy wouldn’t be able to hold the mob at the door for very long. Once they massed outside, they’d overwhelm him easily. My pistol would be of no help when that happened.

Near frantic, I looked around as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

Breathe.

Breathe.

The place was disorganized. Not full, but more crates, boxes and canisters were there than I imagined we’d ever need. Many were open. Some were spilled. Whomever had been in here last had been in one hell of a hurry.

Then I saw them. Grenades.

A box of fragmentation grenades laid broken open on the far side of the bunker. Those were probably the only weapons in the whole place we could put to lethal use in the short seconds available to us. The fact that they’d also alert thousands of Whites within a mile to our presence didn’t matter. If we didn’t use them, we’d die.

I ran over and grabbed as many as I could cradle in my hands and forearms, bounded back across the bunker and dropped a half-dozen on the ground at Murphy’s feet.

His face turned from grim to grin.

He reached down and picked one up. “Grab one, toss it, then get the fuck out of the way.”

He was already pulling the pin on one when I got my finger through the pin on mine. He tossed his through the open door and moved to the side to get out of the direct line of any fragments that the blast would send back in our direction. A half second later, my grenade followed his and I ran back over to the open box of grenades on the floor.

The twin blasts knocked me off of my feet and I landed roughly. Fragments sizzled the air.

As I picked myself up. Murphy was already pulling a pin from another grenade.

Writhing bodies of screaming Whites, their dead and their dazed brethren lay in the mud outside the door. Murphy threw the grenade through the rainy smoke and squatted to gather up more. He’d only just gotten out of line with the door’s opening when the grenade exploded.

Seconds later, I’d pulled a Hello Kitty backpack from my pocket and was loading it with loose hand grenades. The other bag got its share of grenades just as quickly. I yelled to Murphy, “We need to get the fuck out of here and make a run for it.”

“How many grenades you got?”

“Fuck. Does it matter?”

“Give me the word and we’ll make a run for it.”

Another grenade blast rang my ears.

Having stuffed my pistol back in my pocket, I jumped to my feet with a bag in each hand. They were heavy and awkward enough that running would be damn difficult. “Ready.”

“Beside the door,” Murphy shouted, running to put his back to the wall just inside. “We’ll toss out two more, and as soon as they blow, follow me out.”

“Right.” I was beside him in a flash and passed him a bag. We both pulled a pin from a grenade. Murphy tossed his around the corner. I did the same and immediately stepped around the corner to run.

Murphy threw an arm around my neck and jerked me roughly back, pinning me against the wall just as the first grenade detonated.

As the second one exploded, it occurred to me I’d forgotten to wait for the grenades to blow before chasing them through the door. Murphy had just saved my life. Again.

With ears ringing and my brains rattling, Murphy yelled, “A grenade in each hand. Pull the pins. If any motherfucker gets in my way I’m gonna run him down. Throw a grenade at any bunch you see, whether they’re coming or not. Stay on my ass. Now!” Murphy ran through the door and into the smoke.

Chapter 6

Blood.

Body parts.

Shrieks of the dying.

Ripped torsos spilling intestines.

Shattered bones. White skin that ran with red.

Severed arteries spewing fountains of blood that made the ground slippery under our feet.

Murphy was the devil and I was a demon. Together we’d created a little Hell at the entrance of the bunker. Dazed from concussions, Whites limped through smoke that hadn’t yet been washed out of the air.

True to his word, Murphy shouldered the first White that crossed his path and she bounced face first into the mud.

Thirty feet out of the bunker, we made it through the gate in the chain-link fence, and still not a hand had touched me. To our right though, a group of Whites looked wide-eyed at the horror outside the bunker’s door, stunned. Unfortunately for them, too many of their eyes were watching Murphy and me run by. That earned them the first of my grenades as I shouted, “Faster!”

Like we could run any faster.

Murphy caught sight of the grenade flying toward the group and veered left.

The explosion thundered behind us, and I didn’t look back to see the damage I’d done. We were headed for a tree line with no Whites in front of us. My heartbeat was pounding in my ears and my bag of loose grenades was beating bruises all over my back, but I had a moment to hope.

Murphy crashed between the squat cedar trees, stopped and turned to assess the situation.

Whatever the Smart Ones were doing at that moment, they weren’t leading the charge after us. Whites were all over the clearing, most in a state of confusion, some looking at us and more than a few moving to follow.

Across from us, at the tree line from which we’d come into the clearing, two helices of Whites were exiting and making no move at all toward the fresh feast at the bunker doors. They were still on target.

Murphy tossed a grenade at a small cluster of disinterested Whites not far from us. They’d be in the path of the helices coming out of the woods. A distraction for some of them, perhaps.

He dug another grenade out of my bag, pulled the pin and took off through the woods.

Just as the foliage grew thick enough to obscure any view of the clearing behind us, the sound of howling and crashing came from somewhere off to our right. And it was so damn close. Murphy stopped and looked at me, asking in urgent silence if I could pinpoint the direction.

With the shrieking Whites everywhere, I felt no compunction about yelling. “Throw them up high over the trees in the general direction! We don’t have to come close to anything! The noise will disperse them for a moment!” I heaved a grenade with all the force I could put behind it.

Murphy lofted two grenades into high arcs in the same direction. Before the first explosion sounded, we both had more grenades in our hands and were pulling the pins as we barreled through the trees with no idea where we were heading. We were running for our lives. That’s all either of us were thinking in that moment.

When we broke out of the trees again, under a blanket of stink, we were back in another field covered with decaying carcasses. A large building lay off to our right with corpses piled high near the walls, probably the last stand of those who had died at Camp Mabry.

Several vehicles sat about, some military, some civilian. One was an armored Humvee with the front doors swung open and a machine gun mounted on the top. Nothing in the world could have been a more beautiful sight.

On the far side of the clearing, several hundred Whites were coming at us, both organized and not. Behind us, in the trees, the infected were thrashing their way through. Off to our left, two long helices were inter-spiraling toward us.

Murphy said, “We’re so fucked.”

I shouted, “The Humvee!” I ran, knowing without looking Murphy would be right behind.

It was another race we had to win. It was the only thought I could afford to entertain.

My legs carried me faster than I thought possible, and when I was just ten feet from the Humvee, with dozens of Whites closing in, I tossed both of my grenades in rapid succession. Murphy did the same and jumped in through the driver’s door. I hopped in the passenger side.

The infected were closing fast. We had to get moving.

The wet ground would compromise our traction. We’d be dead if they hemmed us in.

I slammed my door and set the battle lock just as a White bounced off the glass.

Murphy already had his door buttoned up and was waiting for the diesel’s glow plugs to warm up.

“Murphy, let’s trade places.”

“What? No time.”

“God dammit, just do it.”

Under the duress of my urgency, Murphy squirmed up out of the driver’s seat and tried to push into the back to let me get around, but the back of the Humvee was stacked full of boxes.

It was awkward getting past one another in the cramped space. We earned more bruises for doing it quickly. But we could afford the bruises. We could barely afford the dozen seconds it cost us. As soon as my butt hit the driver’s seat, the glow plug indicator flashed off and I cranked the engine. The Humvee rocked against the impact of several more Whites. The engine rumbled and I mashed the accelerator.

The Humvee lurched and started to roll.

Across the hood, I saw Whites coming toward us from all over the clearing. I plowed into them as I turned the wheel to angle away from the buildings. They thudded against the grill with crunching bones and desperate screams as I ran them down. The mob was thick enough to slow the Humvee and Whites were climbing on top. But it wasn’t thick enough to stall us.

“You know where we’re going?” Murphy hollered.

“Yeah.”

Rolling out of the muddy field, our tires finally grabbed asphalt and we accelerated down a long straight road.

“Where?”

“This way.”

One of the infected fell off Murphy’s side, rolled across pavement, and tumbled over the rocky grass.

As the mass of Whites receded behind us, up ahead a group of a dozen infected stepped out of the cedar forest on the left. I let my foot off of the accelerator and braced myself for the impact of the bunch as I guessed they’d all jump in front of the Humvee or charge it from the side. But they didn’t. They walked purposefully toward the road, stopped and stared. It was more than weird.

As we passed, the closest of the group was just two feet outside of my window, glaring at me with cold, cruel eyes.

It took a second for recognition to kick in, but as I looked at him over my shoulder, I was sure it was Mark. Fucking Mark.

My toe touched the brake. Murphy felt the deceleration and shouted, “What the fuck, man?”

“That was fucking Mark.”

“Mark? What the hell are you talking about?”

“That was Mark back there. The one right by the road.” I looked back and forth across the road and the grassy shoulders. I could make the turn and go back to run his ass down.

“Dude, it wasn’t Mark. Just keep going.”

The Humvee was slowing. Mark was standing in the center of the road by then, daring me to come back.

Oh, to feel his bones break on my bumper.

Breathe.

Think.

My experience at the hospital, trying to drive that Humvee through the mass of white bodies, was a lesson that screamed at me not to be tried a second time. It was by little more than luck I made it out of that one alive. If I did a U-turn to go back and run down Mark, and if there were Whites in the trees in sufficient numbers, they could trap us on the wet ground. We’d die.

Murphy was trying to look back to see what he could, but the crates and boxes in the back of the Humvee blocked most of his view. “All of those bald-headed motherfuckers look alike, man. Let’s be smart and get the fuck outta here.”

The Humvee shook against several impacts.

I looked forward and cursed myself for focusing so much on Mark that I never saw them. Whites were pouring out of the trees on our right, already climbing on top and trying to destabilize the Humvee with their weight.

Chapter 7

The Humvee was picking up speed again.

“How many on the roof?”

“More than one!” Murphy shouted. “How the fuck should I know?”

I mashed the brakes hard. Murphy hit the dashboard as three naked, white bodies rolled down off the hood. I accelerated again and ran them over.

The Humvee picked up speed and we passed the bulk of the ambushers.

Several were still clinging to Murphy’s side of the Humvee. I swerved and scraped them off on an abandoned car.

And we were free.

Occasional Whites came out of the trees in front of us, a stupidity that cost them their lives. Some tried to catch us from the side. We were moving too fast by then.

Murphy exclaimed, “Holy shit!”

I tensed and jerked my head around to look.

Nothing.

Murphy was grinning.

“What the hell, Murphy?”

He nodded toward the back of the Humvee.

“What, the boxes?”

“Jesus must love us. It’s all ammo and shit.”

“No way.”

“Way. Do you know how to get back upriver from here?”

I laughed out loud. “Yeah, but you’re not gonna like it.”

We reached the base’s southern gate and turned onto 35th Street, headed west.

“This is the way to Sarah Mansfield’s house, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Man, don’t smile like that. You’re worrying me.”

“We’re not going to Sarah’s house.”

“Cool, man.”

The fork in the road was just ahead. Right led up the crest of Mount Bonnell. Left led into the country club parking lot. It was time to commit. I cut the wheels left and entered the country club grounds.

Murphy was alarmed. “Dude, there’s nothing down here. We can’t get out this way.” He turned in his seat. Whites were coming out of their hiding places behind us.

I swerved around the driveway, ran down a few of the infected, got to the parking lot and lined the Humvee up with the boat ramp. “Hang on.”

That’s when Murphy figured out what I intended to do. “I can’t swim,” he said.

“I know.” The Humvee pitched forward as it rolled onto the ramp and I braked to slow it a little. I didn’t want to hit the water so fast that we’d be injured by the impact.  A giant white splash exploded in front of us and my chest hit the steering wheel as my body was thrown forward. I pressed my foot to the brake more firmly but not enough to stop us as we rolled down the boat ramp.

Before I knew it, the water was up to the bottom edge of the windows and running in through the floor drains and inadequate door seals.

Murphy was freaking out and trying to open the door, but it wouldn’t open.

I expected that. “Be calm. Be calm.”

“Goddammit, Zed! Goddammit!” He was panicking.

I lowered my voice and spoke slowly as I reached over to put a hand on Murphy’s shoulder. “Be cool, Murphy. Be cool.”

“I can’t get the Goddamned door open.”

“Be cool, Murphy. It won’t open.”

He spun around in his seat, near frantic. “What the fuck?”

The water was more than halfway up the windows outside, then only a few inches from the top edges of the doors. The six ton vehicle, still rolling slowly down the boat ramp, lurched to a halt when I pushed the brakes all the way down.

The water inside was up over our legs.

Murphy stood as much as he could and tried to get his face as close as possible to the roof.

“Goddamn you, Zed.”

“Murphy,” I said calmly, “we’ve stopped. The Humvee isn’t going to roll any deeper into the water. We’re still on the ramp. We just need to wait a second before the doors will open.”

“They won’t open.”

“They will open. Just not yet.”

“We’re gonna drown.”

“No, Murphy, we’ll still have air up by the ceiling when the water stops rising. Look at where it is near the tops of the windows. Once it’s level inside with the water outside, we’ll be able to open the doors.”

The water had risen to my chest at that point and I deliberately got up out of my seat to get my face near the ceiling.

“How do you know that?”

“I just do. Okay? Trust me.”

“You should have asked me to trust you before you drove the damn truck into the fucking river, because I would have told you hell, no!”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“I swear to God, Zed, if I don’t drown…”

The water was nearing the ceiling and Murphy was nearly hyperventilating.

“Be calm. It’ll be okay.”

The water stopped rising.

Moments passed before Murphy figured out I was right. The rising water had stopped. He looked at me, surprise etched into his face.

“Try the door. But be careful. You don’t want to fall out into the river. You can’t swim, remember?”

“Like I’m ever gonna forget that.”

Murphy turned away from me and reached down to pull on the handle of his door. It opened with ease. He stuck his head out and looked around. “I’ll be damned.”

“You gotta trust me sometimes, Murphy.”

“Okay, lucky charm, what’s next?” He pulled his head back in. “We’re in the middle of the marina and about a hundred Whites are back there on the ramp and more coming.”

“Okay. Listen, I’ve got to swim over and get the boat before they start coming up the docks and get on it. Are you going to be okay if I leave you here for a minute?”

“Whatever, man. I’m cool. Just get the boat. And just so you know, I’m going to punch you in the face when this is over.”

Chapter 8

I worked my way around the nearly submerged Humvee until I was on Murphy’s side. The pontoon boat was tied to a dock at least a hundred feet from that side. The mob of Whites collecting on the shore was growing rapidly. I took my pistol and extra magazines out of my pocket and lay them on the roof of the Humvee. The extra pounds of grenades in my Hello Kitty bag would make for hard swimming so the bag stayed on the roof of the Humvee. I kept the knife.

I inhaled deeply three times before submerging and using my feet to push myself off of the Humvee’s fender. I intended to cross the distance completely underwater. Any surfacing would get the attention of the White mob and might lead to their welcoming me when I reached the boat.

Staying just a few feet beneath the surface, I stroked with my arms and scissor kicked my legs. The wails of the Whites barely transmitted down to me through the water, which was noisy with raindrops falling on the surface.

Surrounded by cold green, I had nothing to guide me but the hope I could swim in a straight line.

As the distance dragged at me, my lungs cried out for oxygen.

The need for breath grew and doubt sat itself on my shoulder and whispered faithless, discouraging words.

But to come up for air was to advertise my presence to the Whites. To come up for air was failure. It was tantamount to stranding Murphy in the Humvee in the middle of the river.

I stroked through the cold green.

I thought about my buddy, Benny, the one I’d eventually beaten up in junior high. The summer before that, we were at the community pool with a couple of other kids from the neighborhood. We were all standing on the side when somebody said, “I’ll bet you can’t swim all the way across underwater.”

Without even taking a moment to brag, I dove into the pool and glided under the surface, kicking with my legs and using my arms to pull myself along as I watched the black lane markers pass beneath. I reached the other side of the pool, popped up and turned around. It was easy but my friends were amazed. I swelled with pride.

Benny, however, was having none of it. “I can do that.” He dove into the water and followed my path.

My pride dribbled quickly away as Benny’s wiggly form beneath the water closed the gap between us. The last smidgen of that pride winked out of existence when Benny’s grinning face popped out of the water beside me.

The little fuck had made it.

The guys on the other side of the pool started to talk. I climbed up out of the pool, looked at all my buddies and said, “Well, watch this.” I drew a deep breath, dove back in, and swam the width of the pool again. Only this time, instead of stopping at the other side, I turned, pushed off of the wall and, starting to feel a compelling need for air, swam across the width of the pool again.

I made it all the way back across and popped up next to Benny, breathing deeply to get some fresh air back in my lungs. The guys were back to being amazed.

But Benny wasn’t giving up. He’d felt the pride too when the boys seemed amazed at the initial feat. The chance to feel like a winner is a rare thing. Benny was determined to feel it again. He climbed up out of the pool. The boys were making noise. They were spectators to a challenge and loving it.

Benny drew a few deep breaths just as I had, shot me a defiant look and dove into the water.

I climbed up and sat on the edge of the pool, so I could better see Benny’s shimmery form beneath the wavy surface. Just as before, he made it to the far side of the pool without coming up for air. And just as I had, when he reached the other side, he turned underwater, pushed off and swam the distance back.

On the way across, I wished he’d come up for air and grant me the victory. But he didn’t. He wanted victory as badly as me. Or so he thought.

When Benny emerged from the water below me after swimming two widths of the pool, the boys cheered and shouted. They were impressed with us both, but I wasn’t willing to share the victory. I drew in deep breaths and prepared myself to try for three.

Benny saw what was coming next and climbed up beside me.

It was then that one of the kids from across the pool scoffed, “You can only do it because when you dive in, you go halfway across the pool before you have to start swimming.”

True. But fuck that kid, anyway. I shrugged and jumped down into the water. “I can do it either way.”

Some other kid said, “At the same time. Do it together.”

I looked at Benny. Do or die, buddy.

Benny, with a touch of worry on his face, jumped into the pool beside me.

I hollered back across the pool. “Somebody has to say ‘go.’” I grabbed the lip of the pool’s edge with one hand, pulled my legs up, planted my feet on the wall, and positioned myself for the biggest push I could.

Benny watched me and followed my example, letting no advantage slip by.

From across the pool, I heard, “Ready. Set.”

I looked at Benny. He looked at me. I didn’t know what he was thinking. It didn’t matter. I was going to win the challenge or I was going to suck in a lung full of water trying.

“Go.”

Off we went.

In an ideal world, the challenge should have been each of us against ourselves to see how far we could push ourselves beyond our beliefs and fears. But that world is a fantasy. Nothing like it has ever existed, nor will it.

Under the surface, I watched Benny and kept even with him as we swam across the pool.

When we reached the other side, it had indeed taken longer without the advantage of diving in. I was feeling the stress of insufficient oxygen in my blood.

I made my turn and started to swim back, expecting Benny to quit at the turn. When I looked though, he was coming up beside me. He hadn’t quit. Persistent fucker.

No biggie. I could make another lap. Benny wouldn’t make it to the other side. No fucking way.

The black lane lines passed beneath us and kept passing until I saw the bottom of the pool curve up to the wall ahead of me. My lungs were screaming for air. But Benny was still beside me.

He would stop at the wall. I was sure of that. I only had to make the turn, swim a few strokes and I’d win.

I could to it. I knew I could.

I hit the wall, negotiated my turn, pushed off with my legs and glided over a few of the black lane markers below. Just before I surfaced to finally grant relief to my lungs, I saw Benny glide on past me, stroking as he went.

Shit.

Every muscle in my body demanded I surface and breathe, but every ounce of my soul refused. Win or drown. I swam on. I sped up and came up beside Benny.

I’d laid claim to something when I’d jumped into the pool the first time, and whatever it was, whether pride or something less tangible, it felt better than anything I’d ever felt before. I would not lose. No matter how much my muscles begged to quit.

We made it to the halfway point and we were still underwater. Despite my resolve, I silently begged Benny to quit and end the irrational pain screaming in my head. Surface. Surface. Breathe.

But Benny swam. And swam.

I swam.

At three quarters of the way, my prayers were answered and I saw Benny’s body change its position in the water just before he pushed his head above the surface.

Victory.

But not enough victory, not yet.

Only a quarter of the way to go. I swam on.

I’d make three full widths.

To my surprise, my body complied.

Stroke. Kick. Stroke. Kick.

Black lane markers passed beneath me.

The pool wall curved up and I hit it with my outstretched hand.

But I wasn’t done.

I turned, pushed off with my feet and let my momentum carry me back out into the pool. Three full widths had passed underwater. I knew I wouldn’t make a fourth. But I pushed myself anyway and watched the black stripes slip past. Then I saw Benny, just ahead of me, standing on the bottom with his head above the water, feeling his defeat.

With the last anything that was left, I stroked past Benny and swam another ten feet before surfacing.

I hadn’t just beaten Benny. I’d beaten him in legendary fashion. The boys on the side of the pool were silently amazed.

I felt fucking fantastic.

So in that cold green water with a seemingly impossible distance to swim, I knew I could make it. No matter how much my lungs, my muscles, my brain protested. I knew I could.

I’d made an unspoken commitment to myself and Murphy when I chose to drive the Humvee into the river. And no way was I letting Murphy down.

But it was rationalization and the fear that almost beat me.

In the murk, every direction looked the same, just green fading to darker green. Distance passed without measure. Direction existed only in degrees of hope. Had I swam past the pontoon boat? Had I veered so far off course that I was swimming up the boat ramp and into the greedy hands of Whites brave enough to wade into knee-deep water for their supper?

It was at the end of a stroke with my arms back at my sides that I realized how little visibility I had. One of the boat’s pontoons materialized from a lighter green color in front of me into silvery aluminum. Before I could react, my bald head collided with a thin metal fin that ran the length of the pontoon just under the surface. It nearly knocked me silly and pissed me off to the point I grabbed my scalp while yelling my anger into a flurry of bubbles.

I ducked under and quietly surfaced between the pontoons, beneath the boat’s deck. Neither the burned squatters under the trees nor the infected on the boat ramp could see me. Grabbing onto a piece of the boat’s deck support to catch my breath, I reached up to evaluate my latest wound. The gash felt deep and enormous but probably wasn’t. Warm blood flowed down my face.

Dammit.

After several deep breaths, I slid back beneath the water’s surface, swam over to the far side of the boat and went under the other pontoon, and came up under the dock. I heard feet on the wooden planks overhead.

The footsteps belonged to Whites. Whether they were working their way around the marina trying to find a way to get to Murphy, or they’d seen me go under water and had deduced my destination, my time had expired. Retrieving the pontoon boat was going to get difficult.

After positioning myself near the rope I’d used to tie the boat to the dock, I reached up with my knife and started to saw at the rope. I wasn’t quick enough. First one, two, then three noisy Whites jumped from the dock to the boat.

More feet were coming when the rope finally separated. I wasted no time in using a support post for leverage to push the bow of the boat away. The Whites on the boat’s deck, seeing the widening of the water that separated them from dry land, started a whole different kind of yelling. They were afraid.

When the Whites on the dock reached the end, just above my head, the pontoon boat was ten feet out into the water and drifting slowly toward the center of the marina.

Given that my boat had unwanted passengers, a hard task was ahead. Climbing up onto the deck and starting the engine was not an option.

I swam out to the front of the boat and grabbed the rope. From there, it was slow going, dragging the heavy boat through the water with only the power of my kicking feet and a stroking arm.

After a lengthy effort, the boat neared the submerged Humvee. I looked up and saw Murphy had climbed up on top and had his rifle at his shoulder. With his feet on something solid, his big smile was back.

My three infected passengers were going completely nuts over being surrounded by water.

Murphy gave me a nod and a wink, but waited before shooting.

Good enough for me. He’d taken ownership of that problem.

By the time I was ten feet from the Humvee, the effort of tugging the heavy pontoon boat across the marina was taking its toll. I was starting to wonder whether Murphy was going to deal with my passengers. They were all leaning over the front railing by then, stretching their grasping hands toward me.

“Damn, dude, any time,” I said between breaths.

In rapid succession, three shots blasted across the water.

The Whites onshore started to run up and down the banks, frenzy driving them to find some way to reach us.

I turned back to look at the boat. All three Whites were down. I looked back up at Murphy.

He smiled and shrugged, as though he’d fully expected to get them all so easily.

Between my heavy breaths, I managed to say, “Fuck you.”

Murphy chuckled. He understood it just as I’d meant it. It was a compliment, and I was envious he was a better shot than me.

I stopped swimming, figuring the boat had enough momentum to float up next to the Humvee.

Just to be sure, I asked, “They’re dead, right?”

“Yup.”

“You sure?”

“Yup.” He nodded. “Your head’s bleeding.”

“I know.” I swam around to the back corner of the boat where I’d be able to climb up the swim ladder.

“It looks like it hurts.”

“I have the virus. It doesn’t bother me.”

Once on the deck, the wet wind gave me a shiver. I’d been in the cold water too long. Near the bow, the three Whites lay across one another, two shot through the center of the chest, one through the head. I’d deal with that mess in a minute. First, I retrieved a rope from one of the storage bins beneath the bench seats and tossed one end over to Murphy. “Tie it off to something and I’ll pull the boat over.”

“Tie it off?” Murphy asked.

“So we can get all the stuff out of the Humvee.”

Chapter 9

While we weren’t in danger of sinking, the pontoon boat was riding low in the water and we were making good progress. Still, Murphy spent a good deal of time looking down at how close the water was to washing up over the deck and gauging the distance to the shore.

“If you can’t swim, does it matter how far out we are when we sink?” I asked, putting a subtle emphasis on the “when.”

“I’m checking how far you’ll have to pull me. Keep us close to the shore. Make it easy on yourself.”

“When we came downriver this morning, almost no Whites were onshore,” I said, changing the subject. “Now I’m seeing lots of ‘em, and most of those seem to be interested in us.”

“Maybe they like to sleep late.”

I started to retort, but realized Murphy’s comment, intended to be funny – and it was – could be true. That would match my experience with the Whites when I was on Nancy’s chain gang.

“Besides,” Murphy said, “this morning we were drifting. Now the engine is on. That’s bound to make them more interested.”

“You’re probably right,” I said.

“You only say ‘probably’ because it bothers you when you’re not the only one with the answers.” Murphy was smiling, so I knew he was just giving me a hard time. “I’ll bet in school you were one of those kids who always raised your hand first so you could answer the teacher’s questions.”

“It’s no wonder you get in lots of fights.”

“Hey, don’t be reminding me of fighting. I think I still owe you a punch in the face.”

“More like a thank you for saving your ass again.”

Murphy laughed out loud. “Like when I kept you from blowing yourself up again? You mean that time? I swear to God, you’d be dead if it wasn’t for me.”

I shrugged. “That’s a two-way street, buddy.”

“Don’t get your panties in a wad.”

I grinned back at Murphy. “I’m not wearing any underwear.”

“I don’t need to know that.”

The rain started to fall heavily again and Murphy moved to a seat on the other side of the boat to stay out of it. I watched the naked Whites on shore as I steered. To me, they seemed too interested.

A mile or two had passed when Murphy asked, “How do you think things turned out at the riverboat?”

On our way downriver that morning, we’d stopped by the riverboat where Amy and the two tweens were living. I’d introduced everyone and then headed out with Murphy.  “I guess we’ll find out when we get back whether we’ve been invited to stay. I think I’d feel safer sleeping on that boat than I would sleeping in that house tonight.”

“Me, too.” Murphy said. “How are we set for fuel?”

“Still about a half-tank.”

“We should maybe try and fill it up on the next run. One those marinas probably has gas.”

I nodded. “We should get some gas cans to keep on the boat.”

“I wonder how much fuel is in the riverboat.”

I shrugged. “I’m sure it’s diesel anyway. This is a gasoline boat.”

“We should get diesel, too. I’ll bet that boat has some big ass tanks. We can store diesel there for using with the Humvees later on.”

“We don’t have a Humvee.”

“’Cause you drove ours into the river.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Besides, you keep sayin’ that most of these white-skinned fuckers will kill each other off eventually. When we get there, having a good supply of gas to get around will come in real handy.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. Scrounging up everything we can get our hands on while we’re out killing Smart Ones is a good idea.”

An awkward silence followed.

“Zed, you know I’m not thrilled about that idea, right?”

“I hear you. But it needs to be done. If we don’t, then we’ll always be at risk. They aren’t going away, not completely.”

“They might go away. That big bunch came here from Houston. What’s to say they won’t just keep wandering west and die of thirst somewhere on the way to El Paso?”

“What if they decide they like it here and stay?”

Murphy shrugged.

“Mark was up there, you know.”

“So you said.”

“He screwed us over once already and would have killed us if you hadn’t been on your toes.”

“And?”

“And he needs to be killed.”

Murphy looked away from me and watched the waves float by for a minute. “Are you sure this isn’t about something else, Zed?”

“Murphy, playing coy isn’t your game. Don’t bother to sugarcoat it. Just tell me what you think.”

“The world is fucked, Zed. But we’ve got it all right at the moment. I mean, we don’t have it like we did at Sarah Mansfield’s mansion. That place was just a couple of cheeseburgers and a hooker short of Heaven, if you know what I mean. Right now, we’re safe. At least if they let us stay on that riverboat, we will be. We’ve got good people with us. You’ve even got a hot redhead who likes you if you’d pull your head out of your ass and do something about it. Forget the past. Forget revenge, man. Try to put on a smile and move ahead. That’s all you gotta do. Go with the Murphy plan.”

I didn’t respond.

He looked back at me and after a long time said, “So you’ve got nothing to say about that?”

“I didn’t think you were finished.”

“Of course I’m finished. I stopped talking, didn’t I?”

“You said my desire to kill Mark and the other Smart Ones wasn’t about our long-term survival, but about something else. I was waiting for you to tell me what that was.”

Murphy shrugged. “No sugarcoating. It’s about Amber. You want to kill him for what he did to Amber. But what you don’t know is, revenge is pointless. Sure, he was a prick, but he was just a prick. You can beat people up for that, but you can’t kill them.”

“What?”

“Let me finish. He turned into Mr. Psycho Killer Dude when he got the virus. You know the virus makes some people crazy. You’ve seen that. Now he’s just a crazy fuck. He does crazy fuck bullshit. He doesn’t have enough brain cells left to be normal. Getting revenge on him for killing Amber is like killing the neighbor’s crazy pit bull for shitting on your lawn. That’s what this is, right? Revenge?”

“No,” I lied. At least, I partially lied. Sure, at first it was revenge, but that turned into—or rationalized its way into—a necessity. “I told you. It’s about our survival. The Smart Ones are too good at using the rest of the Whites to hunt us down and kill us. Left unchecked, they will succeed. They’ll kill every last one of us.”

“And you’re going to go all Null Spot and save the world. Is that it?”

“Fuck you, Murphy.”

Murphy grinned. “You’re getting all bitchy again, man. You said no sugarcoating.”

I wasn’t angry about it, not really. “I meant it in the most loving way.”

“So what, then? Level with me, man. Tell me what’s really going on inside that big, white peanut head of yours.”

I laughed. “I don’t have a peanut head.” That reminded of my earlier collision with the boat. I touched the place where the metal had cut my skin. It was still bleeding, lumpy, and icky.

“I know, man. Like I said, it’s a fucked up world now. If you don’t lighten up, you’re gonna go nuts. If you don’t learn to let all of this shit go and be happy about what little we have left, you’re gonna explode one day. Or finally do something stupid enough to get yourself killed.”

“I know.”

“Well if you know, then why are we out raiding National Guard bases full of crazy white fuckers, instead of staying back home under the blankets and getting some pussy? You know Steph wants it, right? You can see that, right?”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“Well, who cares, man? This isn’t seventh grade. Why don’t you just ask her? Or do you want me to ask her for you?” Murphy busted out laughing. “Do you? Want me to ask her, I mean.”

“I think I can handle it myself. Thanks anyway.”

“Man, lighten up. We might not be around much longer. We need to enjoy life while we can.”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“What?”

“You remember those guys I told you about, Nico and Mr. Mays?”

“Yeah, the old guy and the dude you escaped with.”

“I think we should stop by Mr. Mays’ place and see if they want to join us.”

Murphy nodded but didn’t agree. “Steph’s the boss. Shouldn’t we run it by her, or at least ask the others first?”

I shrugged.

“Okay, tell me why this is a good idea.”

“Sure, but can we at least stop by and see if they’re interested before we try to sell it to the group?”

“We?”

“Yeah, look, their place is just up here on the left. To give you the short story, that old guy looks old enough that he was probably raised on a farm around here back when people still grew their own food.”

“And?”

“And if he knows how to farm in central Texas, he might be the most valuable person we’re likely to meet.”

“Fine, but you better practice that shit up before we get back to the boat, because you’re selling it to Steph, not me.”

Chapter 10

With the pontoon boat tied to the same tree where I’d secured the canoe on my first visit, I knocked on Mr. Mays’ back door. Murphy stood a few paces back, rifle at the ready, keeping an eye out for any infected lurking nearby.

“Nico, Mr. Mays, it’s me, Zed. Anybody there?” I didn’t want to yell, and I didn’t want to beat too loudly. But impatience came easily while exposed and making noise.

I knocked again. “Nico. Mr. Mays.”

“H…hello.” A voice came from the other side of the door.

“Nico?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s me, Zed.”

“Who’s the b… big dude?”

“That’s my buddy, Murphy. I told you about him. Man, are you going to open the door or what? It’s not safe out here.”

The long pause that followed made me uncomfortable. Something wasn’t right. I looked down to make sure the safety on my pistol was off.

Finally, I heard the heavy banging of some kind of braces being removed from the other side of the door. A moment later, it swung open and Nico retreated into the house. I stepped inside. The old man smell still hung in the air, but something else was there too. It was familiar, too familiar. It was death. My eyes darted around looking for danger I felt sure was waiting for me.

Nico was at the far end of the kitchen by then with Mr. Mays’ rifle resting awkwardly in his arms, dry blood crusted on his shirt and pants.

Murphy came in behind me. “Man, it stinks in here.” He spotted Nico at the far end of the kitchen. “No offense, man.”

“Murphy, close the door.” I looked at Nico. He looked to have eaten, but was otherwise unsettled. “Nico, what’s wrong, man? Where’s Mr. Mays?”

Nico looked away without answering.

I stepped closer. “Nico?” He was different, skittish, odd. “Dude, what’s wrong?”

Nico shook his head. “They uh…they g…got in.”

Murphy asked, “The Whites?”

“Yeah,” Nico looked through a doorway into the living room. “They got in. They k…killed Mr. Mays.”

“What?” I’d heard what Nico said, I just wasn’t willing to accept it. “What happened?”

Nico looked at the floor, at the cabinets, at the sink and then back into the living room. “There wasn’t anything I could do. I tried. I t…tried to stop them.”

I tensed. “They’re gone, right?”

Nico nodded.

I stepped closer to Nico’s end of the kitchen.

“You shouldn’t come in,” he said, looking out the kitchen window. “It’s bad. It’s…” He looked back into the living room. “He’s in th…there.”

I tried to soothe him using slow, calm words. “It’s cool, dude. We’ve all seen it. You know what I mean.”

Nico turned almost manic for no apparent reason. “T…take me with you, Z…Zed. Don’t leave me here. P…please, take me to your friends.”

“Um.”

“Please. Please.” Nico had tears in his eyes. Outside of anger, after I implied he’d molested his daughter a few days earlier, it was the first significant emotion he’d expressed. “I can’t do this alone. I just can’t. I n…need to be around p…people. I’m l…losing it in here.”

“It’s cool, Nico.” I had serious doubts about Nico’s mental state, but I couldn’t bring myself to say no. I glanced back at Murphy and then, out of pity, made a choice for the group. “You can come along, but you have to calm down. All right? Be cool. Okay?”

Nico nodded, unable to speak, his emotions were bubbling over.

“Are there any Whites still around?”

Nico didn’t say anything.

“Nico, any Whites still around?”

“No, I ch…chased them off.”

With disbelief heavy in his voice, Murphy said, “You chased them off?”

“I… I swung the rifle like a c…club and chased them b…back out the door.”

“How many were there?” Murphy asked.

“Two. Three. It…It all happened so fast. I was angry. I didn’t know what I was d…doing. I was so m…mad. I was trying to save him. I really was. I thought I was s…saving him.”

“It’s okay, Nico. Just be cool, okay?” I said.

Nico leaned on the counter and looked down at the floor.

I looked back at Murphy again.

He was worried about everything here and made sure I read it clearly on his face.

I shrugged as if to say, “It’s a done deal. Let’s make the best of it.”

“Nico, right?” Murphy said.

Nico nodded.

“I’m Murphy. You got any food in the house?”

Nico shook his head. “Nothing. We haven’t caught any f…fish at all. Nothing.”

“Anything else?” Murphy asked. “Canned food?”

Nico shook his head.

Something was really wrong, but I wasn’t putting the pieces together. I told myself it had to be Nico’s fragile emotional state. “Is there anything in the house we need to take with us?” I asked. “Ammunition? Tools? Weapons? Anything worthwhile?”

“We should just go.” Nico was deflating into sadness.

“No. We need to check the house first.”

“W…why do you need to ch…check the house?” Nico switched to defensiveness, but it was weak.

“We have to see if anything is here that we need.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Murphy’s voiced boomed out. “Zed, let’s get outta here, man. Nico, it was good to meet ya.” Murphy looked at me and motioned to the door. “C’mon.”

It was clear Murphy thought the virus or emotional weakness had broken Nico and he wasn’t worth trying to salvage. I was moments from following Murphy out the door.

“Please don’t.” Nico was coming towards us with one open, pleading hand. The other hand still held Mr. Mays’ rifle. “Please don’t leave me.”

My head was telling me to ditch Nico and go. My heart was hurting for Nico’s pain and lobbying hard to keep my word and let him come with us. Such is the stuff of which mistakes are made. “Nico, it’s okay. Just let us check the house, okay? Is that rifle loaded?”

“L…loaded?”

“Does it have bullets in it?”

“I d…don’t know.”

Murphy scoffed. “Man, you don’t know?”

Nico shook his head. “I don’t know anything about g…guns.”

Murphy shook his head and snorted. “How could anybody not know that?”

“Nico, give me the rifle,” I said. “I’ll have Murphy check it out while I check the house, okay? Afterward, we’ll all get on the boat and head upriver.”

Nico nodded. But it took several long, reluctant moments before he handed the weapon over to Murphy. In a desperate tone, he asked, “You’re n…not going to t…take it and leave me here, are y…you?”

“Man, I’m not taking your gun,” Murphy said.

“Okay, Nico, you stay here with Murphy. I’m going to see if I can find any ammunition, okay?”

Nico nodded more times than necessary as his eyes found their way down to look at the floor.

Trying to think of a way to get out of my promise to bring him along, I walked past Nico and went into the living room.

A shapeless red stain covered most of the rug under Mr. Mays’s body. He had bruises and gashes on bloody hands. His skull was smashed. His shirt was torn at the buttons. Underneath, his saggy skin was ripped to expose a thoracic cavity, empty except for the gore left when his organs had been eaten.

I looked away from the body and tried to repress the memories of a crotchety old man who’d done me a kindness and given me a small meal, probably the last of his food. “Fucking Whites.”

A lamp in the living room was on the floor. A recliner was lying on its back. Some of the pictures on the wall were no longer hanging straight. One, an old black and white photograph, colorized by hand with paint a half-century past, showed a strong young man in a military uniform, arm in arm with a blonde beauty in a wedding dress. That was Mr. Mays with his bride, probably when he was my age.

The young man’s smile radiated through the years. Eight decades had not been unkind to that face, but death had masked it in ghastly anguish. He didn’t deserve to go like that.

Nobody did.

From the living room, the hallway looked like a retreat. I moved my feet quickly in that direction.

It turned out to be no kind of retreat at all. It was covered with picture upon picture upon picture, documenting the life of Mr. Mays, his beautiful bride, their children, their grandchildren and more. It was a humble museum to happy, anonymous lives that ended and were now remembered by no one. The fragile mementos were destined to crumble under the moldy rot of time as if they never existed.

No wonder Nico had gone half-crazy in this house. Every picture was a poignant reminder of the virus’s toll.

The first bedroom I came to was a guestroom, or so I guessed. It held nothing worth my time. I took the pillowcases off of the bed—you could never have too many of those—and stuffed them into my pockets.

The master bedroom, not really different from the other bedrooms in a house so old, had a gun rack on the wall above the dresser. It cradled a lever-action rifle that looked like it belonged in an old cowboy movie. That prize made my depressing trip through the Mays Museum worth it.

No, not worth it, not at all.

The weight of so much death was becoming hard to bear.

More searching turned up a nice-sized hunting knife with a sturdy blade, surprisingly sharp. Mr. Mays knew how to take care of his things. The knife was nestled in a sheath of leather undoubtedly older than me, probably older than my mother. That found its way onto my belt. It was no machete, but it was so much better than a kitchen knife stuck in a pocket.

Chapter 11

Back on the pontoon boat with the extra rifle, some ammunition, a couple of fishing poles, and a fishing tackle box full of all kinds of stuff that had no meaning to me, the boat putted slowly upstream. It was a quiet speed, a fuel conserving speed. But it was a speed that would leave us a couple of hours of travel time to the riverboat.

Seemingly broken by the weight of events, Nico fell asleep on one of the benches near the stern.

Murphy was standing beside me as I piloted. “That dude ain’t right,” he said.

I cast a glance back at the sleeping Nico. “He’s not cut out for this, is all. He’ll be okay.”

Murphy shook his head.

“I know he seems like he’s losing it, but he’s been through some shit.”

“We’ve all been through some shit, Zed.”

“Yeah, but that’s not all I was going to say about it. He had to watch his kids get killed in his front yard. He’d been on Nancy’s chain gang for a week when they captured me. He held it together all through that. And if you think driving that Humvee into the river was bad, our escape from Nancy was on a whole different level of crazy shit.”

“So you said.”

“You know, he can’t swim either. Oh, and what the heck is up with people who can’t swim?”

Murphy ignored my pointless question. “I still think he’s going crazy, man.”

“He just needs a couple of days of safety to get back to normal. Whatever’s normal for him, anyway.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I mean he talks even more than you.”

“Yeah, whatever. We don’t even know if Amy is going to let us stay on that riverboat yet. What are you gonna do when Amy and Steph meet his whack job ass and decide he’s too crazy to come onboard?”

“They’ll let him stay.”

“Suddenly you’re the optimistic one.” Murphy belted out a big laugh. “Optimistic Zed. I don’t know how to deal with it, man.” Murphy pretended to have trouble with his balance and dropped into a seat.

I rolled my eyes. “Can we talk about Mark for a minute?”

“I told you that dude you saw wasn’t Mark. It was just some baldheaded dumbass too stupid to run away from the Humvee.”

I shook my head. “You can think whatever you want to think. I know what I saw. And even if I am wrong about it being Mark, I know he was a Smart One. You saw for yourself what the Smart Ones can do. You know they’re a danger to all of us.”

Murphy nodded noncommittally.

“They are organizing. They’re communicating. We’re at war, Murphy. We’re fighting to the death, and if we don’t go on the offensive and go start killing those bastards, they’re going to kill us.”

Murphy’s smile left his face. Only the serious, older Murphy remained. As much as he didn’t want to see it, he believed it. At least I think he believed it.

“We have to do something about them, Murphy.”

“What can we do?”

I looked back at the pile of weapons stacked all over the pontoon boat’s deck.

Murphy grinned and pointed at Nico. “He’s our secret weapon.”

I shook my head. “You know what I’m talking about.”

“What about the weapons, then?” Murphy waved a hand at the crates. “Are we gonna shoot all of ‘em? Everybody who thought that’d work is dead. It doesn’t matter how many bullets you have. It ain’t enough. You see that, right? Tell me you see that, Zed. ‘Cause you know the people who used to have all these weapons are dead now, right? You see that, right?”

As much as I wanted to argue, I couldn’t deny that truth.

Murphy pushed his point. “Your little nuclear bomb idea didn’t work.”

“It was a gasoline vapor bomb.”

“It doesn’t matter. It didn’t work. And do you know why?”

“Probably the humidity was too high. Maybe the wind mucked up the concentration of gasoline in the air. The ratio was wrong. Maybe if I’d detonated sooner—”

“No, Zed.” Murphy jumped to his feet and moved around to plant himself in front of me. “You don’t see what the problem is, but I do.”

In spite of the interruption, I was ready to hear the answer. Murphy served in the Army. Maybe he knew what to fix to make it all work next time.

“It’s because you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.”

That wasn’t the answer I was looking for, and in fact, it pissed me right off. I huffed and looked around Murphy to see out over the bow. “Just because my bomb didn’t work on the first try doesn’t mean I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

“You don’t get it, Zed.”

“What don’t I get?”

“You think just because you know a bunch of random ass little shit that everything you try is going to work out like it did in some book you read or some movie you saw. The real world doesn’t work like that.”

“I know.” It was a weak protest.

“No, you don’t know. You say you know because you know that’s what a smart person should say, but you don’t know. You just think you know. And what you don’t know is when you’re running around, using up all of your luck, trying shit that shouldn’t ever have any chance of working, you’re wearing yourself out.”

I didn’t understand. “Wearing myself out? What?”

Murphy grinned. “You’re using up the luck so when I need it there won’t be any left for me.”

“So it’s all about you?”

Murphy grinned again. “Looks like that stick is back in your ass.”

I rolled my eyes again. “I thought we were having a serious conversation.”

We motored along a while longer. Whites were on the banks, peeking through the trees, or running along trying to keep up. At least their numbers were thinning.

“Murphy, you know I believe we’ve got to do something about the Smart Ones.”

“I know you believe that.”

“And you believe it, too.”

“Yeah, but believing something needs to be done isn’t the same as believing something can be done.”

“You don’t think we can kill all of the Smart Ones?”

“I won’t even talk about what a stupid hope that is.” Murphy shook his head. “Even if we could, we don’t even know which ones are which until it’s too late.”

I couldn’t argue with him. “That’s not an unsolvable problem. I don’t really think we’ll ever kill all of the Smart Ones, but we need to kill enough of them so we have a chance to be safe, so we’ll have a chance to survive.”

“So give me the bottom line here, Zed.” Murphy’s voice held a touch of anger. “You want to go off on some kind of zombie hunt? Is that it? And you want me to come along?”

I shrugged and nodded. That wasn’t how I’d summarize it, but that was exactly what I wanted.

“And just leave everybody on the boat, so when the shit goes down, we won’t be there.”

“When the shit goes down?”

“Don’t put on your dunce hat now and pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You know sooner or later, riverboat or no riverboat, those fuckers are going to find a way to get to us. And when that happens, where do you wanna be? Off chasing some baldheaded motherfucker through the woods or back with your friends, helping them get to safety?”

Murphy made a good argument with a depressing conclusion. But it was exactly the same conclusion that drove my desire to hunt down the Smart Ones. “That’s why we need to do it.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. If I go out there to kill the Smart Ones on my own, I know I’ll end up dead. If you come along, then we’ve got a chance.”

Murphy turned to watch the water flow past the bow.

“We have to, Murphy. You said as much yourself.”

“How’s that?”

“They’ll eventually figure out how to get to us on the boat. They tore up Dr. Evans’ farm like it was nothing. They got into Sarah Mansfield’s house in less than twenty minutes. They’ll figure out how to kill every one of us, no matter where we hide. Our only choice is to kill the Smart Ones first.”

“But you’re forgetting one thing, aren’t you?” Murphy turned to look back at me.

He wasn’t being argumentative. He was making a point. And being unable to immediately guess what it was frustrated me. “What am I forgetting?”

“You might be wrong about the Smart Ones. Remember, at first you thought it was… What’d you call it? Emergent behavior? What if the Smart Ones aren’t running the show? What if it’s all just that collective intelligence thing? You know, a bunch of twenty point IQs adding up to genius level when they work together. What if that’s what it is? Then you’ll never kill enough of them.”

I shook my head even as I worked out my counterargument. “I think it’s some kind of hybrid of emergent behavior and the Smart Ones kind of guiding it. C’mon, you saw that for yourself, right? On that trail in the woods, one guy was clearly in charge. He was receiving and sending communications. All of those Whites on the trail were following him.”

“It did look that way. But it always looks that way. It always looks like one of them is in the lead, but it doesn’t seem to matter which one, does it?”

“I don’t know if that’s true. But I’m positive that is one of the things the Smart Ones take advantage of. They’ve figured out this follow-the-leader shit works. They do it spontaneously. The Smart Ones have figured out they can position themselves to be the leaders in that game, and when they do, they multiply their strength. It’s not just them going out and attacking regular folks, like us...”

Murphy laughed. “Regular folks like us?”

“You know what I mean. They get the dumb ones to do their dirty work. They get to have a meal of fresh meat and don’t have to put themselves in too much danger.”

“Be honest with yourself, man. We don’t know. We just don’t know. That’s why you keep changing what you say is going on with them.”

“I’m learning, and based on what I learn, I update my theory of their behavior.”

“That sounds like a fancy way of saying you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Chapter 12

Because we’d motored past the riverboat under the anxious eyes of all of our old and hopefully new friends, giving them a casual wave, they knew Murphy and I were safe. Perhaps not as important as our safety, but significant, was that they’d seen the boatload of crates, as well as our sleeping passenger. After going what seemed like a long enough distance up river, we cut the engine and drifted the silent miles back.

When we arrived, the rain was turning from a drizzle to a thick fog. Murphy tossed a rope over to Dalhover, who caught it and hauled us alongside. With our bow tied off, our stern drifted around in the current and swung up beside the big tourist boat. I jumped onto the boat’s deck and tied it off.

Nico slept.

Murphy climbed onto the riverboat and into Mandi’s waiting arms.

Steph and Dalhover were in front of me when I stood up after tying off the stern. Emotional and physical exhaustion were weighing on me and I let my guard down. For the moment, I was safe. I was home, at our new home, if all had gone well between Amy, Steph and the others. I found a smile for Steph and pointed to the crates of munitions on the pontoon boat’s deck. “We got a lot more than we planned.”

Steph put a hand to her forehead, reminding me of my gash. “What happened?”

My fingers came back with some blood on them. I guessed I looked terrible. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Maybe you can patch me up later.”

Steph took her worried eyes off of my wound, pointed to Nico and tersely asked, “Who’s that?”

Unprepared for anything but congratulations or possibly a hug, I was miffed. “Nico. He’s the guy I told you about. The one I escaped from the chain gang with.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Worn out.” Was I being interrogated? “I don’t think he’s slept since the last time I saw him.”

“You said you left him with an old man.”

I looked at Dalhover, silently asking why Steph was in a bad mood. Dalhover conveyed nothing. What a surprise. “Mr. Mays. His name was Mr. Mays.”

“Yes, where’s he?”

“Dead.” Sure, I used the word “dead,” but I made it sound as much like “fuck you” as possible.

Dalhover chose that moment to defuse the tension. “Can’t wait to hear how you guys got all of this.” He jumped down to the pontoon boat’s deck and started to examine the wooden boxes.

“You can’t just bring in any stray you come across,” Steph said.

“But…”

“You know how Freitag worked out.”

And that silenced me.

I looked down into the pontoon boat as I thought about it. Sure, I’d let Freitag and her companions into Sarah Mansfield’s compound. But what else could I have done? I’d ruminated on that mess so many times, searching my memories for clues that could have showed me how badly it would all turn out. I’d told myself a thousand times that if I had been patient, Steph and the group would have come to the same decision. But I didn’t wait. I was so certain at the time that I was doing the right thing. I was decisive. And because of that decisiveness, I bore the responsibility.

Life’s not fair.

I don’t know if Steph saw my clenched jaw and my combative stance, or whether she just came to the end of her own anger. Whichever it was, her tone softened. “Zed, we need to talk about these kinds of things first. Okay?”

One moment she was Captain Leonard and the next she was just redheaded Steph. She could switch modes faster than I could keep up. I glanced back at her to acknowledge she spoke. I wanted to turn away, to immaturely express my unhappiness with her hard words. But it was difficult. I was in the neighborhood of infatuation, at least when I wasn’t grating against her authority. I motioned toward Nico. “He’s an okay guy.”

“I thought you said he was a coward.”

“I probably said ‘pussy.’”

Steph rolled her eyes. “Is he a liability for us? I don’t think you’re capable of seeing people in that way, Zed. I’ll bet you fed every stray cat in the neighborhood.”

“I never had a pet.”

Steph brushed past that. “Please, don’t take this the wrong way, but we need to be pragmatic, harsh if necessary, when we make these kinds of decisions. I know you won’t understand what I’m about to tell you, but we can’t risk our lives unnecessarily.”

I smiled. “That was almost a joke, wasn’t it? You were trying to make nice-nice by being funny. You do have a sense of humor. Well, almost.”

“I can be funny under the right circumstances.”

“I’m sure.” I looked over at Dalhover, who was examining the crates.

“You know everything is different now.” Steph chose to continue with her lesson. Captain Leonard mode again. “You want to do the right thing, Zed. You’re a good person. But that’ll get all of us in trouble if you don’t think about the consequences.”

I nodded, just because I’d already decided I was probably going to do whatever it was I was going to do. And the sooner she stopped lecturing me about doing what she thought I should do the better.

She put a hand on my shoulder to urge me to turn around and give her my attention. “These are hard choices to make. Let me make them, okay? We can talk about it, if you want. But you guys put me in charge for a reason,” she said. “I can make the hard decisions when it’s necessary.”

I glanced at Nico. I was back in the conversation. “You want me to tell him to hit the road?” I sounded as though I was pleading.

“Listen, I’m not saying that. Let us talk to him when he wakes up and we’ll all decide. Okay? If he needs to go, I’ll tell him. I’ll do the dirty work. Okay?”

“We’ll just send him back out into the world? Alone?”

“He was alone when you found him, right? He won’t be any worse off if he needs to be alone again. If anything, he’ll be better off. We can probably give him some food. And it looks like you’ve got enough ammo and weapons for a whole company. I’m sure we can spare some.”

I shook my head. I’d been through all of this with Nico already. I’d already made the choice once not to bring him back and I’d left him with Mr. Mays. And Nico had paid the price. He was at the edge of his wits and it was my fault. I was ready to make up for that by letting him join us. “I don’t feel good about this.”

Steph put her hand on my other shoulder and looked into my eyes. “That’s why you have to let me decide. Well, me and Amy.”

“You and Amy?”

“We’ve talked. They’re letting us stay.”

“That’s good.” I felt one of my worries slip away. “I think this is the safest place for us right now, and they seem like good folks.”

“We all agreed I’m still in charge. But Amy needs to have a say in whether we bring anybody else on board.”

“Okay. Just give Nico some time to decompress. He was trapped in the house with Mr. Mays when we found him. The infected broke in and killed Mr. Mays. Nico’s in pretty bad shape.”

“Trust me. We’re not monsters, Zed. You know that, don’t you?” Steph waited for an answer.

“Of course.”

“We want to do the right thing, too. We just need to make sure we’re all protected first. We have to come first. That’s just the way the world is now. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Chapter 13

For such a large boat, there really wasn’t much to it. Above the water line it was a big, square-ish thing with two white decks painted with red trim. The lower deck was a rectangular space, open on all sides except the stern. On both the port and starboard sides, a structure was built to look like housing for a paddlewheel. They were purely cosmetic. In the stern, on the main deck, was a kitchen large enough to cater a hundred meals. In the superstructure above the kitchen, on the second deck, was the pilothouse.

Stretched out in front of the pilothouse was another open deck. In the evenings, as the boat cruised up and down the river, the sunset tourists would stand under clear Texas skies, watching them change from blue to orange and red while they sipped alcohol and pretended they were in love.

Restrooms were below deck, along with the engine room.

Outside of tables, chairs and benches, nothing was on the decks. Before we arrived, Amy, Megan and Brittany had put the pilothouse to use as their sleeping quarters. The rest of us set up to sleep on the lower deck on seat cushions removed from the other boats. That’s also where Steph chose to hold our first communal meeting, between the faux paddlewheel housings, to keep us somewhat hidden from curious eyes on the banks.

Amy, Megan and Brittany, the original tenants of the riverboat, were there, of course. Dalhover, Mandi and Steph rounded out the six normals. Murphy, Nico, Russell and I made up the infected four. We sat in a rough semi-circle around Steph who was standing, in charge.

Steph started the meeting. “First off, thank you, Amy, Megan and Brittany for letting us stay on your boat.”

Several of us added our thanks.

“We’ve all agreed I’ll be in charge,” she said. “Sergeant Dalhover will be my second in command. I’ll consult with Amy on major decisions and we can all talk about them whenever we get together like this.”

“Will this be a regular thing?” Mandi asked.

Steph nodded. “The first thing we need to talk about is whether to bring anyone else into the group.” Steph looked straight at me. “Amy and I have talked about it and we’re reluctant, but will consider people on a case-by-case basis. That’s the plan going forward.”

Nico jumped to his feet, looking plenty normal after having spent the afternoon napping. “Th…thank you all for tak…ing me in. W…words can’t express how g…grateful I am. I j…just want you all to kn…n…now that I’ll d…d…do my best to p…pull my weight.” Frustrated with his new stutter, Nico took a deep breath before finishing. Speaking in slow clear words, he said, “You won’t regret it.”

“Nico,” Steph said, “as we discussed earlier, you can stay for now. We’ll see how things work out, and in a couple of days, we’ll decide if you can stay permanently.”

“I…” Nico seemed overcome with gratitude or frustration. He slowly sat back down in his chair and muttered. “…won’t l…let you down.”

Did he say, “Won’t I?” Nico’s speech problem was more than just a stutter.

“I’ve posted a duty roster outside the door to the kitchen,” Steph said. “Please don’t see this as tyrannical. If our goal is to thrive and not just survive, we need to work together. That means we all have to share in the duties nobody wants, like standing night watch, washing dishes and cleaning latrines.” Steph was nothing if not anal retentive about organization.

Nods of agreement.

“I don’t have Russell on the duty roster for obvious reasons. He seems glued to Mandi for the time being, and appears more than willing to copy whatever she’s doing. I’ll try and take advantage of that as I assign her duties, so Russell can earn his keep along with the rest of us. Zed, Murphy and Nico won’t be assigned guard duty.” Steph looked around at all of us to gauge our acceptance of this. “They’ll be going out to collect food and whatever else we need. They’ll have plenty of dangerous, strenuous work without also having to stand guard at night. Does that sound fair?”

Mostly nods, but Nico jumped back to his feet again, shaking his head emphatically. “N…no, P…please. I can’t.” He pointed at the shore and tears gathered in his eyes. “P…p…please. I c…can stand guard.”

I wondered if he was shy in front of crowds. He was having a really hard time with his stutter.

“You have to pull your weight if you want to stay,” Steph said.

Murphy’s big voice boomed. “Man, he’s a pussy.” He looked over at Nico. “No offense, man. I’m just sayin’. I don’t want him putting me and Zed in danger if he’s out there doing stupid shit because he’s afraid. Me and Zed’ll handle it.”

“Zed, what do you think?” Steph said.

I looked at Nico, who was slumping in his chair, ashamed. “Nico, can you drive the boat?” I asked. “I’d feel better if we could leave someone in the boat, rather than leaving it alone when we’re on shore.”

With attention focused on his feet, Nico shrugged.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“C…can I have a few days first? I…I need time.”

“Time?” I asked. “For what?”

Nico looked up. Tears were running down his cheeks. “I…can’t go back out there again. Not yet. P…please.”

I turned to Steph. She was the boss. She could make the call.

“You can have a few days,” she said. “You need to understand we’ve all been through a lot, Nico. We all need to find a way to keep moving forward. You, too. You understand?”

Nico nodded. He’d hit the limit of what his brain could process. He was broken. I felt bad for him.

But Mandi wasn’t satisfied with what she saw. “If Murphy and Zed can go out there and risk their lives, then so can you, Nico.”

It was out of character for her. And it took us all by surprise.

With everyone looking at her, she got embarrassed. “What?”

“Let’s move on,” Steph said. “Zed, Murphy, thank you for going out this morning and getting those weapons and all of that ammunition. I know it turned out to be a lot more dangerous than we thought it would be.”

“That’s just how Murphy and the Null Spot roll, man,” Murphy said.

Steph giggled. “I almost forgot about Null Spot.”

I rolled my eyes. “Can’t we all just forget about that Null Spot business?”

Steph gave me a smile and changed the subject. “Amy and I put together a shopping list.”

“A shopping list?” Murphy laughed.

“It’s a list of things we need. Not really a shopping list,” Amy said.

“That’s all right. I gotcha.” Murphy grinned.

“We have enough food for maybe a couple more days, if we eat light.” Steph said. “But we could run out of propane at any time. Since most of the stuff we have is canned or boxed, propane isn’t a necessity, but if we catch any fish, we’ll need to cook them.”

“Most of these houses have grills on the patios,” I said. “We can start swiping the tanks when we stop by to raid the pantries. And while we’re on the subject of food, I think Murphy and I might be able to go back down to that country club where we parked the boat this morning. I think there’s a restaurant in there. We may be able to stock up with bulk supplies.”

“That’s a great idea.” Steph grew excited. “There’s got to be at least a dozen restaurants right on the water up and down this section of the river.”

“We could hit them all,” I said. “But we’re going to need more gas for the boat. We’ll have to scrounge up some of that, too. The marinas probably have some. We’ll need to work out something to pump it out with, though.”

“I’ll take care of that,” Dalhover said. “There’s a hand pump down in the engine room. That and ten feet of hose should be all you need.”

“We can always use a garden hose,” Murphy said. “Plenty of those lying around in peoples’ yards.”

“Speaking of boats,” Steph said, “we need to make a plan for ours.”

“What do you mean?” Amy asked.

“We have five boats at the moment.”

“Six.” Murphy grinned.

“Six?”

Murphy looked down at the deck.

Steph rolled her eyes. “Yes, six. But we have five small boats. Amy, where do you keep the keys for the boats?”

Amy reached into the pocket of her pants. “I’ve got them.”

“I think it would be best if we distribute the keys among the ten of us. Excluding Russell, because… Well, for obvious reasons. And Nico is provisional. That leaves eight people and five keys. I think if we ever find ourselves in a position where we need to get out of here in a hurry, we may not want to have all of our eggs in one basket.”

“In case I get killed,” Amy said.

Sergeant Dalhover spoke up. “We should leave the keys on the boats.”

Steph shook her head. “I don’t want to leave the keys dangling in the ignition switches. We all know how unscrupulous people can be. We don’t want anyone swimming up in the dark and running off with our boats.”

“We hide them on the boats,” Sergeant Dalhover said. “We can all do it together so everybody knows where the keys are.”

“And Nico?” Amy asked.

“If he doesn’t work out, he can’t steal more than one,” Steph said. “Everybody good with that? No offense, Nico.”

Nico stared at the floor and didn’t respond. The rest of us nodded.

Steph started talking about water consumption and conservation. That transitioned into a conversation about long-term food plans. I should have been interested in all of it. I’d been passionate about the subject since practically the first moment I realized the whole world was falling apart. But I was bored.

I was fidgety.

I wanted to move my feet.

I squirmed in my seat.

A debate about something or other went on and on and I found myself staring at Russell who, as it turned out, was also staring. I followed his gaze to Nico, who was also staring. At that point, it became a game. The angle between me and Nico wasn’t optimal for figuring out exactly what his gaze had settled on, but my guess was Megan.

She was bored and busy playing with a pocket knife, opening and folding the blade over and over. I wondered if Nico’s fixation on Megan had something to do with his deceased daughter, though Megan was probably six or seven years older.

Somewhere in there, Sergeant Dalhover droned off a list of the weapons he’d catalogued. He talked about training and maintenance, emphasizing the necessity of each if a weapon was to be depended on to one day save the life of the person holding it.

With the rain falling again and draining off of the upper deck into puddles on the lower deck, I became mesmerized by the relative silence of the splashing water and the sight of splashing drips.

“Zed. Zed, are you okay?”

I looked up. Everybody was looking at me. “What?”

“Mandi asked you a question,” Steph said.

I looked at Mandi. Everybody was still staring at me. I ventured a guess. “I’ll take care of it.”

Mandi laughed.

I looked around. “What?”

“You were kind of zoned out, there. Are you all right?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I guess I just need to get some sleep.”

“Mandi asked if you still had your flash drive. You know, the one that your friend Amber made for you?”

I looked down at my feet, prepared to feel bad about the Amber situation, but I didn’t. I didn’t feel anything at all. That was progress. “I had it in my pocket and I lost my pants when my canoe capsized, after I tried to blow up Sarah Mansfield’s house.”

Steph reached into her pocket and showed everyone a flash drive she had stashed there. “I’ve still got mine.”

“Good.” I looked over at Murphy.

He patted his pocket. “I’ve still got mine.”

“So just the two, then.” Steph looked at Murphy. “When you and Zed are out, if you happen across any laptop with a charged battery, pick it up. We need to make more copies of that flash drive. These drives have information vital to our long-term survival.”

“You got it, boss.”

Steph shook her head. “You, too?”

“Zed calls you boss.” Murphy smiled.

“Speaking of our long-term survival, does anybody have any ideas on where we go from here?” Steph said.

“Let’s stay here. We’re safe,” Megan said.

Amy put a hand on Megan’s shoulder. “We’re just talking about possibilities, okay?”

Murphy spoke up. “We should go down to Corpus Christi, find a big yacht and sail out into the gulf until this whole thing blows over.”

Steph nodded, as did a few others. Heck, it sounded like a good idea to me. Plenty of logistical difficulties, but good nonetheless.

Sergeant Dalhover asked, “Does anybody here know how to sail?”

Everybody looked at one another for the answer. It was apparent that none of us did.

“We don’t need a sailboat,” Murphy said. “We just get one of those big motor yachts, turn on the engines, and away we go.”

“I’m not sure it’s as easy as that,” Steph said.

“Sure, it is,” Murphy said.

“Do you know how to read a nautical chart?” Steph asked.

“You mean a map?”

“How will you know to avoid the sandbars and reefs? What will you do in rough weather? Do you know how to handle a boat when the waves are twenty feet tall?”

“It’s the Gulf,” Murphy said. “How big could the waves get?”

Dalhover’s crusty laugh silenced everyone. “I used to work oil rigs back before I joined the Army. Let me tell ya’, on the news nowadays, you see helicopters flying out and getting guys off those rigs when a hurricane is coming. But back when I was doing it, helicopters were only for the engineers and managers. Roughnecks like me, we got ferried back and forth in boats.”

It was unusual for Dalhover to string so many words together, and that had everybody’s attention.

“There was one trip back when a hurricane was coming in… We were on a good-sized boat, at lot bigger than this tourist boat, maybe a hundred and fifty feet. The waves were already standing pretty tall when we boarded. But the boat looked pretty big to me, so I wasn’t worried. It started to get rough on our way in. Some of those waves were bigger than anything I thought I’d ever see. That boat didn’t seem so big, then. We were riding up the crests and crashing down into the troughs. And every time we did, that steel hull would slap the water so hard, it jarred all of your bones and felt like the keel would shatter. Let me tell ya’, ten or twelve hours of that, and you’ll be wishing you never put your boat out into the Gulf.”

A yacht in the Gulf didn’t seem like a good idea anymore.

“I was out at Carlos ‘n Charlie’s one night for dinner…” Mandi said.

“Up on Lake Travis?” Steph asked.

Mandi nodded. “Yeah. There’s a pretty big marina there. It’s only ten or twenty miles from here. There were maybe ten or twelve big houseboats in the marina. Maybe we could get some of those and anchor them out in the lake. That might be safe for us.”

“And comfortable, too,” Amy said. “With real beds. And maybe showers. That sounds like a good idea.”

Everyone agreed.

“Any other ideas?” Steph said.

“Balmorhea.” Everyone looked at me after I said it.

Murphy laughed. “Are you still speaking English? ‘Cause I don’t even know what you just said.”

“What’s a Balmorhea?” Steph asked.

“Have any of you guys been out in far west Texas?” I asked.

“I know where you mean,” Dalhover said. “I used to hunt out that way.”

Others shook their heads.

“When you say west Texas, do you mean by El Paso?” Mandi asked.

I pointed west. “About four hundred miles that way, about two hundred miles this side of El Paso, is a dinky little town right in the middle of nowhere called Balmorhea.”

“Is that near Big Bend?” Amy asked.

“On Highway Ten, just north of it,” I said.

“Eew.”

I nodded emphatically. “Yeah, I know. It fucking sucks out there. For any of you guys who’ve never taken the drive out to west Texas, there’s nothing out there. Nothing. Once you get out of the hill country, the cedars start to thin out, then there’s pretty much just scrubby little bushes. I’m not sure desert is the right word, but it might be. Mostly, it looks like nothing. In the summer it’s hot and dry, and it sucks.”

Steph smiled. “I’m getting that this place sucks?”

“Yep,” I said. “There’s like fifty or a hundred houses in Balmorhea. And then for hundreds of miles in every direction, there’s nothing.”

Dalhover had another idea. “Fort Stockton. Odessa.”

I shook my head. “But not any big cities. And even those towns are a long, long, dry hike away.”

“A dry hike?” Amy asked.

“Yeah.” I nodded again. “I mean, if there are infected in El Paso or Fort Stockton or Midland, there’s no way they could make the walk to Balmorhea without dying of thirst along the way. I think the place is safe.”

Mandi grimaced. “It sounds awful.”

“Yeah, it is awful. But did I say it was safe?”

Steph was thinking. “Let’s say we could make it out there, and if it’s as safe as you think, how could we hope to stay alive? You said it’s like a desert out there.”

“Yeah.” I stood up. I was getting excited about the idea. “That’s the thing. There are these big beautiful springs out there, and they feed into this lake. There’s more water there than we’ll ever need. The farmers use it to irrigate lots and lots of fields. What I’m saying is, though the place is ugly, hot, dry and it sucks, it’s safe and we’ll be able to grow whatever we need. And even if every person out there is infected, Murphy and I picked up enough ammunition this morning to kill them all a hundred times over.”

Silence followed. They were all thinking about it.

It was Dalhover who spoke first. “It’s a long way out there. But it could work.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We could all go out there and stay for a year or two until the infected in the cities have time to kill each other off, and then we can come back. If we want to, maybe we can move back into Sarah Mansfield’s mansion and live in the lap of luxury. If there’s anything left of it.”

“I don’t think any of us know anything about farming,” Amy said. “How are we going to grow anything out in the desert?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” I said. “First off, we’ve got the flash drives. Those have information on how to farm. Sure, we’ll have a lot of on the job training, and we’ll lose some crops before we get it right. But there are antelope to hunt out there. And there are some big-ass pecan orchards. It could get old, but in a pinch, I’ll bet those orchards produce enough pecans to feed all of us and more. And those trees are already there, getting ready to drop their nuts in a month or two.”

“So, Lake Travis or Balmorhea. Those are two good suggestions,” Steph said.

“Two?” Murphy feigned offense. “Nobody likes the yacht idea?”

Chapter 14

The slow, heavy breathing of those on the first deck made it clear they were still asleep. The absence of Mandi’s snore reminded me she was on watch. It was early, barely light outside. The rain had stopped falling, but a fog was on the river, thick and damp. Only the occasional tweet of a morning bird or the lap of water against the hull broke the silence.

Sitting up on my cushions, I looked around the deck. Russell was, of course, with Mandi. Nico was gone, though. His absence concerned me.

Getting up and stretching my muscles, I shivered and realized October was only a few weeks away. Heck, maybe days away. We still had plenty of days when the heat would add an extra helping of hurt to anything done midday, and make every effort to hammer the life out of us. But cooling nights with the promise of a respite also meant we’d soon need to add long-sleeved shirts and sweatshirts to our shopping list.

Habitually silent, I crossed the deck and climbed the rusty metal stairs. Coming out by the wheelhouse on the second deck, the fog was thinner and I could see the tops of trees on the bank, though nothing beyond. From above, soft whispers of conversation drifted down.

I climbed the ladder up to the roof, avoiding a rung I knew creaked.

Mandi, Russell, Megan and Nico sat on the roof, cross-legged, facing each other. The diminutive girls each had M16s lying across their thighs, looking just as out of place as they should. Nico, however, had no weapon. But what bothered me more than that was the narrowness of the gap between him and Megan.

“Hey,” Mandi mouthed across the roof when she spotted me.

I gave her a nod.

The others turned and silently greeted me. Russell, of course, just stared at the misty gray.

I crossed the roof and asked, “Have you talked to Dalhover about which weapons you two should have?”

Mandi smiled sweetly and shook her head.

“We need to be armed,” Megan said in her squeaky little voice.

“Yeah,” I said. My assumption, based on nothing but ignorance and speculation, was neither of the small girls could handle their big weapons. “Anything interesting going on?” I asked, sitting down.

Mandi pointed to the north bank. “We’ve been hearing things over there. But with the fog, we can’t see anything.”

“What kind of things?” I asked, making the instant switch from casual to concerned.

“It sounds like deer to me,” Megan said. “The noise comes and goes.”

Turning and looking over my shoulder, I peered into the thick fog.

“I…I don’t th…think it’s them,” Nico said.

Not sure yet what to think about the noises on the bank, I instead chose to deal with a question more easily investigated. “Nico, I don’t remember you stuttering.”

“Ah.” Nico paused for a long time. “It c…comes and g…goes.”

“Did it start at Mr. Mays’ house?” It seemed like a fair question. I really didn’t remember a single stutter during that long afternoon between our escape from Nancy and our arrival at Mr. Mays’ house.

Nico spent a little too long thinking about that answer. “I always st…stuttered a little.”

“Wow.” I don’t know why his stutter was important, but something about it didn’t fit right. “I just don’t remember you stuttering after we escaped from Nancy.”

Nico shrugged. “M…maybe b…because I hadn’t said anyth…thing for t…two or three weeks.”

Grinning, Megan offered an explanation. “Like a bunch of words were built up behind a dam that burst.”

“Yeah.” I agreed, but only as a way to change from a subject that didn’t seem likely to lead to any explanation.

The noise of rattling bushes carried across the water.

“That’s the noise,” Mandi said.

I was already looking at the bank. “What time do you guys get off guard duty?”

“We have another hour,” Mandi said.

Nico’s stutter was going to remain a mystery, but that noise on the bank needed to be identified. It could be danger. “Can I borrow Nico?” I asked, turning back to the group.

“You don’t need to ask permission.” Megan giggled.

I gave her a smile.

“Wh…what d…do you need?” Nico asked.

I looked back at the shore. “Now that it’s getting light, do you guys come down off of the roof?”

“Yes,” Megan said. “We try to stay out of sight on the decks during the day. That way the infected won’t see us.”

“We should go down,” Mandi said. “It is starting to get light out.”

“What d…do you n…need?” Nico asked again.

“I need you to help me paddle one of the ski boats over to the shore. I want to check out what’s going on over there.”

“It’s deer,” Megan said with exaggerated certainty, no doubt a trick she’d picked up from some long-dead adult in her life.

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “I’m just a worrier. Should we go?”

Nico was shaking his head slowly. “I… I…”

Standing up, I slapped Nico on the back. “It’ll be cool, dude. We’re not getting out of the boat. We’ll just paddle over until we can see the bank through the fog, then we’ll come back.”

“I can go if he doesn’t want to,” Mandi said.

“You’re on guard duty.”

“I c…can watch f…for her.” Nico nodded vigorously.

“No.” I didn’t have room for negotiation. Although I figured I’d be better off with Mandi, I did know Steph would get pissed if I left Nico on guard while everybody else was asleep. “C’mon. Let’s get this done.”

Not waiting for any more debate, I headed for the stairs. The others followed.

Chapter 15

The ski boat we selected was the smallest of those available. It wasn’t that hard to paddle. But with all the noise Nico was making, you’d think it was a fully loaded pontoon boat.

“Shh.”

Nico looked blankly at me.

“Don’t make so much noise,” I whispered.

Nico muttered an apology and went back to work.

Jesus, how was this guy still alive?

Down at the river’s surface, the fog was so thick the riverboat disappeared into the gray behind us before we’d gone twenty feet. Around us there was only fog, the lapping of water against our paddles and the disembodied sounds of something moving on the bank.

Worry etched deep lines on Nico’s forehead. He took to sitting up straight and looking around for danger after every stroke. Of course, all he saw each time was more fog.

“Calm down,” I whispered. “Just take it slow. We’re still a ways from the bank.”

Rather than try to get Nico to put more effort into paddling, I instead continued paddling hard on my side. As a result, the boat angled upstream from where I thought the noise was originating. When we got close enough to shore to see the trees, we could drift back down with the current and give the shore a thorough check.

Everything on the river seemed to involve drifting with the current.

Eventually, dark green outlines took shape out of the fog on our right. I whispered, “Let’s get a little closer to shore now and start drifting.”

“G…good. M…my arms are getting stiff.”

Pussy.

I nodded and tried to put on a sympathetic smile.

We were less than a dozen feet from the shore before I was able to see among the trunks of the trees. Being that close, we were in danger of scraping the hull on the limestone riverbed. But with the boat’s motor definitely turned off, I figured any scraping would only produce cosmetic damage. Besides, we had plenty of boats.

I whispered, “Listen, you come over to my side of the boat. Help me look, in case I miss anything.”

The shore held all of Nico’s fears and he made a show of his reluctance to cross the meager width of the boat.

A squall line was coming toward us from upriver, announcing its impending arrival with a faint rumble of fat drops hitting the water. Both Nico and I instinctively looked toward the sound. So it was startling when I looked back at the shore and saw the bald, white head of a naked man staring at me from behind a thick tree trunk.

Dammit.

That White was the manifestation of a fear nagging at me since I’d seen the infected chasing along the bank after Murphy and I scavenged Camp Mabry. I was certain he was a scout. And if I didn’t do something about his presence, the fog would soon thin, he’d see the riverboat with us on it, and he’d figure out where we were and lead the rest to us. He had to die.

I turned to Nico to give him instructions, but his fear had backed him to the other side of the boat again.

He was going to be useless.

I laid my rifle on the deck, unsheathed my knife and, to make Nico aware of my intentions, pointed at the White on the bank as I stepped up onto the gunwale.

On a gust of strong north wind, the rain hit us.

I knew the gap between the boat and the shore was well beyond my ability to jump, but I tried anyway. I splashed into the water three or four feet from shore. Making a lot more noise than I’d hoped, my foot found the riverbed in knee deep water. It took two more noisy steps before I was able to land a food on the shore.

The White was already out from behind the tree and coming at me with a mix of aggression and trepidation. Lowering my knife to my hip, I held it with the blade pointing up. Laying a trap, I slumped into a cowering stance.

The White’s misgivings disappeared in a flash. Seeing what its simple brain interpreted as fear, he rushed me.

At the last second, I stepped strongly toward him and shoved my blade up under his rib cage. His momentum drove his weight onto it. He made a sound like a cough and went limp.

Thinking how lucky I was to have put the knife right where I wanted it—into his heart—I turned to the left so the White’s momentum would carry him around, rather than over me. To my surprise, it worked as though I’d practiced the move a thousand times.

The infected man splashed into the shallow water and didn’t move.

Nico screamed, turning my fleeting confidence into fear. Instinctively, I crouched and turned to my right, just in time to see a white blur and a silver blade.

In a desperate move to dodge the blade, I fell to my left, way off balance. I rolled over the White I’d just killed and into the water as the blade was raised again. A Smart One was trying to slash me. Behind him, a mass of white, grasping hands were doing their best to clamp onto my flesh.

I rolled further into the water, scraping myself on algae-covered limestone as I went. A White fell in and screamed as she hit the water. She flailed in panic, but I was beyond her reach.

Followed by monkey squawks and yelps, I desperately tore handfuls of water to get myself away from the shore. I hit the boat with my shoulder and reached up to grab a rail that ran along the port side.

On the bank, not ten feet away, reaching hands, raging faces and gnashing teeth fought between their want of my flesh and their fear of the water. I was so close, but far beyond reach.

One White wasn’t reaching. He held the knife at his side while his muscles trembled. His rage was more cerebral than the others. He wasn’t just an angry white chimpanzee who’d lost his prey. He had complex thoughts in his head and real hate in his heart.

I turned myself around and clambered into the boat. Nico didn’t help. He hadn’t moved since I went in. With adrenaline blasting past rational thought processes, I wanted to unleash my anger at him. At the same time, I knew his well-timed scream had kept that Smart One’s blade out of my back.

Nico had just saved my life.

Nothing is ever black and white.

With my feet on the deck, I raised my pistol and aimed it at the Smart One with the knife.

He glared at me as if daring me to shoot. And I wanted to, badly. I wanted to teach that fucker a fatal lesson for daring to raise a blade to me.

But the adrenaline was waning and thoughts were starting to click. I paused. I looked around. Would one bullet cause too much trouble? Could the report of my pistol get lost in the fog before it advertised my location to too many ears?

I knew even as I conceived those thoughts that they were the product of rationalization. With a dozen cannibals screaming for my blood right in front of me, the dissipating fog would be no blanket over my mistake. The riverboat behind me was losing its gray shroud. To fire the weapon would link the sound with the sight of the riverboat, even in the feeble brains of those still standing when the bullet killed the Smart One. No good could come from such a link.

Lowering my weapon, I turned to Nico and whispered, “We need to go.”

Chapter 16

With all the speed of an arthritic old man, Nico collected his paddle and bent his frail body over his side of the boat.

I was digging into the water with deep strokes, but Nico was doing nothing.

“Dammit, Nico. Help me.”

On a stem of creaky old bones, his head slowly swiveled his blank face in my direction.

“What the hell, dude? Paddle.” I prompted him with some body language. “Now.”

Back on the riverboat, through the remaining fog, I saw a head peek from behind a railing, followed by another. But we couldn’t go back there, not with hungry Whites watching us from the shore. The infected were deathly afraid of the water. But on the short list of things I absolutely knew about the new world was all of those single-digit IQs could add up to some creatively lethal solutions.

At thirty feet from the shore, I pulled my paddle out of the water. Nico caught on to the change in sound and immediately pulled his paddle back into the boat, looking at me with a question on his face.

I whispered, “We can’t go back.”

“What?” he mouthed.

I pointed at the Whites on the shore. “Not with them watching.”

Nico turned and looked at the riverboat with a longing on his face that verged on tears.

Jesus, being trapped in that house with Mr. Mays had really fucked him up.

I waved at the riverboat, hoping that they understood from the gesture that Nico and I were okay. I pointed at the Whites on shore and then pointed downriver. They’d figure it out soon enough.

I dropped into a seat at the boat’s helm, second-guessing my choice to leave the riverboat and check out the sound on the shore. But aside from cowering behind a railing on my knees and praying to a God who no longer seemed to care, no other solution came to mind. A choice to do nothing was a choice to passively die at the hands of a cruel future. I just wasn’t wired for that. I had to do. I had to fight, even if that put me at risk of dying sooner.

Nico dropped his weary bones on a seat at the stern and slowly fell into himself, a sandstone sculpture of sadness, comatose, wearing away in a coarse wind.

The ski boat spun in slow circles as it drifted. The rain pounded us with heavy drops. We passed naked Whites on the bank and drew their interest. Many followed along, hoping to be there when we made the mistake of coming ashore. Apparently, our use of mechanical transport overrode the sight of our white skin when the infected brain was deciding whether or not we were food.

A mile or so downriver, with the tourist boat long out of sight, I said, “We’ll probably be out here all day. With all of those naked Whites on the north shore, I don’t feel comfortable returning unless it’s dark out.”

“I…I…I…” Nico pounded his fist on the seat cushion. “Damn.”

“Damn?” I calmly asked.

“I…j…just w…want to be able to t…talk.”

“Yeah?”

Nico tore his stare away from his feet. “I… w…was supposed to stay o…on the b…boat.”

I shrugged. He was being unreasonable and I didn’t feel like arguing with him. “Shit happens.”

Nico turned away to look at the water over the starboard side.

“We’ll float for a while and motor back upriver later this afternoon. We’ll drift back down to the riverboat tonight.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Yeah, me too, but life just sucks sometimes.”

“You don’t h…have to be a d…dick, Zed.”

And that was the last we spoke for a long time.

I thought about arguing that point, but didn’t. Instead I went through a mental inventory of our weapons. I had a rifle and one magazine, full. Dumbass Nico was unarmed. I had a sturdy bowie knife and my pistol, also with a full magazine. I’d made the mistake of leaving the riverboat without a full load of ammo. And though Nico and I were in no danger at the moment, we likely would be before we got back to the riverboat. If anything, the morning’s adventure was a reiteration of the lesson that danger lurked everywhere. Everywhere. To go into the world unprepared was to tempt tragedy.

The morning wore on in silence. The rain stopped and left spotty gray clouds across the sky. Between those, the sun, seemingly angry over its exile, scorched through the gaps.

As we were rounding a big curve in the river, City Park came up on the north shore. Nico decided he was ready for normal conversation again. He pointed up at one of the hills on the south side of the river and said, “Th…that’s W…Willie Nelson’s house up th…there.”

I looked up a glass walled structure at the peak. “That one with all the windows?”

“Y…yeah.”

“How do you know?”

Nico huffed. God, he was touchy. “I don’t doubt it’s true. I was just curious how you found out.”

“S… somebody t…told me.”

I nodded, as if rumor was sufficient proof. Hell, it probably was. No, of course it was, because it didn’t matter. Willie was probably dead too, along with nearly everybody who ever gave a shit about him. Well, not everybody. In a weird way, I missed him. Maybe in the same weird way I missed Sarah Mansfield. They were the faces of the culture in which I grew up. That culture was dead.

Turning away from Willie’s place, I looked back at City Park’s acres of dead grass. Curiously, not a single White was there. As I looked right, then left, none were in sight, and I tried to recall the last one I’d seen. “When was the last time you saw one of them?”

Nico was back in a pissy mood. “I’ve b…been seeing them all d…day.”

“Nico, chill. I haven’t seen one for a while. I was wondering if you had.”

Nico cast a perfunctory glance at both banks. “No.”

I gave some serious thought to walking to the back of the boat and giving him a smack. But the memory of Mr. Mays on the floor of his living room came to mind. Nico had been through more terror than he was capable of assimilating. So I put on my Dr. Freud cap, smiled sympathetically, and said, “That must have been some bad shit at Mr. Mays’ house. If you need to talk about it… Dude, I’ll listen.”

Tears bulged in his eyes, but didn’t flow. He snapped his head around and pretended to look at something of interest on the south shore.

After looking at him for several full minutes, I was about to give up and turn away when, without any hint of a stutter, he said, “I can’t.”

“Can’t talk about it?”

He shook his head.

Taking a risk at confirming a suspicion, I asked, “Are you ashamed?”

Nico shrugged and turned to the stern so I couldn’t see his face. His shoulders moved, but whether the gesture was a shrug or a sob, I couldn’t tell. I felt bad for him. At the same time, I loathed him. Perhaps loathe was too strong a word. But I felt a sense of blame boiling. Nico was a coward. I’d find out soon enough that wasn’t the worst of it.

We floated past the boundary of City Park. We watched the deserted shore as house after house went by. A small, dilapidated marina came into view. Ski Shores Café, a dumpy little place with decent food and great atmosphere, sat on the shore just past the marina. Giant cypress trees grew up through a deck that hung well out over the water. I thought about times before the world changed when I sat on that deck with friends or with a girl whose pants I was interested in removing. We drank sweaty summer beers, ate greasy burgers and listened to a raspy-voiced man strum a guitar and sing about a better life in another time and place. And life in those days was good. So good.

Through the haze of my nostalgia, I almost didn’t notice a big delivery truck sitting on the gravel parking lot behind the restaurant. That truck shouldn’t have been there. And its presence was best explained with a scenario that had the driver arriving with his weekly delivery. Unfortunate circumstances—most likely including his unhappy ending—had prompted him to abandon the truck. My guess, built on a foundation of my own wants, was the truck had plenty of food inside.

Without hesitation, nor consultation with cowardly Nico, I picked up one of the boat’s paddles and went to work guiding the boat over toward the boat slips adjacent to the restaurant’s picnic-table-covered deck.

“H…hey.” Nico wasn’t happy with the change in course. “Wh…what are y…you doing?”

I gave him a look that I hoped said “Leave me alone. I’m busy.”

Nico didn’t get any of that. “Wh…why are w…we g…going to shore?”

Completely discounting the lesson I should have relearned earlier, that one about danger lurking around every corner, I huffed. “Dude, there’s a delivery truck in the parking lot. I’m going to check it for food.”

Nico shook his head and made some sound I couldn’t identify. I understood disagreement.

“Listen, Nico, we haven’t seen a White in miles…”

Nico pointed vigorously at the shore. “B…but…” In his excitement, he couldn’t find the words to finish.

I stood up straight and looked at him. “Here’s the deal. There are no Whites around that we can see. I know they might be sneaking around somewhere. They always seem to find the most inconvenient time to make themselves known. But we need food and I’m going to check that truck to see what’s in it. And we’re already out here, so let’s not waste the day. If I see any Whites, I’ll get back in the boat and we’ll stick with plan A.”

“P…plan A?”

“Don’t sweat it.”

The bow bumped wood and I jumped out with a rope and wrapped it around a cleat. Leaning back into the boat, I whispered, “Don’t leave without me. Got it?”

Nico sheepishly nodded and watched me walk down the pier.

In no mood to fuck around, I had my rifle at my shoulder pointed out front. I’d already had one too many scares that morning. If anything moved, I’d shoot it, get back in the boat and spend the day relaxing while I stared at the clouds and let the water gently rock me off to sleep.

Orderly picnic tables on the deck gave no hint anything in the world had gone awry. The restaurant could simply have been closed. None of the windows were broken. All of the doors were closed. Not a single scatter of bones or torn clothes lay anywhere to mark the passing of the recently deceased. Ski boats in the marina hung dry in their lifts. Even the trashcans stood upright with nothing spilling out. For a moment, the world wasn’t dying. It had just taken a day off.

But that was a thought I needed to push off a cliff and maybe stomp on a few times. Those kinds of thoughts led to incautious behavior. And that led to bloody death.

I stopped and slowly scanned across all that I could see. Still, nothing moved. No infected monster made nonsensical howls.

As slowly and quietly as my feet could carry me across the gravel parking lot, I made my way over to the big delivery truck backed into the lot. The doors to the trailer faced the river. If it held food, it was optimally positioned for access from the river.

I could still see the ski boat. I could still see Nico, motionless and useless. He wasn’t even looking at me. It was as though fear of what might be on the shore had put him into his catatonic state. At least he didn’t seem to be thinking about starting up the boat’s engine and ditching me.

Coming up to the back of the trailer, I checked underneath.

Nothing there.

I looked right and left.

Nothing.

The situation was starting to have a too-good-to-be-true feel. With no Whites around to harass me, the trailer either had to be empty, and not worth the effort of checking out, or it was full of Whites who’d pile out once I opened the door.

With that in mind, I rapped on the trailer door with my fist and listened for noises inside.

Again, nothing.

I beat again, a little louder this time.

Nothing.

Taking one hand off of my rifle, I worked the overly complicated latching mechanism on the door. It was creaky with years of rust, but still failed to muster any sound from inside. Nevertheless, caution was my friend. I stepped as far away from the door as I could, braced myself, and swung it open. I jumped back and raised my rifle all in a single motion.

The door arced around its path, exposing a dimly lit interior down the end of my barrel. As I examined the darkness, the door banged against the side of the trailer. Nothing inside moved.

Despite the uncomfortably loud bang of the door, I smiled. Was it going to be easy? Really?

I looked left and right. I checked beneath the trailer again. Still nothing. No movement. No unnatural sounds. Where was the pitfall? Cases of food were stacked neatly in a mostly full trailer, with no associated danger I could see.

Had I, through some strange luck, stumbled upon the only place in Austin magically bereft of the infected?

I steeled my nerves, climbed into the trailer and got a clear view of everything inside. “Holy crap.”

The truck had to have stopped here early in its route. Cases of canned chili, beans, condiments and seasoning were stacked along one wall of the trailer along with fifty-pound bags of flour, sugar and corn meal. On the other wall, shrink wrapped on pallets, were stacked green five-gallon buckets full of sliced hamburger dills, cases of canned fruit, fifty-pound boxes of lard, boxes full of fortune cookies and dozens of cases of soda fountain syrup. The only thing missing from my post-apocalyptic gold mine was a rainbow and surly leprechaun.

It was time to check my flanks again, so I hustled to the back of the truck and jumped down to the ground. I saw nothing but trees, bushes, a few parked cars, boats and orderly picnic tables. Not a single, howling, angry White.

Fuck it.

I climbed back into the trailer, grabbed a dolly strapped to one of the walls and lowered it quietly to the ground. I then spent a short while stacking cases of food at the back of the trailer where I could reach them from the ground. Sure, I could have left it all and come back the next day with Murphy. That would have been the safer course of action. But who knew what the situation would be the next day? The trailer might have gotten ransacked by then, or the whole area might be swarming with the naked horde. No. It was better to take the food while the opportunity existed.

Without incident, I carted seven or eight dolly loads from the trailer, across the gravelly parking lot to the ski boat and cajoled Nico into helping me load them. I even took six heavy cases of the fountain syrup. I had no idea what exactly I’d do with them, but those, along with the lard, were concentrated calories. In spite of having little culinary value, those calories could keep us alive for a long, long time.

When I was done, I stored the dolly back inside the trailer, closed, and latched the doors. I got back into the boat, which was sitting low in the water with all the extra weight. But it would float, and that’s all that mattered. I loosed our rope from the dock and pushed the boat back out into the river. Once we were well away from the shore, I dropped the anchor.

“Wh…what are w…we waiting for?” Nico asked me.

“No point in going down river any further. We’ll wait ‘til dark, head back upriver past the boat and then drift back down.”

“I...I’m hungry.”

“We don’t have a can opener, but you can bust into those fortune cookies, if you want.”

Nico reached into a pocket and withdrew a Swiss army knife. He fumbled with it for a minute or more, but didn’t seem to be able to pull out the can opener blade.

“Here, man.” I put out my hand. “I’ll get it. What are you hungry for?”

Chapter 17

With full bellies and a relatively cool afternoon, Nico and I found it easy to nap. We may have even slept on into the evening, had the mosquito buzzing in my ear not woken me as the sun was setting. So according to the plan, we motored back upriver, passed the riverboat with a wave and drifted silently back down under the cover of darkness.

When we finally tied the ski boat to the riverboat and boarded, I’d pretty much forgotten the way the day had started and instead was feeling proud of the trove of food weighing the ski boat down .

Steph, though, had only the early morning’s events to think about all day, and she had fire in her eyes when she marched up to me. “What were you thinking?”

Deja vu. I pointed to the cases loaded into the ski boat. “Look at all the food.”

Murphy brushed past Steph and slapped me on the back. “Once again, Lucky Zed doesn’t get killed. Heh, heh, heh.”

Dalhover, who was looking into the ski boat by then, seemed almost happy. “Damn. That’s a lot.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Like Murphy said, we got lucky. And there’s more where that came from.”

Steph, not one to show too many emotions, especially not anger, poked me in the chest with her finger and leaned in close. “We need to talk. You go ahead and have your little party here, but we’re talking when you get done unloading.”

She was pretty pissed off, but I didn’t rise to the fight. I gave her a big smile instead. I felt like I’d turned a shitty situation into something good, even if part of the equation was luck.

Murphy loved instigating as much as he loved smiling. With a chuckle, he said, “Me and Top got this. You go right ahead and talk to him, boss.”

Steph glared at Murphy.

When she turned back to me, I simply said, “We’ve got weapons and ammo. We’ve got food. This is what I do for a living now, Steph. I scavenge.” Then I shrugged and looked back down into the boat. “I think I’m good at it.”

“Lucky, is more like it.”

I shrugged again and watched Nico shirk any pressure to help Murphy and Dalhover unload the boat. He sauntered past us to take a seat at one of the tables on the lower deck.

Steph had an extra glare for him as well.

“Look, quit shooting daggers at everybody,” I said. “It’s me you’re mad at. Just slap my wrist and get it over with, okay?”

And for the first time since I met her, Steph’s anger got the best of her. “Zed, you just don’t get it, do you? One day you’re going to run off without thinking and get yourself killed, and what then?”

The question was rhetorical, but I was feeling like something of a smartass. “I’ll be dead. What will I care?”

“And what about Murphy and Mandi and Sergeant Dalhover? What about them? What about us?” Steph was nearly yelling at that point. It was so uncharacteristic, she had everyone’s attention, whether she wanted it or not. “What are we supposed to do when you’re dead? Are we just supposed to mourn again? Is that what you want? Don’t you know how much we care about you, Zed? Don’t you know anything?”

Say what?

Steph spun on her heel and stomped off toward the stairs to the upper deck. Behind her, those of us on the lower deck were silent.

After a moment, Murphy said, “You better go talk to her, dude.”

I turned on Murphy. “What’s her deal?”

I glanced Dalhover’s way. He shook his head and went back to work.

I looked back at Murphy. “What?”

“That was kind of a dipshit thing you did this morning.”

In the background, Nico added, “Y…yeah.”

“I did what needed to be done to keep us safe, Murphy. Those naked ones know where we are. Something had to be done and I tried to do it.”

“Don’t tell me, man.” Murphy looked toward where Steph had disappeared up the stairs. “You know who you need to explain it to.”

“Why?”

Murphy laughed. “I wish you two would just sleep together and stop acting like junior high kids. Look, man, go talk to her. If nothing else, she’s the boss. We all agreed.”

I rolled my eyes and huffed. Few things irritated me more than having to answer to people in positions of authority. Of course, that train of thought completely circumvented the fact that I was attracted to Steph.

Murphy nudged my shoulder. “Go.”

“I should wait until she cools down.”

“Man, chicks never cool down.”

“Whatever.”

Murphy nudged me again.

“Fine.” I headed across the deck.

As I walked away, Murphy said, “Don’t forget to say you’re sorry.”

“For what?”

Murphy laughed again. “Does it matter?”

When I got to the stairs, Mandi, Russell and Megan were coming down. I asked, “Are Amy and Brittany on watch?”

“Yes,” Mandi said as she brushed by. Then she turned and called back in her usual bubbly tone, “Glad you weren’t killed this morning.”

“Thanks.” I climbed the stairs.

When I came out on deck two, I immediately spotted Brittany sitting in a chair, concealed behind the rail near the bow. At the stern starboard side of the boat, Amy was standing near the ladder that led up to the roof of the pilothouse. When I looked at her, she pursed her lips and pointed up.

I walked over to the ladder and grabbed a rung. Before climbing, I said, “We came back with a bunch of food. The guys are unloading it down on deck one.”

Amy looked up. “She worried about you all day.” She put a hand on my arm. “Really, she did.”

“She worries about all of us. She’s in charge.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

I started to climb the ladder.

Amy said, “I’m glad you made it back.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll bet you were a lot of fun to have around before all this virus crap happened.”

“Not really.” I made my way up to the roof.

Steph was sitting on the stern of the pilothouse roof, dangling her feet off the edge. I walked across the roof and peered over the edge. “That’s a long way down.”

“It’s not that far.”

“Mind if I sit?”

Steph looked up at me. “I lost my temper. I’m sorry. I’m always the calm one. That’s what people say about me. I’m even-keeled. I never get overly emotional about anything.”

“It happens.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it. Can I sit?”

“Of course.”

I sat beside her. “I’m sorry.”

“For?”

I chuckled. “Murphy told me that part wasn’t important.”

Steph shook her head, smiled wanly and punched my arm. “I’d hate to hear what men must really think of women.”

“In your case, we all respect you. That’s why you’re the boss.”

“I’m the boss because I’m bossy.”

“At the risk of getting all longwinded about it, that’s probably just one of those societal things. I think women—”

“Stop.”

I looked at Steph.

“I’m not in the mood for one of your rambling sociological theories.”

I shrugged. “It happens. Look, I’m sorry about going out on the boat this morning. I really thought I was doing what was best for us all. The girls heard noises on the bank. I thought it might be the infected and I went out to investigate. I didn’t mean to do something about it, but when I saw it was just one naked guy, I thought I might solve a problem at little risk to myself and keep us all just that much safer.”

Steph looked at me. “But he wasn’t alone, was he?”

I shook my head. Of course he hadn’t been alone.

“You don’t think these things through, Zed.”

“It was foggy.”

“You’re making excuses.”

Sure, that was true. I looked out at the water.

“I think maybe you’re so good at laying your bullshit on people that sometimes you believe it, too.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“It’s nothing, Zed, just an observation. You knew more infected could be on shore. You acted on impulse—an impulse to do something for the good of the group—but an impulse just the same. Because you did, you put both you and Nico in danger.”

I took a few deep breaths as I tried to think of a good counterargument, but it was always hard to argue against the truth. “Yeah, but I don’t know what else I could have done. I really just went out to investigate. When I saw that White was alone, I knew I could take him out. It was…it happened so fast. I didn’t think about the possibility that other infected might be there.”

“Have you always been that way?”

“What way?”

“Impulsive.”

I shrugged. “Maybe a little bit.”

“You never think things through?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Looking at her, I said, “I think I tend to think things through. At least I used to. But things are different now. I don’t always have time to think things through. Lots of times, I just have to react. Sometimes that’s saved me.”

“Would you say you’ve gotten more impulsive since you got the fever?”

I was taken aback with that. “What? Are you saying the virus has maybe made me… I don’t know, maybe it’s made me less apt to think? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know, Zed. I’m just trying to understand.”

I got up and paced back and forth a few times, getting a little agitated. “I think it’s the situation.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know. The world changed when the virus hit. People who did things the same way they used to do them are all dead now. People who adapted aren’t.”

“So impulsiveness is a survival adaptation?”

“I don’t know.” I was irritated with the line of questioning. “Maybe. I’m just saying I’m doing some things differently. I’m still alive. I’d like to think some of you guys are too because of me.”

Looking up at me, Steph said, “Come sit back down. Okay?”

I deliberately looked out into the darkness on both sides of the boat before I complied.

“Zed, it’s okay if you do things differently now. It’s even okay if maybe it’s the virus that made you a little more impulsive than you used to be. I just worry about you.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You can’t just say that.”

“I can handle myself fine with the infected. I don’t know why, but I do. I’m good at it.”

“It’s not the infected you see that worry me, Zed. It’s the ones you don’t see.”

“I’ll be more careful next time. I’ll look more closely.”

“And that’s exactly my point, but not in the way that you think.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“You think your only danger this morning was that White you killed by the tree. And you think your only unseen danger were the Whites hiding in the bushes and the fog.”

“Yeah?”

“Did you even think about Nico?”

I didn’t know how to respond.

Steph read that on my face and continued. “I’m worried about him.”

“Did you think he was going to go all Freitag on me?”

Steph shook her head, obviously trying to come up with the best way to say something. “I’ll just be blunt. Zed, his temperature concerns me.”

“Is it high?”

Steph nodded.

I looked for the right words, daring to ask a question I might not like the answer to. “Higher than mine?”

Steph nodded.

“And Murphy’s?”

“His is higher than Murphy’s.”

“And Russell’s?”

“Close to the same.”

“His temperature is close to Russell’s?”

“Yes.”

“Holy crap. I wonder…”

“What do you wonder?”

I looked over my shoulder as though I might see down through the deck. “Do you think his temperature is going up?”

“I’ll check him again in the morning. Why do you ask?”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share anything. I wasn’t sure if anything I shared might somehow cast a pall on me. “He’s been acting weird since we picked him up at Mr. Mays’ house.”

“I agree, but what do you mean?”

“It’s hard to say. But before, he was… I don’t know. He wasn’t emotional at all. Now he seems like he’s a basket case.”

“Trauma can do that,” Steph said.

“Before, he wouldn’t stop talking. Now…”

“He doesn’t talk that much.”

“And he stutters.”

“He didn’t stutter before?”

I shook my head emphatically. “Not once. He could say more in a minute than I could in a week. He definitely didn’t stutter. You think his temperature going up is causing that?”

Steph nodded.

“But it could just be the trauma, right? It could be that.”

Steph nodded again, but her eyes told me she was just going along with me so I’d feel better.

Crap.

I feared what that implied about my future and lost all desire to say anything else. The black water behind the boat seemed like the most interesting thing in the world.

Steph left me alone with my thoughts for a good long while before she put a hand on my thigh and said, “Zed, don’t worry about this temperature thing. Okay? You’ve got enough to deal with when you and Murphy are out dodging the infected.”

I nodded, but didn’t look at her.

“And I know you were just trying to do the right thing this morning. I appreciate that, I really do. We all do. But we all care about you, okay?”

I nodded again.

“I know you think you’re some kind of self-sufficient… I don’t know. Whatever you think you are. And I guess maybe you are. But if you’ll just trust the rest of us to work together, we’ll help you the way you help us. Trust us all to work together as a team. That’s the only way we’re all going to make it. Okay?”

I nodded again.

“I’m serious, Zed. I know you have a problem with the whole depending-on-other-people thing.”

“I’ve never said that.”

“Anybody who pays attention can see it.”

I didn’t respond.

Steph put a hand on my cheek and turned my face to look at her. “Trust us, okay? We can all help each other. If we work together, we’ll survive.”

Our noses were just inches apart and I could smell her, almost taste her. Something in the pressure of her hand on my face made me want it to stay there forever. But it was just pressure. It may have been the caress of a lover, but I’d never know. That kind of sensitivity was gone from my skin. Robbed from me by a virus, rotting my nervous system from the inside out.

That moment could have been romantic. Maybe in another time, months or years back, it would have. But with so much weight from other emotions, current problems, there was room for little more than a wispy thought of a kiss.

I croaked. “I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

Chapter 18

Half of us were in the candlelit galley, eating like there was no long-term shortage of food to worry about. Amy and Brittany were still on watch. Mandi and Megan had taken food up to them and hadn’t yet come down. I’d just made the ill-advised choice to take Murphy’s dare and guzzle a large cup of straight Coca-Cola syrup and was spinning up on a caffeine and sugar buzz that might take days to wear off.

And on that buzz, I figured I’d make an announcement. “We’ve got plenty of ammo and weapons now.”

The others quieted down and gave me their attention.

“We’ve got plenty of food and we’ve got a place to stay that’s as safe as any we’re likely to find anytime soon.”

“And?” Murphy asked.

“There’s something I’ve been thinking about and I think it’s time that I go take care of it.”

That dampened the mood immediately.

“Oh, no.” Dalhover snorted.

I looked around at them. “If we’d had silencers for your rifles, we could have just shot that Smart One on the bank and wouldn’t have had to worry about drawing any more of them in.”

“Is that the excuse now?” Murphy scoffed without breaking his smile. “You just want to go out and hunt Smart Ones.”

“Yeah, but we need the silencers for the rifles.”

Steph, with a worried look, turned to Dalhover.

He understood she was putting it to him to dissuade me and smirked when he spoke. “You’ve watched too many movies, Zane. Suppressors aren’t silent. They won’t do us any good.”

I shook my head emphatically. “No, you’re wrong.”

Dalhover dispensed with any sense of conversational politeness. “I’m not wrong.”

I nodded and pointed at Murphy. “Me and Murphy, we watched our friend Jerome get killed with silenced weapons and we didn’t hear anything. Tell him, Murphy.”

“I don’t think I’d say he was our friend.” Murphy looked at Dalhover, hesitated, looked at me and then back at Dalhover. “Top, we didn’t hear the rifle shots. They were quiet.”

Dalhover straightened up in his chair. “Is it possible with everything going on, in the fog of war, the gunshots were there, but you just weren’t paying attention? You just don’t remember them?”

“No.” I was emphatic about my response, though I knew that Dalhover’s explanation was plausible.

“Do you even know what a suppressed weapon sounds like?” Dalhover asked.

“Like a crack? Like a firecracker, maybe,” Murphy said, with no certainty.

“If you were listening for gunshots, you might not have noticed.” Dalhover dropped his cigarette on the deck and clapped his hands together. “Suppressed weapons sound kind of like that, only louder.”

What the fuck?

I looked at Murphy. He was, for the moment, quiet and perplexed like me.

I asked Dalhover to do that again.

“Clap my hands?”

“Yeah.”

Dalhover clapped his hands together again and then looked at me, waiting for an explanation.

I looked at Murphy. He had the same question on his face as me. “I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound right to me,” I said.

“Me, neither,” Murphy said.

“What do you mean?” Steph asked.

“Clap your hands together,” I said.

“Why?”

“Please.”

With a puzzled look, Steph complied. She clapped her hands together.

“Harder,” I asked.

She clapped them again.

I looked at Nico and asked, “You hear it too, don’t you? Or more precisely, you don’t hear it.”

Nico nodded. “I w…wondered ab…bout that.”

“About what?” Steph asked, barely able to contain her frustration.

“After I w…woke up from th…the f…fever, I felt like I…I had c…cotton stuffed m…my ears,” Nico said. “Everything seemed k…kind of muffled, b…but not. You know what I m…mean?”

“No,” Steph said.

I cut in. “I can hear you guys clap your hands, but it sounds dull and distant. It sounds like you’re clapping with gloves on. It’s like the high-end sound frequencies are gone.”

“When did you first notice this?” Steph asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. After the fever, my ears were ringing like I’d been at a concert the night before or something, but after a couple of days, I didn’t really think about it. Maybe I stopped hearing some higher frequencies and I just didn’t notice they were missing.”

Steph asked, “Murphy, is that your experience as well?”

“Man, I don’t know,” he said. “When I woke up from the fever, shit was happenin’, if you know what I mean. I didn’t have time to think about it.”

“But you noticed the difference in the hand claps, right?”

“Sure. It’s like Zed said. It’s like you’re clapping your hands with gloves on or something.”

“So you’re both right,” Steph said. “Sergeant Dalhover is right about the sound of a silenced weapon. But it seems the virus has damaged your ability to hear certain frequencies. So what sound you were able to hear from the silenced rifles was easily lost in the background noise.”

I picked up from there. “So all of you can probably hear silenced weapons just fine, but for the infected in the world, they’re out of our auditory range.”

Dalhover scooted up on the edge of the table he’d been sitting on. I think he was almost excited. “Silenced weapons might work for killing the infected. Suppressors might be worth their weight in gold right now.”

“Or worth their weight in Spam,” Murphy said, expecting a laugh, which he got. The tension of disagreement evaporated.

Dalhover said, “I don’t know about going out and killing Smart Ones, though the idea has merit. But if we could get our hands on enough suppressors, they could make the difference between whether we survive or not. It puts the advantage with us.”

Steph asked, with a fair degree of trepidation, “And how do we get suppressors?”

Dalhover answered first. “With the right materials, the right tools and a workshop with some electricity, I could probably make a usable suppressor in a half hour or so.”

“But we don’t have those things,” Steph said.

I stepped in. “There’s a squad of soldiers over by the campus, probably all dead from the virus by now. I’m betting most of their weapons are lying right where they died, with silencers attached.”

“And you’re just going to go across town and pick them up?” Steph didn’t like that idea at all.

I nodded. “Yes ma’am, Captain Leonard. I think that’s what I should do.”

She shook her head. “You’re not fifteen, Null Spot. Don’t act like it.”

“Yes, boss.” I looked at Dalhover to see if he’d come all the way over to my side. He didn’t nod, nor shake his head. He just looked at me with his emotionless stare, but somewhere in there, I thought I saw worry.

We talked for a long time after that, but the conversation circled around the same issues, with Steph not changing her position. The after-dinner debate broke up with the changing of the guard. Steph and Dalhover had a shift together. It was getting late. Everyone drifted off to some other place on the boat and eventually went to bed.

Chapter 19

A peculiarity of the riverboat’s design created a wide ledge outside the railing on the upper deck that ran all the way around the boat, except for the stern. Unsuccessful at sleeping, I got tired of staring at nothing and instead found my way up to sit on that ledge at the bow of the boat.

With my legs dangling over the black water, I watched bubbly gray clouds flow south beneath a starry black sky. The three-quarter moon was rising and provided plenty of light for me to see a hundred or so of the infected, squatting and sleeping among the trees and bushes on the north bank. They’d been collecting there for two days, unsettling all of us and proving the futility of my efforts to kill that one.

Murphy and I, along with Dalhover and Amy, had made another run down to Ski Shores with the pontoon boat and a ski boat. That whole area was still inexplicably free of the infected or any normal human. We uneventfully loaded both boats with as much as could be carried, fueled up at the marina and were in a pretty good position for supplies. We had all the ammunition we were likely to need for the next year. And we knew where to get more. We had enough food to last us a month without worrying about rationing.

Except for the infected on the north bank, our situation was good.

The wispy sound of soft talking caught my attention when a few words floated over the deck and found their way to me. I couldn’t make them out, just that the sound was familiar enough to be words. It came and it went for a while, soft enough that the infected on shore weren’t likely to hear, but loud enough that I could.

After some time, I decided I should go find the two loquacious guards and encourage them to be a little quieter. I hopped over the rail and landed noiselessly on the upper deck, finding no one there. I saw the silhouettes of a few heads up on the roof of the pilothouse at the other end of the boat. That made sense. It seemed to be the preferred station for whichever pair was tasked with nighttime guard duty.

As I walked down the length of the boat and the sounds clarified a bit, I recognized the halting pattern of Nico’s stutter. I heard a girl’s giggle and then nothing more. I was giving some thought to going back to my perch, as the talkers seemed to have silenced themselves, when it occurred to me that Nico should not have been up on the pilothouse. He wasn’t on the schedule. His odd behavior had not engendered enough trust with Steph to merit a night watch slot.

Recalling the schedule, I realized the watch for the last half of the night should have been Mandi and Megan. It was possible Nico was suffering from insomnia, just as I was, and had found his way up to the roof of the pilothouse. But just as Steph’s trust for Nico was precarious, so was mine.

I continued toward the stern.

When I arrived at the ladder on the side of the pilothouse, I stopped and listened. The conversation had not restarted, at least not loudly. But the sound of bodies moving in clothing along with some dragging across the rough roof mixed with whispers and drifted down to me.

Something wasn’t right, but I resisted the urge to climb the ladder and immediately insert myself into whatever was going on. It wasn’t that I had any compunction about being rude. My intuition told me there was more to learn, especially about Nico.

After a bit, the talking started again mixed with whispers and periodic giggles. I started to doubt the validity of my suspicions, but at the same time, I didn’t hear the sound of Mandi’s voice at all.

The volume of Nico’s voice grew as the conversation went on and I started to make out much of what he was saying. And mostly, it sounded creepy. He talked about how pretty Megan’s hair was and how he couldn’t help but stroke it. He told her it reminded him of his daughter, Stacy, only Megan was much prettier. He asked her about the school she went to, whether she had played volleyball or was a cheerleader, and what she liked about it. He asked if she liked any of her teachers and, if so, which ones. He asked if she had any boyfriends yet, or if she’d ever had a crush on any of her teachers.

For her part, Megan seemed embarrassed and giggled a lot. She may even have been thrilled to have the attention of a man who, though old enough to be her father, had a young look about him. But she was thirteen. He was in his mid-thirties.

Everything going on up on the roof of the pilothouse was in the realm of inappropriate. I wrestled choosing the right moment to climb the ladder and punch Nico in the face as I considered what I was going to say to Steph and Amy. Bringing him into the group had been a mistake. My mistake.

Then he asked if he could kiss her.

I was on my way up the ladder.

In the seconds it took me to get both of my feet on the roof, Nico had pushed Megan over on her back and, though she was trying to squirm away, he was too strong. His face was buried in her neck, one arm was holding her close to him and one hand was doing its best to explore places where it didn’t belong.

With frightened tears just starting to flow, Megan’s squeaky voice pleaded, “No. No, don’t do that.”

With my mouth closed tightly and my anger boiling, I took three fast steps over to where Nico was pinning Megan to the roof. I grabbed the wrist of the hand worming its way down the front of Megan’s jeans and wrenched it savagely behind his back while I grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled him away. “Stop.”

Megan scampered away in a crab walk, trying to cover her chest with her torn blouse while tears streamed down her face. Her mouth moved, but no words came out.

I pushed Nico to the pilothouse roof and dropped a knee hard between his shoulder blades. He grunted loudly as all the air spilled out of his lungs.

Turning to Megan, I asked. “Are you okay?”

She didn’t speak.

Nico, though, started to babble a litany of stuttery bullshit that only served to piss me off. With my hand still full of the hair on the back of his head, I ground his face into the rough wooden planking. “Don’t say anything. You hear me?”

I guess the anger in my voice was enough to convince him how serious I was, because he stopped talking immediately.

I looked up at Megan. “Go downstairs and wake up Steph and Amy, okay? You don’t need to wake everyone, but you get them to come up here.”

Megan nodded.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Megan didn’t look at me. She was looking at Nico. Her sense of violation had turned to anger. “You’re an asshole, Nico.” She got up and headed for the ladder.

“Steph and Amy, okay?”

“I’ll get them.”

Without another word, Megan climbed down, making no effort to avoid the rungs that creaked.

Nico pleaded. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Save it.” I pressed his face harder into the wood.

“You’re hurting me.”

“No shit.”

Even with his face pressed against the wood, Nico managed to say, “It’s n…not wh…what you think.”

I took my hand off of his head and he lifted it up and took full advantage of the opportunity to start saying something else. With my hand free, I drew my pistol and pressed the barrel to his temple. “Don’t speak.”

Nico understood at that point just how serious I was.

It didn’t take long before Steph and Amy were climbing up the creaky ladder to join us on the roof of the wheelhouse.

Steph was first up. “What happened?”

“Did Megan tell you anything?” I asked.

“No.”

Amy turned to look back down the ladder. “Megan, come up here too.”

“I don’t want to,” she called up from below.

Brittany’s voice called back. “She’s not.”

Amy looked at the gun I had pressed to the side of Nico’s head. She’d already seen Megan’s torn blouse. She was doing the math. “You need to.”

I looked at Amy and said, “Amy, I brought Nico here. This is my fault. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was this way.”

Nico said, “Wh…what way? I’m n…not any way.”

“Quiet.” I put my weight on the handle of the gun and the barrel pressed Nico’s face back against the wood.

Steph, in her business-like calm, said, “Zed, let him up.”

I let go of the arm I held behind Nico’s back. “Put your hands flat on the deck, out in front of your head.”

Nico hesitated and started to protest.

“Do it now.” Harsh talk seemed to work well on him, though the effects didn’t tend to stick for long.

Nico complied and I used my free hand to run over his pockets where I found his Swiss army knife. I took it. I picked up his rifle and stepped away from him. “Go over there.” I pointed to the far side of the wheelhouse roof where he’d be nearly ten feet from us.

Steph asked me, “What happened, Zed?”

With more than one interruption by Nico, I explained what I heard and saw.

Amy headed back toward the ladder. “I’ll go down and talk to Megan.”

Nico figured that was a good time to state his case. “I…it’s n…not true. I didn’t know sh…she was… I th…thought she was old enough… It w…was h…her. All her. Y…you d….don’t know what y…you heard, Z…Zed. You have to b…believe me. You—”

“Enough.” Steph’s tone was sharp enough to cut through Nico’s protests. “Zed, keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t move.”

“But…” Nico started again, but Steph’s glare shut him up.

She went over to the ladder, leaned on the upper rung and listened to the proceedings downstairs. I heard tense whispers mixed with tears. Emotions ran high. Voices forgot the necessity to remain hushed. Brittany seemed eager to climb the ladder and deal with Nico herself.

Eventually, Amy came back up. She and Steph stood at the opposite end of the wheelhouse roof, talking in harsh whispers.

It was clear Nico’s guilt was never in question. They were deciding what to do with him.

Finally, Steph stepped away from Amy and said, “Nico, you’re leaving here tonight. Zed and I will take you upriver somewhere and put you out on the shore. Don’t come back around us. If we see you again, we’ll shoot you.”

Nico collapsed on the deck and cried and pleaded, and cried more.

Steph looked at me. “Do you mind coming with me, Zed?”

“Nope. Not a bit.”

Steph said to Amy, “Will you girls keep watch until we get back?”

“Of course,” Amy said.

Chapter 20

With some care, we got Nico down into one of the ski boats. The one we chose had plenty of gasoline and, almost as importantly, had a bench seat set into the bow – a place for Nico to sit where we could easily keep an eye on him. Steph sat at the helm. In the seat beside her, I held the gun.

We drifted down the river for a half-mile before starting the engine and then heading back up.

I waved at the riverboat as we passed and that was all of the communication that took place on our trip. Steph was as silent as I’d ever seen her. She stared ahead as though Nico wasn’t there.

For my part, I felt a hate for Nico grow the longer I looked at him sitting in the bow, feeling sorry for himself. I thought about his daughter, Stacy, and what he’d told me that day in the canoe before we’d found Mr. Mays’ house. He said she wasn’t sullen because of anything he’d done. She was just wired that way. That’s what he said. Some people are just wired that way.

Yeah, wired that way by parents who take the raw material of innocent children and fuck them up because they can’t control their own twisted urges.

And it was pussy-ass fucktards like Nico who let them die on the front lawn because they were too scared to come out of the kitchen and protect them. The day Nico chose to have children, he only had one job in the whole Goddamned world, and that was to protect those kids. But he didn’t. He was the predator they needed to be protected from.

God, how I hated him.

“Zed.”

Steph’s voice startled me out of my thoughts. I’d been ruminating, completely lost track of time and everything around me.

“Zed,” Steph asked, “are you okay?”

I looked around without seeing a house or structure of any kind. Nico was sitting in the bow of the boat, transfixed by shadows on the heavily wooded bank. The engine was off and the boat was twenty feet from the shore.

Nico turned back to plead with Steph, “N…not h…here. Th…there’s nothing. No sh…shelter. Nothing.”

“And no infected,” she said, looking back at me. “What’s up with you, Zed? Are you all right?”

I nodded.

She scrutinized me for another moment before standing up, her hand deliberately on the butt of her pistol. “Grab that paddle there and paddle until we get close enough to the shore,” she said to Nico.

“I can’t p…paddle f…from up here,” he said.

“Then jump out and swim.”

Nico grumbled and whined, but leaned over the bow and started the awkward process.

After four or five minutes of effort without much in the way of results, Nico sat up, breathing heavily from the exertion and laid the paddle across his knees. “Th…this is impossible. I c…can’t d…do this alone. Why d….don’t you st...start the engine again and j…just p…pull up to the shore?”

Steph took a step toward him. “You can get out, then.”

I put a restraining hand in front of Steph and stood up. “I’ve got this.”

Steph moved back and cleared the way for me. “The sound of the engine will bring in any Whites in the trees. Is that what you want?”

It was only three steps to the front of the boat and I took just one. My pistol was in my hand and I was well within range if Nico should he decide to swing the paddle at me.

I looked at the darkness on the shore.

Nico interpreted that along with the drawn pistol as a threat. “Are you g…going to sh…shoot me, Zed? Really?”

On that long, simmering boat ride upriver, the sins of The Harpy, Dan, Nico and the world conflated in the self-pity stretched on a pedophilic coward’s face. My rage flashed white-hot, blowing away any rational sense of restraint.

In a smooth, natural motion, I raised my pistol, pointed it the center of that face and pulled the trigger.

For that tiniest bit of a microsecond, as that sad face ruptured, I was defined. I knew what I was. I was vengeance.

Nico’s head snapped back and parts of his skull splashed across the water. Slowly, so slowly, his body leaned backwards and fell overboard.

Steph gasped.

I leapt up onto the bow and fired two more vindictive rounds into Nico’s chest.

Fright silenced the frogs and crickets as the night seemed to solidify into a tiny eternity. In the absence of guilt and second-guessing, emotion was satisfied. The scales were balanced. Purpose was fulfilled.

Nico’s body started to sink; black water gurgling red through the bullet holes in his lungs.

But purpose contorted into old, familiar emptiness. Emotionless, I was just a thing with a lethal weapon, trying to remember what I’d been before my bullet had so rudely shattered Nico’s skull.

The body descended further and was gone.

Only cold, dark water and the curious, hungry howls of distant Whites remained to lament Nico’s passing.

“Zed?” Steph said.

Feeling like a soulless White monster, I came back to the moment. I stepped down from the bow and slumped onto the padded seat, my pistol hanging limply in my hand.

“Zed, are you okay?”

I looked up. Steph was worried.

I nodded but tears in my eyes exposed the truth of it.

In small, slow steps, Steph came over and sat on the cushion with me. She put her arms around me and pulled me to her. Somewhere in there, with my face buried in her thick red hair, the rage of a thousand repressed pains found a path to flow free.

Chapter 21

The boat drifted with the current. Steph’s arms held me tight and secure. The cries of the infected faded into the distance behind us as the night sounds of the river took over. Black-windowed houses and cluttered docks drifted past. Silent trees ignored us and dark gray clouds continued to flow across the sky.

I finally found my voice. “I’m sorry.”

Steph put a hand under my chin and pulled my face up to look at hers. “Don’t be.”

Wanting to stay there, feeling her heartbeat through our bodies pressed so close together, sharing the same breaths, wondering what it might be like to have Steph’s embrace always there for me, I still pulled away. Too many other thoughts were bothering me.

“What’s my temperature?” I asked.

Not quite letting go, Steph said, “You said I shouldn’t tell you.”

“Please.”

Steph’s arm dropped off of my shoulder. She sat back on her cushion and took my hand in hers, concentrating on it as if the answer to my question was there. “Why is that important now?”

I looked out at the dark shore, futilely searching for accurate words to describe the complexity of my emotions and thoughts. “I feel like a monster. I need to know if I’m turning into one.”

Steph didn’t have a response for that.

I asked, “Is that what’s happening to me? Am I turning into one of them?”

“Zed, there isn’t any good answer, you know that, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

Steph took a deep breath and looked into my eyes. “Don’t you see? If I tell you your temperature has been going up, then you’ll believe you are a monster and shooting Nico is proof. If I tell you your temperature has stabilized, because of the way you are you’ll decide you’re more of a monster, because you won’t have the virus to blame.”

I didn’t know what to say about that, not at first. “I think I’d rather know. I don’t want to put my head in the sand anymore.”

Steph tried to change the subject, or at least divert it a bit. “Nico deserved what he got.”

“Tell me, Steph, please.”

“I’m throwing away the thermometer when we get back to the boat.”

“And?”

Steph shook her head, dropped my hand and crossed her arms.

“I need to know.”

She surrendered. “Your temperature has been stable since we started checking every day. Mostly. Maybe it’s gone up a little, but it’s hard to tell whether those are just normal fluctuations or not.”

I leaned over, put my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. I realized she was right. I did feel like more of a monster. I was a civilized, thinking man. Yet I’d let my temper run away with me and I’d chosen to kill Nico. I chose to murder him. Deserving or not, he paid for a lot of sins with his blood.

“I’m sorry.” It was all I could think to say.

Steph put an arm back over my shoulders and pulled me close.

The excuses I was telling myself seemed important enough to share. “Steph, I can’t tell you I know that he molested his own daughter, but I think he did.”

“It’s not important, Zed.”

“It is to me. I guess I suspected it all along. I just didn’t want to believe it.”

“People like that don’t change. You know that, right?”

“No. Yes. I think I read that somewhere once. Something having to do with recidivism rates among pedophiles or something.”

“None of it matters. I don’t fault you for what you did. Maybe in a way, I wish I had the courage to do it myself.”

“I’m not sure ‘courageous’ is the right word to describe what I did.”

“It doesn’t matter what anyone calls it. It doesn’t matter why you think you did it. Nico earned what he got. Besides that, nothing else means anything. None of this changes anything about what I think of you, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re a good man.”

“A good man?” My laugh was mocking.

“You’re a good man, Zed. Learn to take a compliment.”

I sat up and leaned my head over on Steph’s shoulder.

The emptiness started to fade and it felt good to be in her arms doing little more than watching the stars between the clouds.

Chapter 22

The next morning, the rain was coming down heavier than I’d seen in a long time. It pummeled the pontoon boat’s canvas roof and added enough noise to make conversation difficult. That didn’t matter much, as the first few miles of our journey had passed in silence. Murphy spent a good deal of time in the stern looking back upriver. I think the more attached he got to Mandi, the more he hated to leave.

Amy, usually good for a conversation, seemed infatuated with her new M-16 and was keeping pretty much to herself.

Dalhover, who was driving the boat, surprised me when he looked over at me and opened the conversation. “What I don’t get is why Captain Leonard let you and Murphy go. I didn’t think it was decided.”

I shrugged. I was doing that a lot. It seemed to be such a handy gesture. “Don’t know. She woke me this morning and told me if I still wanted to go, I had her blessing.”

“You didn’t talk about it last night when you two went out to ditch Nico?”

“Not about this.”

Dalhover looked over to Amy. “Did you talk to her?”

Amy looked at me then back at Dalhover. “We talked for a long time.”

“When?” Dalhover asked.

“After Zed and she got back from taking care of Nico. Neither of us went to bed.”

“And that’s when you decided that going for the suppressors was a good idea?”

Amy got a bit defensive. “You don’t agree?”

“Didn’t say that.” Dalhover took his time digging a cigarette out of his pocket. He put it in his mouth and after a half-dozen attempts to get his lighter to flame, held it up to the end of the cigarette, which proved to be too damp to light. “Dammit.” He tossed the cigarette into the river.

“Those will kill you.” I grinned.

Dalhover shot me a dismissive look.

Amy asked, “So, you do agree that we should do this?”

“It’s Murphy and Zed that are going, if I understood correctly,” Dalhover said.

Amy huffed. “I meant ‘we’ as a group.”

“Don’t mind him,” I said to Amy.

“Do you agree?” Amy asked Dalhover.

“I said as much when we talked the other night.” Dalhover didn’t look at her. “I need a damn dry cigarette.”

Murphy, who’d walked up near the rest of us by the helm, reached up and wrapped his hands around one of the overhead supports to balance himself. “What’s up?”

Dalhover said, “It’s a stupid idea to do it today.”

“Waller Creek empties into Town Lake about four miles south of the university.” I spoke insultingly slowly. I didn’t like the implication I was acting stupid. “If Murphy and I hike up the creek bed, we can get to the university and back in three or four hours and nobody will ever see us.”

Amy said, “I think Sergeant Dalhover is right. With all the rain these last few days, the creeks might flood.”

“We always get flooding after a drought,” Dalhover said.

“That’s not true.” I didn’t know if it was true or not. I never really paid any attention to the weather back when I could sit in an air-conditioned apartment and drink myself into oblivion.

“How long have you lived in Austin?” Dalhover asked.

“All my life,” I said.

“Then you should know what a flash flood is. Don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“They’re always worse after the droughts.”

The boat bounced over some turbulent water and I gripped a rail to steady myself. “I don’t think that’s true.”

Almost to himself, Dalhover said, “I’ve lived in this part of Texas my whole life, which has been a lot longer than yours, Zane. We’re coming off the worst drought I’ve ever seen. Mark my words, it’s going to flood. Stay out of the creek beds unless you want to drown.”

“Yes, Dad.”

After that, we didn’t talk much for a while until Murphy said, “So what I wanna know is, what happened with the whack job?”

“You mean Nico?” Amy asked.

“You know another one?”

“Zed and Steph exiled him last night.”

Murphy busted out laughing. “Exiled? What the hell does that mean?” He looked over at me. “Oh no. I’ve seen that constipated face before, Zed. What happened? Nobody said anything about anything this morning and everybody was acting weird.”

Amy looked up at Murphy. “Steph said Nico’s temperature was up. He started acting crazy.”

“You mean crazier?” Murphy grinned. “What’d he do?”

Amy looked down at the deck. “He tried to…have his way with Megan.”

That surprised Murphy. “No shit. Man, I’d ‘a shot his ass.”

Amy glanced at me.

Murphy saw it and said, “Oh shit.” He looked at me. “That’s what you did. That explains the constipated face.”

I looked away. “I shot him.”

“Man, don’t beat yourself up about it. I didn’t say nuthin’ when we picked him up, but I don’t think it was Whites that broke into that house and killed your buddy, Mr. Mays. I think maybe Nico’s brain started to cook a little too hot and he got hungry.”

Chapter 23

We passed Sarah Mansfield’s boathouse, Mr. Mays’ house, with his remains still in it, the dock where Nico and I made our escape from Nancy’s chain gang and the country club with the Humvee still sitting in the water at the end of the boat ramp. We collected a solid-looking, aluminum-hulled canoe along the way.

Eventually we came within view of the old, gray concrete of Tom Miller Dam. It wasn’t a big dam, at least not compared to the three-hundred-foot-tall Mansfield Dam that divided this section of the river from Lake Travis some fifteen or twenty miles upriver.

Ahead of us on the left was a restaurant called The Hula Hut, with a wide wooden pier for a dining room. Having sat at a table on that pier, sipping a beer and waiting on my food many times with a summer breeze blowing across, I’d stared at the peculiarly constructed dam. Built into the near side was a small hydroelectric power plant. On the far end, a spillway effectively limited the level of the river. At most times, water didn’t flow over the spillway. Instead, the river’s flow ran through the hydroelectric turbines.

Through the center section of the dam were nine more spillways, taller than the main spillway, each topped with an enormous floodgate. If those gates were opened, the level of the river behind the dam would drop ten feet. I’d never seen them open. I’d also never seen the water running over them. But the water was roaring over them that morning.

I said to Sergeant Dalhover, “We shouldn’t get too close to the dam. It looks like the current gets pretty strong.”

Sergeant Dalhover nodded.

I pointed to a building on the southern bank where Bee Creek added its flow to the river. “It would be nice to be closer, but why don’t you drop us off over there?”

Is that close enough?” Amy asked. “You’ll have to carry the canoe for, like, a mile to get below the dam.”

I smiled. “I’ll make Murphy carry it. He’s a big dude.”

“Hey, man,” Murphy said.

“It won’t be more than a half-mile.”

Dalhover took a long, hard look at the building and the thick trees growing down to the edge of the bank. “Don’t see any of ‘em over there.”

Murphy looked intently at that part of the shore. “Looks clear to me, man. Let’s hit it.”

Dalhover caught my attention. “Listen, Zane.”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful going through the trees.”

“I know,” I said.

“You guys will be carrying the canoe. You’ll be vulnerable. Don’t rush. Take your time. Be careful.”

“Yep.”

“A low bridge is a couple of hundred yards downstream from the dam. With the river as high as it is, the water may be running over. If not, it’ll probably still be too high to go under.”

That made sense. I gave him a nod.

“Stay in the trees until you get past the bridge and the rapids, then put your canoe in.”

The water on both sides of the dam was normally smooth, with only a gentle current that could be felt, but seldom seen. But the water wasn’t usually flowing over the dam, either. “Okay.”

“Don’t rush to get back tonight if it’s not safe. Take your time.”

It was all good advice. “We’ll be careful.”

Murphy slapped me on the back. “I wish.”

I shot him a hard look. “We’ll be careful. As careful as we can be.”

Chapter 24

After stumbling through the fast-moving water between the pontoon boat and the shore, Murphy and I were soaked. We trudged up the steep bank, wrestling the canoe through tree branches along the way. Reaching level ground, we stopped for a breather.

Looking into the damp shade beneath the oaks and between the cedars, I whispered, “We can’t keep going this way. One of us needs to have a gun in hand.”

Murphy gave me a nod. “I can carry the canoe. You be the guard.”

Despite my earlier joke, I didn’t like that idea at all. “I’ll carry it.”

Murphy actually laughed out loud at that. “Whatever, man. You’re like an albino Somali. I’m surprised you can pick yourself up sometimes.”

“At least you think you’re funny.” I was mildly offended.

“Look man, put your end down. You know I can carry it easier than you.”

I huffed and looked at my wiry arms. I was stronger than I looked. I was sure of that.

“Don’t worry, dude. Steph likes your He-Man muscles.”

I stepped out from under the canoe and let it fall.

Murphy lost his balance for a moment, but to his credit, caught the weight before the canoe hit the ground. He took a moment arranging it at an angle on his back and shoulders, with the stern down low behind him and the bow up in the air in front. He gripped the gunwales with his hands, keeping it stable and making it look like the easiest thing in the world. He gave me a stern look. “Even you know that was stupid.”

He was right. If the canoe had banged on the ground, it could have brought unwanted attention. That was the only dumbass moment I could afford for the day. Actually, it was more than I could afford. I’d put us both in danger with a petulant choice.

I arranged my rifle into a comfortable shooting position before I turned to Murphy and said, “Sorry.”

He smiled, making it look less awkward to be carrying the canoe alone than with my help. “No sweat.”

And off we went, with little more than a destination and a skeleton of a plan.

Moving at a pretty good pace, we came out of the trees and onto a curved asphalt road that emptied into a small parking lot in front the windowless, two-story utility company building. Not a single infected person was anywhere to be seen. I waved Murphy to follow and we hurried across the empty parking lot. At the opposite end, a row of steel power line towers cut across the landscape. Below, all of the cedar trees had been cut to nubs, leaving only the prickly pear cacti and some hardy weeds growing up through the rough limestone.

The power lines went off in a direction that roughly paralleled the river. I pointed and in a soft voice said, “That’s our path.”

The canoe wobbled from left to right on Murphy’s shrug.

I led. Murphy followed.

Broken bits of limestone crunched under foot. Nothing in the trees seemed to notice the rhythmic noise. The infected were strangely absent. As I watched for movement in the trees, the reason for their absence occurred to me. The terrain on this side of the dam was hilly, cut by steep ravines, and dense with cedars, oaks and all manner of thorny bushes and vines. It was a difficult and expensive place to build. Still, the hilltops and ridge crests, with their breathtaking views of downtown Austin, were dotted with widely spaced, extravagantly priced houses. Any infected or their victims in this part of town were likely to be up there. Down where Murphy and I hiked were only fire ants, scorpions and swarms of mosquitoes.

The roar of the water pouring over the dam started to dissipate and I realized we were spending more time going up than down. The path under the power lines, as easy as it was to walk, was taking us inconveniently far from the river. I started examining the woods to our left, looking for a game trail that might lead back to the water.

But one of the habits keeping me alive in the post-viral world was paying attention to everything happening around me. I’d made plenty of mistakes by focusing too intently on things at the center of my attention, only to be blindsided by something else. So as we moved, as we searched for a game trail, I kept looking ahead, behind us and to the other side of the clear-cut power line easement.

That’s when I spotted movement.

I froze, but just for a second.

I spun and urged Murphy to move quickly behind some concealing cedar branches. I hustled over beside him, and whispered, “There’s something ahead. I’m going to sneak up through the woods and see what’s up. You wait here.”

“Wait here? Why? Ain’t like somebody’s gonna come and steal the canoe if I leave it. Besides, my arms are tired.”

“Sometimes I think you live to be contrary.”

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle white.” Murphy grinned, amused with himself.

“White?”

“Yeah, you know, ‘cause we’re all white now. It seemed apropos.”

“Apropos? How do you even know that word?”

“Just ‘cause I spent most of my educational career skipping class and getting laid doesn’t mean I don’t read.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” My frustration was coming out.

“Lighten up, man. You’re gonna give yourself an aneurysm.”

“Whatever. Put it down and c’mon.”

It took several long minutes of stealthy sneaking to get into a position with a good view. From our hiding place behind the dense cedars, we saw a six-foot chain link fence topped with barbed wire cutting across the power line easement, on a line running right down to the river. On the other side of the fence was Redbud Trail, a street that ran from the bridge Dalhover warned us about all the way to the top of the hills, south of the river. And an unending helix of naked Whites snaked their way up the steep road.

I squatted down to reduce the chance I might be seen. Murphy dropped down beside me. “I guess that explains why we haven’t seen any Whites since we came ashore.”

Murphy’s face asked silently for an explanation.

“The chain-link fence. I’ll bet this whole area, from the road, down to the river and back to Bee Creek belongs to the utility company, and it’s surrounded by that fence.”

“You know they could knock down the fence, right?”

“Of course,” I said, nodding. “But why? There’s nothing over here but trees as far as they can see.”

“Good point.”

“I wonder if they’re all migrating west, now that they’ve found a way to get over the river.”

“Do you mean south?”

“Jesus, does it matter?”

“Not to me.”

I rolled my eyes. “I wonder how many of them there are.”

“A shitload.”

“I knew that much.” I looked back over my shoulder through a gap in the foliage. “We can’t get across Redbud Trail with all of those Whites out there. You know as well as I do that Smart Ones are in the mix. They’ll spot us. With the canoe, we won’t be able to evade them.”

Murphy peeked around the tree. “What are you thinking?”

I shrugged and pointed toward the river. “I say we go cross country and see if we can get into the water somewhere on this side of the fence. Otherwise, we need to scrap this canoe plan and figure out another way to get across town.”

“Man, I wish I knew where we could find some silencers nearby. I’m not diggin’ this idea of going back over to UT.”

“They might be all over town, for all we know. But we don’t have any idea where.”

Murphy asked, “Do you know where any gun shops are on this side of town?”

“I’m not exactly from this neighborhood.”

“Yeah, my billfold’s too skinny for this side of town, too.”

I looked into the woods. “You want to give it a go?”

Murphy made no effort to move. “I’m not a whiz at maps and geometry and stuff, but if we’re on this side of the fence and the road is on that side of the fence, it seems to me if we go in the water back here somewhere, we’re gonna be upstream from the bridge Top told us to get downstream of. ‘Cause that road up there is the one that runs right down to that bridge.”

“Yep. I’m sure that’s right.”

Murphy gave me a flat stare. “You’re gonna try and drown me again, aren’t you?”

I grinned. “Let’s just go down there and look. Dalhover might be wrong.”

“It seems to me he keeps being right about stuff when nobody thinks he’s gonna be.” Murphy paused. “You want me to get the canoe?”

“Why? We might not even use it.”

It was Murphy’s turn to grin. “You hear that noise, right?”

“The water from the dam?”

Murphy nodded. “That’s not all the dam. That’s the sound of rapids.”

“And?”

“I know you, Zed. We’re gonna get down there and no matter what it looks like, you’re gonna come up with some crazy rationalization about why you think we’ll be able to get down the river in the canoe alive.”

“Leave the canoe. That’ll give you time to talk me out of my crazy idea on the way back up here to get it.”

Murphy shook his head. “If you give me the time, I’ll talk myself out of it. I say let’s take the canoe and if you think we should go, let’s go. You’ve been good luck for me so far.”

“You’re a frustrating man, Murphy.”

Murphy shrugged.

Chapter 25

It took a while to carry the canoe through the woods and down to the edge of the river. It was clearly running two or three feet over its banks, and water was rushing between the trunks of trees lining the shore.

Out in the main flow, the water rose up in white, frothy humps over submerged rocks and sank in deep eddies. It was rough. Not class five rough, but it bordered on dangerous for two city boys, one of whom couldn’t swim.

“A couple of things,” I said.

“Shit.”

“Shit?”

“You wouldn’t have started that way unless you were thinking about getting into that.”

“Well, a different couple of things.”

“You’re gonna shame me into going, aren’t you?”

“No. I wouldn’t do that.”

“You remember I can’t swim, don’t you?”

“That water’s not more than five or six feet deep.”

Murphy looked at the rushing water. “I don’t think that makes it any better when it’s like that.”

I pasted on a smile. He was right. We could both drown out there. “Yeah.”

“Remind me. Why do we need the silencers so bad?”

“We can kill all of the Whites we want. Our guns become an advantage, rather than a liability.”

“And we can’t make it without them?”

“Murphy, you know as well as I do that the only people we’ve seen who’ve had any success against the infected were those guys with silencers who killed Jerome. I think the silencers are the only thing that can ensure we’ll live through this.”

“And this has got nothing to do with hunting down Mark and killing him?”

I looked at the bridge. I didn’t want to answer that question. “We can try and figure out another way.”

“Why don’t you just tell me your couple of things and I’ll let you know if I’m stupid enough to follow along?”

“What couple of things?”

“The couple of things you mentioned when you looked at Niagara Falls out there and decided it might be a good idea to jump in.”

“Look, I can go myself if I need to.”

Murphy laughed derisively. “You’re going to jump in the river by yourself, somehow not drown, paddle all the way downtown, hike up through the middle of Austin and get to the university campus, all without getting killed. And then you’re going to find those silencers, like you even know what one looks like, pick them all up, again without getting yourself killed, and find your way all the way back across Austin to the river boat.”

I nodded.

Murphy finished. “And you base your optimism about being able to do this by yourself on what?”

“I’m not dead yet.”

Murphy rolled his eyes and shook his head. “If we go, we go together.”

“Fine.” I pointed inside the canoe. “First off, those bungee cords holding the paddles to the benches will keep them from floating away.”

Murphy’s face turned to worry. “Why would they float away?”

I turned and pointed to the bridge. “Because the canoe will be upside down.”

“This plan already sucks.”

“The water is only about two feet below the bottom of the bridge. We can’t be in the canoe and go under.”

Murphy scrutinized the bridge and nodded. “I’ll give you that. But why upside down? Why don’t we just hang onto the canoe’s sides and float down with it that way?”

“We could, but if we’re going to be in the water anyway, it doesn’t matter if the canoe is upside down or not.”

“It’ll sink.”

Pointing at the bow of the canoe, I asked, “See this compartment at each end of the canoe?”

“Let’s go back to that basic fact that I can’t swim, Zed. I don’t swim. I don’t canoe. I don’t kayak. I don’t ski. I don’t scuba dive. I don’t like it when you drive the Humvee into the river without warning me. I’m not into water sports, in case you haven’t deduced that yet.”

“You don’t need to get all pissy about it.”

“I’m not. Just stop asking me stupid questions.”

I decided to put the conversation back on a productive track. I pointed at the bow. “Lots of canoes have those watertight compartments at the bow and stern. This canoe won’t sink whether it’s upside down or right side up. Sure, it’ll fill up with water and swamp, but it’ll never sink.”

Murphy gave the compartments a long, hard look. “Are you sure about that?”

“Positive. I’m thinking if we turn the canoe over, it’ll work better for us in a couple of ways. First, we won’t have to hang onto the sides with one hand. We’ll be able to hang onto the cross braces with both hands. That reduces the chance the current will pull us away from the canoe and drown us.”

“Okay.”

“If we’re beneath the canoe, we’ll have a pocket of air to breathe, and the Whites on the bridge won’t ever see us. If they don’t see us, they’re not likely to follow us downriver and fuck with us when we try and get out.”

“You think they’d follow us all the way into downtown?”

“Murphy, I don’t know what they’ll do. All I really know is every time I make an assumption about how safe I’ll be around them, they surprise me and I end up in danger.”

“I heard that.” Murphy examined the river again. “So you really think this’ll work?”

I shrugged. I thought it would be easy, though I should have known better. “As long as we stick with the canoe, we’ll get wet, but I think that’s the worse that’ll happen.”

“Back to that point about me not being able to swim. You know if I lose my grip on the canoe, I’ll probably drown, right?”

“I’m a good swimmer, Murphy, and if I lose my grip on the canoe, that water is rough enough that I’d probably drown, too. So we’re even.”

“I’m not sure if that makes you dumber than me or not.”

“If I didn’t think we could both hang onto the canoe, I wouldn’t suggest we try.”

“And how sure are you that this’ll work?”

“Ninety-nine percent.”

Murphy laughed. “That’s bullshit.”

“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “I’m pretty sure we’ll be fine.”

Murphy shook his head. “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”

We spent enough time on shore to make sure everything we had was secure.

I laced my shoes up tightly. I buttoned the flaps closed on the big pockets on the thighs of my shorts. Those held four magazines for my rifle. Two more magazines were stuffed into one of my back pockets, but they were long enough that they prevented me from buttoning the flap closed. I worried I’d lose those in the rough water. My other back pocket held a few magazines for my pistol, but I was able to stuff those in sideways. My knife was secure in the old leather sheath on my belt. As for the pistol, I’d been carrying that in a front pocket, but didn’t want to risk losing it. Tucking it into my belt wouldn’t work. So I set the safety, undid my canvas belt, rolled the end and pushed it through the trigger guard before lacing it back through the loops on my cargo shorts.

“You should take the magazine out and make sure there isn’t a bullet in the chamber.”

I looked down at the gun dangling on my hip.

“You don’t want that safety getting flipped off when the river is dragging you over some rocks. You could shoot your dick off.”

I grimaced. “I like my dick.”

After that, Murphy helped me adjust my sling so my M4 was strapped across my back, rather than dangling by one end.

And we were ready to go.

Together we lifted the canoe over our heads and carried it beside an outcrop of stone and bushes that would keep us hidden from curious eyes on the bridge. Knowing Murphy would not be the first to step into the river, I led the way.

By the time I was knee-deep, the current was tugging chaotically at my legs. It was strong enough to be a worry. When the water was up to mid-thigh, I was having trouble keeping my balance.

Murphy was just stepping into the river behind me.

“Be careful with the current.”

Murphy grunted something. All of his concentration was focused on making himself do something he must really have hated.

At waist-deep, bracing myself on the outcrop, I could proceed no further without getting washed away.

“Damn.” Murphy cursed as the canoe lurched to my left.

I bent my knees and prepared to go in, but Murphy caught his balance. For the moment, we weren’t moving. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Murphy was well into the water, mid-thigh. With our heads inside the upturned canoe, I said, “This is our last chance to bail out of this.”

Murphy grumbled something to underscore his reluctance, but he was willing to go forward with the plan.

“Hold on tight. We need to take a couple of steps to our left and just drop down into the water. Then we can let the current carry us. Don’t fight it, okay? If you do, you’ll lose your grip and then you’ll be fucked, if you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean. Let’s do this before I change my mind.”

“Here goes.” Not waiting for a response, I shuffled to my left, going deeper as I moved. The current pulled exponentially harder the more I submerged my body.

Just as my footing slipped and I knew I was going, I shouted, “Now.” I sank into the water and lifted my legs as the canoe torqued and jostled. With a big splash behind me, Murphy fell into the main current.

With the canoe settling into the water and the current pulling us rapidly downstream, I looked back over my shoulder and flipped my hands on the cross brace so I could face Murphy. He was wide-eyed and gripping his cross brace tight enough to leave hand prints.

“That was the hard part.” I hoped. My voice echoed oddly over the water and under the canoe’s aluminum hull. “Relax and flow with the water. Don’t try to walk or push against the rocks with your feet. That’s how you get hurt.”

The canoe bounced up over a wave.

“How do you know this shit?” Murphy asked, urgency heavy in his voice.

“I’m guessing.”

We started to float sideways in the current.

“I’m gonna punch you in the face when we get out of this.”

I couldn’t tell if Murphy was serious.

More jostling.

The canoe jerked hard to the right and I almost lost my grip. Water splashed my face.

Murphy cursed.

The ride was much worse than I expected.

My feet dragged through some underwater bushes and got caught. I panicked. The canoe jerked out of my hands. I got pulled underwater.

All of those moments over the past month when I’d chanted my calming mantra taught me how to quickly stuff my panic into a little black box and ignore it. Panic was the enemy of clear, quick thought and clear, quick thought was what I needed more than anything.

Murphy’s knees hit me in the face just as his boots kicked me in the gut. But that was okay, as okay as things were going to get. I threw my arms around his legs and hoped his grip on the boat was stronger than the bush’s hold on my feet.

The current bent me back and jerked my feet against the bush, but I didn’t come free. My arms slipped down Murphy’s legs and stopped on his boots. All I could hear was the bubbling thunder of rushing water.

The situation was momentarily static as the river tested Murphy’s strength against the bush’s grip on me.

But I was the weak link. I was only going to last another thirty seconds more without a breath.

As I was thinking rapidly through my alternatives, the bush gave way and the water jerked me downstream.

Thank God.

I needed air.

Using Murphy like a ladder as the current twisted me around behind him, I crawled my way up, gripping anything I could as the swirling water pulled me in every direction.

Miracle.

Nearly punching Murphy in the back of the head as I reached above the water’s surface, my hand caught onto the edge of the canoe’s rear seat. I fished my other hand around above the water’s ill-defined surface, caught onto Murphy’s shoulder and pulled my head above water for breath.

Thank God, for real.

“God damn, Zed.”

I got my other hand on the back edge of the seat and pulled my head as far up out of the water as I could. With my chin against Murphy’s shoulder and our skulls bouncing together with each rough wave, I shouted, “Thanks for not letting go.”

Murphy said something, but I couldn’t tell what.

The current jostled us some more and just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, metal shrieked on concrete. The canoe lurched to a near stop and our bodies jerked forward in the current.

It was time to hang on for all we could.

“Shit.” It was my voice. It was Murphy’s voice. It was the cry of the metal wailing on and on and on until I was sure the canoe’s bottom had been ripped from its frame.

The bow of the canoe bobbed up.

The stern bobbed down and dunked me. But the canoe’s buoyancy compartment popped back to the surface and pulled me and my head up into the air inside the canoe just as the screeching stopped.

“We made it,” Murphy hollered, with all the joy of a man coming out of a near-death experience.

We hadn’t made it, at least not yet. But we’d gone under the bridge. The river would only deepen the further we floated, and the rapids would diminish. No, we hadn’t made it, but the hardest part was behind us.

Chapter 26

Lady Bird Lake was what they called the usually placid section of the Colorado River between the Tom Miller Dam and the Longhorn Dam, six miles downstream. But placid isn’t what it was that day. The water in the lake wasn’t dangerous, but it was swift.

Keeping a hand on one of the canoe’s cross braces, I submerged and came up on the outside of the capsized boat. Murphy did the same. The river was expanding up the wide, flat banks and the water’s surface was relatively calm. Well ahead of us, a concrete-pillared bridge spanned the river a hundred feet up.

Giant cypress trees lined the banks between enormous old oaks with fat trunks and long, crooked branches. Behind those trees, on the south shore, was some of the city’s most expensive real estate. On the north, the neighborhoods were giving way to short buildings, giving way in turn to taller buildings. Downtown Austin was only a few miles ahead.

Coming up on the south shore was a kayak and canoe rental business built on the edge of the river. It had several floating docks secured to the bank and the river bottom by steel cables. But the cables were breaking in the current and one section of dock, about thirty feet long and fifteen feet wide, had swung out into the river moored by only a single, resilient cable. The corner nearest the bank was at least ten feet from shore.

“Let’s try to get over to that dock,” I said.

“You think it’s safe?”

“Safe?”

Murphy laughed. “Yeah. I keep forgetting that safe is your middle name.”

“No, it’s careful.”

“Whatever.”

I pulled myself along a submerged gunwale until I came to the bow of the canoe. I grasped a metal eye built into the bow and started to swim toward the dock. “Keep holding onto the canoe and kick,” I called back to Murphy.

“Just because I can’t swim doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

Murphy and I had spent so much time together, we were starting to talk to each other like a grouchy married couple.

“Just kick. I’ll steer.”

After swimming hard to pull the canoe across the current, I managed to grab hold of a bare cleat bolted on the edge of the dock before we were swept past. The stern of the boat swung around with Murphy holding on. “Give it a sec,” I hollered.

A few seconds was all it took. The aluminum hull banged against the floating dock and Murphy grabbed onto a swim ladder.

Not in any hurry to move, I caught my breath and looked at the trees to make sure we wouldn’t have any company. Despite the wide gap of water between the dock and the shore, I still worried. Who knew what a crazed White might do? I turned to Murphy. “I can hang onto the canoe if you want to climb up on the dock.”

“You sure you’ve got it?”

“No problem.”

Murphy hauled himself up out of the water a lot more quickly than he could have a few weeks before. The weight loss was doing him good.

Once he had both feet on the deck, I said, “Hey, see that yellow rope over there?”

Murphy looked toward the other side of the dock.

“Can you cut a length of it and tie it to this eyehole on the canoe? I can’t get out of the water until we tie it off.”

“Gotcha, boss.” In no time Murphy chopped a length of rope with his hatchet, tied it to the canoe and secured it to a cleat on the dock.

I climbed out of the water.

Murphy gave me a head-to-toe look. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“You lost your shoes.”

I shrugged. “They were free. Let’s get this canoe turned right side up real quick. That last cable might give way.”

Murphy looked at the cable. “So? The dock floats.”

“I suppose you’re right. Can you give me a hand anyway?”

Murphy knelt down at the stern of the boat. I leaned over the edge of the dock near the canoe’s bow. With a stable dock underfoot, righting the canoe was a snap. Doing so in the water was always a pain, left water in the boat and presented the difficulty of getting back inside without re-capsizing it.

“I hope we didn’t put a hole in the canoe under that bridge.” I examined the bottom to see if any water was bubbling in.

“We’re already wet.” Murphy grinned.

Satisfied enough with the seaworthiness of our boat, I stood up and looked back at the trees on shore. Still safe. I looked at Murphy’s equipment. “Looks like you didn’t lose anything.”

Murphy ran his hands over his MOLLE vest and weapons. “I’m good.”

“And you’re all right? No broken bones? No major cuts?”

Murphy shook his head. “Surprised I lived through that, but I’m good. A few bruises, is all.”

“Good.” I ran my hands over my pockets and checked my weapons. My pistol was still on my belt. I had the knife. All of the magazines from my back pockets were gone and one of my front pockets was empty. I was back down to a T-shirt, shorts, a usable rifle and a little extra ammunition. “We’ll have to scavenge on the way, if that’s cool.”

“I don’t have any other appointments today.”

“Did you get punched a lot in school?”

“That reminds me. I need to punch you in the face.”

I rolled my eyes and looked back at the woods. “I’ll tell you what. Next time I come up with a stupid idea, like jumping into a flood stage river with a shitty canoe, punch me in the face. Maybe it’ll bring me back to my senses.”

With a little too much enthusiasm, Murphy said, “Yeah, I can do that. You want to get going?”

“I don’t see any point in staying here. You take the stern, I’ll take the bow.”

“You got it, boss.”

Moments later, we were back in the canoe, right side up and moving quickly with the current.

I craned my neck so I could see Murphy. “With the water moving this fast, we don’t need to paddle to keep the canoe moving. We’ll be there before we know it. We just need to steer ourselves over to the north side of the river.”

“Works for me.”

I resituated myself in the canoe and went to work keeping the bow pointed roughly at the north shore. The rain was coming in squalls by then with drizzle in between. Thunder was rumbling in the distance. It wouldn’t be good to stay in the water too much longer.

With the kayak rental business receding behind us, the Loop 1 Bridge dominated my attention. The closer we got, the more it looked like a contested bridge from the last world war. Two sand-colored Abrams tanks with their severe angles and 120mm cannons squatted on one end of the bridge, daring anything to cross. As intimidating as they looked, they were no more than armored skeletons of dead beasts, as dead as the soldiers inside.

Nothing moved on the bridge among the carcasses of exploded vehicles, with their burnt innards and metal skin flowering out on rusty petals. The concrete and steel rail at the south end of the bridge was broken through. The rear ends of two cars stuck vertically up out of the water.

As we floated under, I looked up and wondered how many bones of how many people lay on the concrete above.

Ahead of us, trees grew thick on both banks, and a slight curve in the river kept the North Lamar Boulevard Bridge—the next one we’d pass—hidden from sight. Tall downtown buildings peeked above the treetops, far enough away that it was impossible to tell that anything was amiss.

Birds squawked in branches. Ducks swam in twos and threes near the shore. Turtles piled themselves on exposed logs and larger rocks, hoping the hot sun would return. Even the sound of rifle fire and the howls of the hungry infected were absent. Only the rain and thunder remained. The temptation was heavy to forget that beyond the trees was a broken world full of dead humans and white monsters.

Succumbing to that temptation, my paddle found its way out of the water and across my lap. I looked up at the sky and closed my eyes, letting the light rain between the squalls drip on my face.

I stayed that way for a long time.

I realized how tired I was, not just physically but emotionally. I’d been blazing away for weeks in full survival mode, riding a tsunami of rage, vengeance and fear. How long had it been? It was so easy to lose track of the days when all of the calendar-based events in life fell away.

The virus hit in mid-August and now it was mid-September, I guessed. I’d survived a month. According to Jeff Aubrey’s equations, I only had to make it another eleven months to earn a real chance at staying in this world long enough to see my hair turn gray.

But I doubted I could make it. Thinking about all that happened, I wondered why I was still alive.

The wooden paddle across my lap nagged at me to pick it up and put it to use in the now onerous task of pulling it through the water. The weight of my world, so precariously dammed behind my anger, burst through and smashed every bit of desire I had to move forward. The rain stopped feeling good. The bird’s songs were an irritating racket. The turtles were just stupid, slow reptiles whose heads would one day be bitten off in the jaws of hungry Whites.

I slumped forward, leaned on my paddle, and wondered how I was going to make it all the way across town to the university campus.

“You all right, man?” Murphy was concerned. He sensed the change in my mood.

I nodded. What choice did I have but to be all right?

Still, I leaned on my paddle and stared at the greenish water, at the splashes of tiny raindrops and little expanding circles, dying as they each drowned in the waves of other circles on the surface of the water.

I was one of those circles, and I felt like I’d expanded to my limit. I was waiting to get washed away. In that moment, I would have welcomed it.

The absence of the sound of a paddle in the water behind me told me Murphy had pulled his paddle into the boat as well. “Are you okay, Zed?”

Sitting up straight, I perfunctorily dipped my paddle back into the water. “I just need to keep moving.”

“What?” He heard me. He was one of those many people who use the single word “what” as a request for more information.

I stroked the paddle. “When I’m moving, I’m okay. When I stop and give myself time to think, all of this craziness starts to seep through the cracks.” I drew in a deep breath. My confession had a weight of its own. “It’s wearing me down, Murphy.”

Murphy didn’t respond immediately. Finally, he said, “You know what I think, man?”

I shook my head. “Do I want to know?”

“If we see a liquor store on the way, we need to get a few bottles of the hard stuff. And when we get back to the boat, we need to drink ourselves out of all this bullshit for a while.”

I turned back to Murphy. “Yeah, that sounds good.” It did indeed.

“Some pussy wouldn’t hurt either.”

“Don’t start that again.”

“Man, I’m tellin’ you. I can’t figure out why you and Steph aren’t bumpin’ uglies yet.”

I nearly laughed at that. Murphy did have a way. “Bumpin’ uglies? How old is that expression?”

Murphy shrugged.

“It’s complicated.”

“How complicated could it be? She likes you. You like her. I don’t know if you’re holding out for something better, but in case you haven’t noticed, there’s not likely to be anything else around. You know what I mean, man?”

“It’s not that.”

“What is it, then? She’s a little on the skinny side for my taste but we’re all gettin’ that way, right?”

I smiled and looked down at myself. I couldn’t afford to get much skinnier.

“So what is it? Spill the beans.”

“I don’t know.” I looked down the river. I looked at the trees. “Sometimes, all I think about is her. Other times, she pisses me off with her bossy bullshit, and all I want to do is go somewhere where I don’t have to listen to her.”

Murphy laughed loudly and the sound carried across the water. “You just don’t like being told what to do.”

“It’s not that.” It was.

“Don’t lie to me, man.”

I turned forward again and started paddling.

“When you get those bossy ones in bed, Zed, take my word for it, you won’t go away unhappy.”

I shook my head. I was steering the boat again. I was doing something. I was moving forward. Murphy was a better friend than I deserved.

To our right, the wide mouth of Barton Creek opened up onto the river. The banks of the creek were thick with trees and shrubs. I saw two of the infected squatting among the bushes on the shore. One of them had a canoe paddle over his shoulder, probably one of the many available at another canoe rental business a half-mile up the creek. Both Whites were intently watching a spot in the water just a few feet away from the bank. One of them looked up at us in our canoe and oddly, didn’t seem to have any interest.

The one with the paddle smacked it down hard on the surface of the water. The other jumped up and waded in, going chest deep just three steps from shore. As I started to wonder what was going on, the one in the water lifted a sizable turtle out by its back leg and showed it to the one with the paddle.

The one with the paddle grinned. Just as I was about to conclude the pair was Slow Burns like me, the one with the paddle made some kind of monkey sound. The one making his way out of the water answered in kind.

“What’s that about?” Murphy asked.

“Turtle… fishing?”

“I can see that. Those ones aren’t afraid of the water.”

“Uhm—”

The White with the paddle gave the White with the turtle a hand in climbing up the steep bank. Then, with only a quick glance back at Murphy and me, the two took their prize and walked casually into the trees.

“I’m not sure what to think about that,” I said.

“Those aren’t the same kind of crazy Whites we’ve been dealing with.”

“I’m starting to believe there’s a whole spectrum of mental abilities left in the infected brain after the virus does its damage. As a matter of fact—”

Murphy jerked and pointed to something on the other bank, shouting. “Is that a squirrel?”

On instinct, I turned to look as I was processing what he said. “What?”

“Man, I’m not in the mood for another Professor Zed lecture.”

“Man, fuck you.”

The North Lamar Boulevard Bridge came into view. It was barricaded at the midpoint. Which side was barricading which was impossible to discern. Cars were jammed up pointing in both directions. Evidence of the intense fear that drove people to flee without the barest knowledge of whether the destination was any safer. Anywhere but here.

Anywhere but here. What a desperate fear those people must have felt. To race off in the family car filled with crying children, teddy bears and a few insufficient bags of canned goods hurriedly gathered from the pantry.

Anywhere but here.

Most of those cars were burned black, probably with blackened skeletons, large and small, lying across metal springs of seats whose cloth and cushion had turned to ash.

The wide footbridge just downstream from the North Lamar Boulevard Bridge was blocked as well and packed with cars. None were burned, but most had broken glass. Below the barricades, a body hung from the bridge. It looked to have gotten a foot jammed between the barrier and the rail before falling over the edge. It was a woman’s body. swaying in the wind, dripping with rain. Her arms were draped past her head, seeming to reach down toward us in a plea to be set free. Whether she was infected or normal when she went over the edge was impossible to tell. She’d been there a while.

The image of her dangling body stuck in my head.

I barely noticed the railroad bridge until we had to steer the canoe around one of its footings. Shortly after, the roar of rushing water drowned out most other sounds. Shoal Creek flowed into the river through a wide gap on the north bank.

Murphy pointed. “Looks like Top was right about Shoal Creek. Waller Creek is probably full, too.”

Sergeant Dalhover’s being right about the flooding in the creeks—minor flooding though it was—was turning into an annoying trend. “Has Dalhover been wrong about anything yet?”

Murphy shrugged. “Not that I can think of.”

“I hate that.”

Without seeing any more infected on either bank, we passed the old convention center on the south shore and floated under the South First Street Bridge, another battleground. Who in the hell thought they could contain the infection on one side of the river with tanks and guns?

At the Congress Avenue Bridge, the smell of ammonia was thick enough to taste. The squeaky chatter of a million and a half bats that lived underneath overwhelmed the sound of the rain hitting the water around us.

I looked back at Murphy. “This is where we get off.”

“At Congress Avenue? Six lanes wide, with tall buildings on both sides, and who knows how many of those naked crazy fuckers around to see us coming from a mile away? Is that what you’re thinking?”

Well, kind of.

“Waller Creek is up ahead several blocks. There are places right here where it’ll be easy to get on shore. Not so much up there. I’m thinking we can get up to street level and walk over to the creek. I wasn’t planning on going up Congress Avenue.”

“That’ll work.”

Chapter 27

Downtown wasn’t quite a ghost town, but it was creepy as hell. Wails of the infected, individually and in groups, echoed between the buildings. Cars had run up on curbs. Some had collided with each other, trees or light poles. Some intersections were jammed solid with abandoned vehicles. Windows were broken. Anything that could be imagined was in the street. The looters had come through sooner than they should have, and left their bones as payment for the mistake.

The smell of old death had seeped into the concrete sidewalks and limestone walls. It dripped down with the rain and put the taste of maggots in my mouth. I resisted laying a hand on any surface for fear of what might crawl up through the moisture and infect my skin with some new kind of rot.

I’d found a couple of bloody, mismatched shoes shortly after coming on shore and asked Murphy to keep an eye out for a dead soldier from whom I could re-equip myself. But the smell urged me to change my mind. “Forget the soldier thing we talked about. Maybe I’ll find something later. This place gives me the willies.”

The mood of the dead city was starting to weigh on Murphy’s optimism and it was clear in the sound of his voice. “I hear ya.”

We’d been working our way slowly up Brazos Street, careful to conceal ourselves behind cars and trucks. We looked around to be sure nothing on two feet was taking any interest in us. At the intersection with Sixth Street, we turned right and headed east to get over near Waller Creek. Once there, we could make better time.

A full block down and across the street from us on the north side were five Whites on the sidewalk, with hands and faces pressed against the plate glass window of a storefront. It was at least noon by then. We were between rain showers and the sun’s heat was seeping through the clouds and magnifying the humid stink.

Murphy whispered first. “If we stay quiet and keep on this side of the street, they’ll never notice us.”

“They’re not the naked ones. Let’s see what’s up.”

“You know what they say.”

“What?”

“Curiosity killed the Zed.”

“Do you make this shit up, or do you have bad writers?”

“We should keep going.”

“I just want to see what’s up. Besides, we’re going that way anyway.”

Murphy shook his head. “Dalhover would tell you this is a bad idea and he’d be right.”

“Dalhover isn’t here.”

“Whatever, man.”

I snuck over to hide among the wreckage of two cars. I didn’t get so much as a glance from the five Whites. Looking over my shoulder, I watched Murphy come reluctantly after. I checked to make sure the safety on my rifle was off. Not that I wanted to use it in downtown Austin and draw in every White that still lingered.

A quick check in all directions assured me nothing was taking an interest in me. The next best spot for cover was a clump of a dozen cars near the center of the block. The first of them wasn’t more than thirty feet away, but once among those cars, I could sneak right up on the five Whites. If I stayed quiet about it, they’d never know I was there.

I gave Murphy a glance to let him know I was moving. He was not happy. I took off at a sprint.

Once at the clump of cars, I found myself a snug spot between two pickup trucks that afforded me a place to stand and see out through the trucks’ windows in all directions.

In seconds, Murphy was by the pickups, harshly whispering, “Dammit, I can’t fit in there.”

“Sorry,” I mouthed.

Murphy rolled his eyes, bent low and hurried down to find a place between two other cars. I pulled out of my tiny gap and followed. When we finally came to a stop, we were directly behind the five Whites, but exposed to any prying eyes from the other side of the street.

“Look and see what you can see,” Murphy whispered and turned his back to the Whites and the storefront holding their interest. He’d appointed himself lookout so I could indulge my dangerous curiosity.

So I looked. It only took a moment to see everything, but the situation hadn’t become any more understandable. The five Whites were in front of a tattoo shop. Shoddily attached inside the window—with what looked like duct tape—were wrinkled and sagging tattoos on stained, moldy paper.

The things the Whites found fascinating.

I shook my head and turned to look up and down the street. Was there anything to be learned from that? Was there any behavioral rule I could generalize?

A noise behind me startled me back to full attention and I spun around to see a skinny man, white with the virus but in a rumpled suit and tie, come storming out of the shop. In one hand he had what looked like a policeman’s baton, in the other hand… A blind man’s red-tipped cane?

The man in the tie growled something harsh and poked the nearest White with the cane. The White jumped back and yelped.

A cattle prod.

The tie-wearing man swung the baton at another of the Whites and used the cattle prod on the third. Before I knew it, he had all five running away. He stood in front of his shop, made some kind of pissed off monkey sound and stomped back inside.

“What was that?” Murphy whispered.

“They’re all crazy, dude.”

Murphy seemed intently focused on the tattoo shop. He shook his head angrily and quickly slunk away, squeezing between two cars to get closer to the storefront.

Something had his curiosity.

After checking up and down the street, I followed.

By the time I was beside Murphy, he was squatting between two parked cars at the curb, in front of a piano bar next door to the tattoo parlor.

“Curiosity killed the Murphy,” I whispered.

Murphy ignored me, stood straight up and walked over to the window.

What the fuck?

Readying my rifle for action, I looked nervously around. “Murphy.”

He ignored me and started examining the tattoo designs hanging behind the glass.

From my hiding place, I whispered, “Murphy, what are you doing?”

The man with the tie and the cattle prod came stomping noisily out his front door again. He made a threatening gesture with his police baton and jammed the cattle prod at Murphy. But Murphy wasn’t a stupid animal. He knew exactly how a cattle prod worked. He knocked it aside and caught the shaft in his hand.

The man in the suit lost his temper and smacked Murphy on the shoulder with his baton. Then he tried to hit Murphy a second time. In a blur of motion that sent the man falling back on his butt, Murphy took both weapons from him. He tossed the police baton away and pulled the axe out of his belt, simultaneously using the cattle prod to beat his assailant.

I jumped to my feet.

The man in the tie scrambled on his hands and knees to get back inside his shop, while the heavy handle of the cattle prod came down on his back again and again.

Through all of this, Murphy was silent, but he was boiling with anger. The kind of blazing silent anger I’d seen only one other time—when we were at his mom’s house.

Unrelenting, Murphy herded the man into his shop and the noise of things being knocked over and broken rattled out through the open door. That was the kind of noise that would bring attention.

I cast a quick look around and hurried inside.

The rotten smell was palpable. Flies buzzed on windows. Maggots crawled on the tattoo art, which wasn’t just on the window but all over the walls, held there by silvery tabs of tape.

The beating continued amidst sounds of whimpers and crunching bones.

The guy Murphy was beating to death was infected. And he had to be a Slow Burn like us, but that didn’t seem to matter to Murphy. He had to have his reasons. I decided one more murder didn’t matter to me either.

Fuck that dude.

I pushed the shop door closed.

Chapter 28

The body lay in a pool of blood. The skull was broken and bits of brain were stuck to the handle of the cattle prod on the floor beside him. It was a gory mess, but it didn’t faze me. Perhaps I was getting used to it.

Murphy went to systematically looking at each of the fly-covered tattoos on one of the walls.

I didn’t ask him what he was looking for. I figured he’d tell me the reason for his murderous tantrum and his weird little search when he felt like it. It was my job to cover his back when he lost track of his senses. I had no doubt he’d do it for me. Brothers in arms. Brothers in sin.

I peeked between the tattoos taped to the front window to get a good view of the street outside. Only the inanimate carcasses of cars lay out there, some shiny again in the rain. Murphy’s escapade seemed to have no consequences—yet. I reached up to push one of the pieces of tattoo paper out of the way, hoping to get a glimpse of a blind spot down the street.

Eek.

I jumped back from the window, nearly stumbling over my own feet.

Holy shit.

The tattoos were all on human skin.

I ineffectually rubbed the finger that touched the dead skin on my pants again and again and again before bounding across the room to kick the sick, dead fuck on the floor.

The big front window and every wall inside were decorated with tattoos skinned from Whites and, judging by the variance in skin color, from normal people as well. As gut-wrenchingly wrong as that was, most of the skin was just skin. But hanging in the center of one wall was the eyeless, tattooed skin of some man’s face, stretched out and surrounded by a starburst of tattooed patches of skin, each with a human nipple in the center.

I stomped on the dead man’s skull.

And that was that, at least for me.

The shop was a monument to uninhibited human depravity, the kind that scars souls with permanent shadows. I had enough shadows on my soul. All I needed were callouses. I turned my back on the perversion and silently begged for Whites to come up the street. I needed distractions.

Any distraction to get me out of this fucking shop.

The rain was coming down in a torrent by then, pounding the pavement in a comforting rumble, pouring off the roofs and running deep between the curbs.

I looked up toward the sky and saw a million glistening gray droplets falling down. I hoped it would wash away all the stink, all the evidence of evil littering the streets after the virus killed man’s inhibitions. Were the facades we all constructed to mask our wicked brutality so fragile that they could be crumbled by a tiny virus and a high fever? Were the Whites not monsters but simply our true selves, with the unwanted fetters of morality erased?

From the back wall where Murphy was looking at the tattoos, almost to himself, he said, “My sister had a tattoo.”

That explained that.

Without turning away from the window, I asked, “Do you want me to help you look? What kind of tattoo did she have?”

Murphy didn’t answer. He wanted to do it on his own.

I didn’t completely understand Murphy’s choice, but I was more than willing to accept it.

After a while, Murphy spoke again. “She got it when she was a freshman at Rice.”

“She went to Rice?” Perhaps talking might help us both deal with the situation. “That’s a really good school.”

Murphy’s voice was weaker than I’d ever heard it. “She had an academic scholarship. It wasn’t the kind of place my mom ever could have paid for. Mom never had enough money to pay the electric bill on time. You know what I mean?”

I’d been there.

“She never did anything crazy in high school.” Murphy was staring at one of the walls and had stopped moving. His voice was starting to crack. “My mom loved her so much.”

“I’m sure she loved you, too.” I probably should have just kept my mouth shut.

Murphy ignored me just the same. “She always got good grades. She was always popular. You know, cheerleader type and all that. She never drank. Never smoked any weed. A real goody two-shoes. She was three years younger than me.”

Whatever Murphy was doing, he needed it. The other things on our to-do list that day could wait.

“When we were in high school, she was a freshman and I was a senior. She’d try to hang around with me and stuff, but you know, she was my sister.”

“Yeah.” I nodded at my reflection between the flaps of skin on the glass.

“I was too busy being cool, I guess. I’d hang out with my football buddies and do stupid shit—drink too much, smoke too much weed, skip school, dumbass stuff.” Murphy drew a long slow breath. “It was close to the end of the school year and I was about to graduate. I was going to this party one night down on the east side. She begged and begged me to come and I kept saying no. But she wouldn’t let up. So finally I told her if she could get one of her friends to come, I’d let her tag. I figured, you know, if she had a friend with her, they’d be safe together. ‘Cause, you know, this party was down in far east Austin, and that ain’t the best neighborhood, not even for a black dude. And it really wasn’t the kind of place for a freshman girl to be hangin’ around. But, when you’re that age, you don’t know shit about life. You’re still invincible, and bad shit only happens to other people.”

I started to have my fears about where the story was going.

“I didn’t know what happened that night. I got so wasted. I remember going to the party. I remember some things, but somewhere in there, I don’t know what happened. I woke up the next day in my bed, in the same clothes I went to the party in.”

“I’ve been there, too.”

“Man, haven’t we all.” For a moment, Murphy’s laugh came back, but in it you could hear tears in his eyes. “So that next week, Rachel’s friend, she stops coming ‘round. And I mean, this is unusual, ‘cause she’s always at our house, like, every day. And Rachel, she’s not herself. You know those girls who never stop talking?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Rachel was like that. Always talking. I mean, always talking. Always smiling. Well, she wasn’t talking and she wasn’t smiling. At first, I figured she got a B in Chemistry or something. But one night, I was making a Chef Boyardee pizza for supper ‘cause my mom was workin’ at her second job. It’d been like a week since Rachel had said much of anything. So we had dinner and I ate, and she mostly just stared at her food and didn’t say anything. I mean, not one word.”

I craned my neck to see up and down the street. It was empty except for the five Whites that the sick fuck had chased off earlier. They were getting their nerve up to come and drool again over the human skin on display in the window.

“I had to interrogate Rachel that night. She didn’t want to tell me what happened, but I made her.”

The words stopped flowing. I looked around to make sure Murphy was still in the conversation. He was looking at the third wall of human skin trophies, back on task.

It took a while for Murphy to find his voice again and when he did, he was crying. “Her friend, Keisha, the one I made her bring to the party, she lived a couple of doors down. Her and Rachel, they were best friends since grade school. But Keisha was one of those girls that blooms real late. Fifteen years old and not even a pimple of a tit, if you know what I mean. Skinny as a two-by-four. She looked like a tall fifth grader. Not that bright. She did stupid shit all the time. Well, she went to this party and started drinking and doing whatever else was there. These three handkerchief-head gangster-wannabe motherfuckers took an interest in her and decided they wanted to figure out if she was a boy or a girl. She was dressed like a girl, but she had no tits. They thought she was a fag. These three limp dicks beat the fuck out of her and ripped her clothes off. They laughed at her when they saw she was a girl. That’s when she ran away. Can you imagine how she felt, Zed, how humiliated?” A hard pause followed. “That was my fault.”

“Keisha’s dad was a real pussy, you know? I mean, he was a scrawny little dude, smaller than you, Zed.”

I shrugged. Sure I was skinny. Regular meals were hard to come by.

“He was afraid to go to the police. They never do anything to really help anybody, not on the east side. Hell, the wannabes didn’t even rape her. The cops wouldn’t have done nuthin’. And I think Keisha’s dad was afraid the wannabes would retaliate if the police got involved. So what was he gonna do?”

I turned and gave Murphy my full attention.

“Me and Rachel went over there that night to see Keisha and her parents. I was going to apologize to her dad for getting her into that situation. I did that. But you know, when I saw Keisha, one of her eyes was still swollen shut and she had a big cut on her face with, like, thirty stitches. She hadn’t been to school in a week. I got mad. I got really mad. Somewhere in there, the girls and the mom were all in the kitchen talking ‘round the table, and me and the scrawny old man were in the living room, and he goes on to tell me how he’s all broken up about it. And he was. You could see it in his eyes. It’s like the last little bit of pride the man had was gone. He tells me he’s got this unregistered gun he bought and he’s been taking it and cleaning it every night ‘cause he can’t sleep. And he’s been going over and over in his mind how he’s going to kill these dudes. But I’m thinkin’ that’s not gonna end well. He won’t be able to do it. He’ll puss out when they start begging for their lives and he’ll either get himself killed or fuck it up so bad he ends up on death row.”

Murphy stopped talking after that. He gave me a long, appraising look before he said, “I told the old man it was my fault and my responsibility to make it right.”

I wasn’t expecting that.

“A few days later, I found those three motherfuckers that did it. They were hangin’ out behind a 7-Eleven, not two blocks from where that party was. They were selling rocks to little kids and toothless welfare hags. I went back there and I didn’t say nuthin’ about nuthin’. I told ‘em I wanted a rock and I held out my money. They figured I was just another crackhead customer. I mean, they kinda knew me and I kinda knew them. So one of them sticks his hand in his pocket to get my rock, while another one is stickin’ my money in his pocket. And I pulled that gun out and shot ‘em. I shot one right in the face and he never had time to do anything but look surprised. The second one started to back up and beg and I shot him twice in the chest. The third one was starting to run away and I shot him in the back. They all died at the scene. At least that’s what the newspaper said. They said it was gang related or drug related or something like that. I threw the gun in the river. After that, I joined the Army and got the fuck out of town. I didn’t come back for four years. By then, Rachel was already at Rice. And you know what she shows me the first time I see her after four years?”

I shrugged. I was out of guesses on that story.

“Rice’s mascot is an owl. She had a tattoo of that on her ankle.”

“And when you saw the tattoos, you thought hers might be here.” It was a stupidly obvious thing to say, but I felt like I needed to say something.

Murphy shook his head. “Not really. Maybe. I don’t know. I had to look.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t find hers.”

Murphy shook his head and went over to the front window. He started lifting and looking at each flap of skin taped to the glass. “For a long time after it happened, I felt bad about it.”

“Keisha?” I asked.

“Mostly the killing.” Murphy put on a smile that was little more than a mask. “You and me, we’ve done a lot of shit since the virus hit.”

“Yep.”

“I don’t know how I feel about all of it.”

I was continually troubled by it. “The things we did were necessary.”

“Do you think me killing those boys was necessary, Zed? Do you think I did the right thing?”

“Murphy, I don’t know if it was right or wrong, but I’m proud of you for doing it.”

“Proud?” Murphy didn’t turn away from his work, clearly thinking about how that word applied to his choices. “It bothered me for a long time. Matter of fact, my first couple of years in the Army, I was kind of a dick, like you.”

“A dick like me?” In spite of everything, I almost laughed.

“You know what I mean.” Murphy gave me one of his big smiles. “I was full of anger and always looking for a fight. That shit haunted me that way. It took me a long time to think it all out.”

“I guess.”

“I came to realize those three dumbasses made their choices. They didn’t know what the consequences would be, but they had to know consequences might come. You just don’t go ‘round beating the shit out of fifteen-year-old girls and not expect somebody to get mad as hell about it. They made their choice and I made my choice. I figured I had to live with it.”

Murphy took a moment to look for the right words. “I thought for a long time what I did was bad. Society says murder is bad. I guess I agree. As bad as I felt for killing those boys, I couldn’t get past the feeling I’d done the right thing. I came to think killing those boys was justice, the only kind of justice Keisha and her dad were ever going to get. I realized by my moral code, Murphy’s moral code, I’d done the right thing. The reason I felt bad was because my moral code didn’t exactly align with society’s moral code.”

“Murphy, are you sure you never took any philosophy courses?”

Murphy laughed. “I barely got out of high school. I just spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff.”

“And you’re cool with it all now, I guess.”

“I made my peace. I made my peace with lots of stuff. That’s when I came to realize we’re all where we are in life because of our choices. Sure, shit happens we can’t control, but that’s exactly what it is: shit you can’t control. You can’t control what it is, or sometimes what it does to you. But like I’ve told you before, you can control how you feel about it, how you deal with it. I figured all this out when I was in the Army. I get to choose how I feel. I’m happy now.”

“Now?” I asked, in disbelief.

Murphy turned and looked around the grotesquery. “Yeah. The world is fucked up. Bad shit has happened. Hell, I’m looking at tattoo skins from dead people that might be my sister’s. How fucked up is that?” Murphy laughed at that, so I did too. “But I can’t do anything to change the past. I can only change today. I’ve got a cute, short girl back on the boat who loves me. I’ve got good people to spend my time with and I’ve got a dickhead of a best friend who would do anything for me.”

“If you keep calling me a dick, you might have to re-evaluate that.”

Murphy went back to work. “I don’t think so. So, yeah, I’m happy. I’m doin’ all right with this.”

“One day, when the world is back to being something like normal, I’m going to write a book and call it The World According to Murphy.”

Chapter 29

It took several hours to make our way through town following the meandering path of Waller Creek. We were careful, hiding or taking detours when we saw Whites. We took shelter when the lightning got too close.

By the time we got to Twelfth Street, the rushing water in Waller Creek was lapping at the undersides of the eastbound and westbound bridges. Waterloo Park, across the street from us and adjacent to the Brackenridge Hospital complex, was a deserted battlefield cradling the bones of the dead.

“Murphy,” I whispered, “can you keep an eye out for a minute? I’ve got something in my foot.” I sat on the sidewalk and leaned against the side of a car. Blood leaked across my hand as I pulled my right foot up to examine it.

Crap.

At least a dozen pieces of glass were stuck in the sole of my shoe. I huffed and indulged a moment of frustration by looking out at the rain. Dangers large and small lurked around every corner, behind every bush, in every dark room and apparently under each footstep. I pulled each piece of glass from the shoe bottom taking care to slowly remove the bloody culprit that made it all the way through to bury itself in my foot. I removed the shoe and examined its ridiculously thin sole. I needed to get some real shoes.

I checked my other foot for any cuts I failed to feel. That foot was good. “When we pass through the park, keep your eyes peeled for any dead soldiers. If we see anything I can use, I need to gear up.”

Murphy shook his head. “When we find the guys with the suppressors, we can use their stuff.”

I looked down at my bloody shoe and Murphy followed my gaze. “I don’t know what we’ll find when we get there. But I really need a pair of boots.”

Murphy nodded. “You know they’ll be disgusting, right?”

“Unless we come across a military surplus store, whatever I find will be disgusting. I can wash it all off in the creek.”

“Okay. But this is taking a lot longer than I thought it would. It’s a long, long way back to the boat. I really didn’t want to have to find a place to hole up out here tonight.”

“That’s cool. I have an idea.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Don’t be that way.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Do you remember that story I told you about the parking garage by the hospital?”

“Yeah.”

I pointed at a multi-story parking garage up at the north end of Waterloo Park. “That’s the one.”

Murphy gave it a look. “I thought for sure you made up the part about sliding down that banner, but there it is, hanging on the side of that garage.”

“It probably still has some of my skin stuck to it.”

Murphy grinned.

“You know what else?” I asked.

Murphy shook his head and took a moment to check our flanks. The habit was ingrained in us both.

“There’s one of those armored Humvees up there. One with a machine gun on top.”

Murphy nodded wickedly.

“I’m thinking we get our silencers, stroll back down here and drive that Humvee back over to the river. We’ll be home for dinner.”

“And if all the Whites are chasing us when we get there?”

“We just drive it into the river, like we did the last one.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.”

“It worked.”

Murphy shook his head. “I’m driving.”

“Whatever. You ready to get going?” I stood up and scanned the area for movement.

We’d just crossed Twelfth Street and weren’t ten steps into the park when I found a MOLLE vest with five full magazines. I pulled one out. “Will these fit my rifle?”

Murphy nodded.

After taking the vest over to the rushing creek to rinse off all of the gnarly bits, I was inspired to put some effort into a search for the pants and boots. Pants would be easy. I was way skinnier than the average American and baggy pants could be cinched up with a belt. Boots pretty much had to fit just right.

With insufficiently masked impatience, Murphy stood watch as I worked my way through the park, picking through the remains of bodies. A few Whites timidly crept out into the rain to root through the bones and clothing for scraps of anything that might ease the rumbling in their bellies. They were as intent on keeping some distance between us as we were them.

After spending a half-hour on the endeavor, I had a pair of pants, but no boots. I led Murphy across Red River Street and onto the hospital campus. The closer we got to the main hospital building, the more thickly the ground was scattered with the remains of the dead.

Murphy whispered, “There’s lots of shoes. Do you really need boots?”

I looked around. None of the Whites I could see were paying us any attention. “Give me ten more minutes. If I don’t find some boots, we’ll go.”

Murphy checked his watch. “Ten.”

I gave him a nod and went back to walking among the gnawed bones, kicking over pieces of clothing, looking underneath for the prize.

The main hospital building loomed large on my right. The remains of the dead were still piled thick around the bottom of the glass stairwell I’d shot up with that fifty-caliber machine gun. No dismembered and scavenged remains of soldiers lay among them. Of that, I was sure. Bypassing that trove, I headed toward the far northwest corner of the complex and walked toward a large, collapsed military tent.

“Do you remember that tent?” I asked.

“No.” Murphy wasn’t liking the heavy rain. He kept looking at the sky when it rumbled thunder. He was nervous about the creeping Whites and didn’t have any patience for memory lane.

“That’s where we went when we first got to the hospital.”

Murphy looked around. “The Army doesn’t even use those old-ass canvas tents anymore.”

“Maybe it’s a Red Cross tent.”

Murphy shrugged.

The heavy green canvas didn’t lay flat on the ground. Beneath it were lumps, some roughly rectangular in shape, cots most likely. Some I could only guess were bodies. Others had to be medical equipment. The body shaped lumps looked intact. The bodies of the dead underneath must have been protected from the scavenging Whites by the heavy canvas. That meant if any were soldiers, all of their equipment would be on the body rather than scattered to who knew where.

“Murphy, I’m going to crawl under the canvas and see what I can find.”

“That’s a stupid idea.”

“I know.”

“You know, and you’re going to do it anyway?”

“I was just agreeing with you so I wouldn’t have to argue with you about it.”

“It’s like you want me to punch you in the face.”

All this talk of punching me in the face was getting worrisome. “Keep an eye out, okay? Give me a few minutes.”

“And if a bunch of those naked fuckers come along while you’re underneath?”

“Warn me and then go hide. I’ll just pretend I’m dead until they leave.”

“And how will you know when they’re gone?”

“You’ll tell me.” I didn’t wait for a response but dropped to my hands and knees and proceeded to burrow beneath the edge of the canvas, leaving my scavenged booty on the ground in the rain.

Like just about every other thing I’d attempted since the virus hit, crawling beneath the canvas was so much more difficult than I’d have guessed. With no breeze, it was hot, wet and muddy. The abrasive weight of the canvas worked against me for every inch of progress, leaving me with only one speed: slow.

Once I’d made my way about ten feet in from the edge, a sturdy cot supported the canvas. The weight on my head and shoulders eased and I crawled along the path of waning resistance, hoping to catch my breath. Just about the time I was able to see into the inky shadow beneath the cot, the familiar howl of a hungry White startled me and I slipped down onto my belly as I tried to push myself back the way I’d come.

A blur of gray with snapping teeth and greedy yowls exploded toward me out of the dark.

I tried to get away. I tried vainly to wrestle my rifle around under the heavy canvas.

I should have gone for my knife instead.

A handful of bony fingers grasped my wrist and pulled. I yanked back as teeth brushed my skin and I fell onto my belly again, trying my best to swing a fist.

The emaciated creature screamed in premature victory. Retreat wasn’t working. I steeled my nerves to make the best of a charge.

Just then, the sound of bone crunching under steel cut the monster’s voice. The crunch was followed quickly by two more wet crunches, and the White’s grasp on my wrist went limp.

Still tense, I looked for more threats from the darkness under the cot.

“You okay, man?” It was Murphy.

“Yeah,” I said.

A blade poked through the canvas a few feet from my head. Dim light and rainwater poured through.

The air from the outside felt relatively cool as it rushed in on me. I saw Murphy through the split in the canvas, kneeling down and cutting his way through. “I swear to God, Zed. Sometimes it’s like you don’t have one damn bit of common sense. It’s like you want to do everything the hard way.”

I deflected. “How did you know you weren’t chopping my skull with the hatchet?” It was a crappy question, but it was the quickest one I could come up with.

Murphy let me know just how crappy it was. “Because I’m not retarded. I saw your dumb green lump ass crawling along the whole way.”

I huffed with as much dignity as I could in such a situation and wormed my way through the gap in the canvas. “Thanks,” I muttered.

Murphy stood up and looked around. “No biggie.”

Sitting down to collect myself, I looked back at the emaciated dead White through the tear in the tent. “I wonder how long he was stuck under there.”

Murphy looked down and grinned. “He’s not much skinnier than you.”

I noticed then the White was wearing a military uniform. I got up on my knees and grabbed him by the shoulder and tugged. His body came a few inches out of the hole. I pulled again and again.

Perhaps bored of seeing me struggling to pull the corpse out, Murphy reluctantly knelt down and gave me a hand. It only took a few more seconds to pull the body out into the rain.

“See?” I said. “He’s got a full kit.”

After a glance at the infected soldier, Murphy looked around for anything that might show an interest in us. I did too. It amazed me how natural it was to build that particular habit. I guess humans weren’t too far removed from a time in the past when fast critters with big teeth chased us around the savannah. No Whites anywhere in view seemed to care about us. One guy caught my attention. Over by the hospital wall, he was zigzagging through the shrubs while watching his feet. He seemed familiar.

Hmm.

I turned to Murphy, who was checking the magazines in the MOLLE vest of the dead White. I went for the boots. In a turn of fortune that made my under-canvas escapade worth it, the boots were my size. As a bonus, most of the magazines in the vest were full.

Chapter 30

By the time I finished washing my newly acquired kit in the creek, the rain was coming down heavier than it had all morning.

Murphy was patient and uncharacteristically silent as I put on the pants and boots and arranged my gear. I looked up with a start when he said, “That shuffler is coming this way.”

The familiar-looking White who’d been dragging his feet in circuits around the shrubs by the hospital wall wasn’t more than twenty feet from us. I drew my knife from its sheath. Murphy had his hatchet ready.

But the closer he came, the more familiar he looked. I’d come into contact with plenty of people, both infected and not, on my previous visit to the hospital and they were all dead. Well, except for Steph and Dalhover.

I glanced at Murphy. “I’m ready when you are.”

“’Bout time. This creek is starting to worry me. It’s been rising the whole time you were doing your laundry.”

That was true. I looked upstream. I don’t know what I was looking for. Maybe a wall of water from a coming flash-flood? Dramatic, even for me.

The shuffler, seemingly oblivious to the rain, was getting pretty close.

“You think he’s going to follow us?” I asked.

Murphy hefted his hatchet. “I can see that he doesn’t.”

The shuffler came to a stop, not five feet away. He smiled.

What the hell?

That meant he had to have some degree of brain function. The worst of them never smiled.

Holy crap.

The shuffler looked at me and said, “Zzzz…”

Murphy turned to me. “You know him?”

Dumbfounded, I nodded. It was Jeff Aubrey. He’d survived.

Murphy shook his head and lowered his hatchet, but he didn’t put it away.

“Jeff?” I took a step forward.

Jeff’s grin widened. “Zzzz…”

Murphy’s face turned to worry and he put a hand on my shoulder to stop me from getting closer. He took a quick look around to make sure nobody else was close enough to hear. “He’s not right.”

That much was clear. “I met him in the hospital. He was passed out with the fever when we escaped. We locked him in one of the rooms.”

Murphy went from worried to confused. “And?”

“He was Steph’s fiancé.”

Murphy shook his head in disbelief and laughed out loud.

“Jeff, can you speak?”

After a pause, he answered. “Yez.”

“Yez?” I said.

“Yez.”

Murphy leaned in close to me. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s a bad idea. Let’s ditch this dude and get the hell out of here.”

Sorely tempted to heed Murphy’s wishes, I said. “We can’t.”

“Hell yeah, we can. No good’s gonna come from this. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you need to do the right thing and reunite Jeff here with Steph. But that stupid little good angel that sits on your shoulder doesn’t know shit.”

“Anzel.” Jeff interrupted with another grin.

“He’s harmless,” I said.

“You don’t know that.” Murphy was getting a little bit pissed. “You don’t know anything about this guy. You met him before the virus fried his brain. Now you want to reunite him with Steph…”

“I didn’t say that,” I said.

“You didn’t need to. I know you. I know you always want to do the dumbass right thing. But it’s gonna get you killed one day.”

I shook my head.

“Killz,” Jeff said. “Killz.”

Murphy raised his eyebrows, as if to emphasize Jeff’s choice of words.

“Jeff, what have you been eating?” I asked.

“Hungry,” he said.

“Have you eaten anything?”

“Hungry,” he said again, as his smile melted away.

“If you bring him back, you know you can kiss any chance of getting into Steph’s pants goodbye,” Murphy said. “You know that, right?”

“It’s not about that.”

“It’s always about that.”

“I know you’re not like that, Murphy.”

Murphy smiled wickedly and shook his head. “Man, you wanna bet?”

The rain was coming down so hard, it was flowing off of us. Hushed conversation was impossible.

“I can’t leave him here,” I said.

“You can, and you should, but you won’t.”

I didn’t see any point in responding.

“Fine. I’m only gonna say one more thing about it. You won’t be doing anybody any favors,” Murphy said.

“How’s that?”

“Zat,” Jeff said.

We were already ignoring him.

“First off, he seems to be doing fine right here on his own.”

I shrugged. I didn’t agree, but I couldn’t argue. He was alive. Nearly everybody else he knew from the hospital wasn’t.

“You’re not gonna get any pussy.”

I shrugged again.

“Whatever.” Murphy said. “And how do you think Steph is gonna feel when you bring him back?”

I started to say she’d be happy, overjoyed maybe. But Murphy’s question made me give that some real thought.

He read my hesitation correctly and nodded. “You see, don’t you? Ask yourself how you would feel if your old girlfriend showed up and she had the IQ of a frog. You’d take care of her, out of obligation, like we do with Russell, but how could you still love her? She wouldn’t be the same person, Zed. This dude isn’t, either. He can barely speak one-syllable words.”

“Zyllble.”

“All you’re gonna do is make Steph feel bad and saddle her with a responsibility she can’t handle and that will probably get her killed. That’s if he doesn’t decide to kill her himself when he sees her. You gotta remember, Zed, you and me are Whites, like him. He doesn’t see us as food. He might be just as crazy as the rest of these fucks.”

“Fugz.”

We stood there in the rain for a bit, Murphy letting it all sink in.

Thinking about these things was bothersome. It was so much easier to just act on my whims. “What’s Steph going to say when I tell her I saw Jeff and just left him?”

“Dude.” Murphy looked around at the rain. “You don’t have to tell her anything. All that knowledge will do is make her feel bad. That’s it. There’s no upside to this situation unless we turn around and leave Professor Syllable right here and forget about him.”

Murphy was right. Jeff couldn’t make anything better for anybody. He was a burden at best. But the idea of leaving him felt bad, nevertheless.

The wind started to blow heavy, fat drops against my face in little slaps that irritated me before the drops ran down through my soaked clothes and filled my new boots. The world had turned to noisy gray.

“Damn, it’s comin’ down.” Murphy had to raise his voice to be heard just a few feet away.

I looked around. The rain was so heavy it was getting hard to make out the shapes of nearby buildings. Water ran ankle-deep across the ground where we were standing. Waller Creek was visibly swelling over its banks. It was a flash-flood in the making.

I shouted. “Fuck!”

Murphy brought his rifle to his shoulder and spun around, looking for targets. His head jerked left. Then right. He looked back at me, confused, tense.

I pointed at the creek. I had to shout. “It’s going to flood.”

“Who cares? Let’s get out of here.”

“That intersection we’re headed to is only a few blocks off Waller Creek.”

Murphy’s brows knit. “You think…?”

I nodded vigorously.

Floods in Texas came and went, usually a few feet here or there when a creek overran its banks. Carpets in nearby houses would need to get replaced. The drywall would need to be rehung. Sometimes, the floods washed down the creek beds with the wrath of God behind them. Twisted steel, piled masonry and smashed cars were left when the water subsided.

“Murphy, if the water rises too fast, it might make finding those silencers impossible.” I was getting hoarse from shouting. “I think we should go get that Humvee I left up on the roof of the parking garage and drive over there.”

“Drive?” Murphy’s face showed just how bad he thought that idea was. He looked around for any Whites that might materialize out of the gray sheets of rain.

“With it coming down like this—” I looked at Jeff and doubted what I was about to say “—all of the Whites with half a brain are hiding inside. They’ll never even see us drive by.”

Chapter 31

On the top level of the parking garage adjacent to the hospital, the Humvee was exposed to the rain. And just as I’d left it, the machine gun hatch was open, providing the only way to get back inside the vehicle. All of the doors had their battle locks set. I’d set them before I used the fifty-caliber machine gun to shoot up the stairwell on the side of the hospital.

Climbing up on top of the Humvee and getting back down inside was easy enough. I went in first, leaving it to Murphy to close the hatch in the face of Jeff Aubrey, who’d followed us up through the parking garage’s five levels. He was tagging along, that was clear enough. I realized he’d understood so little of our conversation, he didn’t get that we were going to ditch him. The virus had left his brain too addled. At least, that’s how I rationalized it.

The last I saw of Jeff was him watching Murphy and me drive away, crying out loud, reaching his hands toward us, though his feet took no steps to chase.

I put that thought out of my mind as Murphy drove the Humvee down the ramp, which was littered with the bones of hundreds of Whites, gnawed clean by those who survived that day on the roof. The Humvee’s big tires rolled over them like so many bumps on the road. Thankfully, the noise of the rain pelting our metal roof covered the sound of crunching and breaking.

When we were down to the second level, Murphy said, “You’ll need to tell me where to drive this thing. I don’t know how to get around down here.”

“When we get down to the end of the bottom ramp, turn right. We can take the garage exit onto Red River Street.”

“I know you didn’t want to leave that dude there, but it was the right thing. I know you’re gonna want to make yourself feel all guilty about it. Don’t. The world is fucked up now. That’s just the way it is. You can’t fix everything. You can’t save everybody.”

We got to the bottom of the last ramp and, without a word, I pointed right.

Murphy drove slowly to push some barricades out of the way and then we were back out in the rain. The pounding on the roof made conversation impossible without shouting. So we didn’t talk, mostly. I pointed and Murphy turned the wheel.

On Red River Street, the water in the road had filled it to the tops of the curbs, and still the intensity of the rainfall did not let up. Things were starting to float with the current in the road. It all flowed toward the creeks, which flowed south toward the Colorado River, which ran through the center of town.

I hollered. “This thing will do okay with all the water, right?”

“Oh, yeah.”

We drove past the circular basketball arena and crossed over Martin Luther King Boulevard. We were back on the campus.

The road veered off to the right. Looking at the maze of abandoned vehicles in and along the road, Murphy gave me a look. He was wondering whether we could get through. Several weeks before, I’d driven that big motorcycle down Red River on the way to the hospital. I knew it was clear enough for us to pass. I motioned for him to head up the road.

Slowly, we went north. IH-35’s upper deck loomed out of the easing rain on our right. Several heads popped up to watch us. They were Whites, making a living off of scavenging rotten meat from the carcasses of motorists who’d died in the highway traffic jams. Those Whites probably still had bellies full of putrid flesh and little motivation to come after us. As we passed between one of the football practice fields and the LBJ Library, the road dipped down. Before I could form the words to shout, the Humvee was in a couple of feet of water. “How deep can we go before we’re stuck?”

Murphy shrugged. “I don’t think it gets that deep.”

“I thought you were afraid of water.”

“I can’t swim, but I’m not neurotic.”

We reached the bottom of the dip between the two hills and the pavement angled back upward. When we reached the top of the hill, the sky had opened up again and the rain was coming down as heavily as before.

“When you come to the next street, that’s Dean Keeton,” I shouted. “Turn left. That intersection where Jerome got shot is a few blocks down.”

Murphy stopped the Humvee halfway through the turn onto Dean Keeton Street. Looking at me, he asked, “What do you think?”

“Hell if I know. We’ve come this far. Let’s just drive over there and see what happens.”

“And if those dudes are still there?”

I rapped on the glass in my door. “Will this protect us?”

“It should. But if they are there, I doubt they’ll shoot at the Humvee. They’ll wait until we get out.”

“I’m sure they’re all dead. I mean, what are the odds of any of them making it through the infection?”

“Pretty slim.”

“Yeah. That’s one of the reasons we came all the way over here. The place might be underwater for all we know. If we can, we’ll go past by a couple of blocks and then loop around into that neighborhood north of campus. We can sneak up that way.”

Murphy shrugged. “And if it is flooded?”

“We go home.”

The Humvee rolled into the intersection and Murphy steered it toward the westbound lane and down a long slope toward Waller Creek. The rain was slacking again. Apparently, waves of heavy rain separated by waves of lighter rain were the order of the day. Lightning split the air a few car lengths ahead of us. The crack rattled me to my bones and I jumped in my seat. Murphy instinctively slammed the brakes and the Humvee jerked to a halt.

“Holy shit.” The afterimage was burned into my retinas.

“I think I just shit my pants.” Murphy looked right and left again. “We need to get out of this.”

With plenty of leftover fright in my voice I said, “Just keep going. It’s okay.”

Thunder from another strike rumbled over us.

“This shit’s dangerous, man.”

“Murphy, be cool. Trust me on this one. Inside of a car is a safe place to be in a thunderstorm.”

“What?”

“I’m serious dude. It’s a physics thing. We’re safe. Trust me.”

Murphy took his foot off the brake and the Humvee started to move. “Sounds like bullshit to me.”

“Have you ever heard of a Faraday Cage?”

“Nope.”

“Then don’t worry about it. Just keep going.”

We accelerated. As we neared the intersection where Jerome had met his end, Murphy slowed.

Only one Humvee was sitting in the intersection. On our first visit, three were there. Several inches of water were running down the street and through the intersection, burbling up over hundreds of carcasses, the success score of snipers hidden nearby.

“Just go on through like we’re not scoping them out,” I said.

The ride got bouncy as the Humvee drove over the rotting bodies.

Murphy looked quickly at the buildings on the corners. “Do you see anything?”

My attention was focused on the university co-op store on the northwest corner of the intersection. It had a second floor and an angled wall of windows. From there, snipers had command of the intersection and the roads leading up to it in three directions. Several of the windows were broken out, leaving jagged teeth of black, tinted glass hanging in the frames. Nothing moved in the shadows within.

Past the intersection, Murphy swerved the vehicle close to the right hand curb. “Where do you want me to pull this thing over?”

Looking behind at the co-op building, I said, “Keep going. If they’re still in there, I don’t want them to see us stopping.”

We passed a street on the right. We passed another and the road started to curve. Still looking back at the co-op, I said, “Take the next street, okay?”

The Humvee came to a stop.

I spun around in my seat. “Not now.”

Murphy directed my attention out over the Humvee’s hood.

“Shit.” I was stunned. Waller Creek, a deep, crooked ditch before the rain came, had turned into a river two hundred feet wide. The bridge ahead of us was completely immersed. Not even the rails were visible. Only the water rising up to flow over the submerged obstacles provided any evidence of their existence. “This is a lot worse than I thought it was going to get.”

“I’m worried about Mandi,” Murphy said.

“I’ve never heard of flooding on the part of the river where they are. I mean, with Mansfield Dam just upriver, how could it?”

Murphy dropped the concern and turned determined. “Let’s get this done and get the hell out of here. This is bad.”

“Yeah.”

To our right was a parking lot for a small apartment building. I pointed. “Just stick it there between those pickups. Do it quick.”

Murphy gunned the engine and cut the wheel, ran over a curb and bounced the Humvee to a stop just where I’d asked.

“Damn.” I’d have to be careful next time I asked for quick.

Murphy shrugged.

I was already soaked to the bone, but was still reluctant to open the door and go back out into the rain.

Murphy noticed me hesitating. “You good?”

“As good as I’m gonna get.” I flung the door open.

Chapter 32

Moments later, Murphy and I were well off the road and slogging through a park adjacent to the apartment building. Water was flowing or standing everywhere. In some places, it was just deep enough to soak into the toes of our boots. In others, it poured over the tops.

Broken limbs, fallen from the oaks in the park, were scattered. Fences were down. Shingles were blowing off of roofs. Garbage cans were sailing on gusts or floating in the water. Thunder continued to rumble.

“At least we don’t need to worry about being quiet. What do you say we just run the rest of the way?” Murphy didn’t wait for an answer. He jogged ahead and I fell in behind him.

We exited the park, crossed a backyard and ran between two widely-spaced houses. Caution wasn’t even an afterthought by then. We ran on across a street without slowing down to look. I saw no other living thing. We were apparently the only two infected people crazy enough to be out in the weather.

Once across the street, we had to weave our way between parked cars and some small duplexes laid out at unusual angles to the road and to each other. No front doors facing the street there. Past those, we were rewarded with a view of the backside of the co-op building, just across a narrow road. We squatted behind a car and looked.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“We could try one of those doors, but if those dudes are still inside, that’d be like asking to get shot.”

“Those doors are built to keep burglars out. If they’re locked, we’re not going to get through anyway.”

“Around front, then?”

I nodded. “We wouldn’t be risking this if we didn’t think all those guys were dead inside. I say we sneak around front and go in through the broken windows. If by chance some of those dudes are still alive up on the second floor, they won’t see us sneaking up along the wall and won’t be expecting anyone to come in that way.”

Murphy didn’t like the plan. “That’s all hopes and ifs. Why not just say you wanna go out there and depend on your good luck to get this done?”

“Look, two of those Humvees are gone. They wouldn’t be gone if there were still soldiers up there, right?”

“How do you figure?”

“Either the guys who didn’t get infected drove off in the Humvees, or somebody came and stole them without getting shot. If they didn’t get shot, it’s because those guys are dead.”

Murphy, uncharacteristically silent, pondered that.

“Cool?”

“Fine, but when we get inside, we should announce our presence, rather than sneak up on anybody who might be up there. I’d rather they yell at us and tell us to go away before they see what we look like and shoot.”

“Agreed.” I was getting to the point I just wanted to get the task finished and get back to the riverboat. Just as Murphy was worried over Mandi, I was starting to worry about Steph.

I took off at a run with Murphy right behind. The water in the street was curb-deep again, nearly tripping me as I crossed. I leapt up onto a curb, crossed a sidewalk, and came to a stop at the corner of the co-op building. Murphy hit the wall beside me.

I gave him a nod. He nodded and peeked around the corner. The front wall of the building down its full length was unbroken by window or door. It was just a long, uniformly colored wall. In front of it, I was going to be a target nobody could miss. All of the big glass display windows and the front door were built into the corner of the building, facing the intersection.

With only the sagging crepe myrtles planted between the sidewalk and the street for cover, I took off at full speed down the length of the building. If someone had taken a shot at me, I wouldn’t have heard over the noise of the rain, my breathing and the sound of my feet splashing through puddles.

I came to a stop and dropped to a knee where the wall ended. Just around the corner was the main entrance. When Murphy fell in behind me, I asked, “Cool?”

He nodded.

I peeked around the corner and quickly pulled my head back, closing my eyes so I could concentrate on what I’d just seen. No movement. Broken glass. Dark interior. Books and merchandise on the ground. Closed door.

I risked another peek and pulled quickly back.

“Well?” Murphy asked.

“I don’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean no one is hidden. The place looks like it’s been ransacked. It’s a mess. A million great hiding places.”

“So what, then?”

“I’m going to risk it. The entrance is a couple of feet above street level. It’s got, like, this big concrete platform under a portico with four or five steps leading up to it.”

“Porti-what?”

“The roof over the porch, with columns holding it up.”

“Why didn’t you just say that?”

“Is this really the time for a vocabulary debate?”

Murphy looked around. “If somebody was going to shoot us out here, they already would have.”

“I’m going to run over there and get in the bushes in front of the porti… porch,” I said. “From there, I can see inside. You stay here and don’t come until I wave you over. If somebody starts shooting, hurl a grenade inside and I’ll haul ass back. Cool?”

“It’s your ass.”

Rolling my eyes, I turned. Without taking the time to second-guess myself, I bolted around the corner. I crossed a sidewalk and dove onto the grass, sliding into the short hedge in front of the portico.

Ouch.

The grass had a few good-sized rocks hidden in it.

From my muddy, wet spot among the roots, I rolled over and gave Murphy a thumbs-up to let him know I was okay.

He was taking a risk by keeping his head around the corner to watch me.

Fuck it. If he can risk it, so can I.

I got up to my knees and lay my rifle up on the concrete landing, pointing into the darkness. The place was a shambles. Any one of a hundred gloomy lumps could have been a threat. My imagination started to brew up dangers, seeing rifle barrels and snipers’ helmets in every random shape.

Double fuck it.

I decided I was as safe as I was going to get. I jumped up onto the landing, bounded across and stepped silently through one of the big, broken windowpanes. Once out of the rain, I felt like I could hear again. The rain still roared down outside, but it was no longer the only thing I could hear.

Looking around in the darkness, I saw a wide staircase in the back corner. I slowly passed my eyes over what I could make out in the mess, first to my left, then my right. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. I waved Murphy in, turned and stepped gingerly through the junk on the floor to take up a position behind a checkout counter.

Murphy came in through the window I’d just entered and took a moment to do his own recon. He stepped silently through the scattered merchandise and dropped to a knee beside me. He looked at me, for an assessment I presumed. I made a show of looking around and shrugged to let him know I thought the place was deserted.

I whispered, “Did you see the stairs at the back?”

He nodded.

“What do you say we get over there and when we get near the top, we call out? If we holler from down here, nobody up there will hear anything.”

Murphy shook his head emphatically. “Let me take the lead on the stairs.”

Yeah, whatever. I shrugged.

With his rifle at his shoulder, panning from left to right, Murphy led the way through the ruined merchandise clothing, books and souvenirs. He was tense, and his tension kept me on edge. He clearly wasn’t as convinced as I was that the soldiers were all dead.

We were halfway across the store and making our way through the remnants of some kind of glass shelving units full of Longhorn doodads and trinkets, the kind of shit parents put on their desks at work to let their friends know their kids were students at UT.

It started out as a scraping sound. Before I knew it, Murphy’s feet were slipping out from under him. He reached a hand out to catch himself as he fell and instead cut his palm open on a piece of the glass shelving unit.

“Goddammit.” He hit the ground.

And that was a mistake.

A body doesn’t make much sound when it stands, except for the sound made by brushing against something nearby, or the sound of shuffling feet on a messy floor. Even the exhale or draw of a single breath isn’t that noticeable, especially when all the rain in the world seems to be falling outside. But when thirty or forty Whites jump to their feet to investigate an unexpected utterance of human speech, it makes a peculiar swoosh, distinct even under the noise of the rain.

If anything, the seemingly ubiquitous whisper made it that much more frightening.

Twenty feet away, between a wall of shoes and a mound of fallen clothing racks, all of those Whites rose. Every eye was on me and I knew in about two seconds, their frog brains were going to decide I was edible.

Without another thought, without taking a moment to warn Murphy—he’d figure it all out soon enough—I pointed my rifle at the nearest of the Whites and pulled the trigger.

Instant pandemonium broke out among them as I squeezed off a dozen rounds into their ranks.

Calm.

Breathe.

Think.

Breathe.

Murphy was on his feet in a ridiculously short second, blood splattering out of his wound and bullets blasting out of his rifle.

My intuition was sparking rapidly.

With too many Whites still screaming and charging me from the front, I spun around to look behind. Damn good thing I did.

Seven naked Whites were running at us from the far end of the store. Only the size of the store and their choice to take shelter so far from the door had saved us. Had they been closer when Murphy fell, they’d have been on my back and ripping into my throat before I’d squeezed off my tenth round.

I fired at them. Half my rounds went wild, but the Whites obliged me by coming closer and closer into a range where even I was deadly accurate. When the last one fell, I spun back around to see the last of the larger group fall under Murphy’s bullets.

“Damn. That was intense.” Murphy grinned.

I looked up at the ceiling. “I guess they know we’re here.”

Murphy looked toward the bodies of the Whites I’d killed. “Dude, I’d a thought more were back there. What’d you do, shoot ‘em all three times?”

“Yes.” Double helping of sarcasm.

Murphy chuckled. “It’s like the more you shoot, the worse you get. I know it’s hard, but just be calm and breathe. It’ll save your ass. And you’ll use a lot less bullets.”

Chapter 33

An explosion rocked the building and debris flew away from the stairs.

Jesus, what the fuck is this place?

I dropped to my belly without a thought for the cuts I earned for my haste.

Murphy took cover behind a counter.

I clambered across the floor until I was behind what looked like a sturdy shelf and threw the barrel of my rifle over it, aiming at the stairs.

C’mon, motherfucker.

I’d gotten surprised by the explosion and I was pissed. Two surprises in as many minutes was a trend that did not bode well for long-term survival.

I waited. Murphy waited. We exchanged a look to let each other know that we were okay.

Still, nothing happened.

One benefit of the storm outside was not a single White came running into the building after Murphy and I had emptied the better part of three magazines. And, oh, by the way, something tried to blow us the fuck up. Well, maybe not us, exactly, but, damn, it was just right over there.

Thank God for thunder. It made good camouflage for such noises.

My anger was dissipating and adrenaline was stoking impatience. I whispered, “I’m going to go over there and see what’s up.”

“Me first. You follow. Be careful.” With his rifle at his shoulder aimed at the stairs, Murphy made his way carefully across the store’s main floor until he was beside a wall near the bottom of the stairs.

As soon as Murphy stopped, I ran across the sales floor, passed him by and crossed the wide foot of the stairs. I came to a stop and positioned myself beside the banister, pointing my rifle uselessly up at an empty landing where the stairs made their turn to come back up over my head. From Murphy’s position by the wall, he could shoot anything coming down from the second floor on the flight of stairs above me. My position sucked. I couldn’t shoot anything.

Still, nothing moved. No more noises came from above.

While we were waiting, I looked back across what I could see of the sales floor. Nothing had moved since we’d stopped shooting.

Breathe.

Be calm.

Be cool.

We were in a dangerous situation. Riding a wave of adrenaline through a sequence of impulsive choices would only get me killed.

Breathe.

Up at the landing, an arm in what looked like a military MOPP suit lay down across a couple of stairs. A white-skinned hand dangled past the end of a sleeve. A steadily flowing rivulet of blood ran down over the hand and off of the index finger.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Murphy looked up at the empty staircase above my head and hollered. “Anybody up there?”

We waited, but no answer came.

“What just happened?” I asked.

He hollered again. “I’m coming up.”

Not liking the feeling of uselessness, I added, “Don’t shoot at us. If you’re up there and would prefer we leave, just tell us.”

“What the fuck is that?” Murphy chuckled. “Are good manners going to make a difference?”

I shrugged. “Go fu—“

Something, maybe a book, slid across the vinyl tiles on the floor at the top of the stairs.

I looked up as though I could see through the flight of stairs above me just as heavy feet started pounding the steps on the way down.

Murphy’s rifle tracked a target, but he didn’t fire.

“What is it?” I whispered, but I didn’t need to wait for Murphy to answer.

A tan-colored mass hit the wall at the back of the landing, slipped, scrambled around the corner, regained its footing and rushed down at me. It was one of the soldiers in a MOPP suit. Familiar, from the day I’d seen a soldier in just such a suit murder Jerome. The suit’s hood was gone. His skin was white. His eyes were crazy and his mouth was bloody.

I ripped off three shots, hitting the White in the center of his chest. He came to a dead stop and dropped into a seated position on a stair, with his legs splaying out in front of him. His breath hissed slowly out of the holes in his chest.

Standing there with my rifle still trained on the dying White, I realized something profound. I whispered to Murphy, “That could—”

“I don’t think you need to whisper anymore.”

“That could have been the one that shot Jerome.”

“Could have been.”

I started up the stairs and stopped. “Oh, you wanted to go first.”

Murphy shook his head and answered the implied question. “I thought the stairs might be booby trapped, but I think that dead one on the landing took care of it for us. You go ahead.”

“That was the explosion, then?”

Murphy nodded.

With two Whites in military garb dead on the stairs, I figured there was little chance of any normal soldiers still on the second floor. That boosted my courage. Whites I could deal with. The soldiers had lethally bested us on our last meeting.

The stairs were slippery with fresh blood. I was extra careful as I made my way around the body on the landing, keeping my weapon trained at the top. Murphy came up behind, close enough to support me, but not so close that we could both be easily shot by a single gunman.

The wall on the backside of the landing was blackened from the explosion we heard. The handrail was bent and sticking out from the wall. With the greatest caution, I continued up the final flight of stairs, examining every step and every metal support on the banister as I went. I didn’t want to find any booby traps not yet tripped.

At the top of the wide staircase was another sales floor stacked with shelves of mostly textbooks, much more orderly than the first floor. Unfortunately, the shelves limited what we could see. Anyone or anything had a hundred places to hide. At least the second floor was smaller than the first. Doors off to our right led to the administrative offices, or so I guessed.

I ran over to a checkout counter, kneeled and waited for Murphy to join me.

Once he was there, I whispered, “I don’t like this place.”

“We’re here. Let’s get this done.” Murphy ran off to the wall on the left side of the floor.

I followed. Once there, keeping some distance between us, we started working our way through the racks and display cases. All we found were bodies, soldiers in various states of decay. Each of them had been fed on, probably by the two dead Whites on the stairs.

It all appeared to have happened just as Murphy figured. One of the soldiers had brought the infection into the building, either on his gear or in his blood. At least a few of the soldiers succumbed. The others either caught the virus or were killed by those already infected.

When we were finished clearing the upper floor, we’d found the bodies of eleven soldiers. More importantly, we found six M4s with silencers attached to the barrels. They weren’t ideal sniper rifles, but they were perfect for our purposes.

Chapter 34

With five rifles in the back of the Humvee, Murphy took the passenger seat and was making himself comfortable with his new weapon when I got in on the driver’s side.

“How are we set for gas?” Murphy asked.

“Looks like three-quarters to me.”

“You have any idea how we’re getting back? Looks like the whole damn city is flooding.”

I rolled my eyes. “The whole city won’t flood.”

“You know what I mean, man. If the creek down the street has that much water in it, every creek in town is probably doing the same thing.”

“What are you getting at? Are you saying you want to stay down here tonight?”

Murphy looked at the rain pouring down around us. He shook his head. “If we can get back without drowning, that’s my preference. At least we can drive around right now without getting chased by Whites.”

Taking a moment to think about it, I said, “We can’t go directly across Austin. Even if we could find a way across Waller Creek, we’d never get across Shoal Creek. I think if we can make it up to Highway 183 and take that out to 620, we can head back south and hit the river that way.”

“That sounds like the long way around.”

“It is. But Highway 183 is raised. It won’t flood. 620 might be iffy, but mostly it’s built on high ground. At least, it looks that way to me.”

“You want to go all the way out to Mansfield Dam?” Murphy didn’t like the idea.

I shook my head. “Nope. I think if we cut through that subdivision up there…”

“Steiner Ranch?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Kind of in that area. If we get lucky enough to turn on the right streets, we should get pretty close, maybe a mile or two from where the boat is anchored.”

“Just so you know, if you drive this thing into a river again, I really am going to punch you in the face.”

I started the engine.

Lightning ripped the sky with scary frequency. The rumble and crack of thunder was nearly constant. Rain poured out of the clouds in torrents that made it difficult to see. The curbed streets we drove as we paralleled IH-35 were rivers flowing toward the creeks. The few infected we saw cowered under trees and made no attempt to come after us. With their intense fear of the water, the world must have seemed like zombie hell.

Nearly an hour passed by the time we found our way onto the southbound access road to Highway 183. On that access road, we headed north until we made a U-turn onto an entrance ramp. Unlike IH-35, which ran through the center of Austin and had lanes clogged in both directions with abandoned vehicles, almost no cars were on 183’s southbound lanes. Those lanes led into town. The northbound lanes were an escape route out of town and were full, bumper-to-bumper, with abandoned cars.

With visibility measured in a few dozen feet when the rain was coming down heavily, I kept the Humvee’s speed in what seemed like a safe range, below twenty.

From the gray blur of rain, a man materialized, coming into the traffic lanes, waving his arms. Before I knew it, he was in front of the Humvee. My first instinct was to accelerate and run him down.

Just as I pushed on the gas pedal, Murphy yelled, “That dude’s normal!”

I braked and swerved. The distance between the truck and the man was small and it was only our slow speed that saved his life. When we came to a stop, the man dropped his hands to the hood and looked in at us, shouting, “Help us, please!”

I looked at Murphy. Murphy looked at me. Neither of us was ready to jump out of the Humvee and do anything.

The man on the hood called again, “Please.”

“He thinks we’re soldiers,” Murphy said. “He thinks we’re the cavalry.”

I looked off to my left, then behind me to see what I could see through the drenching rain. “Or he thinks we’re targets.”

Murphy jerked around in his seat. “You think it’s an ambush? Maybe we should just get the fuck outta here.”

The man ran around to my side of the Humvee, pleading as he came. Once there, he slapped his palms flat on my window, pulled his face close to the glass, and shouted, “Please! Please! You have to help— Oh, my God. You’re a zombie!” He stumbled back a half-step.

I hollered. “I test zombie positive! But I’m just as normal as you!”

Murphy nudged my shoulder. “Let’s go, man. Let’s get outta here. If this isn’t an ambush, what’s he doing out here in the rain? I don’t feel good about this.”

That was good advice and Murphy’s instincts were usually on the mark. We were parked in the middle of four lanes of empty asphalt with rain pouring so heavily we could have been surrounded by men with automatic weapons and not even known.

I turned away from the guy on the road and moved my foot back to the gas pedal. Just then, a child of maybe seven or eight came running out of the rain, wrapped an arm around the man’s thigh, shouting, “Daddy!”

Murphy muttered. “Shit.”

The man put a protective arm over the boy and backed up a few more steps.

Murphy, without any discussion on the question, opened his door and stepped out into the rain.

Dammit.

Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it wasn’t. I was on the fence about it and couldn’t find my way off. So I stayed put and looked through the Humvee’s windows, trying to spy any danger from another direction.

When I looked back at the man and the boy, Murphy was on my side of the Humvee, three or four steps from the two. He had one hand on his rifle and one palm in the air as he talked. Both the boy and the man were frightened, and looked like they might take off at a run.

I couldn’t hear what Murphy was saying, but at some point, the man started speaking. He gestured toward the side of the road. He and Murphy spoke some more. More gestures. More pointing.

Maybe Murphy thought I could hear what was going on. Maybe he figured since he was already outside, exposed, he’d follow his instincts and make his own choices. Because that’s pretty much what he did. He looked over at me with a pained expression, turned and headed into the heavy gray rain.

Double dammit.

I checked through all of the windows again to see what I could see, which was pretty much nothing.

Nervously, I stayed on the lookout for something bad to happen. Time passed slowly.

The rain didn’t let up. The lightning seemed to dissipate, though the rumbles of thunder, some near, most far, told me that dissipation was a misperception at best.

Trying to trust Murphy’s intuition, I whiled away long moments. Finally, I couldn’t wait any longer. If he was in trouble out there where I couldn’t see, I wasn’t going to let him be in trouble alone. And according to that line of thinking, waiting was pointless. I swung my door open and stepped out of the Humvee.

Wet though I was, the new rain was cold when it pummeled me and soaked through my clothes. It took all of two steps for the cold water to seep back into my boots.

With my rifle at my shoulder, I scanned back and forth in front of me, ready to fire at anything that looked like danger. As I made my way across one empty lane and then another, the shapes of people and a big square-ish thing formed out of the rain. Murphy and the man were behind an SUV that had gone off the road and come to a stop at a precarious angle on a steep embankment.

Murphy saw me as I neared. He hollered, “Man, we need to pull them out of here.”

I looked at Murphy and looked at the man, still not sure I needed to do anything. Did I want to? Sure. But one of the many things I was learning about life was it so much easier to be a super hero in video games.

The man pointed toward the front of the SUV and motioned me over to the edge of the shoulder.

The SUV was stuck with only one rear wheel on pavement. The front wheel I could see, the one on the passenger side, was buried in mud up to its axle. I guessed the wheels on the other side were similarly buried. It was both bad and good luck wrapped in the same package. Had the ground not been so saturated, the heavy SUV would have barreled down the steep embankment and slammed into whatever was parked on the highway access road thirty feet below. But now they were stuck.

Just as I turned to walk back to the rear of the truck, a girl of four or five pressed her face to the foggy passenger side window and stared at me. A woman pulled her away from the glass.

Crap.

“Are these your kids?” I asked the man.

“Yes.”

“How many do you have?”

“Three.”

“Why aren’t any of you infected?”

“None of us ever got the virus. I think we’re all immune.”

“All of you?”

The man shrugged. “We were all exposed. All of our neighbors, all of our friends got it. None of us ever came down with the fever.”

That didn’t seem at all plausible. But what could I argue? The evidence was right in front of me.

Going back to the rear of the truck, Murphy was wrapping a chain around the ball on the SUV’s trailer hitch. “They hydroplaned when the water got deep and they skidded off the highway.”

“Got it, Sherlock.” Looking around, I asked the man, “Why not just get another car?”

He pointed to the back window of the SUV. It was packed full. “It would take too long. We have all of our stuff in here.”

“How long have you been out here?”

“Maybe five minutes.”

I pointed at the SUV’s wheels stuck in the mud. “So this just happened.”

The man nodded.

“Are you guys from here in Austin?”

“Yeah. We noticed there weren’t any infected out on the street. We thought we’d use the rain to shroud us so we could get out of town.”

“Where to?” I asked.

The man clammed up.

My old world sense of manners urged me to get miffed over the rudeness, until it occurred to me that if I was in his shoes, I wouldn’t tell the location of my next hideout to two armed strangers either. “Never mind. I understand.” Then, not seeing a pistol or rifle on the man’s person, I followed my intuition. “Are you armed? Do you have any weapons?”

More silence.

“Look, we obviously have guns. You don’t have a weapon on you. So I’m guessing you’ve only got one, in the car, probably. Please don’t tell me you don’t have anything.”

Unable to contain the guilt showing on his face, the man said, “Our house has a safe room. We stayed in there. We’ve kept quiet. We didn’t need anything. Hiding was working out.”

Looking around to distract myself while I thought about my next choice, I finally said, “Listen. We’ve been pretty lucky with collecting weapons. We’ve got plenty. We can spare a few.”

The man stuck his hand out to shake mine.

I didn’t put mine out. “Better you don’t touch me in case you’re wrong about the immunity thing.”

He dropped his hand and said, “Thank you.”

Murphy hollered at me. “Man, get that Humvee over here. I don’t want to be out here all day.”

I motioned the man to follow me and jogged over to the Humvee. “Hop in the passenger side.”

Once we were both in, I started to maneuver the Humvee over to the edge of the road.

The man looked around and spotted all the rifles and pistols in the back seat.

“Here’s the deal.” I pulled the Humvee up behind the SUV and came to a stop when Murphy motioned with his hand. “Every time I do what seems like the right thing, it bites me in the ass. See those rifles with the silencers on the end? Take one of those. The infected can’t hear the silenced weapons when they fire.”

The man nodded.

“Listen, and this part is really important. Don’t ever shoot a gun without a silencer unless it’s a matter of life and death. These fuckers hear gunshots and come running like you’re giving away free french fries at McDonald’s. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Take another rifle, one without a silencer, and two pistols. Get as much ammo as you think you’ll need. We’ve got plenty back at the boat.”

“At the boat?” he asked.

More harshly than I wanted to, I said, “You can’t come with us. Trust me. That always ends badly. I’m giving you the weapons. Be cool with that, okay?”

The man was shaking his head, “No, I… thanks. The guns are enough. Thank you so much.”

“Just take care of your family. Okay? Be careful. I don’t know what’s going to work and what isn’t, but get as far away from the cities as you can. Hordes of these things can tear down any house they think people are inside of. Don’t underestimate them.”

The man gave me a serious look. “I’m Greg. What’s your name?”

“I’m Zed. That’s Murphy out there.”

Murphy stood up straight and waved me to start pulling.

I nodded at the man, who wasted no time in gathering a couple of rifles and a couple of pistols.

“Take those and come back for the ammo.”

I gunned the engine. The wheels alternately caught and spun. We started to move.

With a jerk that seemed like it should have bent its frame, the SUV popped up onto the roadway. The SUV’s brake lights lit up and it came to a stop. I rolled the Humvee forward just a bit so Murphy would have enough slack in the chain to disconnect it.

The man hurried back to the Humvee to gather up some ammunition for his weapons.

I got out and went over between the vehicles with Murphy.

Working to disconnect the chain, he asked, “You didn’t give him a silencer did you?”

I looked over past the highway’s access road. The rain was starting to slacken, and I could make out a tall red and yellow sign for Rudy’s Barbecue. “Maybe.”

The chain clinked to the ground and Murphy gave me the look disappointed mothers save for when their children do something stupid. He unwrapped the chain from the trailer hitch.

“You’re the one that wanted to stop and help,” I said.

With the chain off, Murphy stood up, looking around out of habit. “Don’t do that, Zed. You know you would have done the same thing. I just came to the decision sooner.”

“They’re all immune. They may have the magic genetic combination to start over.”

“So you’re saying the Mighty Null Spot gave him the silencer to save the human race?”

“I’m just banking some good karma.”

The man came back around and Murphy handed him his chain.

Greg said, “Thank you so much.”

Murphy said, “Don’t sweat it, man.”

I gave him a nod.

The rain was rapidly settling down to something like a sprinkle and visibility was back. As if to punctuate that, the howls of a few hundred infected rose up from down the embankment and across the access road.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Murphy yelled at Greg. He moved to his left to get a better view and raised his new silenced M4 to his shoulder.

Greg started to mouth something else.

“Go,” Murphy yelled at him.

He ran for a door of the SUV.

I was beside Murphy by then, and without the SUV blocking my view, I saw the Rudy’s Barbecue down the steep embankment and across the access road. Wrapped around the front and one side of the building was a wide, covered patio large enough for tables to seat a couple of hundred people. It was also a great place for Whites to huddle and stay dry, which is what they had been doing until the rain eased enough for them to see us in our noisy vehicles.

But they were already pouring off of the patio and out across the parking lot. Some were on the access road and several were trying to run up the steep, slippery embankment.

Murphy fired his weapon at those closest.

The SUV’s starter cranked and the engine growled.

I fired my weapon toward the oncoming infected, but couldn’t tell whether I’d hit anything or not.

The SUV started to roll slowly forward. Murphy slapped the back window with his hand. “Go! Go!”

It did.

At least twenty Whites were already clawing their way up the muddy slope. The SUV was picking up speed and already beyond the hope of any White to reach it.

I shouted, “They’re safe. Let’s get out of here.”

Murphy gave the SUV one more look and bolted for the Humvee.

With the first of the infected just clamoring their way out of the mud and taking steps onto the asphalt, we accelerated our Humvee north on the highway.

Chapter 35

Not two miles up the highway, we were right back into another squall and I slowed the Humvee down to fifteen miles per hour.

“What is up with all this rain?” Murphy asked.

“Maybe Dalhover was right.”

“Top is right about a lot of shit.”

Then something occurred to me. It was only mid-afternoon, so unless something drastic happened on the way back to the river along the circuitous route we were taking, we’d get there well before dark. “There’s an Academy up here on the left.”

“An Academy?”

“You know, that store that sells all of that camping and sports stuff.”

“Tell me this isn’t going to be another inspiration of yours.”

I swerved the Humvee out of the center of the roadway until I was driving along the shoulder. “Hear me out on this one.”

“Whatever. You’re gonna do whatever you’re gonna do. That’s the way it works when you’re driving.”

“Don’t be petulant.” I U-turned onto an exit ramp, cut across the access road and jumped a curb beneath the Academy Sports and Outdoors sign. In the process, I ran down some crepe myrtle trees, really just tall bushes that had lost their bright pink flowers in the rain. The parking lot was mostly empty, at least what we could see of it. Coming to a stop about halfway across, I looked at Murphy for confirmation. “I’m going to crash right through the front doors.”

“Crash and grab? I like it.”

“Do you think it’ll damage the Humvee?”

Murphy shook his head. “Nope. It’ll make a hell of a noise when we go through, but I’m betting the Humvee will be fine.”

“Once we’re inside, there’ll probably be some infected. I mean, the damn things are everywhere right? They’ll probably be in there, too.”

“And?”

“Do we open the hatch and shoot them with the fifty caliber machine gun?”

“Nope. I say we jump out and shoot ‘em, unless there are a bunch standing right there when we drive in. If so, we drive out and leave.”

With a nod, I revved the engine and aimed at the entrance.

The pavement between us and the store disappeared quickly. I braced for the impact. The Humvee bounced over the curb and smashed through the glass and window frames. A second later, we rammed through another wall of glass at the back of the foyer and hit some product display shelves. Scores of multi-colored T-shirts exploded across the hood and windshield.

Still, the Humvee’s momentum was carrying it forward and I pushed hard on the brakes. Tires skidded on waxed floors and more display racks fell victim.

And we stopped.

The hood was covered with so much debris from the collision that we couldn’t see through the windshield. Murphy shouted, “Well, here goes!” He wrestled his door open and I did the same.

We’d made one hell of a mess out of the front of the store. Glass, bent aluminum and merchandise lay everywhere.

“Up top!” Murphy shouted.

I didn’t see any infected coming at me, so I followed Murphy’s order, turned and climbed as quickly as I could to the top of the Humvee. Murphy beat me there. He had his rifle up and was firing before I got my feet under me.

A long row of cash registers ran across the front of the store and Murphy shot down two infected who were running past those on their way from the fishing department.

On my side of the store, the weightlifting gear filled out the corner and a long wide aisle led up to the shoe racks. I assumed that to be my area of responsibility. Women’s sports apparel was directly in front of the Humvee. Murphy and I would have to share that.

An infected woman came out of the shoe section, wearing an employee’s blue smock. She was hungry and in a hurry. I fired.

Of course, I missed. My aim really was getting worse. I fired four more times before a round caught her just above her left eye. She did a grotesque pirouette as blood, brain and bone exploded out the back of her skull.

To my right, Murphy was firing again, but stopped by the time I looked over.

“Damn, there must have been a bunch of them on your side.” He grinned at me.

“Yeah.”

“Did you get them all?”

“Yeah.”

We held our positions for a few more minutes.

Murphy called into the cavernous store. “Hey, Whitey, it’s dinner time. Come and get it.”

No more of the infected came out.

Turning to Murphy, I said, “What I’m thinking is, we grab some coolers, some sleeping bags, winter coats, boots, Coleman stove, tents…”

“Yeah, yeah. I gotcha. Some of everything they’ve got here.”

“Let’s stick together while we’re shopping.”

“Yep. You push the basket. I’ll ride shotgun since I can hit what I shoot at.” Murphy couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, yeah, funny man.”

Chapter 36

Having loaded the Humvee with nearly as much as we could stuff into it—the damn things just weren’t as roomy as they looked like from the outside—Murphy and I were in one of the aisles in the camping section. I found myself eyeballing a machete display.

“I think you miss your machete, Zed.”

“I do.” I picked up a particularly wicked-looking machete with a black plastic handle and black powder-coated blade. On the side of the blade was painted a white skull over the name “Zombie Killer.” Pointless curves and cutouts adorned the blade’s back edge. It was a frightening tool.

I tore off the plastic and cardboard wrapping and hefted it while I admired its inherent evil.

Murphy laughed. “Man, don’t get that piece of crap.”

Embarrassed, I asked, “Why?”

“Look at it. It looks like a movie prop.”

“So? It’s sharp.” I pointed it at him. “It’s got a pointy tip.”

“You’re not going to be sword fighting. I mean, get it if you want. I’m betting it’s a piece of shit.” Murphy grabbed a Zombie Killer off of the display rack, tore off the packaging and wrapped his fingers around the handle a couple of times until he had a good grip. He stepped over to the end of the aisle, gave me a smile and started hacking at the metal shelving.

I jumped back as pieces of merchandise flew. All along its forty feet, the shelf rattled with each impact.

On the third hack, the blade got stuck and Murphy had to wrestle it back out again. Breathing heavily from the exertion, he held the Zombie Killer out so I could see the blade.

“Holy crap.” The blade had big gouges where it had hit the shelf. One gouge looked like the blade had been bitten away by a sizable lizard. I looked down at my blade and back at Murphy’s. Was the Zombie Killer really that shoddy? Or was Murphy just that strong? “Let me try.”

I hauled back and swung the machete at the same shelf. Mine got stuck on the first swing. I wrenched it out and hacked twice more. When I was done, I held up my Zombie Killer and compared it to Murphy’s. It looked just as bad. Even the plastic handle was cracked. I couldn’t believe it. It had looked so damn lethal. “What a piece of crap.”

“Uh-huh.” Murphy tossed his Zombie Killer on the floor.

Looking at the price, I said, “I can’t believe this thing cost sixty bucks.” I dropped it.

Murphy pointed to the most utilitarian of the machetes on the display. It had a plain wooden handle and was wider at the end of the blade than near the handle. It looked quite a bit like my first machete. Its blade didn’t glisten and it didn’t have a name. It was just a machete. It cost seventeen dollars. I picked it up to see how it felt in my hand.

Murphy nodded at the shelf. “Try it.”

“Okay.” I went after the shelving unit just as before. The blade had more weight than the Zombie Killer and it hit the thin metal shelf and bit in deeply. I yanked it out and hacked twice more. When I was done, I held the blade up for inspection. It was nicked, but there was no significant damage.

“I know which one I’d buy, if I was a machete man.” Murphy nodded at the blade in my hand, just in case I needed a hint.

“I agree. And I’ll save forty-three dollars.”

“Plus tax.” Murphy turned and headed over to look at other bladed tools on the aisle.

I left the nicked machete on the shelf, put four more into our shopping basket and took the last for myself. While Murphy selected some hatchets, several axes, a few dozen knives and propane lanterns, I worked on fitting my machete sheath across my back so I could pull it out over my shoulder without cutting my ear off.

I practiced the movement several times and pumped myself up with badass confidence. I’d wielded my last machete through some pretty horrific business. Having one in my hand felt good.

We loaded the last of the gear into the Humvee’s back seats. Murphy put himself in the driver’s seat while I got in on the passenger side and we drove out into the rain.

Chapter 37

“What time is it?”

Murphy looked at his big gold watch. “Twenty after four.” He turned onto an exit ramp for Highway 183 and drove the Humvee north in the southbound lanes.

“The rain is letting up.” I looked through the windows to see behind us. The sky was black to the south and east.

Murphy took a long look at the clouds. “Looks like the worst of it is past.”

Every detention pond I could see was brimming. Every low spot in the road was a pond. Water flowed down every slope. “I think we’ve got plenty of time to make it back before dark.”

“I don’t want to spend the night out here.”

“With the rain past us, the Whites are going to start coming out again. It might be slow going.”

Murphy shrugged. “I’ll run ‘em down.”

The rain was falling lightly and we had good visibility. We made quick time running north on the highway. As we drove, I kept an eye out for the SUV we’d towed back onto the road. I wondered if they made it out of town.

Some of the infected were coming out of their hiding places in the stalled cars on the northbound lanes. A few were venturing out of businesses lining the access roads. None gave chase, however. Most seemed too distracted, frazzled by their experience in the storm. That was good to know. Thunderstorms were advantageous times for us.

We got off of 183 at Anderson Mill Road and Murphy deftly wove the Humvee through a jam of cars at the intersection. He manhandled it through a ditch with several feet of flowing water to get around a long row of parked cars with broken windows. Some of those held corpses.

After a few miles, the road was lined on both sides with six-foot stonewalls built to keep the noise of the traffic out of the neighborhoods. They also served to keep the infected residents corralled inside. At least, those not bright enough to find their way out along the roads that cut through the walls. As with every other street in the city, sometimes a few cars and sometimes many were in the road, on the shoulders and on the sidewalks. Some were wrecked, but many simply empty, with doors swung open.

At the intersection of Anderson Mill Road and FM 620, cars were crowded at every angle. To get through, Murphy used the Humvee’s bumper to push a minivan into a ditch. That opened a way across somebody’s lawn and a path into a shopping center parking lot. Of course, the section of the parking lot in front of the big grocery store which anchored one end of the shopping center was a maze of abandoned vehicles and shopping carts.

Some of the infected came out of their rain shelters as we navigated the parking lot. We were moving slowly enough that it was easy for a couple of them to jump onto the Humvee. But their presence didn’t bother either of us. Perhaps we were becoming used to the Whites.

“I’ll shake ‘em off when we get out on 620.”

I pointed to a restaurant in the strip center. “I used to go there for tacos.”

“Torchy’s?”

“They make some damn good tacos.”

“Never been.”

“That’s too bad. All mankind ever built or ever did, every war, every pyramid, every medical discovery were just sign posts on the way to the pinnacle of mankind’s greatest success, the Torchy’s taco.”

“I miss hamburgers.”

“You’re a burger man?”

“Not just any burger. There’s a place called Hopdoddy down on South Congress. Man, what I wouldn’t do for a big burger and a cold beer.”

“I hear ya.”

Murphy bounced the Humvee through deep running water in another ditch. Both of our infected riders lost their grip and fell off. That put us westbound on FM 620, finally heading toward the Colorado River and home.

We passed a dealership that specialized in exotic and restored cars. “I used to drive by that place all the time and drool.”

Nice old automobiles were still parked in the lot in front of the building. Murphy looked over. “You used to live around here?”

I pointed north. “My mom lived a couple miles that way.”

“So this is where you grew up.”

“Yeah.”

“This is memory lane for you, then.”

I thought about that for a moment. “No. Maybe. I hate this place.”

“Doesn’t seem like it.”

“I know. Just keep driving.”

He did.

I looked around at the trees growing thicker along the roadsides as the number of businesses thinned out. Most of the property along FM 620—on the northern edge of Austin—hadn’t yet been developed. Now it never would be.

The sky was still matted in a thick layer of clouds, but the rain only sprinkled lightly down. We passed fewer and fewer abandoned cars the further we drove. Even the Whites were absent, another inexplicable black hole. I wondered about that until I slipped off into an old fantasy, imagining myself as the last living man on Earth, a fantasy not so far from my new truth. I thought about all of the things from the world I lost that I loved or hated. And oddly, in all of that, the loss that seemed most significant at that moment was Torchy’s Tacos.

Of course, that conclusion made me feel like a total shit.

Chapter 38

The thing people never think about when they speed up and down the streets and highways is how the road undulates up and down with the terrain. If the road doesn’t slope up and down too steeply, all roads seem flat. Car engines do all the work of climbing low hills at seventy miles an hour, and drivers seldom notice the change in effort. But when those once-a-decade floods come, the low spots make themselves visible by filling or running with water.

Our Humvee crested one of those undulations in the terrain along a road I’d always thought of as flat. But it wasn’t. Murphy brought the Humvee to a fast stop.

A river flowed a quarter mile wide across the road in front of us.

Without a word, Murphy got out of the Humvee, leaving the door open while he walked out in front. He stood and stared at the water.

I followed.

“You got another way down to the river, professor?”

I looked at a wall of cedars that paralleled the road. To the left, another forest of cedars and oaks bordered the thoroughfare. Water flowed out of the forest on one side and into the forest on the other. In between was no evidence any road lay underneath.

Shaking my head, I said, “There’s no river here to flood. There’s not even a creek bed that I remember.”

Murphy looked around. “What are we gonna do?”

I shrugged. “It’ll be like this all over town.”

“We made it here just fine.”

“We came this way on purpose, Murphy. All this water is flowing toward the river. We never would have made it across town. We’d have had to cross rivers like this everywhere there was a creek. You saw Waller Creek. All that rain water has to go somewhere.”

“The Colorado River.”

“Eventually.”

“How long do you think it’ll keep flowing like this?”

How the hell would I know that? “A couple of hours. A couple of days.”

Murphy looked at the sky to the north. “What are the chances we’ll get more rain, do you think?”

“A hundred percent.”

“I mean, really.”

“I don’t know. I’m sure it’ll rain more. But holy crap, how much longer could it possibly rain like it did this morning and this afternoon?”

“You live in this part of town.” Murphy pointed at the new river flowing over the road. “Does this usually flood?”

“Never.”

“And you’d know, right? You drive this way, right?”

I pointed down the road. “Mansfield Dam is four or five miles that way. This is the way to Lake Travis. I’ve gone this way a thousand times.”

Murphy put his hands on his hips and stared at the water for a while. He turned and looked back up the road. He and I were still the only living things we’d seen since turning on to 620.

While Murphy was coming to a decision about how to proceed, I took the time to take a hard look at the woods on both sides of the road. Nothing was there, nothing with a heartbeat anyway. I took a seat up on the hood of the Humvee and watched the water flow by. I wondered whether it would eventually finish draining off of the land to our north and allow us to pass.

Murphy walked around, silent, looking at the water, looking back up the road. We were stuck and he wasn’t happy about it. In fact, his face was showing more and more worry with each passing minute.

Finally, when he was standing beside the Humvee and looking at the water, I asked, “What are you thinking?”

“With all of this water flowing into the Colorado River, what are the chances it’ll flood below the dam?”

“I honestly don’t know, Murphy.”

“I’m worried.”

“I can see that.”

“I love her, Zed.”

“Say what?”

“Don’t be a dick. I just told you that I love Mandi.”

I wasn’t sure how that fit into the context. “I’m happy for you guys.”

“I’m not used to worrying like this.”

“I hear ya.”

Murphy looked back up the road, perhaps trying to think of another way to get back to the riverboat.

“You’re thinking they might get in trouble if the river floods?”

Murphy nodded. He was deeply concerned.

“I’ll tell you what. You know as well as I do, every time it floods, you see on the news how some dumbass tries to drive their car across a low water crossing and ends up drowning when the car gets washed down the creek. Right?”

“That’s what worries me, man. I’m thinking about doing the stupid thing and just driving across.”

“You’re that worried?”

Murphy gave me a nod.

“Listen. You get in the Humvee. I’m going to walk out there, you know, see how deep it is. See how strong the current is flowing.”

Murphy shook his head. “You can’t do that.”

“Don’t sweat it. Worst case, I get washed across the road and into the trees. If I’m in the trees, I can hold onto something until the current abates.”

“That’s dangerous.”

“But if you’re really concerned about Mandi…” I looked back at the wide new river. “I can handle myself in that. I’ll take the chance. Who knows, it might be safe enough to drive across. That’s what we need to find out, right?”

“Thanks, man. Wait, I’ve got a better idea.”

Chapter 39

One end of the rope was tied to the Humvee’s grill guard. One end was tied around my waist, with maybe fifty feet in between. I waded out into the water and Murphy drove behind, keeping the rope stretched loosely between us.

At a hundred feet across the new river, the water was still only half way up my calves. The current was noticeable, but not strong. I wasn’t in danger of losing my footing, though the current did tend to trip me up when my feet crossed.

To my surprise, the water at the halfway point was only just over my knees. I was having a little trouble keeping my feet under me by then, but the heavy Humvee seemed to be doing okay. I stopped, turned to Murphy, and raised my palms to the sky. “What you think?”

Murphy swung his door open and stuck his head out. “I’ll chance it if you will.”

“You always say I take too many chances.”

“We’ve come this far. Let’s do it.”

I pushed on through the water and hoped. But the thing Murphy and I hadn’t really thought about in our brief conversation was he was nearly fifty feet behind me and in slightly shallower water. That became clear when I heard the Humvee’s engine rev. I turned at the sound, just in time to see the armored vehicle slip to the left as the current got underneath and pushed it across the road.

It was touch and go. It would slip. It would stop. I was frozen in my footsteps, wondering what I should do. Murphy quickly passed the point of wondering what he should do and chose to rev the engine higher. The Humvee accelerated toward me.

With no desire to be run down, I took off at a clumsy run through the knee-deep water, angling to my left to get out of the Humvee’s way, working with little effect at the knotted rope around my waist as I sloshed.

I made it out of the Humvee’s path for the moment, with full faith Murphy wouldn’t run me over. But I also knew he didn’t have full control over the Humvee’s direction. He was accelerating to get through the deepest part of the water—maybe a good idea, maybe not—but that choice was dangerous to me. Hell, even if he did avoid getting me stuck under his tires, at some point those tires would gain full traction on the asphalt. Being tethered to the vehicle might not turn out well for me.

With a sigh of relief, I got the knot untied and dropped the rope.

The Humvee was passing me by then, about twenty feet to my right, and splashing up a heavy wave that hit me and knocked me off of my feet. Weighed down with my equipment, I sank in the shallow water and the current started dragging me across the asphalt. I tried to sit up. I caught a breath, but the current pushed me back over.

Dammit. I’m not going to drown in twenty inches of water.

Rolling over onto my belly, I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. The rough asphalt tore at my knees and palms, but the friction brought me to a stop. I breathed deeply and looked up.

The Humvee was back in ankle-deep water again and Murphy was hanging out the door, looking back. It was clear from the look on his face he was only seconds from abandoning the Humvee and coming after me.

I gave him a wave to let him know I was all right and his grin stretched wide.

The worst was behind us.

Chapter 40

At the corner of Ranch Road 2222 and Ranch Road 620, the largest intersection for miles in any direction, we had to navigate through the usual maze of abandoned cars. The infected from nearby apartment complexes and shopping centers found their way back outside. After days of being cooped up, staying out of the rain with nothing but the grumbling in their stomachs to keep them occupied, they were ravenous. And, if I dare say, more than a little rude about it.

We picked up four of them by the time we were moving southeast on 2222. One was on the roof, one on the hood, and two were hanging onto the passenger side.

Murphy said, “There’s a big hill up here in a couple of miles.”

“Don’t sweat it. We’re not going down that hill. About a mile ahead, there’s a light. Turn right.”

“How well do you know that road? Do you think we’ll get stuck in some more flood water?”

“The roads we’ll be taking run along the crests of the hills. You know, so the houses on both sides will have those million-dollar views. I’m pretty sure we’ll be good.”

“Did you used to date a girl in this neighborhood, too?”

“Nope. I had a stoner friend who lived out here.”

Murphy started to run through his maneuvers to shake off the four infected clinging to the Humvee.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” I said. “With the rain stopping and the Whites starting to come out, we’ll probably pick up some more going through these neighborhoods.”

“Yeah.” Murphy steadied the Humvee in the center of the road.

“We can try and lose them all once we get closer to where we’re going.”

“How close can we get to the river?”

“If we do get through on these roads, there’s a street called Far View. It runs along the crest of a big hill on this side of the river. When you’re driving on that road you can see between the houses. The river is down below.”

“How close do you think that is to the riverboat?”

“I think we’ll be able to see the riverboat from there.” I pointed at the intersection coming up in front of us. “This is the place. Turn right here.”

The intersection was blocked with too many stalled vehicles, so we had to turn around and go back a half-block. A few quick turns later, we were on River Place Boulevard, heading directly toward the Colorado River again.

Murphy gestured toward the backseat. “We got a lot of stuff here. What are you thinking we should do with it? How do we get it to the boat if we’re up on a hill?”

“I think we find a safe place to park, hike down to the river, find a boat of some kind to get home and come back here in a couple of days when things have settled a bit. Heck, maybe we can even drive the Humvee right down to the river once all the roads dry out. I know there are houses close to the river. I just don’t know how to get to them.”

“The infected will be out.”

“Yeah, we’ll figure it out.”

With more than one wrong turn on winding roads—most of my memories of the neighborhood were made when I had at least a few extra chemicals in my blood—we found our way to a narrow, little no-name ribbon of pavement that looked like somebody’s driveway. It cut between Narrow Ridge Drive and Glenlake Drive. After that, Far View Drive was the first right. By then, we’d driven too fast over too many speed bumps and our friends without pigment had lost their grip and fallen off.

Scanning across the road and looking into the yards on both sides of the street, I said, “I don’t see any infected around right now. What do you say we pull over and jump out while we can?”

“How close are we?”

“I won’t know until we get a clear view of the river.”

Murphy turned the Humvee into the first driveway on the left and followed a long, steep curve down to a courtyard big enough to turn around in. In front of us was a four-car garage. The house on our right had so much glass on the front and back, I could see right through to the low-hanging clouds above the hills on the other side of the river.

Murphy cut the engine and we both took a good look around before getting out.

Coming together at the front of the car, we continued to keep an eye on the dying landscaping while we situated our weapons. I adjusted my sling so my rifle was hanging down my back. In my left hand, I held my pistol, in my right, my new machete. I was ready. “You want to go around back? I’m betting the deck has a view of the whole river.”

“Let’s go straight through.”

I shrugged. Murphy led the way.

At the front door, he knocked with the handle of the hatchet.

We waited.

Knocking was a pretty effective way to bring infected residents out into view. But none obliged us by coming to the front door.

Murphy knocked again. It was a big house, after all.

We waited.

Nobody came.

“One more time?” I asked.

Murphy knocked, waited a few moments and tried the doorknob. It turned and clicked. The front door swung open on silent, well-lubricated hinges. In we went.

The air inside was hot and stale, but didn’t reek of rot. Everything appeared to be in order. Not even the usual clutter of life collected on the counters and tables of most peoples’ houses was anywhere to be seen.

Must be nice to have a maid.

“Hey,” Murphy called up into the towering space above us in the foyer.

I could see all of the main living room, much of the kitchen and down a hall to our left. Above us, a loft opened up to more space on the second floor. “I don’t think anybody was here when the virus hit.”

“Doesn’t look that way.” Murphy was already moving across the living room toward a pair of French doors that led to an outdoor living space with a view to envy. I closed the front door behind us and followed. Sizing the place up for possible refuge as I went, I quickly came to the conclusion too much glass on the ground floor meant the house was vulnerable.

Murphy swung the back door open and hurried across a wide, stone-covered deck, coming to a stop at the railing a dozen steps ahead of me. He looked downriver, then upriver. He stiffened visibly with tension.

Knowing something was up when I hit the rail, I looked upriver and spotted the riverboat, maybe a mile distant. But that wasn’t all.

Chapter 41

The naked horde was streaming up the north bank of the river, thousands and thousands of them, congregating in a screaming mass of angry arms and grasping hands, a hundred feet from the riverboat anchored in the current.

Everything I saw down the steep mountainside was wrong. Black diesel smoke was pouring out of the riverboat’s exhaust pipes. Someone was hoping the combination of anchor and engines would keep the boat from being washed downriver. The engines were straining in the current. The rough water behind the boat’s propellers was frothy white. The deep-throated diesels rumbled through the shouts of the infected.

The boat drifted from side to side on its bow anchor. The river’s surface wasn’t smooth. It was flowing. It was rough—I’d never seen it that way—and it was wide. Way up over its banks.

The remains of a boathouse floated past the riverboat. Debris, two-by-fours, siding and half of a house’s roof were jostled through the current and down the river. A capsized ski boat and a dozen white-skinned bodies were in the water. On the banks, the river flowed white between trees and around houses built too close to the bank.

Murphy’s voice, empty and sounding like it was speaking a thought that sneaked out without any conscious choice, said, “Holy shit.”

“This part of the river never floods,” I muttered in a pointless defense of what I’d said much earlier. “It never floods.”

But the water was rising, even as we watched.

A house on the south bank, directly across the river from us, collapsed and came to pieces in the water running over its foundation.

The wind picked up in a blast that blew needle-like droplets of rain into my eyes. Looking up, I saw a mass of roiling black clouds above a wall of torrential gray rain stretched across the sky north of us and moving our way. Lightning illuminated the clouds from within, and thunder rumbled over us.

The storm wasn’t done yet.

Murphy was the first to react. “We need to get down there.” He looked for a way to get off of the deck and down to the steeply sloping yard ten feet below.

Without the slightest inkling of a plan, without any idea of whether we could help or whether those on the boat needed it, especially without any idea of whether we could even get there, I hollered, “Fuck it!” With one hand on the rail, I vaulted over the side, trying to control my fall.

I hit the wet grass squarely with both feet, but they slipped out from underneath me, sending me skidding and rolling down the length of the backyard, until I hit the thin metal bars of a fence fifty or sixty feet down the slope.

With a grunt, Murphy hit the fence beside me.

Catching my breath, I asked, “You all right?” While waiting for an answer, I checked that I could move my arms, legs, fingers and toes. Nothing seemed to be broken.

Up on his knees, holding himself steady on a fence post, Murphy said, “I’ll live.”

Realizing that I no longer had my machete, I looked for it in the grass.

God, it was stupid of me to jump with that in my hand.

Thankfully, rather than being stuck in me, it was stuck straight up in the dirt near where I’d first hit the turf. My pistol, which I’d stuck in my belt just a second before jumping, was in the grass halfway up the slope.

“We should have looked for a better way down,” Murphy grumbled.

He was right.

Going back up the slippery grass slope easily ate up any time I’d saved by following my impulse to get down the hill quickly. Nevertheless, we were soon over the fence and doing some combination of jogging, slipping and falling as we cut across the steep slope toward the river and toward the boat that, for the moment, was keeping our friends safe.

Chapter 42

We were maybe a third of the way down the mountain, out of breath, standing on a limestone outcrop, looking for a path that didn’t seem to get steeper or more rugged as it went. Directly below us was a hundred-foot drop straight down a jagged cliff face. The wind was howling out of the north by then, carrying on it the haunting wails of the infected at the river’s edge.

Murphy was pointing to a path that looked like a promising way down when the riverboat’s anchor line snapped with a crack that cut through the wind and the voices of the Whites.

Even as the thick rope recoiled into the air, the riverboat was already spinning sideways. The current relentlessly drove it to shore, on our side of the river, where the Whites were screaming their excitement at their shift in fortune.

“You still have grenades?” Murphy hollered as he started to run.

I had four or five in my bag. I jumped off the outcrop and ran through the gap in the cedars that just swallowed Murphy. He wasn’t running down the hill so much as across it. It took only a moment to figure out he was headed to the top of another cliff that might put us above the bulk of the horde on shore. Well, not really above, but close enough.

The riverboat’s path was erratic as it struggled against the current. Figures ran across the top deck. One stopped and pointed. The boat listed hard to starboard and the figures on the upper deck tumbled toward the side rail.

“Faster,” I shouted.

Murphy and I were both running between scrubby cedars on a thirty-degree slope across rocky limestone so rugged that it promised to break ankles at any misstep. An impossibly loud scrape of metal hull on stone stopped us in our tracks.

We were out of time.

The current was pushing the riverboat across the rocky bottom close to shore. It listed further to starboard and the bow jammed between several large oaks just south of the horde’s main body.

Murphy already had a grenade in his hand and positioned himself at the edge of a thirty-foot drop. The nearest tree was far below. He heaved the grenade without a hope of reaching any White near the shore. It arced through open air.

As I awkwardly fished a grenade out of my Hello Kitty backpack, Murphy’s grenade flashed fire and exploded in the air just above the trees. A thunder crack of sound hit us a fraction of a second later and I understood Murphy’s purpose. Another of his grenades was already in the air.

I tossed a grenade, dropped to a knee and unscrewed my silencer as fast as I could. Once it was off, I started firing ineffectual, but noisy, rounds toward the mass of Whites below. Murphy and I were noisy bait, trying to draw the horde’s attention away from the riverboat.

But my rifle wasn’t the only one firing.

The riverboat erupted in gunfire as Whites climbed through broken oak branches and made their way onto the sloping decks.

Run. Go for the ski boat.

I aimed at Whites on the bow of the boat, but they were so far away. Round after noisy round blazed through the barrel of my rifle. Each seemed to evaporate in the air on the way to their distant targets.

More grenade explosions and then Murphy’s rifle came alive.

Far below us, tempted by our noise, hundreds of the horde were screaming up the cliff, making their way through the trees. But it wasn’t enough.

Down on the riverboat, three people were climbing to the roof of the pilothouse as a wave of Whites flowed onto the upper deck.

“Jump,” shouted Murphy.

It was Mandi and Brittany on the pilothouse, followed by slow Russell.

A ski boat with four occupants disconnected from the far side of the boat. It struggled in the current as it slipped fifty, then eighty yards downstream before it came around. Dalhover’s spidery figure stood in the bow with a rifle at his shoulder, spewing bullets at the Whites on the boat. Amy took up a position beside him and added her weapon to his fire.

Whites were on the ladder up to the pilothouse roof.

Russell stood at the back corner, pushing Brittany behind him as he screamed, face upturned to the clouds. Bravely, Mandi held her ground on the center of the roof and shattered each bald white head with bullets from her gun.

“Jump. Dammit, jump,” Murphy shouted.

It was thirty feet to the water from up on top, a scary height from which to jump into a violent current.

Please, jump.

I reloaded and emptied another magazine in the direction of the boat. The effort felt frustratingly futile. But I had to do something, and pulling the trigger on my weapon seemed the only thing I could do that had any hope of helping my friends.

Mandi stopped firing and fumbled with a magazine.

Dammit, she should have practiced that.

Dammit.

Fuck.

Whites were on the roof.

She got another magazine pushed into the receiver on her rifle and fired, but five or six Whites were on the roof by then. Jumping into the water was the only escape, but for some reason, she didn’t see that.

Whites fell in front of her as she pulled the trigger again and again, and again, backing up a step each time the fire shot out of the end of her gun.

Then she was empty and reaching for another magazine.

Murphy howled.

Mandi tried to reload but was instantly overwhelmed.

Horrified, I stopped firing.

Mandi kicked and punched and fought, but too many hands were clawing, too many jaws snapped.

More Whites flowed past the melee. Brittany hugged Russell from behind, burying her face in the small of his back, and then the Whites were on them, too.

For an impossibly long moment, Russell stood firm, as hands tore at his clothes and clawed at his skin, shielding little Brittany. But one grabbed her arm and pulled her away. It seemed the only thing I heard was Russell’s pained scream. The only thing I saw was bloody white skin.

Dalhover and Amy stopped firing and their boat started to drift down the river. The black clouds rolled over. The wall of rain hit us and hid the world from view. I could barely see a dozen feet in any direction. The wind threatened to blow us off the rock and lightening blazed all around.

With my voice cracking, I said, “We have to go, Murph.”

Chapter 43

I was torn between hunkering down in a safe place or rushing out into the storm—doubling down on futile action, which seemed to be the order of the day—in an effort to go all Null Spot and find Steph and the other survivors from the boat. But Steph was with Dalhover. Dalhover was as smart, resourceful and tough as he was abrasive. Hell, they were all smart, resourceful and tough. I couldn’t offer any help they would need. I chose instead to ride out the storm in the house with all the windows, the one on the ridge where we had parked our Humvee.

The storm blew itself out overnight and the sun rose to clear blue skies and blazing heat. The drought was broken. The heat wasn’t. Autumn should have been knocking on the door, but was tardy.

Murphy, who’d turned into a silent statue of himself, went out on the back deck early that morning and sat. He didn’t eat, though there was plenty of food in the house. He didn’t drink. Most noticeably, he didn’t speak. He stared at the sunrise. He watched the river below. He watched the sun go down later that day. He just sat in his chair and watched the colors of the world change.

I realized that as much as I wanted to go downriver and find Steph and the others, the person who was most likely to benefit from any help I could give was Murphy. And though I didn’t explicitly do anything to help, Murphy needed time to recover—he loved Mandi. I kept an eye out for him while he stared despondently at nothing and tried to find an open road to pass through his grief.

On the second day, I awoke on the couch in the living room. When I sat up, I saw Murphy standing at the rail on the deck with a box of dry cereal in his hand. I watched for a moment and saw him eat a handful and the concern I’d had the previous day started to fade.

I went outside and took up a position by the rail a few feet to his right. I glanced down at the cereal. He scooped a handful for himself and handed the box to me. It was a little stale after a month in the pantry, but it was better than no breakfast.

Far below us, the water level had dropped, but the current in the river was still running fast. All of the hills had been saturated in the storm and the runoff was filling the creeks, which flowed down to the Colorado River. All up and down the valley, wide swaths of debris, uprooted trees, and demolished houses littered the banks.

“Why don’t we ever see any normal people?” Murphy asked, eyes wandering over the flood destruction below.

For a few long minutes, I thought about that. Or I thought about what I should say about what had happened two days before. “Are you all right?”

Murphy nodded, turned to me and put on his familiar smile, but his smile was alone on his face. His eyes were sad and angry.

In the absence of an answer, I leaned on the rail and looked at the wall of trees growing just outside the backyard fence. Nothing was moving but branches swaying in the wind. We had no infected company that could be seen. “You know, Murphy. I admire you in a lot of ways.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re Murphy.”

No response.

“Do you remember that day when we went to your mom’s house?”

“Have you ever tried to cheer somebody up before, Zed? ‘Cause you’re not very good at it.”

“I’m not trying to cheer you up, Murphy.”

“My mistake.”

“I know it’s hard, what happened the other day.”

“Yep.” Sitting on the rail on the other side of Murphy was a coffee cup. Murphy picked it up and took a sip.

“I can’t imagine how hard it is for you to smile when you do, when the world just wants to be a big fucked up mess.”

Murphy didn’t say anything about that. Something down in the river seemed to have grabbed his attention and wouldn’t let go.

“What I’m saying is, I’m with you, no matter what you need to do. You want to stay here and stare at the walls, I’m here with you. You want to go downriver, I’m there with you. If you need to cry about it, I won’t shame you for it.”

“Big boys don’t cry.”

“Everybody who’s still alive cries. It might be the only thing that keeps us human.”

Murphy nodded and watched as a couple of mockingbirds swooped into the backyard, aerobatically chasing a grasshopper.

I figured I’d try humor. “You know, I already went online and ordered my What Would Murphy Do bracelet.” I smiled. “Don’t let me down, man.”

Murphy chose to answer. “You know what Murphy would do?”

“No.”

“Murphy would kill some Whites. Murphy needs to kill some fucking Whites.”

We said nothing for a long time.

To have Murphy wholly invested in my plan to slaughter Smart Ones was one of my goals. But the cost he paid, we paid, for that was too high. Hell, we didn’t yet know the full cost. Steph, Dalhover, Amy and Megan had all gone down the flooding river with the current. Who knew if they’d found a safe place or drowned?

Could it be they all died?

The thought sent a grievously sharp pang through my heart.

Thinking about all of that while the sun slowly rose in the late morning sky, I asked about something that had been bothering me. “Is this all my fault?”

Murphy shook his head and looked disappointed. “Self-pity?”

“No.” I looked up at him. “If we’d been there with them instead of going off and chasing across town, would it have turned out differently? Could we have saved them?” It wasn’t self-pity. I really wondered. I needed to know if I was making bad choices that were hurting people.

“As much as I’d like to blame you for dragging me off, Zed, as much as I’d love to punch you in the head until I felt better, I know I might as well go out there and punch a tree trunk. What happened wasn’t anybody’s fault. Nobody knew God was gonna drop a Noah flood on us. Nobody knew the anchor line was gonna break. After that happened, nobody could have done anything. Maybe if we’d been there, the outcome would have been different. Maybe we’d both be dead now. Maybe all of us would be.”

Did that make me feel better, blaming it all on random circumstance?

“We need to go downriver and see if we can find the others,” Murphy said.

I nodded and looked downriver. “Thanks. I need to know if they made it.”

Murphy looked at me. He knew I was mostly talking about Steph. “Seems the only way we’re gonna know for sure is to hike down there and find something that’ll still float. That’s the only way to get downriver that makes sense. Do you remember which boat they took?”

The picture of Dalhover and Steph firing from the bow of that boat was etched into my memory but the painful memory that followed. “Yep. It was the Malibu with the black hull.”

Changing the subject, Murphy pointed down to where the riverboat had run aground. “It’s gone.”

I looked down the length of river visible from our perch. Just to keep the conversation going, I said, “Do you think it sank, or washed down?”

Murphy shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“I don’t see any Whites down there anywhere.”

“Maybe they’re afraid to come out.”

“Should we test out these silencers to make sure they work like we hoped, before we put ourselves in a situation where we’re depending on them?”

“Might want to. When we get down there, we could shoot some Whites from the boat and see what the others do.”

“But they’ll be able to see us. It might be the visual cue of the gun will be enough to set them off. Hell, just them seeing us in the boat will be enough.”

“What do you think, then?”

Chapter 44

Ten minutes later, Murphy and I were up by the road in the trees, looking for Whites. None were out.

“How long do you want to wait?” Murphy asked.

“I want to get this done and get down the river.”

“Well, there aren’t any infected out.”

“Okay.” I gave Murphy a nod that said, “Watch this,” and hollered out into the street. “Hey monsters. Time for second breakfast.”

Heads immediately popped up out of bushes and from behind parked cars.

Murphy raised his rifle to his shoulder and aimed at an infected man two houses down . The white was slowly standing up, looking back and forth, and searching for the source of the voice he’d just heard.

The rifle cracked. Blood erupted from a wound and the infected man crumpled into the bush.

I hissed. “Shit.”

“What?”

“That was loud.”

“That’s ‘cause we’re right here by it.” With the barrel of his rifle, Murphy gestured at a couple of Whites three houses down. “I don’t think those ones heard it, or they don’t know what the sound was.”

Indeed, the pair of infected women was walking gingerly down a driveway, looking around. They knew something was up, but they definitely weren’t running toward the sound from Murphy’s rifle.

With only one way to know for sure, I knelt, leveled my rifle at the nearest of the pair and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. Neither of the infected women fell. Neither of them ran in our direction. Neither of them even looked at us.

“You got blanks in that thing?” Murphy grinned. It was good to see a grin, but it still held an emptiness that would take a long time to fill.

“I missed. It’s no secret you’re a better shot.”

Murphy took the next shot and one of the infected women fell. The other jumped back, frozen in surprise.

“Show off.” I fired another round and then another. “Damn.”

None of the infected was coming at us. I counted seven on their feet up and down the street, suspicious, but with inadequate senses and insufficient brainpower to figure out what was going on. At least the silencers seemed to be working as hoped.

Murphy said, “Give me your gun. There’s got to be something wrong with it, unless you’re the only person in the world who gets worse with practice.”

Yeah, that had to be it. The rifle was faulty somehow. Maybe the sights were misaligned. I unclipped the rifle from my sling and we traded weapons. Murphy gave my rifle a quick inspection and raised it to his shoulder. With only a moment’s pause, he pulled the trigger. The rifle cracked. The second infected woman in the driveway fell.

“What the hell?”

Murphy shook his head as he lowered the weapon. “This rifle’s fine.”

“Crap, I suck with guns.”

“I’ll draw them closer in. Shoot at them when they’re near and see how that works for you. It just takes practice, is all.”

I shook my head at my frustration. “I’ve been practicing a lot.”

Murphy hollered, “Come and get it.”

That got the attention of the remaining five, who all started heading toward us, looking back and forth to find the source of the voice.

I pointed my rifle at a man who was jogging in the middle of the street and bearing down on us. At two houses distant, I fired. Miss.

I fired again. Another miss.

“Take a deep breath,” Murphy said.

The guy was in front of the house next door. I fired and missed. He looked right at the spot in the trees where we were hiding and ran straight for us.

At ten feet away, I fired again and hit him in the chest. At that point, the other Whites on the street, having seen the man run toward us with all of the certainty infected body language could convey, were also running at our position.

Murphy and I went to work shooting them down. That’s to say, I squeezed off another six rounds at the sky, houses and shrubs, while Murphy killed the rest of them.

Angry with myself, I asked, “What am I doing wrong?”

“Not sure. I was kinda too busy to watch.”

“Well, thanks.”

“For?”

“For killing them. Because if we were going to depend on me to shoot them, we’d be getting eaten right now.”

“Man, don’t get so down on yourself. We learned something pretty important.”

Sarcastically, I said, “That the silencers work.”

“More important.”

“And that is?”

“Zed, it’s like when you get mad, your brain stops working or something. Because this is exactly the kind of shit you’re good at figuring out. And then lecturing me on.”

“Just tell me what you want to tell me.” I wasn’t in the mood for guessing.

“When you missed that first dude, it was no big deal. He didn’t hear the sound of the gun, or he was too far away to figure out what the sound was. When he got close enough, though, he could tell. Did you see that just before you killed him? When you fired that last shot that missed, he made a beeline for us. He knew we were shooting.”

“Ah.”

“Exactly. Ah. The silencers are exactly what we hoped for, but when the infected are too close, the silencers aren’t silent enough.”

I smiled. That was a great thing to learn. I frowned. “So by the time they’re close enough for me to hit them, they’re close enough to figure out that I’m shooting at them. Great.”

Chapter 45

We stashed the Humvee in the house’s garage, took on full loads of ammunition, about a half-dozen hand grenades each, and enough food to last several days. Then it was through the house, across the backyard and over the fence. With no wind and no rain, the jagged limestone slope down to the river was significantly less dangerous than it had been a few days before. Still, it took more than an hour for us to make our way to the water’s edge.

The river was flowing fast and it was still at least a foot higher than normal. But up in the branches of the trees – the ones that made it through the flood with roots still in the ground – were clumps of grass, gobs of mud and parts of houses. Up the slope of the bank were broken boats, coolers, boards, furniture, housewares, pretty much everything you could imagine, much of it shattered into puzzle pieces of the whole, covered in a film or a thick layer of mud. And in all of that were the bodies, naked, white and bloated with gasses of decay. The heat was accelerating the growth of putrefying bacteria and everything stank of death.

For the first mile of our trek along the river, we saw several ski boats, some intact, most not. But none close enough to the water so we could guess at how to get them afloat. We did come across a Sea-Doo that looked plenty big to hold us both. We sweated and shoved it across fifty feet of rough ground to get it in the water, only to find it wouldn’t start.

Along the way, we didn’t see a single living White. We saw plenty more bodies with bellies distending in the heat, on the shore with arms or legs bobbing in the edge of the water. Some were half-buried in drifts of wooden debris. More than a few were lodged in tree branches over our heads.

Eventually, we found a plastic yellow kayak thing along with a canoe paddle and a fence board. We pushed it out into the river and used it to float with the current. But even that held a significant disadvantage. The current carried us too quickly to adequately survey the destruction on both sides of the river.

Struggling to slow the kayak with his paddle, Murphy said, “This isn’t going to work.”

“Yeah. That and I feel vulnerable in this thing.”

“Like it’s going to tip over any minute?”

“Exactly,” I said.

“It’s not even a real kayak. It’s like some kind of Fisher Price kiddy kayak or something.”

“How about if we just float with the current and whenever we see a boat that looks seaworthy, we’ll stop and see if we can start the engine?”

“What if the water got into the engines? Do you think they’ll start?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know much of anything about marine engines, but in principle, they’re just like car engines. Air and gas go in one end, exhaust comes out the other. Water can get in just as easily, I guess. If it does, the engine probably won’t start.”

“Makes sense.”

We pulled our paddles out of the water and watched the shoreline.

Murphy said, “If we don’t find a boat, you know we can’t paddle back up river with the current this strong.”

“We’ll have to hike it, then.”

Changing the subject, Murphy said, “I’m seeing lots of dead Whites.”

“Yeah.”

“I wonder how many of them got killed in the flood.”

“Hundreds, at least. It seems like everywhere I look, there’s a body,” I said.

“Not to be a pessimist, but we need to prepare ourselves for what we might find downriver.”

“Meaning?”

“Steph and them got away in that ski boat, but the way the river was flooding, you know there’s a pretty good chance they sank, right?”

I nodded. “I know that. I think I more than know that. I expect that. I’m just hoping for something else.”

“You don’t seem all broken up about it.”

“Maybe you’re rubbing off on me. I’m just trying to think, What Would Murphy Do?”

“Zed, I’m just trying to get through the day, here. I know you like to poke fun at me about trying to smile and move on. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. I’m having a hard time. It’s like everything is weighing me down. I think if I just move my feet I can get back to a good place.”

“Murphy, that’s what I’m doing, too.” I looked at him. “Honestly. I just need to find out if the others made it. I need to help them out if they need the help. Heck, maybe they’re all sitting on a deck on the back of somebody’s house down here waiting for us. I want to give them their silencers. That’s their chance to survive. And we’ve already paid too high of a price for those silencers not to have them put to use.”

Murphy pointed at a ski boat on the bank. I looked over and shook my head. It wasn’t the one we were looking for.

Continuing with my thoughts, I said, “I want to go and kill Smart Ones. I don’t know how many I need to kill. I don’t even know if it makes any sense to do it or not anymore. I don’t know if it ever did. I don’t know if it wasn’t all just a rationalization to take some vengeance out on Mark’s stupid white ass. I really only know I feel the need to kill them the same way I feel a need to eat and breathe. It’s a necessity to me. I can’t explain it better than that. I keep seeing what those Smart Ones are doing. It’s like they’re fucking up the whole Goddamned world and I want to punish them for it.”

Nodding, Murphy said, “Punishing them would feel good.”

I nodded also. “Maybe when enough of them are dead, I’ll get in a Humvee and drive to Balmorhea and sit out there for a few years trying to forget about all of this shit. Maybe I’ll try to figure out if Steph and I can be happy together without all of this bullshit. Maybe I’ll figure out if we’re something more than convenient people to hold onto when the grief gets too heavy to bear. Hell, I want to just wake up in the morning and not have to worry about seeing any dead people, without mourning whoever got killed yesterday or worrying about who’s going to die tomorrow.”

I half-expected a smartass remark from Murphy after going off on my long rant. But I guess even he was past that. And that was sad enough to hurt.

We rounded the bend in the river at City Park and floated past a long row of concrete foundations for McMansions that once stood next to the water. Now those houses were just broken pieces piled into a single mound of debris twenty feet tall among the thick trunks of several dozen cypress trees.

“I’ll be damned.”

The little marina next to Ski Shores Café wasn’t demolished. Well, most of it was, but one of the structures for keeping the boats protected from the elements and hoisted up out of the water was undamaged and still held at least eight boats. The mound of mansion parts saved it from the river’s destructive rush.

Murphy and I paddled hard across the current to get to the mouth of the marina and into the relatively calm water of its shelter. Boards, bodies and other floating debris were caught in the backwater. I didn’t comment on the bodies. In fact, I did my best to ignore them as we pushed the boat past one after another.

We guided the plastic kayak into an empty slip where ropes hung with cleats or pieces of chrome still attached from dangling ends. The boat that had been there must have washed away in the flood. Coming up alongside the remains of a walkway that separated the slips, I took hold of a post and steadied the kayak while Murphy climbed out. He, in turn, gave me a hand out and we lifted our watercraft onto the dock.

“It feels good to be out of that,” Murphy said as he looked around.

I nodded and looked across the inlet to the parking lot where I’d found the food delivery truck. It seemed like such a stroke of luck at the time. It was gone. Well, not gone. Further down the bank, I saw the twisted trailer bent around the trunks of several trees. Ski Shores Café, the restaurant the truck had been parked behind, was gone. Much of its concrete foundation remained, as did several of the old cypress trees that shaded its deck. But not much else was there.

As for the dock we’d found, each of the boats hung several feet above the water on hoists to keep the hulls dry and algae free. Murphy climbed up to the first, a formerly shiny boat with some kind of fast-looking pink design painted on the side. It looked to be covered in a film of mud.

“This might not be the one,” said Murphy.

I couldn’t see anything wrong with the boat from where I stood. “How’s that?”

“It’s full of water.”

“Full?” I wondered how the cables on the hoist system could handle the weight.

“You know what I mean. It’s maybe a foot deep inside.”

Shaking my head, I asked, “Can you see into the others?”

Murphy climbed higher and reached up to take hold of an old black support beam beneath the tin roof. “They’ve all got water in them.”

“You want to try to start that one? Who knows, it might work.”

Murphy swung a leg over into the boat with a splash of shallow water. He sloshed himself over to the helm and fumbled around for a minute. “There’s no key.”

Duh. Of course.

I hadn’t thought of that. I walked out to the end of the dock to see down the row of hanging boats.

Murphy leaned on the gunwale and looked at me. “What do you think?”

“There’s an old one down there.”

Murphy looked.

“The faded aqua one with the Batmobile fins on the back.”

“We’re here. We might as well try it.”

While Murphy climbed out of his boat, I walked over to the main walkway and headed down to the aqua colored boat. Just as Murphy had, I climbed up the hoist equipment until I could step over the side of the hull into the water inside. The willies ran up my spine as I imagined mosquito larvae squirming through the dirty water to cling to my legs.

The boat’s dashboard was simple: a steering wheel, speedometer, fuel gauge and a starter button. I pressed the button, but nothing happened. I exhaled a long, disappointed sigh.

“Bad news?” Murphy asked.

“Won’t start.”

“Back in the kiddy kayak?”

“I guess.”

Chapter 46

It was early afternoon when the current carried us around the last long bend before the river ran straight for a half-mile to the Tom Miller Dam. The rumble of water falling over the dam carried across the river’s surface. A surface covered bank-to-bank with bloated, naked, white bodies, lumber, capsized and swamped boats, trees and life preservers, but mostly white bodies.

It was Murphy who found his words first. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

We had run out of river and had seen no hint of the black-hulled Malibu ski boat and no sign the others were alive.

We found the riverboat, though, or at least what remained of it. The pressure of the current had it pushed up against the dam, the stern deep in the water and the bow sticking at an angle up into the sky. Everything on the boat above the waterline was now mangled or gone. All of our supplies and weapons were in the river. The bodies of Mandi and the others, or what little remained of them, were in the flow of water downstream.

And the current carried us into the mat of white bodies.

“There’s a boat about halfway through that’s floating upright,” I said.

I looked back at Murphy. He was slowly shaking his head, his mouth a tight frown. How many dead can a person see before the pieces of his soul turn to ash and float off in the wind?

Finally, he said, “It’s your call.”

“It’s the first boat we’ve seen all day that looks usable. It’s even got a canvas cover stretched over the top.”

Murphy gave me a nod and a shrug, leaned into the gruesome task ahead and started paddling. When our bow neared the first of the floating dead, I used the broken fence board to push it out of the way. But the dead were packed so tightly together, we had no chance of floating untouched between them. We had to push through. In doing so, we disturbed swarms of feeding and breeding flies. Hundreds of birds had settled on the bodies and were picking at the flesh. Beneath, fish large and small tugged at what would fit in their mouths. Even rats were making their way from the shore out onto the floating feast.

The thick taste of humid rot on the air was bad, but not nearly as bad as it was going to get in the coming days.

A long forty-five minutes after starting the struggle through the mat of floating dead, I reached up and put a thankful hand on the ski boat.

“This thing better run.” Murphy looked back the way we’d come. The corridor we plowed through closed up behind us. “I’d prefer not to paddle back through that.”

“If it doesn’t start, we’ll hit the shore and hike it.”

“Back upriver?”

Was he really asking? Sure, after coming down the river in something of a hurry, we didn’t see any sign of the black-hulled Malibu, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t back there in the trees somewhere. “I still want to go back upriver.”

Murphy nodded. Whether to agree or just to stop the conversation, I couldn’t tell.

I cut a few of the ropes that held the canvas cover over the boat and took my time climbing off of the plastic kayak. The last thing I wanted was to turn the banana-colored toy over. Once I had a leg over the gunwale, I smiled at the most optimistic circumstance we’d come across all morning. “It’s dry inside.”

“Dry?” Murphy didn’t believe it.

“Well, there’s maybe a little water down in the bottom, probably from the rain. But not much.”

Murphy, reaching up from the kayak and holding onto a chrome rail along the port side, said, “See if it’ll start. I don’t want to chance climbing off of this thing and falling in unless I know there’s some gold at the end of the rainbow.”

“That’s a very un-Murphy-like attitude.”

“Today’s not a good day to mess with me, Zed.”

In little more than a mumble, I said, “Sorry.” I turned and went to work at pulling the canvas back.

The canvas was heavy and stiff. I tugged and pushed, and after several sweaty minutes, got it off the front half of the boat. While I was pushing it back to let it fall off the stern, the ski boat tilted and I turned to see Murphy climbing inside. He’d changed his mind. Without a word one way or the other, I went back to pushing on the canvas.

“You’re right.”

“About?” I asked.

Murphy came up beside me and added some muscle to the problem. The canvas fell off the stern, but didn’t hit water. It landed across several floating bodies.

Murphy took his backpack off and laid it on the deck. He pulled out a plastic water bottle and took several gulps before stashing it back inside. He sat in the seat opposite the helm and looked up at me. “I just need a couple of days to deal with this one. I don’t mean to be a Zed about it.”

“A Zed?”

Murphy grinned, the first real smile I’d seen on him all morning. “You know.”

I rolled my eyes and sat at the helm. “Let’s hope God likes us today.” I started searching around compartments under the instrument panel.

“Look under the seat.”

I stood back up and lifted the seat cushion. “I’ll be damned.”

A ring with three keys lay there just waiting for me. I scooped them up, dropped back into the seat and guessed right on the second attempt. The ignition switch turned, the starter cranked and the motor coughed, once, twice, three times. It was running.

I looked over at Murphy. He looked back at me, just as surprised.

I immediately killed the engine.

“What?” he asked.

“Can you reach over and grab your paddle and my fence board?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Let’s use those to push that canvas away from the back of the boat. I don’t want it getting caught up in the propeller.”

Murphy gave me a big nod. “Good thinking. Wouldn’t that be just our luck lately, to find the last running boat on the river and then break it by being stupid?”

Five minutes later, with the engine purring like it had just been tuned, the bow of our new ski boat was pushing through the raft of reeking bodies and heading back toward clear water.

Chapter 47

Just having a comfortable seat, a motor gently pushing me back upriver and a breeze blowing across my skin had a positive effect on my mood. I could tell it was doing Murphy some good as well. Maybe it was a minor thing, but we were no longer two powerless vagabonds in a world full of hostile apes. Technology was back on our side.

Murphy said, “Hey man, you should let me drive.”

I shrugged, wondering why. But I stood up and left the seat open for Murphy. As he put himself in it, he said, “Why don’t you find a comfy spot and squeeze off a few rounds at anything you see on shore and see if you can hit it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to waste the ammunition.”

“You waste it every time you shoot. Let me watch you and see what you’re doing wrong.”

“Wrong? How hard can it be? You point the barrel, look down the sight and shoot, right?”

“If it wasn’t hard, you’d be hitting the infected when you shoot at them.”

I sucked in a deep, exasperated breath. Murphy was right. It was harder than just pointing the gun. Somewhere over the past week, I’d picked up a bad habit of some sort and it was throwing off my aim.

With no seats in the bow, I put a foot up in the passenger seat and lay my M4 on the top edge of the windshield. I looked through the sight and was surprised by how perfectly clear the image was. “These military sights are really nice.”

“They make one with a laser dot you can see through the sight, but it doesn’t show up on the target. That way, you can see exactly what you’re shooting at.”

“I think I need one of those.”

“There’s a body floating out there about a hundred yards. See it?”

I scanned across the glimmer of the surface. “Got it.”

“Shoot a few rounds at that one and see if you can hit it.”

I angled the rifle and lined up the sights with the body. The shot was pretty far out for me, but I had my rifle laying on the edge of the windshield to steady it.

“Be patient. Take a breath. Time your shot with the rhythm of the boat going up and down.”

“Okay.” Murphy was right. The boat seemed to be riding pretty smoothly across the water, but through the scope, with the rocking movement magnified by distance, it definitely wasn’t.

I waited. I got the rhythm down. I fired.

“Damn.” Murphy was more surprised than critical.

I looked up and saw the remnants of a splash fifteen or twenty feet past the body and off to the side.

With a chuckle, Murphy asked, “Is there another body out there you can see through the scope that I can’t?”

“No. Just the one.”

“Try again. Breathe smoothly. Hold your breath, then shoot. You’ve done it a thousand times.”

I fired again.

Miss.

This time, the bullet splashed far to the right.

Before Murphy could poke fun, I fired twice more. One came close, but one missed by so much, I couldn’t find the splash.

“Here, take the wheel. Let me see that thing again.”

I handed my rifle to Murphy as he stood up, hoping he’d find something wrong with it.

Murphy took a quick moment to look over the rifle. He pointed it at the body, which was only about fifty yards ahead of us by then. His concentration sharpened into focus. He fired. A reddish-gray clump of flesh seemed to jump up off of the body.

Two more quick shots followed and both found their targets.

“Crap.”

Murphy pulled the rifle down from his shoulder and handed it back to me. “I don’t know what to tell you. There is nothing wrong with your rifle.”

“So I saw.”

We switched places in the boat. With the body not more than twenty feet away, I shot several more rounds. I only got one hit.

Perplexed, I sat in the passenger seat and looked at Murphy. “What am I doing wrong?”

“Looks like you’re doing everything right to me.”

“What then?”

“Maybe it’s the rocking of the boat that’s throwing you off.”

I wanted to disagree. If that was the case, my shots would either be long or short. That, they were, but they were also far to the left and right. They were everywhere. It was only the lucky shots that found their target.

“Maybe you just need to spend some time practicing. You’ll get it down.”

For the next twenty or thirty minutes, I burned through three full magazines. I fired with the scope and without the scope. I tried shooting with my pistol, hoping my shooting problem was just with the rifle. It wasn’t. I didn’t hit a single shot more than twenty feet out. Inside of that, my accuracy was maybe fifty percent.

It didn’t make any sense. Years and countless dollars spent at the paintball field made me deadly accurate with a paintball gun. And those guns weren’t known for exceeding accuracy. I’d done well in the first weeks of the infection. It seemed my paintball skills had transferred directly to the M4 I’d acquired. But now, with time and maybe thousands of bullets fired, I couldn’t hit anything.

Maybe back at the beginning, I’d been so good with the M4 because I hadn’t thought about what I was doing – right or wrong. I just picked it up and did what came naturally. Perhaps now I was overthinking and layering on a full helping of frustration to boot. That combination could be ruining my accuracy.

So I put my weapon aside and concentrated instead on trying to find the black-hulled Malibu ski boat. If it had sunk, we were out of luck. I was hoping to find it in among the trees. If Steph and the others had pulled it out of the current to get on shore, that’s where it had to be. Because that’s where the shore was when the river flooded—up in the trees.

But the boat could have been covered in a film of dirt to match the surrounding ground, or caked in mud. It could have been behind a mound of flood debris, or covered in it. And the more scenarios I spun, the less I believed we’d find it.

Trying to escape all of those negative thoughts, I said, “Point out anything that looks like it has any chance of being a boat, okay?”

“You’re the boss.”

“No, Steph’s the boss.”

Murphy didn’t respond to that, a fact that made me think he had no hope of finding her alive.

And so our day went. We’d go a quarter-mile upriver, sometimes less, sometimes more. We’d see something, sometimes close to the water’s edge, sometimes not. We’d get close enough to identify it for sure. Or we’d get out and walk through the mud, broken limbs and the muddy trinkets that used to be inside houses, only to find something that wasn’t the boat we sought.

We floated into each cove and creek and searched.

As the afternoon heated up, the bodies of the dead kept floating down the river. More than once, the body of a white-skinned man or woman popped up from below the surface as the gasses of rot gave it enough buoyancy to break free of its bonds in the weeds on the bottom of the river.

Not once did we see a living person, normal or infected. Nor did we see any of the mule deer, which were normally everywhere in the hill country on the west side of Austin. Only bugs and scavengers dared chance the murderous river.

Late in the afternoon, with the sun inching toward the horizon, Murphy said, “We’re not going to finish this today, you know that, right?”

I looked up the river and nodded.

“Are we gonna try and sleep on the boat tonight, or do you want to hike up one of these hills and find a house that didn’t get washed away?”

“I don’t know.” I was despondent. The long, fruitless afternoon had worn away my hope.

“It doesn’t look like we’re going to get any more rain.”

I looked up at the clear sky. “Nope.”

“I think that was a hurricane.” Murphy was trying to take my mind off the search.

“You think?”

“We haven’t had one blow up this way in maybe ten years. I think we’re overdue.”

I rubbed my hand across my sweaty arm. “Yeah, makes sense. That explains why it’s still hot, anyway.”

“The heat can’t last much longer. It’s got to be late September, early October, right?”

“I don’t know.” I smiled and almost laughed at myself. “You know, I was going to say I don’t even know what day it is. But that expression is pretty meaningless, isn’t it? Days of the week don’t mean anything anymore, do they?”

“I don’t guess they do.”

“For the foreseeable future, I guess all we really need to care about are the four seasons.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

I looked back up the river. “Do you think we’ll find them?”

“Sugar, or no sugar?”

“No sugar.”

“Nope.”

“No chance?”

“Everywhere you look, you see dead Whites. That was a wicked storm. Not much of anything in this valley lived through it. If I had to bet, I’d bet they’re all dead.”

I slumped in my seat. “Do you think we should go hunting?”

“For Smart Ones?”

“Yeah.”

Murphy shook his head and looked around at the destruction. “Another day or two won’t matter. I’d like to wish all of the naked ones got killed in the flood. God knows thousands of their bodies are in the river. But you remember that farm, right? Out by Hutto or Taylor, or wherever it was?”

“Dr. Evans’ farm.”

“How many do you think we saw that day?”

“Tens of thousands. I couldn’t even begin to guess.”

“It could have been a hundred-thousand or more, right?”

I thought about it for a moment. “They covered that whole valley and they were still coming over that hill.”

Murphy pointed at a cluster of white bodies floating on the current. “This isn’t all of them.”

“We’ll never kill all of them. You know that, right?”

“Just the Smart Ones.”

“Yeah, the Smart Ones.”

Chapter 48

We put down anchor in a wide cove and slept on the boat. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was the safest we could make ourselves for the least amount of effort.

I woke in the morning as the sky was making the slow transition to blue. A heavy dew had settled on my skin, making it difficult for the mosquitoes to make their way around on my exposed arms, face and neck. That’s when I realized the virus had a benefit I hadn’t thought about. The mosquito bites didn’t itch.

I stood up, stretched, yawned and put a big smile on my face. It wasn’t real, but it was worth a try.

I felt better.

The birds were singing in the trees like nothing in the world was out of place. The water in the cove was calm and inviting. I stripped off most of my equipment, keeping only my boots, pants and machete. I couldn’t hit a damn thing with the guns, so why bring them with me?

I went to the stern of the boat, climbed out onto a small swim platform and slipped silently into the water.

The cove wasn’t deep and I was able to stand on the bottom, which seemed to be covered with all manner of debris. I’d made a good choice to keep my boots on. I lay back in the water and let myself float as best I could with the added weight of the machete. Still, it felt good, relaxing, otherworldly, with only the calming flow of the river water to hear.

I stayed there for a long time, thinking about everything, thinking a lot about Murphy and the way he accepted the tragedies crashing into him. He kept his head up and smiled, most of the time.

Was it so easy to lose the shackles the past burdened you with? Was it so hard to cry through the grief and then smile to face a new day? Was it so necessary to hold all of the pain so close to my heart I could feel it over and over and over?

The answer had to be no. Murphy’s bumper-sticker-simple philosophy worked for him. Why couldn’t it work for me?

I was alive in a world where I was likely to be confronted by a new sorrow every day until one of them killed me. To choose to live, to make that choice to fight for life every day, had to be a choice to accept all the sorrows of all of my tomorrows. But if that choice to live was to be bearable at all, I needed to let loose my embrace of the pain, both yesterday’s and tomorrow’s.

And it was that easy.

No, not really.

It would take work. I was too habituated to nursing my painful memories to lose them so easily. But if I tried, I might look back one day and say to myself it had been easier than I thought.

So I stood up straight in the water. Fish swam around me. Birds, still uncaring about the travails of humans, chirped and sang. The sky was a beautiful blue. The big trees that survived the flood swayed in the morning breeze. And I’d never had a better friend than Murphy.

The sound of running water startled me and I jerked my head around to find the source.

Murphy was standing on the swim platform, relieving himself into the river. “If the water gets warm, swim away. Heh, heh, heh.”

Chapter 49

Back out on the river, Murphy and I repeated the previous day’s routine. I wasted some time and bullets on target practice, with no discernible improvement. We spent a few hours siphoning gasoline out of derelict boats. We checked each cove and marina. We hiked up on the shore a dozen times to look closer at boats that might have been the Malibu.

When we reached the point where the riverboat had snapped its anchor line, Murphy asked, “What do you think?”

I looked upriver. “Looking downriver for them seemed like the natural thing. It occurs to me now nothing was stopping them from going up that way.”

“Nothing but the current.”

“I’m sure that boat could have run against the current. I mean, what will these things do, forty or fifty miles per hour?”

Murphy shrugged. “How would I know?”

“It’s worth a look. We can probably check all the way up to the dam by sundown.”

“Another night sleeping on the boat. It’ll be fun.”

“Sarcasm is not your forte, Murphy.”

“Maybe I’m just so good at it, you can’t tell when I’m being sarcastic.”

“Whatever.” I looked up the hill on the north bank and spotted the glistening windows of the house where Murphy and I had ridden out the last of the storm. “We can climb back up there and crash tonight.”

Murphy looked up the steep slope. “If we get done soon enough, maybe. I don’t want to climb up there in the dark.”

“Another night sleeping in the boat won’t kill us.”

Murphy started the engine. “You’re the boss.”

“Whatever.”

Still in the absence of other humans, we made our way up the river. We came across fewer and fewer bodies as the miles passed. The destruction on the banks became less severe.

“You know–” I turned away from the trees on the bank to look at Murphy. “I just naturally assumed all of this flood water poured over Mansfield Dam. But I’m starting to think that storm dumped all the rain here in the hill country.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.”

“I’m thinking if they came upriver, their chances were pretty good.”

“Maybe.”

Reading Murphy’s tone, I made a guess. “But you don’t think they came upriver, do you?”

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“Who would? It’s not intuitive. Going upriver is like running toward the danger instead of running away from it. People don’t think that way.”

“Still, they could have.”

“Sure.” Murphy scrutinized me with a long stare.

“What?”

“When did you turn optimistic?”

“I wouldn’t go as far as to call it optimism.”

“Whatever.”

More hours passed before we rounded a bend to see the sand-colored monolith of Mansfield Dam filling the valley in front of us. Water was pouring out of the floodgates with a roar that rolled down the valley. And though the current was running faster than normal, it wasn’t over the banks. In fact, it looked to have peaked at four or five feet above normal. Not bad, considering how deep it had gotten downriver.

Spanning the valley just downriver from the dam and a hundred feet over the river, the 620 Bridge stood mostly empty of cars. Further downstream, closer to us, a much older bridge reached from bank to bank just a few feet above the water level, surprisingly undamaged.

As we neared the low bridge, the point where we’d have to turn the boat around or get out and walk, Murphy pointed to the right, shaking his head slowly. “That can’t be it.”

I followed the line from the end of his finger to a narrow old boat ramp of crumbling concrete and overgrown bushes. At the top of the ramp, on the muddy ground in the trees to one side, lay a black-hulled ski boat. I couldn’t contain my surprise. “Jesus, I think it is.”

Staying calm, Murphy said, “You’ve said that about every black-hulled boat we’ve seen.”

“No, I think that’s it. See that logo paint thing on the side? That’s what our boat had.”

“Just don’t get too excited, okay? I’m betting Malibu manufactured more than one boat like that.”

“Just drive the boat over there and let’s check it out.”

“Do you see any Whites?”

I was standing on my seat by then, steadying myself with a grip on the windshield, thoroughly scanning up and down the bank. “Same as it’s been all day. Nothing.”

“Just don’t get too comfy with that, okay? You know as well as I do they’re still out there somewhere. When we come across them again, I’d rather be ready than surprised. Know what I mean?”

“Yup.”

Murphy pulled the boat up to one of several half-rotted pilings that marked a lane for boat traffic coming on and off the ramp. Both of us took a moment to work through our preparedness habit. My rifle hung from the sling on my back. I still had my Hello Kitty backpack with some grenades, some plastic bottles of water and food for another day. My MOLLE vest held my full and empty clips…oops, did I say clips? Old habit. I looked over at Murphy in silent guilt.

He saw me in the process of running my hands over the magazines, making sure the Velcro on each pouch was secure. “You need ammo, man?”

“No. Just checking my magazines.”

Murphy looked at me quizzically. “You can’t hit anything, anyway.”

With my pistol in one hand and my new machete in the other, I said, “Ready when you are.”

Murphy gave me a nod and I jumped off the boat into waist-deep water.

While I waded to shore, Murphy stood on the bow of the ski boat with his rifle at his shoulder, pointing into the woods. It was the safe way to get to shore. He covered me while I was vulnerable in the water. Once my feet were firmly on the bank, I covered him while he came across.

Once we were both onshore, Murphy took the role of guard, scanning right and left through the trees, looking for and expecting a dozen infected to burst out with no warning.

I stepped over the ramp’s broken concrete and headed toward the boat. As I neared, I was surer it was the boat. But once I stepped up beside it, I was positive. Hanging from the ignition was a key. On the key ring was a small foam float in the shape of a Shiner beer bottle. I’d seen that before.

Steph, Dalhover, Amy and Megan had made it to this point.

They were alive. They had to be alive.

I grinned.

Murphy was beside me by then. “You’re grinning like a monkey. You’re sure this is the one?”

I pointed at the key chain.

“Can’t argue with that.”

I looked around and climbed into the boat, rocking it to the side with the addition of my weight. “Where do you think they went?”

“Quiet, dude.”

Steadying myself with a hand on the side of the hull, I said, “Sorry.”

I looked up and down the deck. I looked at the seats. I started lifting the seat cushions and looking underneath.

“They aren’t hiding under the cushions.”

“I’m looking for… clues.”

“Clues?”

“You know, whether they all made it here alive. Where they went. Stuff like that.”

“The boat’s tied to that tree, so somebody got here alive.”

I looked up at the rope tied from the bow to a narrow tree trunk.

Duh.

That’s when I spotted an odd pattern of white scratches in the black gel coat paint across the bow. Careful to keep my balance on the sloped deck, I crossed between the split windshield and the padded seats in the bow. I leaned over and looked at the words that were scratched onto the front edge of the bow as it curved down. “Look at this.”

I put a hand on the gunwale and jumped over to the ground, landing beside the rope that held the beached boat, a place where someone could have stood two days ago, out of the angry river, safe. That’s where someone had scratched a message into the paint.

Murphy gave it just enough of a glance to see the pattern of scratches was text before looking up the road that led down to the boat ramp. “What’s it say?”

“It says they’re going to Monk’s Island.”

Murphy grinned. “That sounds like a clue to me.”

Chapter 50

It was late in the day and Murphy and I should have made the safe choice and found a sturdy house to hole up in. We could have spent another night feeding the mosquitoes while sleeping on the boat. But with our goal certain on the other side of the dam, we chose to press on.

The boat ramp led to a narrow asphalt road with too many patched potholes to be smooth. But that wasn’t important to us since we were on foot. Small houses were hidden at the ends of gravel driveways, back in the trees on both sides of the road. Many had cars parked in front, though my bet was at least half of those were broken down well before the virus hit. Front doors on some houses were open. Many had broken windows. A few bones and shreds of clothing lay in front yards. Several coyotes worked on the scraps in front of one house.

We crossed 620 where its four paved lanes entered the half-mile-long bridge over the river. It struck me as odd that only a few abandoned cars were visible. The number of bridges over the river that bisected Austin surely had to be less than ten. Given what Murphy and I had seen on the bridges in the center of town, I’d expected to see a barricade at one end or the other of every one.

With a fenced-off transformer station down the hill on our left, we started a rugged climb up a rock-covered slope that made up the face of the dam on the north side of the river. The rocks were too large and jagged to provide any kind of decent footing. Both of us slipped countless times and got our feet jammed between the rocks on the way up. At the top, we were breathing hard and bleeding from new cuts on our shins, knees and hands. We climbed over the guardrail and were on the long-obsolete two-lane road that topped the dam.

The thing about Lake Travis I always found odd was it was called a working lake by the Lower Colorado River Authority. I think that meant it was a water supply for much of Travis County and had a primary purpose of regulating the flow down the river so it wouldn’t flood out Austin or the rice farmers further south. Nor would it leave their irrigation canals dry during droughts. As a result, the lake level moved up and down by ten to twenty feet or more through the course of each year.

At the moment, with the sun just a hair below the horizon and the sky glowing red and orange behind us, the lake was as full as I’d seen it. Looking down the length of the main basin as it spread mostly north, we saw Monk’s Island, named for an old Spanish mission built on a hill that reached above the water in the center of the lake. Of course, two hundred and fifty years ago, when the weathered limestone walls were erected, the lake was a long way in the future.

When Mansfield Dam was completed in the early ‘40s and Lake Travis filled, half of the mission was submerged. The old church at the top of the hill and several outbuildings still stood. They were surrounded on three sides by a thick wall that followed the line of the hill down into the lake.

The mission had been abandoned before the First World War and had been turned into a state park as part of the dam project. So, uninhabited with a couple of arable acres on top, surrounded by the widest moat anyone was likely to find, it wasn’t a bad place to go for safety.

Looking across the glistening water at the pale walls of the church, hued in blood red from the setting sun, Murphy asked, “You see anything?”

“Can’t tell from here.”

“You think they made it?”

I shrugged and hoped. “We’re not going to get there tonight. We should probably go find a place to stay.”

“It may be safer to find a boat in the dark than trying to clear a house of the infected.”

I was tired, but the possibility of reuniting with the others gave me a second wind. “I’m game if you are.”

Murphy looked over at the shore on our right, then left. “Which way, then?”

Pointing to the right, I said, “I think the shore on that side is pretty rugged, with cliffs and ravines and stuff.” I pointed left. “If we’re going to follow the shore and look for a boat, I think we cross the dam and go that way.”

“Sounds good.” Murphy started walking down the two-lane road.

We were nearly halfway across the dam when he decided it was a good time to pick up the conversation. “I know there was a flood and all, but it seems odd we haven’t seen any infected in two days.” He put on his big grin. “I think I’m kinda starting to miss them.”

I laughed. Given that I had a three-hundred-foot drop down the face of the dam on my left and a fifty-foot drop to the surface of the lake on my right, along with a half-mile of empty road behind and in front of me, I laughed loudly. It felt good for a moment not to care. Not a single White had a hope of hearing me.

Catching the mood, Murphy yelled at the top of his lungs, “Fuck you! Fuck you all!”

I faced the lake and did the same.

After that, we stood and watched the last of the sun’s glow turn to black on the lake’s surface.

When we started walking again, I said, “Yeah. It is kind of weird that we haven’t seen any of them.”

“If the others are on Monk’s Island, what do you think about staying there?”

“I don’t know.” It seemed tempting to have a place within reach that might be a sanctuary.

“Do you think the Whites could get to us there?”

“I don’t know, Murphy. I just know every time we underestimate them, every time we think we’re safe, it all goes to shit.”

“Ah, Pessimistic Zed. It’s good to have you back, man.”

I shook my head and smiled. “I’m just trying to work the Murphy plan. Shouldn’t you be encouraging me?”

“I was.”

“Whatever.”

As the sky above us blackened enough for the stars to sparkle, Murphy said, “I wonder how many normal people survived.”

“I don’t know.”

“Mr. Mays would have been the last one we saw, right?”

“There were a bunch of them holed up at Camp Mabry.”

“But they’re all dead now, right?”

I shook my head emphatically. “We don’t know that.”

“We saw the bones, man.”

“Yeah, we saw a lot of bones. But Freitag and Harris got out with that skinny guy, what’s-his-name. More must have gotten away.”

Murphy shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose so. You think there might be some all around then, just hiding?”

“Hiding seems to be the best solution. Or getting out of town. Holy shit. I forgot about the family we helped up on 183 the other day.”

Murphy smiled. “Yeah, I totally forgot about that. Zed, I feel good about that.” Murphy stopped walking and turned to look at me. “This is a big, fucked up world now. But I feel good about that. We did the right thing.”

I never was the sentimental type, nor the enthusiastic type, but Murphy’s happiness over the good deed rubbed off. It was something to feel good about. It was a sad little tragedy in the making that, because of our intervention, had a happy ending. Without the vocabulary to express how good it did feel, I simply said, “Yeah.”

With smiles buoyed by that one act of kindness, we walked down the dark road toward the other side of the lake.

The End

Book 6 in the series will be out in early fall of 2014.

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Other Books by Bobby Adair

Horror

Slow Burn: Zero Day, book 1

Slow Burn: Infected, book 2

Slow Burn: Destroyer, book 3

Slow Burn: Dead Fire, book 4

Slow Burn: Torrent, book 5

Slow Burn Box Set: Destroyer and Dead Fire

And coming soon…a joint collaboration with another zombie author…

Satire

Flying Soup

Text copyright © 2014, Bobby L. Adair

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

- Cover Design and Layout
- Previously, in Slow Burn:Book 1 – Zero Day
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6Blood.
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22T
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Chapter 33
- Chapter 34
- Chapter 35
- Chapter 36
- Chapter 37
- Chapter 38
- Chapter 39
- Chapter 40
- Chapter 41
- Chapter 42
- Chapter 43
- Chapter 44
- Chapter 45
- Chapter 46
- Chapter 47
- Chapter 48
- Chapter 49
- Chapter 50
- The End